Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!

It is SO hard for me to delegate. But, it is so rewarding and beneficial on so many levels whenever I do. In the past 6 weeks, I spent a week and half in England, was back in the pulpit for a Sunday, then took a week's vacation to celebrate our 10th anniversary, then was back in the pulpit for another Sunday, then went off to Annual Conference for a week. Needless to say, I haven't been in the office much since, well, April. This Saturday we have a HUGE event at our church, our 4th Annual Community Day Festival and Flea Market. This Festival is a great outreach to our community, and we typically get a lot of response from families in the area. The Flea Market is a great fundraiser as well. For contact information, we always have a number of door prizes to give away, and people have to fill out a registration card to be eligible for the drawing. That is a great incentive for people to give us their contact info so we can follow up with them later, and it astronomically multiplies the number of registration cards that we get. A great tip for those who are looking for a way to get people to fill out contact cards at any event your church offers! Now back to my post. With me being gone so much over the past 6 weeks, I neglected to leave someone in charge of setting up the flea market this week. So when I returned to the office on Tuesday, our fellowship hall was piled high with items for the sale, and nothing was in place to arrange, price, and organize the items on the tables. Now my first response to a situation like this one is always to think of how I can organize my own time so I'll personally have enough time to come in, set up the tables, arrange the items, and price and organize them all. I planned on setting aside the entire day to do this. Then I thought to myself (in one of those rare moments of productive thought) - "I could spend hours doing all of this, or I could spend a few minutes on the telephone, swallow my pride over my neglect of this important aspect of our event, and ask a few others to come in and help me with it." I got on the phone, and an hour later, some of the wonderful people of Bethany UMC came together and by the end of the afternoon, EVERYTHING was priced, arranged, and organized perfectly. I spent a little time at the beginning getting them organized, suggesting how to lay out the tables and arrange things by category, then I was able to go back to the office and catch up on a load of things that had accumulated while I was away at AC. It gave the people of the church an opportunity to use their gifts of service, it gave me a chance to work side by side with them for awhile rather than trying to do it all on my own, and it then gave me a chance to get done with some other important things that needed to be done. Hopefully I'll remember this lesson the next time I need to!