Task or Territory?

I grew up on a farm. Dad was less con­cerned about which of us did the task needed to be done than the accom­plish­ment of the task itself. It was (and still is) one of the great­est lessons of my life. The ques­tion is sim­ply: “Did the job get done?” Though my broth­ers and I would argue over which one of us would do what, we knew that at the end of the day the assign­ment had to be accomplished.

Ter­ri­tory peo­ple tend to become resent­ful con­trollers. They spend a lot of time draw­ing orga­ni­za­tional charts and defend­ing social ter­ri­tory. Though there is such a thing as appro­pri­ate bound­aries, the bot­tom line has to do with whether or not a good deed was done — not who was doing it.

While the dis­ci­ples argued about political/social/religious ter­ri­tory (who would be the great­est in the King­dom), Jesus took a towel, wrapped it around him­self, and began to wash their feet (thank God foot wash­ing was not a union job in that day or he would have been sued for doing a lowly task with­out a union card). Jesus made a point: It was get­ting meal time and peo­ple needed to get ready. Feet were dirty. A task needed to be done. He got to it.

Task-oriented com­pa­nies do very well. Territory-obsessed endeav­ors tend to die. Orga­ni­za­tions that respect gifts more then they mon­u­men­tal­ize their orga­ni­za­tional charts suc­ceed at a much higher level. (The Japan­ese use very flat orga­ni­za­tional mod­els.) Again, the dis­ci­ples were upset that some­one they did not know was preach­ing Jesus. That unknown, dis­tant dis­ci­ple was not under their con­trol. The Lord told them not to be uptight about it. That per­son had his gift — his call­ing — and was ful­fill­ing it. He was get­ting the job done. That is all that mattered.

On any given day, I do a dozen things or more that have noth­ing to do with my pri­mary job descrip­tion. They are just things to be done. It is far bet­ter sim­ply to do what needs to be done than to be con­cerned with which com­mit­tee head could be called to do this or that lit­tle task. In God’s world, the spirit of servant-hood is supe­rior to any ego posturing.