This post is really just for me, but I will let you guys listen in…. though after this I may have to find away to express my thoughts in a less public manner 🙂
Mike (our senior pastor) has said many times he would hire someone with the fruits of the spirit over someone who is talented. One of the reasons for that is the church already has tons of talent…. and we have it in spades. You know who is not talented (big secret here) me. In Mike’s message this weekend he said he had an inferiority complex … which turns out isn’t complex, in fact, it’s pretty easy. He is inferior. At which point I let out a breath I have been holding for 4 years, because I found out I wasn’t the only one.
My motto since I have been working at at the church is “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.” It’s easy for me to be the authority on video in a building where know one else knows anything about it. I see videos from churches all the time that I just sit back and go “WOW I am not sure I could ever do that.” And if one of those is YOUR church, AWESOME WORK! (that is Christian growth in my life right there folks) Which pretty much makes me want to sit in a corner, suck my thumb and then come in a quit my job cause I know I am not good enough at it. Now no one has ever said that to me, not once. I have always managed to get whatever impossible task, finished on time. My end of year review last year summed it up perfectly. It was hand written in sharpie on a blank sheet of printer paper “you don’t suck.” I made the senior pastor sign it, but PR refused to put it in my personnel folder. I know for a fact my effort isn’t sub-par, just my ability. If it were effort alone…. man I think we would have the coolest videos around, but alas it’s not. As my review stated I don’t suck… I am just inferior.
So far this really isn’t a big deal… so here is the kicker, I am not ok with that. I’m just not. Call it human nature or chalk it up to me being a flawed vessel, call me selfish, but I am not ok with being just good enough. Why? Easy, it’s MY passion, and I want to be the best at it. So what do I do? I try harder and I come up short, but only by my standards. Which are the only metrics I trust since as I stated before, no one else knows any better.
Well I am getting better at accepting my inferiority, embracing it really. Apparently my complex was more complex then I thought. I am also getting better at recognizing that just cause someone does this better then me it doesn’t really diminish me or my accomplishments (though I still need work there). Another aspect of the solution was to hire a new video producer, (for the post production stuff) who is better at this stuff then me. This way I can focus on the stuff I am good at (live production), but I can help with the post production stuff I enjoy, and hopefully I can learn a bunch of new stuff and get better at it. Hopefully that and some long conversations between me and God, will get me comfortable with my inferiority.
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