I Am Training People Who Will Leave

You have trained fourteen people in six years.

Two of them are still there. The rest went, mostly for good reasons, mostly to things that were better for them, and you were glad for nearly all of them and said so.

And somewhere around number nine you started holding something back.

Not deliberately. You did not decide it. But there is a set of things you know that take a while to teach properly, the difficult ones, the ones that are actually the job, and at some point you stopped starting them with new people until they had been there six months.

Then eight months. Then you began waiting to see whether they were staying.

Which is a sensible allocation of your time and it is also a way of never being disappointed again, and both of those are true at once.

Here is the thing that has been bothering you since the last one left.

She was good. She was there eleven months. And she left knowing about seventy per cent of what you could have taught her, because you were waiting to find out whether she was staying, and by the time you knew, she was going.

So she got a partial version of you because of a decision you made about protecting yourself.

There is a verse about who is actually responsible for what grows, and it takes a weight off in an unexpected place.

God gave the increase

Paul writes about two men doing work on the same field and then says who did what.

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. (1 Corinthians 3:6, King James Version)

Three parties and a very clear division.

One planted. One watered. And the increase, the actual growth, the part everybody actually cares about, belonged to somebody who was not either of them.

You are responsible for the planting rather than for the increase, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives the increase. 1 Corinthians 3:6 hands the growth to God rather than to the person doing the work, and He has been doing it in all fourteen of them whether you were there for it or not.

Now what that does to the eleven months.

The teaching has been getting measured by whether it stayed in the building. That is the wrong measure and it was never yours to hold.

Paul does not appear to know what happened to that field afterward. He plants and he moves on and he never once reports on the yield, because the yield is not the part he was given.

You have been holding a measure that was never yours, and it is written that the increase belongs to God rather than to the planter. The Spirit of God is the one holding the outcome, and 1 Corinthians 3 puts the division exactly there.

And here is the part that will actually reach the last one.

She left with seventy per cent of what you know. That seventy per cent is out there, right now, in a building somewhere, being used on people you will never meet.

The increase happened. You just were not in the room for it, which is the ordinary condition of nearly everybody who has ever taught anybody anything.

You have already had increase from every one of the fourteen, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been doing it in fourteen buildings. Scripture puts the growing where a person cannot watch it, and 1 Corinthians 3:6 is where the arrangement is stated.

What the holding back is costing

Let me be honest about the protection, because that is the actual subject.

The holding back started around number nine because it hurt. That is not a character failure. Fourteen people in six years, and about eight of them good enough to be sorry about, and a person adjusts.

But the adjustment has a price and it is not being paid by anybody who left.

It is being paid by whoever is standing in front of you now, and by the version of yourself that used to teach the difficult things in the first month.

You have been protecting yourself at somebody else's expense without meaning to, and the written word puts the planting on you and the increase somewhere you cannot reach. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a person that without accusing them of coldness.

And there is something practical in the arithmetic that will help.

The difficult things take about three months to teach properly. Eleven months is plenty of time. Even six months is enough for most of them.

The waiting was never about time. There was always time. The waiting was about knowing, and knowing is not available, and it never will be.

You are able to give the whole thing to somebody who may be gone in a year, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does not require anybody to know the outcome first. It is written that the increase is God's business rather than a planter's forecast, and 1 Corinthians 3 is why.

Teach the newest one the hard thing

So here is the thing to do, and it is this week, and it is specific.

Take the newest person and start on one of the difficult things that have been getting held back. Not all of them. One.

Start it properly, the way you would if you knew they were staying nine years.

You are planting rather than investing, and 1 Corinthians 3:6 says God gave the increase. The Spirit of God is the one who takes it from there, and He does not need a forecast from you first.

Do not tell them you have been holding it back. Do not make it a moment. Start it on a Tuesday, in the middle of the work, the way it used to happen.

And do not decide anything about the next fourteen. This is one person and one thing and one week.

You have one thing to start rather than a policy to change, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives the increase. The written word divides the work into planting and watering and leaves the rest out of your hands, and He gives it in buildings you will never see.

Then open in the morning and go on running the place the way you run it.