The Unthanked Faithful =================== Keith took up half of our discussion at the board meeting. Keith is a homeless man who lives around the church. When he first came to the church, he said that other churches always put him out and banned him from their church. My mother said, What a shame that a church would do that! Something in the back of mind said, I wonder why EVERY church would ban him? I found out. Keith illustrated a principle that I have been dealing with concerning MountainWings. I had spent far more time with Keiths than with those who bend over backwards to help us. You have Keiths in your life too. They take up a tremendous amount of your time and energy. They contribute nothing but chaos. They get joy out of causing confusion and disruption. You end up spending more energy on Keiths than on those who love and try to help you. Let me tell you what was happening at MountainWings. We get disgruntled people who write to us. It is a very small percentage but with a large subscriber list, you just cant please everyone. It takes far more time dealing with the disgruntled people than the overly pleased people. Most of the time, even after you take the time to communicate and do your best to explain, they are still disgruntled. Its real hard, if not impossible to please grouches. Sooner or later, theyll find something else to gripe about even if you smooth the current thing over. Sound familiar in your life? What hit home was when a lady emailed about a check she had sent. She wanted to make sure that no one had stolen it and cashed it. MountainWings got it. The problem was that we never sent anything that said we got it. We hadnt. We should have but we didnt. Again, does that sound familiar in your life. You should, but you dont. Why? I lost sight of priorities. I spend so much time counseling and answering hurting, lonely, depressed, and lost people that I didnt take time to thank people who helped make it possible and helped to ease the load. We all make that mistake. I will always spend time trying to help those who truly need and want help, but the Keiths are a different story. People think that MountainWings is a huge company. We dont have any employees. I do all of the issue screening, the majority of the writing, half of the technical work, and most of the other stuff. I had a lot of excuses why I had not thanked the people who helped us. I had good excuses but not a single right excuse. Sound familiar? The lady had sent a check for $400.00 and had not heard a word from us. It was one of our largest donations but I was busy with the Keiths of life. I reordered priority. I now take time and pray for every internet contributor by name. I pray two prayers. A prayer of blessing for the contributor and a prayer of thanks. I often send a thank you email. I pray for the person who sends every envelope that comes to the office. Most of you have spent so much time dealing with the Keiths in your life that you have failed to thank the real contributors, those who have helped encourage and sustain you. You should devote some time to the Keiths but keep things in perspective. Most of the Keiths you cant change. They dont want to change but they will take up all of your time and energy. Devote plenty of time to those who sincerely need your help, but again, keep things in priority, see about your family first. When was the last time you thanked your parents? So much time on the grouches, so little on the blessings. Its not too late to correct that.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 05:19:18 +0000
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