This week, I read Tom Camacho\u2019s Mining for Gold. It is a primer on coaching to help leaders draw out the God-given talents from their team so people can flourish. I want to extend an idea that Tom Camacho developed in his book that he didn\u2019t fully develop.<\/p>\n
Camacho says that our Sweet Spot is \u201cthe place where we naturally bear the most fruit for the kingdom.\u201d[1]<\/a> He shares a Venn Diagram showing our sweet spot, the overlap of our passions, wiring, and fruit.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n What happens when we only have two of three? Camacho never addresses that. I want to take this blog post and examine what happens when we live with two of the three. He comes close but doesn\u2019t fully explore these areas. He says, \u201cI have worked with leaders who have never identified their sweet spot. They experience the opposite of thriving. Work is exhausting and joyless\u2026\u201d[3]<\/a> Working off the assumption that two of the three lead to exhaustion, I wanted to tease out where these combination pairs would lead.<\/p>\n As the Church, we live at the meeting point between the Kingdom of God and the stolen Kingdom of Satan. I can become impassioned about extending God\u2019s kingdom to many social causes or systems of sin in our world. I may join and lead organizations in this effort, and we may succeed. Yet, if I am not wired toward these efforts, they will come at the cost of my soul.<\/p>\n When we live out of our natural wiring, Camacho says it will feel like \u201ceffortless soaring\u201d and not frustrated and doing things we hate.[4]<\/a> Leaders who fail to lead out of their design are not stewarding the gifts God has given.<\/p>\n Let me illustrate this. I don\u2019t remember who I heard say this: Breaking God\u2019s law is not like breaking a law as we understand it today. Imagine I was to climb to the tallest tower in your town. It doesn\u2019t matter if you live in a big city or the country; imagine the highest point. Imagine that I believed I could fly, so I tied a red cape around my neck, wore my red underwear outside my blue pants, and painted a big red \u2018S\u2019 on my chest. If I leap from that high point, will I break the law of gravity? No, I will break myself as I prove the law.<\/p>\n When we fail to live according to our natural wiring, even when we are successful, we push against God\u2019s law and become broken. That brokenness is burnout.<\/p>\n As a Westerner, I intuitively understand what working in a job I am not passionate about will do to me. We, as Westerners, place a high value on finding a career we are passionate about. So, I won\u2019t spend as much time here. We have a phrase to describe the lethargy we feel from years of passionless work – Soul-sucking.<\/p>\n The lack of passion will stunt our growth. Camacho says that when \u201cwe align our working life with our passions, fresh bursts of joy and purpose rise up within us.\u201d[5]<\/a> Then, it follows that when our life is not aligned with our passions, we don\u2019t experience those bursts of joy and purpose.<\/p>\n We hold our positions of leadership for a short time. There will be a day when I am no longer the church pastor. Somebody else will sit in my office. If I am not passionate about that work, I need to recognize that I may be sitting in an office God wants to give to somebody else.<\/p>\n This one strikes me as the most frightful because we can live a long time in this zone without feeling the burden on our souls. What happens when we find a niche that fits our passions and wiring but is fruitless? Camacho calls this our comfort zone. Our Comfort Zone is the spot where we are:<\/p>\n \u201cSafe and secure; we fight to defend ourselves. But when we refuse to be disturbed in our places of comfort, it not only affects our own growth but the growth of our organization\u2026Facing the crisis and helping the team develop and grow past the problem is the goal.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n When we live out of our passions and wiring without concern for fruitfulness, we live in our comfort zone. In this zone, we find a ministry that fulfills who we are as people without fulfilling the Great Commission. We enter a life of idolatry.<\/p>\n Our ministry becomes an idol. Idols always demand sacrifice. It no longer belongs to God; instead, it belongs to us. The idol of ministry will require us to sacrifice. We will sacrifice anything to ensure our safety and security and to avoid being disturbed. We teach about God without ever encountering him because if we ever did, we would have to immediately confront our idol.<\/p>\n I know a woman who has pastored a church for 25 years and runs a ministry focusing on five to ten-year-olds. While the church has slowly dwindled to a handful of people, they claim to reach 30-40 five to ten-year-olds. There are no eleven to thirty-five-year-olds in her church. They age out of the program and are never seen again. Working with this age group is in her passion and wiring, but there is no fruit. There is only a dying church sacrificed to the idol of ministry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Tom Camacho, Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders Through Coaching<\/em>, First published (Nottingham: IVP, 2019), 133.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Camacho, 135.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Camacho, 139.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Camacho, 121.<\/p>\nPassions and Fruit, No Wiring – Burnout<\/h1>\n
Fruit and Wiring, No Passion – Lethargy<\/h1>\n
Passions and Wiring, No Fruit – Idolatry<\/h1>\n