Five Loaves & Two Fish: Making the Most of Our Talents

 A devotional I read this week is lingering in my mind and heart:

Sometimes our bread and fish (skills, talents, resources) don't seem all that impressive when held in our hands. However, when we give the Lord all what we are and all that we have, He can multiply our offering beyond comprehension....

So what are my loaves and fishes? 

Have I given my loaves and fishes to the One who can multiply them for use in His Kingdom?

This is my prayer: Use me, Lord, to bless the people you've entrusted to my care and leadership. Reveal my loaves and fish to me, and use my skills, my talents, and my resources to unleash a mighty work in our midst, that You might be glorified in every word and action.

photo source: Five Loaves & Two Fish

Overcoming Giants

In one of my Amazon addiction frenzies in recent months, I ordered Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath.  Although I skimmed several chapters upon its arrival, I just got around to reading it cover to cover.  I grabbed it on my way out the door for a cross-country plane trip, thinking I could read it without a highlighter and ink pen in my hand.  Good thought, but I just don’t seem to be able to read without utensils at the ready.

After all, good writing resonates with the reader.  And because I read through the lens of an educator, I relate most of a writer’s points to teaching and learning. Thoughts must be captured.

So now, a week after this good read, I’ve returned to the highlights and added sticky note tags to some of the ideas that triggered my thinking.  Habits of a non-fiction bibliomaniac. 

Citing numerous examples, Gladwell posits that underdogs often overcome giants through unheralded means.  Such was the case when our fledgling charter school launched in the fall of 2000.  Few people believed the doors would ever open to students, and skeptics doubted it would last.  Despite many hurdles that threatened its very existence, and including being such a new phenomenon that an employee in the state’s Department of Education insisted that charters were private schools (yes, that really happened!), the school is completing its 14^th year of operation and will be sending its ninth graduating class off to college in the fall.  No small accomplishment. The underdog has survived, meeting challenge after challenge. 

As Gladwell writes, “much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.”  He goes further to say, “the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.”

In shaping and building this charter school from vision to reality to durable fixture in the educational landscape I have experienced what Gladwell describes as compensation learning: “what is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.”

Perhaps that is one reason that I continue to be perplexed when someone suggests that my background as a charter school employee is underappreciated by traditional school leaders. (“Charters are just an experiment.  You don’t have the same kind of students we have.”) Hmmm. 

Are we that shallow in education that we cannot accept that one-size-fits-all is an inappropriate educational model?  Every child deserves a quality education in an environment conducive to his/her learning style and needs; different children thrive in different environments.  For some, independent schools are the right match; for others, charter schools, traditional public schools, parochial, Montessori, or home schools are the right match.  Regrettably, many have limited family resources, as well as limited options available in their communities.

By opening our hearts and minds to other models of schooling and encouraging leaders to cross from one model to another, we can bring together the best aspects and strategies of a variety of models.  And what better way to meet the needs of all children? 

We continue to have to overcome giants.

Leadership: Enlarging My Territory

And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested.     1 Chronicles 4:10

Spring is a time for reflection in education, and I typically begin to look forward to the opportunities of next school year.  This morning I am reminded of something that profoundly affected my life and my career.

It is Bruce Wilkinson’s Prayer of Jabez and the sequel Beyond Jabez.  Many of you may have these books at some time in the past.  I read the Prayer in 2001 or 2002 and began to pray the Prayer of Jabez.  That happened at a time when I was transitioning into a leadership role and it made a significant difference in my life and in my work.  Then in 2007 I was drawn to Beyond Jabez during a Leadership class at Liberty University and it caused me to revisit the ideas contained in that prayer. It’s been a while since I’ve read that book or even prayed that prayer, but today as I ponder the possibilities of again enlarging my territory, I feel compelled to reconnect with this scripture.

Though I joined our school the very first year it opened, I didn’t plan to become any type of school leader or administrator.  I was just a classroom teacher doing my best to shape the lives of 20 third graders.  Those first two years were difficult in that we were involved in lawsuits and legal battles with the county school board just to maintain our existence. 

