“Are we not all children of the same Father? Are we not all created by the same God?”

I presented a session recently on how to lead a successful volunteer board meeting. One of my tenants, and one of the hardest to achieve is how to keep everyone at the same level of knowledge and learning.  So, last week I was telling others how to do this and then a few days later I was sitting in a board meeting where I was brand new and without an orientation.  I knew that the questions I was asking were “newbie” questions and regardless of how “good” they were (as described by the Board Chair) they were questions that had there been a pre-meeting of all the new Board Members, before intermingling the veterans with the novices, I’d have hopefully inquired in a more contextualized way.  I’ve run many a meeting where everyone didn’t read the materials, or they hadn’t thought about what we were doing since the last meetings until they were driving to this one.  What is at stake when everyone is not up to speed and at the same level of knowledge and understanding is that some serious time gets wasted by those who were prepared.  And with each minute that is wasted, we lose a little bit of their engagement and enthusiasm.  Nothing is worse than time lost and we can avoid that if we just spend a little extra time bringing everyone to the same speed.

I’ve been fortunate to know some deep Bible scholars.  These are men and women who forgot more about what they knew than I will ever know.  I’ve also met prayer warriors who when they pray over you, you can almost feel the Holy Spirit through their hands.  And, I have met those who know little and are early in their journey with the Lord who when they love on others, it is so genuine and real that you can’t help but be moved.  We are fortunate that God meets us where we are and doesn’t feel that His time is wasted when we are striving to become closer.  When we stumble today (we always do) don’t worry that we are falling behind.  Just ask Him to start us all over and keep bringing us along, at His speed for us.

Reference: Malachi 2:10 (New Living Translation)