I recently heard this local proverb for the first time. It points to the wisdom that wishes don’t actually change anything. No, we must live in the world as it actually is, a world that requires work to achieve what we desire. Apparently, we have a saying in English that is similar, “If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.” I’m not familiar with this saying, but it makes sense. Beggars don’t ride horses because wishes don’t actually result in horses. Wishes don’t result in anything – unless they are transformed into action.
Solomon agrees, “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied” (Prov 13:4). Solomon tells us that wishful thinking is often linked to being a sluggard. And diligence is so important that it makes the difference between a satisfied soul and a soul that gets nothing, a soul that’s fruitless.
We’ve also seen here in Central Asia that it’s not just sloth that can lead to fruitless wishful thinking. This kind of posture can also come from a culture enslaved to fatalism. If a people group doesn’t believe that God actively intervenes in their daily lives, if they don’t believe that their actions can be used by God to make a significant difference, then they are not likely to translate their wishes into action. After all, if everything has already been determined and God is distant, then what’s the point?
Western culture is very active when it comes to trying to turn desires into reality. Sometimes this borders on being naively optimistic. But the underlying belief that we really can change things through our efforts has deeply Protestant (and biblical) roots. In contrast, the culture here has been cut off from the wisdom of God’s word for so long that they’ve largely lost this practical agency and optimism of the book of Proverbs, even though old local proverbs like the one about the tree of wishes still linger. Thankfully, the Bible is now available in our local language. That means that little by little, its wisdom will be leavening the worldview of our people group, especially that of the believers.
Long-term, this will mean much less sitting underneath the wishing tree – and much more planting, pruning, and picking from trees that actually satisfy.
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This local proverb speaks of the power and efficacy of slow, steady, diligent work. This kind of work is compared to a king enthroned – weighty, authoritative, influential. It reminds me of Proverbs 12:24, “the hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.” According to both our local oral wisdom and Solomon, authority is the natural result of long-term labor that has proven wise, fruitful, and effective.
One of the very interesting things about this season in our area of Central Asia is that we are now seeing the good fruit that has come from missionaries who years ago chose the slow and steady route to church planting. In multiple cities now, church plants that both locals and movement-driven missionaries said would never work are actually thriving. And, wonder of wonders, they are raising up faithful, humble, qualified local leaders. Yes, their road has been very messy and involved much suffering. But they have kept their hand to the plow and kept going, one plodding step at a time.
I heard this past week about a local pastor who has approached our former team in Poet City to ask them for help in leadership development. As is modeled by most foreign organizations, this local leader has relied on ministry programs and salaried positions to raise up other leaders. But this approach keeps failing him. This is because ministry salaries and positions cannot create faithful character, though they sure can wreck the character of young and immature potential leaders. However, this pastor has seen from afar as young men like Darius* and Alan* have been raised up over a number of years to now be a faithful elder and faithful elder-in-training, respectively. And this evidence of slow labor speaks with a kind of authority all its own.
The slow route of faithful shepherding will always lap the seemingly fast route of exciting methods. And when rushed and shallow work inevitably collapses due to an inadequate foundation, other work will suddenly be elevated, enthroned as it were. If this newfound authority is then accompanied by a humility based on the fact that the principles and methods employed were not really our own at all but merely an attempt to be faithful to God’s word – then that newfound influence can be put to good, even eternal, use.
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*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security
In the season just before we found out that Ahab* was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I was trying to help him start a small business. Ahab was a sharp man with many skills, but he had strangely gone without work for quite some time. Looking back, this should have been another warning sign. What was really going on was that Ahab was unwilling to work another real job since he believed he deserved a ministry salary – especially now that our church plant was meeting in his house. But it took some time for this to come out.
In the meantime, I tried to help him start an illegal pig meat business. At the time, I wasn’t really thinking through the legality of everything, just trying to see if the concept would work. But yes, afterward we found out that we were indeed violating a number of Islamic social and import/export laws. Alas, it was for a good cause.
