Missional FriendshipSample

Day 8 - Building Friendship Through Showing Up

If you want to do it, you find 1,000 ways to do it. If you don’t want to do it, you find 1,000 ways not to do it. - Kyrgyzstan Proverb

In 2012, Alex Barron set a juggling record by juggling 11 balls with 23 consecutive catches. That’s impressive! But the thing to notice is he couldn’t do that with 12. Everyone has a limit of what they can juggle. Mine is 2!

We are all jugglers with all the things we have to do in life. If you are a leader, you have more things than most to try to juggle. The temptation is to keep saying yes to “one more thing” while never releasing any of the things that are already in the air. This creates a life of deciding daily what is going to drop that day. It is a life of the tyranny of the urgent that quickly crowds out the important. Interestingly enough, what usually seems to go are the relational aspects of life.

The leadership expert, Peter Drucker, had this to say: "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” It is not only okay to drop some of the balls you are juggling, it is essential. The question is whether you are dropping the right ones.

True missional friendships can’t be relationships that are engaged based on convenience and do not have anything better to do. Friendship is about showing up. Consistently, faithfully, in body and spirit. Missional friendship is going to be inconvenient because it demands your time and attention.

But when you do show up…when you decide to be committed to your community of leaders for your good and for theirs, amazing things take place.

A leadership community that had been meeting for years saw that one of their members needed a sabbatical. He wasn’t on the edge of burnout; he had fallen over the edge and was not in a healthy place. His leadership community of support went to the board of his church to advocate for a break for him. They even helped pay for some of the things to support him in experiencing rest, renewal, and recovery. That is what showing up for one another looks like.

Questions to Consider

• What have you been trying to keep juggling that you need to give yourself permission to let go of to make room for what is truly important?
• How can you show up for someone that will be an encouragement and help to them?

Action to Take:

• Stop doing something of significance for a week as an experiment to gauge its importance to you and your Kingdom work.

Prayer to Make:

Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what you should not be doing. Pray for a leader that the Holy Spirit brings to your mind to be cared for in a gentle and kind way that will encourage them.