Baby Sitting Adults

A friend explained what he does for a living in succinct fashion: "I baby sit adults." The way he said it indicated that he didn't really like babysitting or felt that he shouldn't have to.

He was talking about, I think how he often had to take people step by step through tasks and jobs that didn't really seem that complicated: like you would a child.

I got the feeling that sometimes his colleagues didn't take the time to think through things and had to be walked through scenarios and lots of silly questions had to be answered.

I suppose there is a fair amount of that in any profession. But I also wonder if that is not a component of leadership that we have to embrace.

And if it is: maybe we need to rethink our perspective of baby sitter.

Maria in the Sound of Music was a pretty cool baby sitter. She had to earn some credibility with the children. She rose to the challenge and found how to connect. And she earned her way to a better position of leadership.

Ditto Mary Poppins. Except when her gig was done and she had achieved what she thought were appropriate results, she moved on.

Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, on the other hand (stretching the concept of baby sitter) provides a different take. Nurse is Ratched is a former army nurse. Her nickname is "Big Nurse", taken from the term Big Brother in George Orwell's novel 1984. This term refers to an all knowing authority. She wields control in every interaction she undertakes.

Over the years you have heard some baby sitter nightmares (they locked my kids out of the house because they were misbehaving) and some good things (they always clean up the kitchen even though I don't ask them to).

Maybe you have some babysitting experience and see similarities in how you engage others in ministry.

Maybe babysitting adults, really, is leadership. So when someone asks you what you do, you can sigh, shake your head and say: "I baby sit adults" or you can say: "I lead a mission".

At the end of the day, the two might not be too different. How successful you are might depend on if you take care of those in your leadership like Maria would or like Nurse Ratched would.

The next time someone at the ministry team meeting gets under your skin with a question that they and everyone else around the table knows the answer to (it's the same one they have been asking for the last two years and you have been giving the same answer to), just ask them what a few of their favorite things are.

And then maybe break out in spontaneous song.

Or: there is always electroshock therapy.