I was eager to see if I could help this potential elder start a small business that would provide for his family’s needs in a climate where outspoken believers often face many hurdles to gainful employment. At that time, most locals only lived on $500 a month or less. So, a small business only needed to bring in several hundred dollars a month in profit to be significantly helpful for a family like Ahab’s.
During this first term of ours overseas, my mind was aflame with dozens of business ideas that locals could start. Many of these ideas came from noticing what wasn’t yet available in our area compared to much of the developed world. And one product that was simply nowhere to be found was pork or pig meat of any kind.
This is not too hard to understand since we live in an Islamic country. Yet I was surprised that there was almost no infrastructure whatsoever for selling pork products to the growing population of foreigners. I remember once seeing a store section in Dubai labeled, PORK – NOT FOR MUSLIMS! Our grocery stores had no such sections with intimidating signage. Every once in a while an alcohol store would sell some canned spam of some sort. But even this was a rarity.
Some of our colleagues had decided not to eat pork for the sake of witness. But since eating pork didn’t lead to any loss of relationships in our local culture, others of us decided that we would occasionally partake as a way to point toward gospel freedom, bless local believers, and simply enjoy one of God’s good gifts. But those of us who partook had to content ourselves with precooked bacon or packages of pepperoni occasionally carried over in suitcases. Once, I won an American canned ham in a white elephant Christmas game. That was a good Christmas.
However, I knew that there were abundant wild pigs up in the mountains. Many locals would hunt them for sport. Some would even cook what they killed, bragging to close friends about eating something that had been forbidden to them all their lives.
Putting two and two together, one day I asked Ahab if he knew anyone who regularly went pig hunting.
“Yes, my son-in-law who lives just over the border.”
Like many families, and like our people group as a whole, Ahab’s kinfolk treated international borders much more casually than Westerners would. After all, their people group had been living in these mountains for millennia. Empires rose, kingdoms fell, borders changed – and their people group was still there, fighting rival tribes, marrying women from those same tribes, herding livestock, robbing caravans, and trading between ancestral areas as they pleased. In fact, because of this arbitrary imposition of borders by outsiders, smuggling is still viewed as an honorable trade here. The modern state in all its rigidity continues to gain power and permanence, but for now, the older tribal and semi-nomadic ways still regularly violate its borders and thereby call its legitimacy into question.
“Brother Ahab, could your son-in-law ever bring us pig meat to sell to the foreigners here?”
“Yes… Yes, he could do that. He goes hunting all the time and then comes to visit us or we go to visit them at least once a month.”
“Well,” I continued, “I’m not sure yet, but there might be enough interest among the foreigners such that there would be a monthly demand for fresh pig meat.”
Later that night, I posted a question on one of the expat Facebook pages. “Would anyone be interested in buying fresh wild pig meat were we to start selling it?”
Now, I tend to be an optimist when it comes to business ideas, but the response I got surprised even me. Dozens of expats from at least two big cities said they would be eager to buy wild pig meat from us were we to start selling it. All of a sudden, a plan was coming together.
A few weeks later, we had our first batch of fresh mountain boar meat. These cuts of meat were for us to cook, in hopes that we could develop a good recipe to recommend to buyers.
“Did they give your son-in-law any trouble at the border?” I asked Ahab, worried about what the Islamic border guards might do if they discovered someone transporting haram (Islam’s term for defiling) meat across the border.
“No trouble at all! They asked what it was and he truthfully said, ‘Meat.’ Look at it,” he said, pointing into the cooler full of rich red slabs of mountain pig, “It looks red like cow meat, so they let them right on through.”
Here, our local language did us a favor. The most common term for animal meat in daily usage is a generic one that doesn’t distinguish what animal that meat is coming from. It could be cow, lamb, goat – or pig. The listener doesn’t know unless he asks a specific follow-up question. Even then, the common answer might be given as ‘beast meat’ as opposed to ‘bird meat,’ and the specific beast still might not be named. So, we had at least two levels of linguistic cover.
