Identify
I worked for Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) for three and a half years. Just like most jobs, it was alternately fun and exasperating. Overall, it was a good job: I learned a lot, was well paid, and got to work with good people. I got laid off in September of 2003.
Just like any layoff, it was pretty traumatic, but that’s not what I want to write about.
It was more than a year later that I stopped identifiying myself with the DART name and logo. Every time I saw a billboard, bus, or train with the DART logo, I had to remind myself that I didn’t work for them anymore and that that was OK.
I’ve talked with other people who have had this happen and it seems like a common occurrence. When you work for a company, you do not really notice it because it is not a problem. When everything is peachy at work, you don’t mind being associated with a commercial or product. As a matter of fact, you’re kind of proud and that is probably OK. But, once you are no longer part of that organization, it is difficult for you to separate yourself from what was, at one time, your identity.
Everyone does this to some extent. When you are young, you identify with your school, team, friends, family, boyfriend/girlfriend, and (maybe) church. As you get older, you may identify with your college, hometown, company, husband/wife, and family.
People in ministry find it very easy to get their identities
totally wrapped up in their work; their lives ARE their work. When
someone leaves, gets fired, or laid off from ministry, they feel that
they have been betrayed. Everything they are is tied up in serving God
through a particular ministry or church.
totally wrapped up in their work; their lives ARE their work. When
someone leaves, gets fired, or laid off from ministry, they feel that
they have been betrayed. Everything they are is tied up in serving God
through a particular ministry or church.
The problem is, Christian companies and churches are the same as secular organizations in that they are run by people. You know, humans. They have contrasting goals, poor communication skills, different ideas about the best way to do things (gasp!!), and egos galore. Also, no companies have morals and goals; people have morals and goals. A company cannot have morals any more than a car can have morals. It is people that matter.
I’ve been doing some writing/thinking about how churches should not use marketing to do outreach because marketing, by its nature, focuses on groups, not people. Now I’m going to turn that around. Are you focused on some sort of group or organization for your identity?
I have this picture in my head of a person walking through life carrying bits and pieces of their identity. The pieces are all the things in your life that you have been told were true about yourself by friends, enemies, bosses, parents, siblings, etc. It doesn’t matter if these bits of identity are true or not, what matters is we believe that they are. All the pieces come from outside of you.
Then, something happens to make you lose a piece of your identity. You get laid off, hurt, shamed, divorced, or scorned and find yourself sitting at home with a piece of you missing. When this happened to me, I spent the next two years finding a new identity and I have spent the intervening four years building on that identity. But I’m still building it with human/outside pieces.
I think that, just like churches need to focus on individuals, we need to focus on one person for our identity. The one person who will never betray us, the one person who really has our best interests at heart, the Man from Heaven who knows our true identity; Jesus.I wish I could say “Follow me, I know where to go” but I can’t. I CAN tell you that I’m the person above. No, I haven’t been laid off, scorned, or divorced, but my identity has been shaken. The bits and pieces I carry around are falling off and I don’t like some of the things I see beneath the facade. I am trying to “find my identity in Him”, but I really don’t know what that means. I’d love to be able to weather all life’s storms with the calm assurance that I am a child of God and that he loves me without measure. I know he does, I just can’t seem to add that to my facade.
Here’s hoping that it’s all just part of the process…
