Recently, I spent
time with a young man who had been promoted to a primary leadership role within
his technology company. His 30th
birthday is still a few years off. This is a heady position for a young man to
assume. In our conversation he asked how
to create a healthy work environment for his employees. I told him that all businesses and
organizations do their best work when they periodically revisit their roots and
recall why they began the journey in the first place. I told the young man it is a passion for
their product that starts all successful businesses. It will be the rediscovery of that original passion
that will help them push through the stale and challenging seasons they will
encounter as they move forward into the future. I have found this to be true in our personal
lives and ministries as well.
As an example, I told
him that some of the greatest entrepreneurs and musicians that got their start
in a garage. The garage is where they were free to experiment and not be
hampered by the number crunchers or by the fear of failure. I offered Steve
Jobs and Eric Clapton as two examples. They both started out in a garage. Jobs started Apple computers from the humble
beginnings of his father’s garage. Eric Clapton, who played with the Yardbirds
and Cream, also started out in a garage and he went on to be the only person to
be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times. Clapton is considered to be one of the
greatest guitarists of all time.
Our original
source of passion must be revisited and rediscovered from time to time in order
to ensure that our future creativity is not stifled. Creativity flows from passion. People who are
creative over the long term, like Jobs and Clapton, never forgot the original
passionate environment that sparked their calling in the first place. They never lost the memory of their creative garage
environment.
At some point,
when we lose our way in a business, a ministry or a marriage, we need to find a
way to return to our beginning and rediscover what birthed our original passion
and then deal with the reasons why we tried to live life without it. Jesus told the church in Ephesus, “You have forsaken the love you had
at first”. (Revelation 2:4) In the next verse He tells the Ephesians, “Repent,
and do the things you did at first”. Even the great and historic Ephesian
church needed to be reminded of this principle.
Going forward
into new seasons of life and creativity will require that we go back and
rediscover the passion we felt in the beginning. We do this so we can recapture
the power of that original creative momentum and move forward with it into the
future where new sounds, new products and new callings are waiting to be discovered.
No comments:
Post a Comment