My wife and I looked up a recipe online for cooking wild pig meat and decided to try one that involved cooking the meat in a slow cooker with garlic, onions, salt and pepper, and red wine. I went down the street to the same liquor store where I had once bought vodka to try and treat a mold infestation.
“I need some red wine for cooking pig meat!” I said, the clerks shaking their heads at these wild excuses I kept giving them for why I was buying alcohol.
For the taste test meal, we invited two other local believers to come and try it with us, serving it with Dijon mustard and barbecue sauces for dipping. Even after soaking in its slow cooker brew, the meat still proved to taste much gamier than normal pork would. Yet it was tender, juicy, and still contained rich flavors that hinted at this wild porker’s distant relation to the pink farm swine so long domesticated in the West.
The foreigners would enjoy this. The local believers? Hit or miss. One of our guests liked it. The other one, unfortunately, pledged afterward to never eat pork again – a vow I believe he has kept to this day. In his defense, when you’ve been told your whole life that pork is the most disgusting and unclean thing you can possibly eat, this can be quite the hurdle to overcome. Regardless of what his tastebuds told him, his mind was convinced it would make him sick. In hindsight, we really should have started him out with bacon, not roast of feral pig. Every local believer we’ve introduced to bacon first has afterward joined us in a long-term enjoyment of this delicious meat of the new covenant.
Having found a recipe we were mostly satisfied with, we then began advertising to the expat Facebook community. The first orders were placed and fulfilled. More cross-border trips took place without any issues. New orders came in. Things were looking promising.
Unfortunately, right about this time is when other local believers started approaching us with very concerning things that Ahab was saying to them behind closed doors. So naturally, our small business efforts halted and then came to an end in parallel to our hopes for Ahab’s future leadership in the church. In the following weeks and months, it became apparent that Ahab was not who he seemed to be, but that we had a very skillful deceiver on our hands. Among many more serious things, this meant that the fledgling pig meat business would also have to come to an end.
In the years since we’ve not attempted it again. Yes, the later revelations that it was technically illegal were one part of this. But the concept still comes up every now and then. Just last week I was talking to our kids’ school director about small business ideas for the students as they learn about entrepreneurship.
“We need a decent sausage business here!” I told her. “There are no good sausages or hot dogs available whatsoever. Even if it’s only some good beef and chicken franks, I’m convinced there’s a market here for it among the expats and locals who have come back from Europe.”
“And…” I continued, “Maybe you could have a secret menu of pork sausages.”
I do know it’s not illegal here for Christians to sell pork products to other Christians, so we may yet have a sausage company here someday. But yes, this time we’d be careful to do some legal research ahead of time. We’ll also keep things simple by sourcing our feral pigs domestically. No international smuggling required – just a trusty local hunter with a good rifle and decent cooler.
And if, in the good providence of God, our illegal pig meat operation with Ahab somehow eventually contributes to a solid small business for some missionary kids, then that would be worth celebrating. All things for good. Even ill-conceived pig meat smuggling operations.
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This local proverb speaks to the truth that if you try to do two things at once, you do neither of them well. The imagery of the saying has to do with trying to fit two animal heads (sheep, goat, cow, etc.) into one pot for boiling. Traditionally, this wouldn’t have been possible, given the size of the pots available. No, each head needed its own pot. Only then would it be boiled well enough, which really is important if you’re planning on eating the brains.
The wise laborer will learn to slow down, divide his work into separate parts, and then focus on those parts one at a time. I remember learning this lesson as a new dad who needed to divide my time between our part-time refugee ministry work and our part-time small business of selling Central Asian chai and Melanesian coffee to Louisville hipsters and seminarians. My most effective weeks were those when two days a week were set apart solely for the business and three days were set apart solely for the refugee work. When they mashed together on a given day, I ended up accomplishing much less and doing so with a much more anxious and cloudy brain.
To work well, divide your work into separate compartments – or into separate pots.
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This local proverb speaks about necessary mess. Valuable work brings certain costs and messes with it. This saying refers to someone who wants the reward of catching a fish, but without the unpleasant wetness that tends to come along with it. “Getting your hands dirty,” and “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” are close English equivalents to this idea. Or, simply, “No pain, no gain.”
