I went to Ca. Smith and asked if I could be on his crew. We barely knew each other, and I was very fearful of him. His presence was demanding, his work ethic strong, and his crew had to adapt to his pattern and habits of work.[3]<\/a> I told him that I was on the promotional list, and I needed more experience and wanted to learn from him. He accepted my request, and I began a two-year apprenticeship with him. After about six months, he began to finally trust me and stopped simply testing me. Our crew worked hard, we drilled at night and on the weekends. Ca. Smith and I sure had our disagreements, and it never became easier to work for him, but I trusted his leadership when a fire raged on.<\/p>\n One aspect that Eve Poole focuses on in her book, is the idea of character. She writes, “Blessed are those leaders who have a wisdom tradition or spiritual practice to help them at this point.”[4]<\/a> This is where the beauty of a Christian life can be helpful. She neglects to point out the helpful aspects of spiritual disciplines and how these might shape our character. Character matters, but whose character are we following? As Christians, we should be following and seeking after the character of Christ. I wanted to learn from Ca. Smith how to be a good captain, but I was not seeking to emulate his character. It was helpful during this period to focus on developing my Christian character in the likes of Christ as I endured the endless fire drills.<\/p>\n The author and his son.<\/p><\/div>\n I finally promoted. I had hours and hours of study, drills, and practice. Yet, all the study and learning are only fluff until there comes a time in which the test really comes. In fact, Poole iterates, “All wisdom tradition have tales of trials, where a hero has to be tested and found true.”[5]<\/a> It was a fire on a very hot July 4th<\/sup> (Independence Day for those outside of America) that my trial came. I was the captain on engine 19 and the fire alarm went off. As we ran to our engine, we could see a huge column of smoke from our driveway. We would be first to arrive, and I would be charged with taking command. As we quickly approached, the dispatcher kept squawking with more information, more units enroute. Time was speeding by, but I was seeing things in slow motion. We rolled down the street, I asked for radio silence and began my size-up report. There had been a propane explosion and so we had four different houses on fire. People were everywhere, half-dressed and in swimsuits, all of them trying to get our attention. I zoned in on the problem at hand, ignored the fluff and directed my crew to attack the fire on the right side. I directed the other engines enroute to the left side and the rear. I directed the truck company to perform a quick search for victims and it was determined that this was not going to be a search and rescue. I called for more resources as this fire was burning in four different houses. My battalion chief arrived and encouraged me to keep command of the fire for a while to get more experience. We called for a 3rd alarm, the biggest fire I had been to in years. The fire went out, nobody was hurt, and we stopped the damage from extending beyond where it was when we arrived.<\/p>\n Campbell might say that my “\u2026 hero quest [has] been accomplished, through penetration to the source\u2026\u201d[6]<\/a> I had gone through the fire, quite literally, and had come out of it a stronger and better leader. I had learned to perform under stress and resort to my training. I reflected on the apprenticeship of working for Ca. Smith and knew that he would be proud of the way his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 had performed on that fire. I was on the journey of becoming the leader I wanted to be.<\/p>\n In my new role, in a church-based ministry setting, I find it hard to find those mentors to apprentice under. They are few and far between and often not in the same location as I am. Do you have a leader whom you are apprenticing under?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership<\/em> (London Oxford New York, NY: Bloomsbury Business, 2017), 29.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Poole, 3.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Poole, 16.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/IMG_7794-200x300.jpg\")
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