I Promoted Him Into A Ceiling

You gave him the job in February and he was so pleased.

He rang his mother. Somebody told you that. He rang his mother from the parking lot.

He is good. That is the whole reason he got it. He has been with you four years, he learns things once, and he handles the hard customers better than you do.

And there is a ceiling above that role and he does not know it is there.

It is a hard cap. Not a discouraging thing somebody said; an actual structural limit in how the whole arrangement is built. There is nowhere above that role in a building like yours, and to go further a person has to go somewhere else entirely.

You have known that since before February. You knew it while you were telling him.

Here is what you have been telling yourself since.

He is happy. Why put a cloud over a good thing. He has plenty to learn in the role for at least two years. There is no need to have that conversation now.

And every one of those is reasonable, and every one of them is also a reason not to do a hard thing, and you know the difference.

The thing that finally made this unavoidable was on Tuesday. He said something about where he wants to be in five years, and he described a role that does not exist.

There is a verse about counting a cost before a person starts building, and it puts the counting in the right place.

Counteth the cost

Jesus asks a question about somebody starting a project, and it is a question about information.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? (Luke 14:28, King James Version)

Sitteth not down first. Before. The counting happens at the beginning.

And what is being counted is what a person actually has, so that they can decide about a thing before they are in the middle of it.

You have information he needed before he started rather than information he needs now, and the Holy Spirit is the one who values that order. Luke 14:28 puts the counting at the start rather than at the collapse, and He is the one who made Tuesday's conversation land on you the way it did.

Now notice who does the counting in that verse.

The builder does. Jesus does not say somebody else should count it for him and then hand him a summary. The man sits down himself with the actual figures.

Which means what is being withheld from that young man is not comfort. It is his own ability to decide.

You have been holding somebody's decision rather than protecting his mood, and it is written that the one who builds is the one who counts the cost. The Spirit of God is the one who wants that in his hands, and Luke 14 puts it there.

And there is a mercy in it that you have not been seeing.

Everything in that fear happens anyway. Nobody stays in a role for years without working out what is above it. He will find out, and he will find out at a worse moment, from somebody else, and by then the question will not be about the ceiling.

It will be about how long you knew.

You have a choice about the manner of it rather than about whether it happens, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is offering the better version of an unavoidable conversation. Scripture puts the counting before the building rather than in the wreckage, and He is offering it in February terms rather than in year three terms.

What you are actually afraid of

Let me name it, because it has been going under the name of kindness.

The fear is that he leaves.

He is very good, he handles the hard customers better than you do, and if he learns that the top of the ladder in this building is one rung above where he is standing, he may go somewhere with a taller ladder.

That is a real risk and it is not a shameful thing to feel. Anybody who has ever built a good team has felt it.

But it is a reason about you, and it has been dressed up as a reason about him for eight months.

You have been protecting yourself in the language of protecting him, and the written word puts the cost in the hands of the person doing the building. The Spirit of God is the one who separates those two, and He does it without any contempt in it.

And here is what is true about the risk, which will not remove it but will put it in proportion.

A man who stays because he does not know is not loyal. He is uninformed, and uninformed people leave eventually anyway, and they leave badly.

A man who knows the ceiling and stays two more years because he wants what those two years contain is a different kind of colleague entirely, and that is a thing you can actually rely on.

You are able to have somebody who chose rather than somebody who did not know, and the Holy Spirit is the one who builds that kind of team. It is written that the counting is what makes a project a decision, and Luke 14:28 is where the counting sits.

Show him the map

So here is the thing to do, and it is one conversation, and it is not a warning.

Tell him where the ceiling is. Plainly. This role, and then above it is nothing in a building like this, and going further means going somewhere else.

Then say what is genuinely in the role for the next two years, because there is a great deal in it and he should hear that in the same breath.

Then ask him what he wants to do with that, and then be quiet.

You are handing over a map rather than delivering bad news, and Luke 14:28 says the builder sits down first and counts the cost himself. The Spirit of God is the one present in that conversation, and He is not anxious about how it goes.

The question at the end is the whole thing. Without it, you have delivered a limit. With it, you have handed him a decision, and a decision is what the verse is about.

He may say he wants to go eventually. That is allowed. He may say he wants the two years first. He may say he had already half worked it out.

You have been holding something that belongs to him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who will be in the parking lot afterward. The written word makes the counting the property of the man doing the building, and Luke 14 is where the order of it is set.

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