This proverb would be used when someone is excited about a certain outcome but then balks at the cost required to achieve it. We’ve all seen it. Someone is totally with us as we cast vision and talk about the amazing potential of a certain work. But then we talk about what it actually takes to get there, how long it’s going to take – and we’ve lost them.
Proverbs like this are important for reminding us about the nature of reality. We are prone to illusions that we can easily gain wealth, influence, or ministry success without much hard work. But we live in a post-fall world. By and large, good fruit only comes through painful toil and sweat equity, by getting our feet wet. This applies to fruit in both the natural and spiritual realms. Starting a business is very hard. So is planting a church. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Solomon also speaks of necessary mess – and how it can be evidence of good work being done. “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox” (Prov 14:4). The logic is clear. If you want abundant crops, you need oxen. And oxen make messes.
Clean mangers and silver bullet ministry methods may sound great. But the kind of fruit that counts is costly – and yes, often very messy too.
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There are a number of stories from my life that could go under a category called “How in the hand-holding picnic line dances of Central Asia did I end up here?” In spite of my heartfelt desire to pursue wise risk, I have periodically found myself in situations where those decisions instead led to circumstances somewhat dangerous, or at least absurd. For instance, one time I ended up working for an organization that turned out to be involved in international money laundering and harboring wanted fugitives. Believe it or not, they accomplished these crimes by recycling used clothes and shoes.
When I was finishing up university and heading into marriage, I was looking for more flexible work that would pay well. One day I was scanning the nonprofit jobs section of the (admittedly hit-or-miss) website, Craigslist when I came across a curious posting. An environmental organization was looking for drivers who could find new sites for their clothing and shoe donation bins. The gig was simple. Contractor drivers would travel around their part of the country asking local businesses if they would be willing to host one of these tall metal bins on their property as a service to the community and as a way to contribute to sustainable development projects in India and Africa. For each site you secure, you’d get paid $125, a sum which at that point equaled ten hours of my other work at a furniture warehouse. And I would get to set my own schedule – a very appealing thing to a flexibility-loving individual like me.
Interested in seeing if this was all legit, I applied, explaining in my email that while I was not necessarily an environmentalist myself, I was a Christian who did believe in the wisdom of creation stewardship and sound development projects overseas. I also had one year of experience in relief and development work in the Middle East. Apparently, this was enough to land me the job. I met the woman who would become my boss for an interview at the same coffee shop where my wife and I had hosted our engagement party. She was a mysterious figure in her sixties, of Danish ethnicity. She offered me the role after a relatively brief conversation. Given that she was married to a woman and also a card-carrying member of the pseudo-religious climate apocalypse culture, I found it curious that she didn’t seem too concerned about the fact that I was not only a conservative Christian, but a student at a Southern Baptist Bible college to boot. Not for the last time, I thanked God that humans really are remarkably inconsistent creatures.
I soon began my job and took to it right away. I had the freedom to drive around and stop at every gas station and corner store in a two-hour radius of my city and ask if they’d like to host a clothes and shoe recycling bin on their property. Even though I didn’t fully buy into the philosophy behind my new employers’ work, I could get behind the substance of it – keeping Americans’ excess clothing, shoes, books, etc., out of landfills and redirecting them toward more productive places. I was told that some of the best quality items would be donated in the US, the second tier items would be resold overseas, and others beyond redemption would be shredded so they could be used in other products, like the insulation inside car doors. The money from the items resold was said to go toward projects in India and Africa, such as farming methods that were better for soil, used less water, and led to better crop yields. Again, this is all stuff a Christian can support who understands that though this world is temporary, it’s still ours to steward responsibly.
