I am a control freak, as many well-intentioned women in ministry tend to be! When I began the women’s ministry at my sweet church, I tried to do everything on my own, for many reasons. I enjoyed every aspect of ministry, of building something from the ground up. I was wired up with leadership, administrative and creative communication spiritual gifts. I didn’t want to burden anyone. And let’s be honest, one person can get the job done – or all the jobs done – much faster than having to explain it to someone else or wait for them to get back to you. So in other words, I was selfish and prideful. Though, in my defense, I was young and thought I was doing people a favor. And God. (“Look at me doing all this for you, Lord! See how much I love you to stay up this late? You’re welcome!”)
As the years went by, and I grew in my leadership, I realized that the way I was doing things not only wasn’t working, it wasn’t beneficial for me – and I was burning out very quickly. But my major motivation to make some changes came when I ran across these verses from Ephesians 4:11-12, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”
I’d read this before, I’m sure. But one day, it hit me between my eyes. My main task as a leader was not to do ministry. This was a shocking revelation to me. My main task as a leader was to equip others to do ministry. And why? So that they may be built up. This changed everything for me. This changed how I built my team, what tasks I kept doing, and what I let go of.
I began with baby steps. I had to. It was if someone had to pry my fingers off the entire ministry. “This is my baby!” I thought on more than one occasion, completely forgetting that no, in reality, it was God’s and not mine.
I started by bringing my team together and doing a brief spiritual gifts survey, along with talking through their areas of passion. This was humbling to me because it showed me a couple of things. First, I didn’t know my women as well as I had thought. And secondly, I was basically using them to fill in holes. I was, in essence, saying to them, “I don’t care that you don’t like to use email and hate cooking, I really need someone to schedule all the hospitality needs for this coming year.” When I found out that two-thirds of my ladies didn’t have a passion for women, but instead for children or prayer or music, I was blown away. But I needed to know this. From this place of truth, I could build a team of women who wanted to be there. And I could steer those into areas of better fit who I had been trying to pigeon-hole.
Another small step I took was actually letting go. I intentionally gave pieces of the ministry away that I had for so long held on to so tightly. I remember handing over the monthly newsletter to an eager teammate. Being a writer and a stickler for grammar and spelling, this practically killed me, but I knew I had to die to self in some areas, so I started here. I coached her then let her go. The morning of the first event after she had taken over, we were placing them next to everyone’s plate and I was glancing it over. Typos galore. I wanted to scream. Instead, I thanked her for her hard work, and after the event, we talked through a system that would make it better the next issue. A dear friend even came up to me afterwards and said, “I know this is killing you. I’m so proud of you for handling this so graciously.” If she only knew how I was feeling on the inside. But it takes a long time to change a habit, to change an attitude.
My final step was sort of manipulative. I was somewhat putting my team and the women in my church to a little test. I just stopped doing some things that I had been doing for years. I knew one of two things would happen. Either no one would even notice and I would know I had been wasting my time, or someone – who it mattered to, whatever it happened to be – would step up and fill the hole.
It took me several years to get to the place of feeling like the women’s ministry was not “Beths’s ministry” but truly belonged to all the women of our church. By the time I handed over the reins, I felt as if I were ready to walk away because I had trained many good women who were serving in their areas of passion and giftedness, and who had ownership over our mission and plans.
It turns out, I couldn’t do it all by myself. And I never was supposed to anyway.
