Leadership and Coffee Pots

At the church, we have about five of the 10 to 12 cup coffee pots. They are of varying ages and functionality.

One of the older pots is about 40 years old, and doesn't get real hot. We use it to make water so people can have tea or cocoa. It may be the hubris of coffee drinkers to believe that tea or cocoa drinkers don't really like it too hot, but frankly, no one has come up and said "this isn't hot enough for tea". Silence in this area is probably good ....

A couple more of the pots are from the early 80s or so, and while looking a little like the older one they each present their own challenges. One has a place for a cone filter, the other a basket one. Their pots aren't interchangeable either ...

These pots don't get used every week, and I am not exactly sure why ...

We also have two brand spanking new coffee pots. New here is a relative term, and in reality means less old than the other three or so. They look just spectacular, all shiny and modern. The funny thing is that while these two look a whole lot alike, they aren't in fact, anything alike. Different manufacturers. They are beyond their color and modern appearance, nothing like each other. I'll bet Eli Whitney had this kind of manufacturing problem in mind, when he invented the manufactured cotton gin (and the manufactured rifle, but that is a bad image for a pastor to use) where all the parts for the various gins could be disassembled and then reassembled into different machines. Or is my memory bad and he did this with guns only?

Here's the bottom line: If you put the wrong pot under the wrong basket, you get lots of coffee all over the place.

And, to make it even better, the first three pots are all ten cup pots, and these are twelve cup pots. They take just a little more grounds in order to ensure you have coffee and not tea. At least that is what the people who are looking for bold coffee call it when what they get is hot but tasteless -- they insult the product by calling it "tea". Is tasteless an absolute truth or is it relative?

Paul must have had this very situation when in his first letter to his miscreant church in Corinth. He commented to them that everybody gets to make a contribution in their own way, and it was important to be part of the organic whole.

It takes some effort to get the organic process for this production into good working order.

Isn't church leadership a lot like that?

Isn't it about putting the right elements of the pot together so that all the parts are working as a team?

Isn't it about being sure that the new, slick idea doesn't swamp out a perfectly good idea that has been working and producing for a while, and while it isn't as pretty or new anymore, it still works.

Isn't it about being sure that all are trained in such a way that they recognize the strengths and weaknesses of all those who wish to help build up God's kingdom ....

Oh ... did I mention that a lot of the volunteers don't actually drink coffee themselves, so are always at a loss as to how much coffee to actually put inside the filter ...

I would elaborate on that, but I think you get the drift ...

Peace ....