In fact, the conversations I had with coworkers in this season became a good chance to sharpen my beliefs when it came to creation care. I came to see that when individuals, companies, and governments abuse the natural ecosystems around them, it’s almost always the poor who suffer. Given the strong biblical concern for the poor, we do well to care about commonsense protection of clean air, water, and soil. Globally and historically, when we treat the natural world out of a posture of “it’s all going to burn anyway,” we often thereby poison the orphan and widow. For a Christian, that should be something that’s very concerning. If you doubt what I’m saying here, just visit places like China in the winter and try not to breathe in the soupy-thick air pollution. Sadly, the workers in those cities will lose around five years of their lives from simply breathing in that poisoned air.
As I drove around rural Kentucky, I also spent a lot of time thinking about the wisdom of learning from God’s creation logic when it comes to many of the renewable cycles baked into natural ecosystems. I remember learning about the “waste is food” principle present in nature and chewing on how we could better emulate this wisdom of God’s creation in our societies. I remember talking about this with one of my pastors and bringing up our reliance on fossil fuels as something I felt was unnatural to the created order. He, however, told me not to forget that everything on our green earth is in fact dependent on a giant star of burning gas. Good point. Fossil fuel energy is a natural part of the created order, just something that we need to keep learning how to use as God has.
Ultimately, I came away from this season of working for pagan environmentalists having a more thought-out biblical theology of creation care. And for that I’m grateful. This can be a blindspot in American evangelicalism, and even more so now that it is so highly politicized. But there’s something to Lewis’ and Tolkien’s instinct to stick up for the trees in their writings. In the end, the heart of evil is to tear up and ruin creation, while God desires to see it gardened into an even more beautiful and productive version of itself. Our theology should somehow reflect these realities. Even as we seek to share the gospel and reach the nations, Christians should in their own small way plant gardens in Babylon – not out of some kind of apocalyptic panic, but as a nod toward Eden lost, and toward the coming resurrected Earth.
I also learned curious things about people and cultures while doing this job. The businesses most likely to say yes to this opportunity to host a free donation bin were those run by internationals, or by very liberal Americans. Gas stations run by South Asians and smoke shops run by white hippies were promising places to stop. But conservative Americans (many of them seemingly Christians) tended to bristle when I made my spiel. This was curious because when it came to other jobs I had worked where tipping was involved, these dynamics tended to be reversed. The conservatives tipped (gave) generously if you demonstrated you were willing to work hard, but they were not interested in anything that smacked of a handout. The fact that this was all free and easy and helped farmers in Africa seemed to make them even more suspicious. Then again, perhaps they were right to raise an eyebrow at this whole operation.
I had just successfully recruited one of my close friends to join me when some very strange revelations came to light. He and I were on a paid weekend trip to Atlanta where we attended a bunch of trainings/hype sessions with a number of other NGOs and companies that all seemed strangely intertwined with our org. Curiously, all of them were also headed up by someone from Denmark, people who had gone to university with our boss back in the 1960s. The whole vibe was like one big family reunion, though these were alleged to be independent organizations and companies involved in the used clothes market. Into this unusual context, my friend was forwarded some very concerning investigative articles.
Apparently, there was a reason all of the groups present at this weekend’s event in Atlanta seemed related. They were. They had all descended from a leftist professor in 1960s Denmark and his cadre of loyal students. Allegedly, when their radical movement was banned from Denmark, they went international, starting a network of companies, non-profits, and schools in multiple countries. They really were committed to environmentalism of some sort, and some project sites really existed in Africa and India. But they were also committed to money laundering. Some of the funds from the donations had illegally gone toward paying for a condo in Florida, where the founder of the movement had hidden for some years as he tried to elude Interpol. If this were true, then who knew where the funds from the bins we had placed were actually going? A few months previously, I had been asked to open up the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. I had placed dozens and dozens of bins all over that metro area, work that could result in a substantial amount of money from all of the donations received.
My believing friend and I grew more and more alarmed as we read page after page of investigative reporting that accused our employer of some very egregious things. Even if this network of inbred entities was still operating legally in the US, things were beginning to feel awfully dodgy. There wasn’t yet the kind of fire that led to legal action, but there was a lot of smoke. And even worse, just the week before our organization had asked the two of us to represent them to our city council.
