‘My’

It happened a couple of times a few months ago; I was talking to someone at work and I referred to ‘my team’. Each time I said it it, it felt false- like I was striving for position and status. I stopped immediately, but it still feels uncomfortable recalling it. If pressed, I now talk of ‘the team I lead and manage’ , ‘The Chaplaincy team’. or better still: ‘us’. It’s been an important reminder for me: people I work with are not ‘mine’- they are themselves and have gifts that surpass mine. If I’m doing my job well, they thrive and I become invisible, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

A few weeks ago, I got into a disagreement with someone when I said that I never refer to ‘my patients’: I don’t own them, they are not ‘mine’, but unique individuals: I might work with them, listen to them, help them, but they remain their own people and my equals. Before the Teams room- mercifully- cut out, they were saying ‘my patients’ demonstrated care: I could see that, but I also thought it demonstrated power and at worst, control and loss of individuality.

Many years ago when I had a sabbatical, I began to realise that ‘my church’ or ‘my churches’ had slipped into my lexicon. It wasn’t helpful for me: it felt like boasting: the good things that are happening are ‘mine’. Some of this was part of my ‘evangelical detox’: being around many other leaders who wore that label sometimes seemed to me about ‘my church’ being an extension of their own success or sense of worth.

At worst it led to an overdeveloped sense of responsibility- I have to be there, I cannot stop and they cannot thrive without me. Sometimes I think it verged on controlling behaviour: this is ‘mine’, although thankfully I never got into saying ‘my people’ or worse still ‘my folk’.

It was cumbersome, but I began to say to myself ‘the churches over which I have pastoral responsibility’ and if someone said ‘this is your church’, I’d say, ‘No- it’s yours, or better still God’s- we are just passing through’.

I’m attempting to use ‘our’ more as I slip into late middle age: I am realising that there are fewer things I control or own- fewer things that are genuinely ‘my’ and in either case it’s not worth boasting about or striving for significance. I am part of ‘our’ and eventually, if I’ve done life well, I will be carried by ‘our’.