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I am a coffee sales rep
Every time One Village Coffee the company I represent has a hard month selling coffee I get down. I ask questions like, can I do it?
You see in the past three months I have accepted the role of the sales manager and primary sales rep for OVC. For the longest time I have fought the feeling of the role I am playing in this venture. It has taken many conversations and people like David to help me see who I need to be.
Why is it so hard?
I have a very large ego. I want to be famous. I want to seem important. I want to feel good about myself.
The only way I feel good about myself as a sales rep is when someone buys coffee. Wow, that sounds tright. But it is true and I want to be honest, because I want to be successful. Meaning, I want to do the best i can do, in the time I have been given. I want OVC to be sustainable and I want the organizations overlooked to have a marketable tool in coffee. I want to connect the consumer to the story of the overlooked people of origin. Most of all i want to be apart of something bigger than me. I want to be apart of what God is doing in this World. I want to be apart of reconciliation, justice, mercy and grace.
Ok, now that I have made more meaning out of what I am apart of, I can sleep and be ok with the fact that tomorrow I will drive to places I have never been in towns I do not know and ask people in coffee shops and stores if they will sample my coffee and listen to the story of OVC. A group of people who started a company around the premise of helping people.
When I wake up and get in my car armed with samples and sales brochures I make it possible for growth, with out me doing this simple job there is little possibility. I accept my job. I accept who I am and I accept the responsibility offered to me.
Who are you?
suggestions for my new blog
Ok here is how it goes:
I get a call on the phone, “What you are saying on your blog is important, but i do not think people read it because it is to ugly.” I love honest friends.
So what does, www.toddhiestand.com do, that’s right he makes me a new blog. I can honestly say it will be hard to top this Christmas gift, and I am not sure how to thank him. I think I will give him more of my clothes and take him out to lunch. I would give him coffee but that is might be overdone.
Ok so here is where the four loyal readers of my musings come into the picture.
I need your help making suggestions for the title.
The title that has been on my mind lately is “confessions of failure” reflections and musings on God, Business, and how it all connects.
What I do not want my blog to be:
A negative perspective. I am fine with Critique, but like my dad said to me in college while we were eating at an Applebee’s, where are pivotal moments happen for young adult, “I do not want to hear you complain one more time till you try to help it..”
What was the it?
It was the Church.
What is the it now…
I think I am still trying to figure that out…
So if you have any suggestions let the fly.
I do not like lectures…
That is probably why I do not listen to many sermons.
Recently a friend was asking me about my community group, in fact I have spent a lot of time talking about this group this past week. The Livingroom is the intentional community I have participated in for the past two years. Here is our blog: www.livingroomconversations.blogspot.com
A couple things about livingroom, we meet intentionally once a week to relate to one another and God. We form our time around these elements: a common meal, communion, prayer, scripture, story, conversations, film, art, council, kids, inward and outward needs, services and play.
There is no one leader/pastor, we all play our roles we accept in the community. My role is a facilitator/encourager/listener.
Most people who know me outside of livingroom context think I am the leader. i guess I fit the profile of how they see the leader. However inside livingroom I am one of the pieces that make up the mosaic that is livingroom. The group of people, some strangers make up the most natural, normal, successful Christian community I have been apart of.
Note: most frustrating issues for new people, Livingroom is what you make it. No one role is held higher than anyone elses role. The children sit in the middle of the room most nights. They are distracting, and we celebrate the mess and normalcy they bring to the group.
We have no one purpose of structure. We organize and re organize every eight weeks in the areas that fit the values of how we see God/Jesus/Gospels/Christian Community expressed in Scripture.
I enjoy the company of people who are in the role of pastor when they are questioning their position… Why?
Because I wanted to be one since I was thirteen.
I had all the experiences of being “called” at a very young age, I went to the right schools and was mentored by the right people.
Now I have a new respect and perspective on the role of the pastor.
I think it is one of the toughest jobs out there.
I think they have become a joke to most of the Western world.
I think they are set up for failure in most institutional church structures. (at times the “lead” Pastor looks like a CEO who’s congregation see as a superhero.)
In this past week i have had lunch, taken walks, had coffee or drank a beer with five pastors in four days and i can honestly say I enjoyed it. But sitting hear now I can not help but think, why?
Here is what I hear: You know what it is like, you do not judge me, you enjoy me as a human being and you respect what i am trying to do.
Maybe we could all treat pastors more like human beings and less like super heros and we might see a change in the church in America.
I do not know, but i think it would be a grand experiment.
What I observe
My life is changing,
I have more of a belly.
My hair is thinning,
I care less about clothes.
People are separation,
Isolation is becoming easy.
Winter is coming,
Depression is setting in.
Friends are situational,
Alliances are being formed.
Disappointment is evident,
Relationships will never be the same.
I want to start having children,
My life is to stressful.
I want to sleep good at night,
My mind wont let me.
I have a fatalistic mind,
But I want to be positive.
There are thoughts i do not speak of
For fear of letting people down.
Pastors have a tough job,
People will allways lift them up.