This is the point where the question dropped: How in the world had we ended up here? The two of us were preparing for gospel ministry. We were busy students, just trying to work hard and be faithful and save money to take care of young families. Now we were unwitting employees of money launderers. We knew that we didn’t have the time nor the connections to do the work required to verify or discount the many accusations present if anyone simply googled the name of our employer. So, we prayed – and then decided it was time to bail. Now that our eyes were opened to see we’d been working for some kind of shadowy hippy mafia, we were conscience-bound to get out, and that as fast as possible.
Our boss was very upset at us for quitting – and for asking questions. “I don’t dig into your strange religious background, do I?!” But she ultimately resigned herself to our position that we were in no place to prove or disprove the things we had heard, and that meant we needed to bow out. My friend and I explained that we wanted to someday be men who were above reproach. And this meant not working for groups allegedly involved in setting up recycling fronts for money laundering.
Many years later, I still see the tall green bins scattered around our city here in the US. They are looking quite faded and beat up these days, but their presence means the organization must still be functioning. Somehow, they must still be legal, still under a cloud of accusations, yes, but continuing to hustle nonetheless.
If there is a lesson to this strange tale it might be to stay away from job offers on Craigslist. Or, don’t be afraid to trust God and bail if you find out your employers are doing illegal things. Or, if you are in need of donating your used clothes in the US, then stay away from the tall metal bins you might see planted around your city. They are awfully convenient, and they claim to be helping the planet. But as far as I can tell, they belong to some kind of hippy mafia, people who want to use your old clothes and shoes for dodgy, and even wicked, ends. (My old shoes? Really, Evil? Really??)
Yes, let’s seek to grow in caring for creation. We are God’s redeemed gardeners, after all. But I’m sure that we can find a better way to do this than by donating to the hippy mafia.
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Local Oral Tradition (The Message-style translation)
This local proverb is a very short rhyming couplet, making up only two words in total. The first part is a one-word command to work, the second part is a one-word statement about the reward of work – in this case, earning a chicken (Our local language can smash the noun, the article, and the be verb into one word.) My first attempt above at rendering it into English is a wooden, direct translation, but it loses its rhyme and its meaning is obscure. The second attempt, more of a paraphrase, keeps some rhyme but also adds a number of words to spell out what’s implied in the original. Such are the choices presented to those who attempt to translate from one tongue to another. There are very few direct one-to-one translations of words, never mind structure, and getting over this expectation is an important step for any language learner.
Another local proverb gets at a similar meaning. It goes, “A tired hand on a full belly.” Both of these sayings speak to the crucial connection between work and food so common for most humans throughout history. Work hard, get food. Slack off, go hungry. Of course, food here is representative of all good results that come from hard work, and also of those lost if one embraces laziness. This is a lesson many a dad has attempted to get through to his children. “Boys are born with a lazy bone,” one friend once said to me while we talked about trying to parent our sons well.
Solomon may have been the second wisest human to ever live, but he was still a dad. A recent read-through of proverbs at bedtime devotions with my kids (ten verses at a time) seemed to hit on this theme almost every night. “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense” (Proverbs 12:11).
Hard work results in chickens (or bread). Solomon agrees with our peoples’ ancestral proverb. Or, rather, they agree with Solomon. This is how the universe works. Ignore this wisdom and you won’t get any chickens, bread, gas money, etc. Follow it and you may have tired hands, but they will rest on a belly full of good food, maybe even some kantaki.
This proverb is spoken to the person who tries to accomplish too much on his own. Such a laborer is under a delusion that his isolated efforts can bring about the needed results. But just as one flower cannot by its own appearing bring about spring, humans cannot truly achieve great and meaningful things without a community supporting them and laboring alongside them.
