“You can’t be late and expect to get taco bell!”
When I was about 15 years old I got shoved into the position of leading worship for my church’s youth group by (at that time) the “new” youth pastor. I learned a lot of things about ministry and leadership at that time, but one of the greatest lessons he taught me was during the one night I arrived late to my own worship team practice.
During the formation of our new worship team we started rehearsing at around 5:30pm before church, which was tough as high school kids just getting out of school. So to do what I thought was a way to “reward” us for making the sacrifice of coming out early, my youth pastor said he’d buy us all Taco Bell. The only condition was that we needed to at the church at 5pm if we wanted free taco bell.
Well I didn’t arrive until 5:30pm. And when I got there, I came in (like a typical teen) expecting to get some food. When I found out the food was gone, I made a big stink that I didn’t get dinner and I probably had some lame excuse for being late too. My youth pastor looked me right in the face and told me, “Phil, you can’t be late and expect to get taco bell!”
That day was the moment I learned some huge principles in leadership.
- Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable. As a leader, my actions set the precedent of what “on time” means. If for me, being on time means 5 minutes late in reality, then whenever I say, “Be there by so and so” people will always feel that what I’m really saying is “be there at ‘so and so’ but if you’re 5 minutes late, it’s cool.”
- The reward for doing what you’re supposed to do is the doing. Too many times you can place your hopes in the result of your “doing” as a reward, when the “doing” is the reward. If we as leaders can begin by seeing that being a leader is a reward that God has given, then it will take the focus off of us, because leadership is not about you, it’s about others.
- People are watching. Leadership is about influencing others. That night I learned that acting out of selfishness caused a diminishing effect on my leadership status in front of those who I was leading. Yes I was hungry, but as a leader, there is a fine line between “keeping it real” and understanding that my actions can hurt my ability to influence others. (1 Corinthians 9:11-23)
- Keep the main thing the main thing. Taco bell was a reward for coming to worship practice, but I as a leader did not accept the position to get taco bell. I wanted to be used by God to lead people into real encounters with a living God. If I was focused on that, then I would have thought with my head instead of my stomach.
