Rodeo: Rising to the occassion

It took a volunteer train to pull off the rodeo, but near the front of the train, leading the effort, were several individuals. You've probably met them, heard of them or saw them about during the rodeo. But there's a unique element to them that you're likely unaware of and that didn't strike me until just recently.

Imagine you've just started in a new job as the head of an entire department or division. Along with an able staff, you job is leading about 100 people. You've never done anything on this level before, you've barely gotten your feet wet, but you've got tremendous support from the team around you and your leader. That's not too far from the position in which Doug, Tammy, Susan and Con found themselves last fall; all four of them had assumed new roles at Grace.

Having already identified their strong leadership and organizational skills, and needing people to ring lead the rodeo efforts, when they had only been in their new roles for but a few months, we asked them to take on the additional challenge. As I look back, I'm astounded. They've excelled beyond our expectations. If put in the exact same position, I'm not sure I would have succeeded to the levels they reached.

In addition to being incredible people, they are and have surrounded themselves with a collection of an equally incredible team that empowered them to reach greater heights. And, if I haven't stressed it enough already, through all of us it was really God working and His doing immeasurably more than we imagined.

Oh, and while I've got your attention, I thought of another fringe benefit to the rodeo... we used the land. While we worked hard during the land purchase process to orient people to where the property lines where and which field we were buying by handing out maps etc., I still heard people asking where the field was even just last week. Those who participated in the rodeo have a clear idea not only as to where the field is, but a concept of it's size, what it looks like and the condition it's in. In fact, a lot of us took a good bit of the field home with us covered in layers of dust. Many have even tasted the new property. Hmmm, I'm not sure that if those were the only things to come out of the rodeo that it would've been worth it just for that.

So, are we doing it again next year? Watch for my next post.