It is a proverb quite appropriate for Westerners, who fall into this self-sufficient way of thinking far more than those from Central Asia. But ultimately every culture must face the short-sighted nature of individualistic labor. We are simply not strong nor talented enough to effect great change on our own. And those who cut ties with others, charging off into the world to do great things by themself will one day realize they have simply run out of fuel. I’m reminded of the English proverb, “many hands make light work” and the popular African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone; If you want to go far, go together.” The Preacher of Ecclesiastes writes on this same theme, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).
It is not good for us to be alone. Not even in our labor.
My wife has always maintained that those going into ministry should first work a few years in food service. Her main point in this claim is that you will never treat that server, barista, or otherwise unimpressive worker the same after you’ve known what it’s like to be in their shoes. My wife worked her way through college, picking up countless shifts in the campus cafe, serving at banquets, and working in the cafeteria. She finished her undergrad with no debt at all, a feat that her future husband was unfortunately not able to replicate.
Most of my wife’s jobs were on the campus of Southern seminary, where she attended Boyce college. Over the four years she worked on campus, her brief or repeated service interactions with students, staff, and visiting leaders gave her a unique window into the character of each. This is because the way we treat those with supposedly unimportant jobs always says something about our humility. Seminary can be a heady place. World-renowned scholars are teaching and being made. Current leaders rub shoulders with future leaders. Famous pastors preach in chapel and visit to give prestigious lectures. In other words, the temptations of fear of man and showing partiality are regularly present, made all the more slippery in that everything is set in a context of preparation for ministry. After all, why slow down and engage the college kid behind the counter in a black apron when standing right over there is the author of your favorite theology book?
These dynamics meant that my wife and others working service jobs always noticed the ones who would indeed slow down and truly engage them as people and fellow heirs of the kingdom. And of course, they would also notice when students or leaders didn’t extend even basic Christian courtesy. Now, everyone has bad days where we are lost in our thoughts or discouraged and forget to make eye contact or interact genuinely with the person behind the cash register. The issue is not what happens as a one-off, but what is the pattern of our lives and interactions with those in everyday or lowly roles around us? Do we truly see and value those around us whom the world deems unimportant? Do we ever slow down and genuinely engage them, seeking even to delight in them? Pay attention to those who do this well, for they are the kind of leaders worth following.
In the field of leadership training, some authors speak of the “waiter principle,” the idea that how a leader treats a server speaks to whether that leader is truly a leader of integrity or not. A true leader will understand that every role in their organization or company matters, and this will affect how they treat those in even the lowest roles. In Central Asia, it’s not so much the restaurant servers who get treated poorly, but the cleaners or the chai boys. When we’ve taught leadership seminars in local universities, we’ve learned to slow down and focus on this principle, because in a patron-client hierarchical society, the culture says that it’s actually shameful for leaders to treat the unimportant with respect. While Western culture is a little stronger on this point, the temptations toward showing favoritism toward the important are really universal. No matter where you live, our sin natures want to judge by appearances, honoring the rich, talented, and important, and belittling or ignoring the poor or average among us.
Somewhere like seminary can illustrate why it can be downright foolish to judge by appearances. That foreign exchange student making your sandwich might in a few years be leading a thriving church overseas and show up on a 9 Marks podcast (as took place in my earbuds this week). The guy doing landscaping may end up planting a church in one of the hardest cities in North America. The gal making your coffee may become a well-known author, or, in my wife’s case, serve faithfully on a frontier church-planting team in a region overseas where many others would never even consider raising their families. Basic wisdom tells us to honor even the lowly because we cannot predict if or when they will be lifted up to a place higher than ours – and if that someday happens, then our honor or shame is tied to how we treated them before.
But this strategic wisdom really shouldn’t be our primary motivation to show respect to those who appear unimportant among us. It still assumes that it’s the potentially-powerful who are worthy of more honor. Instead, the deeper motivation should be that God has welcomed the lowly, honored them, and even delights in them. We need to remember the upside-down logic of the kingdom of God, “many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Matt 19:30). Jesus welcomes little children and rebukes those who don’t (Mark 10:14). He befriends the outcasts (Mark 2:16). He pronounces blessing on the poor and pronounces woe upon the rich (Luke 6:20, 24). Not many of God’s chosen are rich, powerful, and important in this world (1 Cor 1:26-31). The sick and the poor are the true treasures of the church, and every person we interact with has a fascinating story that overflows with God’s glory, and the potential to themselves be eternally glorious – to even be a judge over angels (1 Cor 6:3).
