You Gotta Do What You Hate
On a wintry Sunday afternoon at Fulton Ranger Station during the football game, the conversation drifted to memories from the last fire season. Men who had faced death together on the side of a mountain told stories of surviving a burnover in Kings Canyon, watching four unfortunate firemen die just down the ridge in Santa Barbara, plane rides out of state, and helicopter rides with close calls, along with the antics of fire camps and station pranks and foolery. We drove down to the flat country, eager for fire season to start.
A few months later, running on fumes after a week of fire school, catching up with old friends, and retelling some of the same stories, the mood in the crew truck turned to gloom and doom as we neared the mouth of the Kern River.
Highway 178. There were 27 miles of fireline to cut with McCleods and pulaskies on the hillside in the 100-plus degree heat, trash to be picked up that people threw out of their cars, and rattlesnakes around every corner.
Just about every evening when we returned to the station, one of the new crew members would tap out. Our grizzled superintendent's answer was always the same, “If you can’t do the canyon, you can’t be on the crew.” “I didn’t sign up for this,” they would say as they walked to their car defiantly. I’ll never forget our superintendent Bill’s next words, “You gotta do what you hate to do what you love.”
Are pictures coming to your mind? I’m picturing my years as an Army officer, leading tank crew platoons and soldiers. I loved maneuvering during the cold war in Germany. I loved gunnery and coaching crews to become more proficient. I hated dealing with issues in the barracks – searching for drugs, listening to soldiers gripe about having to go to the motor pool (tanks break all the time), submitting to poor leaders who outranked me, and the endless meetings.
Many times a day, I would quote Bill to myself: “You gotta do what you hate to do what you love.”
No matter what you love to do, there is a downside. I loved fighting fire but hated doing hazard reduction along Highway 178. I loved shooting tanks but hated being the S-1 battalion administrator. I loved studying at Dallas Seminary but hated cleaning pools to make enough money to feed our family. I loved teaching at Biola, but I hated grading. And I loved pastoring a church, but I hated raising money.
Mature people know that no one can do what they love all the time without devoting some time to doing what they hate.
During the years that I led churches and now that I work with leaders, I’ve been amazed at the number of times I've heard a staff person, pastor, missionary, or elder say, “I didn’t sign up for this. This is not why I went to Bible school or seminary, went to the mission field, volunteered, or agreed to be an elder.”
My first thought is often, “Grow up!” But my reaction is to restate the maxim from the lips of a seasoned fireman, “You gotta do what you hate to do what you love.”
There are two ways to view your ministry. One is to make it about you, what you want to do, and what your expectations are, compulsively and urgently forming a job description of your own making and living in a fantasy world no true leader lives in. But there is another way.
View your ministry from the place of a servant, where your personal desires and expectations no longer dominate you. Speak about the things you hate to do with a distant view, the view of Jesus, and see these tasks as the way to your present freedom, releasing you to do what you love with joy.
