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The Starving Baker
Posted by
Bob Fetherlin
,
24 December 2007
·
1404 views
Often important truth can be powerfully communicated through metaphors and images. One that gripped me as I recently pondered it was the starving baker. When I think of a professional cook or baker, I think of a person who enjoys food so much that he has become jolly and plump. I'm even comforted when I see an overweight person in a restaurant kitchen preparing my meal or dessert. "Surely this will be delicious," I reason observing that this person obviously enjoys food.
Yet the image of a starving, skinny baker is about a person who is constantly close to food yet never eating. I encountered it in Tim Elmore's book Habitudes: Images that Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes (2004, Growing Leaders, Inc).
The starving baker represents the person who is so busy feeding others that he neglects feeding himself. In other words, sometimes leaders put so much into the people they lead that they fail to nourish their own lives. Eventually this kind of situation can deteriorate to the point where the leader's talk is great while his walk becomes increasingly fake.
How do busy leaders avoid this tragic condition? By feeding themselves before feeding others. The airline industry understands this well. They instruct adult passengers, "Put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others." Why? So that able passengers don't die from lack of oxygen while helping those less able access oxygen.
In preparing for 2008, how can you get enough soul-food to keep growing as a person in Christ . . . so that you can lead and help others who want to follow Him? What does it profit a person to gain the whole world yet forfeit his own soul (Mat 16:26)? Don't become a starving baker!
Yet the image of a starving, skinny baker is about a person who is constantly close to food yet never eating. I encountered it in Tim Elmore's book Habitudes: Images that Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes (2004, Growing Leaders, Inc).
The starving baker represents the person who is so busy feeding others that he neglects feeding himself. In other words, sometimes leaders put so much into the people they lead that they fail to nourish their own lives. Eventually this kind of situation can deteriorate to the point where the leader's talk is great while his walk becomes increasingly fake.
How do busy leaders avoid this tragic condition? By feeding themselves before feeding others. The airline industry understands this well. They instruct adult passengers, "Put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others." Why? So that able passengers don't die from lack of oxygen while helping those less able access oxygen.
In preparing for 2008, how can you get enough soul-food to keep growing as a person in Christ . . . so that you can lead and help others who want to follow Him? What does it profit a person to gain the whole world yet forfeit his own soul (Mat 16:26)? Don't become a starving baker!
