I am not prone to worry, and I don’t. My grandfather and mother have always lived by the motto, “You just take it one day at a time.” I have inherited that gift from them. I don’t worry, I simply work hard. There is no benefit to worrying, so don’t. (Another post in coming weeks)
At CentriKid Director Training a few weeks ago in Atlanta, something came up in a discussion about travel. I began to share my “greatest fear” about long hours of travel in vans and buses and the fear that someday I would get a call that there had been an accident. I can’t imagine the agony of having to call someone’s father and mother to tell them their son or daughter had been hurt. In mid sentence I stopped myself to say, “That’s actually not my greatest fear, but it is one of my fears.”
Later that day Meredith asked me, “If the worry about an accident and a staffer getting hurt is not your greatest fear, what is?” Simply put, my greatest fear is that camp would become about us! Campers love staff, they even “idolize” staff in some cases. They want to dress like staff, talk like staff and someday be one of the staff. The attention can become addictive, and it would be so easy for Satan to use that to keep us from our only goal, changed lives. Over my 20 years, I have seen staff who totally changed their “look” in order to stand out. Guys have painted their toe nails and finger nails, hair has been colored, only one sock has been worn, the list could go on. It was all an attempt to stand out to get attention. It isn’t always that overt. It can simply be the love of being on stage or the desire to be in front.
We must continue to make sure our focus is on Christ and not on us, and that we want to use our gifts in order to share the Gospel and influence others for Him. We must be incredibly focused on meeting the needs of kids and those who entrust their kids to us.
What is your “greatest fear?”