Important but not urgent

Important, not urgent
A tribute to my students in TS 324
In the course just completed at the UWC in Christian Leadership (third year for the BTh, Bachelor of Theology) the focus has in fact been on the very basic things: how to organize your life according to your deepest convictions and beliefs. The crude fact is that more often than not, and those working in the church seem to be at least as affected as anybody else, life is instead caught up in the whirl wind of events, meetings and commitments to other people.
You end up in a permanent situation, as it seems, of urgent but important things. What is so deeply dissatisfying is that despite having this serious wish to be involved in what is important we become more and more reactive than being proactive.
We certainly need to react on crises (there is no other choice), and a society like South Africa sometimes looks as if such crises almost make up the nation, but even so there must be space for my own very personal commitments and driving force. I must be selfish enough to find that inner core of my being if I want to serve others in an authentic and effective way.
Having marked the final exam of the course above last night I must congratulate my students, all 17 of them. They have all done reasonably well and some very well; all should feel proud of what they have achieved. They have inspired me a lot in class and I will be missing them.
Millions of people have been dealing with almost the same leadership manual as we did but we also did something extra. The basic book has been Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but we have also studied Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like and some of Jesus’ parables on the Kingdom of God.
By making students acutely aware of this very common shortcoming, of ending up in what is urgent and important (quadrant I) instead of what is not urgent but important (quadrant II), I have in fact increased the pressure on them and we could feel it in class. There are a few who say that they are able to keep the balance and maintain a long term planning, but most of my students concede that they too often feel that they are stuck in quadrant I. My hope is that all will be able to sort out their lives before long and in so doing play a significant part in the renewal and transformation of society including the church. In other words, my fervent hope is that my students will almost immediately go and apply what they have learnt.
One of the learnings is that what you have to manage is not so much your time as yourself. In other words, you yourself are in the centre working out the relationship with others. Those relationships are the base for any meaningful activity in any kind of leadership. My conclusion is also that it is here in Africa where the great potential lies for this kind of approach. Time will then, almost in a Mbitian (John Mbiti, famous African theologian) sense, become an asset that due to its immediate link to human events is richly available instead of a commodity almost always in short supply.
If you want to acquire skills worthy of the name, those skills are for life. And without exception they take a lot of effort, they will mark you out with a specific character, which is the beauty of it.
I am thinking of the following story. The Emperor asked his court artist to draw a cock, with crest and colourful tail feathers. After a week the Emperor inquired about him whether he was not soon ready, but he pleaded for more time. This went on for months and when the Emperor nearly had lost his patience completely even planning to punish this lazy and slow artist, the artist in fact was on his way to the court and sought an audience with the Emperor. “I am ready now”, he said. “So where is the painting”, said the Emperor. “I don’t have it. I had several of them but I have destroyed them”. The Emperor became furious. “What do you mean, you have let me wait for weeks and then you come and say that what you did paint is now destroyed”?
“Wait a moment”, said the artist, “I have brought my brushes and some paint, and a canvas”. Then in some minutes he painted a most glorious cock with its colourful plumage and a red crest, a painting that stunned everybody because they could see that the beauty was a result of hard work and very advanced and skilful techniques.
What we have been talking about in the module TS 324 somehow has to do with such a painting.