Being reminded of the nature of God’s kingdom can help us live in such a way that we become believers and leaders who truly see the lowly. Picturing that service worker resurrected and remembering that we are to consider others as more important than ourselves (Phil 2:3) can transform our everyday interactions with those around us – and give life to those who often feel invisible. And if seeing and delighting in those deemed unimportant becomes a pattern in our lives, then we are well on our way to developing this character trait of a true and trustworthy leader ourselves.
While I didn’t have too many jobs in food service (Stints at Jamba Juice and Jimmy Johns showed me my hands could never seem to move fast enough), I have often experienced a similar dynamic because I don’t present as physically or interpersonally impressive. I have a pretty average appearance and bearing and I find myself not very good at first impressions in a Western context. This means that those I’m briefly introduced to often quickly move on to those who appear more interesting. I can’t help but notice that there’s often a very different sort of interest shown later – once they learn about my ministry and story. This means that those who show a kind engagement before they know about my background and ministry accomplishments truly stand out. Their posture toward an unimpressive person has shone a light on their character. Without knowing it, they have outed themselves as humble and trustworthy.
I’ll never forget the time I met a very well-known pastor and author during my first week as a green, 25-year-old missions pastor. This leader was a regular speaker at T4G. He had published numerous books and spoken to tens of thousands. He was at our church for an important meeting with our senior leadership, and I was somehow invited to sit in, even though I was the brand new kid on staff. Yet in the hallway, as we made cursory introductions, this leader didn’t quickly move on to talk with the more dynamic leaders like I was used to. Instead, he slowed down and turned to me, deeply interested in the couple of details that my lead pastor had told him about me. Looking me in the eyes, he seemed to be fascinated by what he had heard. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Brother, I hear you’re just beginning a new role as a missions pastor. I am so excited about your ministry.” I was so taken aback by this kind of focus that I have no idea what I said in response. It was qualitatively different to be seen in that way. And it made me desire to be the kind of leader who would see others around me, even when they haven’t achieved enough to “deserve” that kind of focus. It also made me want to repent for the times I was guilty of ignoring the unimpressive.
Leaders who see the lowly and unimpressive are the kind of leaders worth following – and the kind of leaders we should want to become. This is because how we treat the lowly is truly a window into our character. Let’s keep that in mind the next time we meet someone who doesn’t appear that important. And if God is calling you to go into ministry, then follow a wise woman’s advice and consider first working some years in food service.
There are some serious echoes of Ecclesiastes in this song that explores the drudgery of work, the things that all men long for, and the meaning of a life well-lived. Lyrics below.
Making a living has a way of killing men
The lungs keep breathing, but the soul suffocates within
There is nothing new under the sun, it's all the same
Need revival 'cause survival's a losing game
Am I fighting the good fight? Am I on the run?
Am I chasing vanity or doing what needs to be done?
A man must always have something to conquer
A woman to fight for, a war to be waged
We are born for the storm, we risk all and rebel
To live hard and die well is why we were made
I've seen an evil that overcomes us all
The backs of good and wicked men are both against the wall
What then shall we do when we are destined for the dust?
Dig our feet into the earth and roll them sleeves up
No matter our station, wages, or trade
Our labor is loving, it's a worthy way to spend all our days
A man must always have something to conquer
A woman to fight for, a war to be waged
We are born for the storm, we risk all and rebel
To live hard and die well is why we were made
This life's a vapor that quickly escapes
My love, my hate, my memory will soon be erased
So let's breathe in this vapor and drink this sea dry
To do and dare greatly 'til our last day arrives
A man must always have something to conquer
A woman to fight for, a war to be waged
We are born for the storm, we risk all and rebel
To live hard and die well is why we were made
Entrusted to the Dirt 