Gold
“The glory of God is man fully alive.”
- Saint Irenaeus
One of my favorite scenes from film involves a crackpot, bush-pilot philosopher named Rosie Little. He is flying a scientist named Tyler to the Valley of the Blackstone in northern Alaska. He is trying to figure out what kind of treasure he is really after. When Tyler won’t tell him, Rosie says,
“We're all of us prospectors up here, eh, Tyler? Scratchin' for that... that one crack in the ground. Never have to scratch again. I'll let you in on a little secret, Tyler: the gold's not in the ground. The gold's not anywhere up here. The real gold is south of 60 - sittin' in livin' rooms, stuck facin' the boob tube, bored to death. Bored to death, Tyler.”
The point is clear and well taken, the treasure of this world is not in the traditionally thought of resources; gold, silver, diamonds, or even oil (although many people in my neck of the woods would probably argue that last item)…
The real treasure is people.
Our greatest natural resource and the one that the squandering of is costing us most, is people.
Last weekend I was part of a team that led a large company of men through a “Boot Camp”. We’ll actually do it again on February 7-10 and registration is open. The most humbling thing about this particular weekend, out of the dozen and a half or so we’ve done, is that every man except one had already been to a previous event of ours. And 80% of these attendees were banded with other men and are now leading similar retreats/ministries out of what they experienced there.
I’ve never been a part of anything that replicated itself so beautifully and nothing could have made us more proud. This is the fulfillment of our greatest heart’s desire to see the work expand beyond our team.
On Sunday, after three days of on-and-off rain, the sun came out and we were blessed with an incredible sunrise. As I looked across the infield, I saw four of the men who have banded together and are offering their own similar retreat on November 15-18. I started to take a picture of the technicolor sky, but my attention immediately went to the four men.
Rosie Little’s statement rang in my ears. Despite how amazing that sunrise was, the real gold, the glory really, was those four brave men that have banded together with the joint desire to rescue and free others. The men looking at the sunrise were the real treasure, not the sunrise itself.
May our successful leading of companies, families or ministries, not end with us, but multiply to others and into subsequent generations.
Consider
Do you feel like the leadership of your business, ministry, or family is producing real fruit?
How do you know?
Are there others imitating or leveraging their experience with you on their own?
Are they honoring and celebrating the way you led them?