Sometime during the second or third year, I read the Prayer of Jabez and I began to pray for the Lord to enlarge my territory.  I knew that I was touching 20 lives each day, but somehow that didn’t seem to be all I was called to do.  As I prayed that prayer for weeks, and months, I began to realize the changes that would need to be made in our school as we continued to expand each year.

We were growing by leaps and bounds.  We started with 140 students in PreK through 5^th grade, added sixth and seventh grades the next year, and eighth and ninth the following year, increasing to 225, 350, 400, and now that we are through twelfth grade, we have over 750 students. 

Not only did I take on more responsibilities, such as mentoring and coaching other teachers, but I also returned to school to earn a master’s in school counseling and become our school’s only counselor.   As these things began to take place, my territory was enlarging, I became responsible for many more than my 20 students.  My task load increased and my sphere of influence multiplied.   

I continued my education, eventually earning an Educational Leadership degree, and I have continued to enlarge my sphere of influence, using my skills to build capacity with our faculty. As I begin to plan for next year, I am reminded once again of why I prayed it in the first place, and why I should still be asking for God’s blessings each day.

Sometimes, we get so busy, so unbalanced, in our day to day operations that we lose sight of what we’re really here for.  I knew from the moment that God laid his hand on me back in the spring of 2000 telling me to go to work at the charter school that this school was a mission field for me.  A home mission field.  But I get busy and I forget to treat it like it is a ministry and I treat it like a job.  But it’s so much more.  Our kids need the role models that we’ve gathered on our campus. 

The four phrases of this prayer are distinct requests to God, and each of them has an impact on what God can do in our lives.  But the one that continues to stand out so much for me is that of enlarging my territory.  My territory has been enlarged – from one elementary classroom, to that of our staff, to our entire school of 700 plus students, and their parents, to even teachers in other schools whom I’ve had the opportunity to train.  The territory is there.  It’s what we do with it that sets us apart.

Some notes I took while reading the chapter on enlarging my territory in Beyond Jabez remind me of the important implications of this prayer:

•          “to abundantly increase” -- a huge expansion
•          sphere of influence/expanding ministry (service)
•          Whose territory?  God’s!
•          Prayer for territory involves change, risks; not comfort
•          “remember that God will never expand your territory beyond where He knows the two of you can achieve his goals.”
•          “When you realize and embrace your share of the responsibility for increasing  fruitfulness in your life, you will discover new motivation to pray the prayer of     Jabez!”
•          “He will provide all the supernatural resources necessary to enlarge your territory, but you are the one who must decide to break out of your comfort zone.”
•          “Taking new territory involves all of God and all of you. And if you leave out either part of this equation, your efforts will be ineffectual.”

How does He do it?

1.       “by increasing its size, enabling you to do something different or new.”

2.       “by extending its scope, enabling you to do something new.”

3.       “by sharpening your skills, enabling you to do what you do, better.”

4.       “by improving your strategy, enabling you to do something more effectively.”

5.       “by deepening its significance, enabling you to do something more influential.”

Wilkinson encourages us, and I am re-energized and recommitted to “rekindle the habit of praying the prayer of Jabez” and to “catch the vision for what God wants to do in your life, that you will experience incredible fulfillment and produce results of eternal value.”  

As I rekindle this habit, I am seeking all parts of this scriptural verse: Blessing, Territory, the Hand of God and His Protection:

• The Prayer for Blessing:  “spiritual or material or both
• The Prayer for Territory: “not primarily for yourself, but for Him and His purpose
• The Hand of God: “to enable you to steward the responsibility well”
• The Prayer for Protection:  “so that you might pursue His best for your life without hindrance”

I believe He has a great expansion in store for me, a departure from my comfort zone.  My skills have been sharpening, my strategies evolving.  Significance is on the horizon.  Use me to influence others.

What is your prayer?