Loo Leadership
I’ve just had one of those moments. Having spent a few minutes sat in the toilet (no, not in the toilet. I hadn’t fallen down legs shooting into the air grasping for the sides. I was simply sat on the toilet) and then came the crisis moment. I turned to where the toilet paper should have been - the clue, of course, being the word ‘should’. The toilet paper wasn’t there. The very thing I wanted was not in the place I expected it to be. I turned to alternate 1: … no. Alternate 2: reaching behind to the place impossible to see, grasping with my hands for that velvety smoothness which promised relief. No. I was getting a little desperate now, looking around this way and that, desperate in a way I hadn’t been before. My wife! I know she had done this to me. She probably used the last piece on purpose and had not put another roll in. She must have been laughing away to herself while she took the kids to school.
Options were starting to flow through my tortured mind; pull them up but not quite all the way, then casually wander to the other bathroom. Pull them all the way up wander into the bedroom and then change. I could use a page from Glyn’s book or risk it all and do the shuffle. You know the shuffle where you can’t walk properly because of the position of your pants! Shuffle was looking good. But as I resigned myself to the ignobility of the shuffle of shame I spied the roll, directly behind my left leg. In my panic I had missed it. All this time the very thing that I had hoped for, searched for, believed for, even made faith declarations over, had been with me; unnoticed, unused and ignored.
Stop today and look at the young people you have with you. See who they are, the massive talents that they posses, the passion they have for life, and realise that they are who you have been searching for. The key is simple - belief in them coupled with releasing them to be the person God has uniquely called them to be. There isn’t another group out there better than them. These are the people that God has put you with. These are people that have been drawn to you.
Ask your young people great questions about who they are and what they feel God has called them to do with their lives. You will be stunned by the answers, but only if you invest the time to discover them.
Then offer to partner with them in walking the journey of destiny. Focus not only on fulfilling your dreams but theirs as well.
Most of the answers to your problems, you’ll find in your amazing group of young people and through them, you can take the world that you each inhabit.
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Stop, Look and Listen by Stuart Keir was published in the December 2006 edition of JOY Magazine.
Stuart Keir is a core team member of Audacious. Stuart is the Associate Director of Youth Alive UK and the Senior Pastor of London City Life Church.