To a place the do not deserve,
A place they do not want.
Christian have a hard time being human,
But make it easy to feel spiritual.
Churches no longer have loyalty,
Because the iron curtin has come down.
People look at me like I should do something,
About all that is happening.
But all I want to do is listen
Waiting…
What are you observing?
AA a metaphor for Christian Community
What if we started every Christian meeting with, “Hello my name is… and I am a human being,”
I think the institutional church would be a different place.
A confession:
It has been hard for me to write for the past month:
The very reason I write is what keeps me from writing. I need to write when i am anxious. When I am anxious I do not write.
A friend said to me:
“You are an environmentalist,”
No not the person who thinks the world is going end and only if I thought that paper in the right recycling bin will I save it. I want to do my best at conservation, but in no way do i think I can save the planet.
Any way, what he was saying by calling me that was, you set the environment. You enter a room or situation and you observe the environment. If what he said is true than I have been doing a poor job for my partners at OVC.
However, in the community group I am apart of I would say I have accepted that role and am practicing it quite well.
In my mind I have been thinking, “hello my name is scott hackman and I am a human being.”
How are you doing with the role you play?
An Open Hand Initiative
Maybe it will take an open hand initiative.
What do you see when you look at this picture?
I see a boy giving all he has…
And I hear a voice asking:
“What will you give…”
The problem of poverty can end…
Voices of now
The church has left the building and it is time for us to hear the voices from beyond the organized religion.
Why is it open source programs and web 2.0 created a new world order? What is it about giving the power to the users and watching what happens so facinating? What if the church used some of the phylosaphy behind open source communication? What would happen if we began to view organizations a living things?
Before you make a decision you have to check with the comity. Before you check with the comity, you have to check with the team leader and if the team leader veto’s it then what do we do… But there are people suffering and people in need, and their voices have left the building.
So where do we go from here. Who are the voices we must listen to? For me the voices of Sally www.trueconversations, Todd Littleton http://www.toddlittleton.net/ have been a source of encouragment and hope. Friendships with www.jrbriggs.com and www.toddhiestand.com have helped give me a voice in the christian conversation. Most importantly my wife, my faith community, www.livingroomconversations.com have brought me back to a relationship with God, through the incarnation of Christ and the dream of God.
What I believe about leadership
I believe:
*everyone leads or can lead
*there is a broader view of leadership
*there are historical and cultural factors that form our perspective of leadership
*woman can lead as well as men, (when people view woman as leaders)
*people need a scapegoat for their own failure to lead
*the churches view of leadership is narrow
*the Evangelical world view sets leaders up for failure
*leaders listen
*leaders identify with the people
*leaders are learners
*leaders trust others
In Margret Wheatley’s book, “Finding our Way”, the reader is given a glimpse into the “new story”. There is possibility for true organizational change. There is possibility for life giving organizations to thrive and be. The step for people who pioneer new ways of leading and organizing in this uncertain time of change, will lead to much failure in the eyes of society. The people paving the way may not ever find financial success or material security. However, what they will find is a new way.
The new way is only possible when the dream is realized. We all started with a dream, most of us left that dream once we realized it was self serving and impossible in our own resources. When the ceiling falls out on the perspective of what is to come and things are not as they seem. When an person realizes they got what they wanted and it is not as they thought. Hopelessness fill the bones and atrophy occurs. The breakdown of sells and structure begin. The created starts to die and can no longer co create. We are left lifeless, hopeless, and dreamless.
I say let the dreamer speak,
Let them hold their head high in the face of reality.
A reality void of meaning and purpose.
A reality build for people unwilling to dream.
Raise your voice and speak softly to the seams of society.
Work in the cracks of system which have ceased to have meaning.
there is a shifting in the sand, there is a collision of matter.
People are looking for answers and way to freedom.
We must look inside ourselves and be honest.
“I do not have what it takes”
But I will believe any way.
I will believe in the possibility of freedom.
I will believe in the hope of a savior.
I will believe in a God who loves all.
I will believe in a future.
Most of all I believe in you.
Conception
The excitement of a new life.
The possibility of greatness
The possibility of happiness.
Why are we doing this together?
Do we believe in the process, or do we just want the rush?
I do not want to feel this if it is not real.
I do not want a one night stand…
I want to believe in the miracle of when two become one…
The story of a God who loves,
Involved in the natural world.
So I believe…
As I pen a narrative of a boy trying to be a man, I begin to see.
There is truth in the idea that success is not financial.
And if I really believe this, I have to look the fear of homelessness and death in the face and reach out for the possibility.
As I right my narrative…
I am apart of a living organism, call it family, call it friend. Call it community, just do not call it organized religion. The dream to help one village,to help one child, to help mobilize change… We create a brand. We talk about success, we don’t think of failure. It will be three months before we break even. There is no pain in receiving the gift. There is only pain in loosing…
My mind can not keep up with the information causing change.
(this was apart of me processing the desire to start a new venture, be it relationships, children, business, these are my feelings left after the conception.)
