The Starving Baker
“This is a common hazard for leaders. We’re like the baker who spends so much time baking bread for others, we forget to eat ourselves. Leaders must feed themselves for personal growth.”
(Tim Elmore, Habitudes, Vol. 1, Image #2: ‘The Starving Baker’)
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Have you ever considered how antithetical the safety instruction to “First put on your own oxygen mask before turning to your child sitting next to you” during an airplane emergency actually feels? I’ve always found it incredibly off-putting, as if during a life-threatening situation 30,000+ feet in the air, I am to calmly take care of my own need for breath prior to engaging my child choking to death next to me.
“Hold your breath, Mia – Daddy needs his oxygen first.”
It sounds incredibly rude, selfish, and dangerous to the well-being of my daughter at first pass. But considering the reality that I know absolutely nothing about the ability to fly an airplane, let alone keep a group of strangers calm in the middle of the sky during a life-or-death situation, perhaps I don’t understand the nature of this safety instruction, and it actually is most beneficial to my daughter’s safety for me to be able to breath first.
Is this not a remarkably similar analogy to the nature of sustainable self-care within the soul of a leader? Am I truly able to grow as a leader if my entire energy is expended upon the care and needs of the people I am trying to serve, ignorant to the growing reality that my “return on investment” is more and more slim in nature? Put another way, “We’re like the baker who spends so much time baking bread for others, we forget to eat ourselves. Leaders must feed themselves for personal growth” (Tim Elmore, Habitudes, Vol. 1).
Jesus echoes a remarkably similar refrain within his teaching on the two greatest commandments, to love God and others with the deepest parts of our selves. “Jesus said, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commandments are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them” (Matthew 22:37-40, MSG). Honestly, most Christ-followers abbreviate the commandment to something like, “Love others,” crucially chopping the phrase that holds the entire commandment together: “as well as you love yourself.”
Because the written word doesn’t have the benefit of tone or volume, permit me make a small editorial choice here. Given the context of the passage, the nature of the Pharisaic religious scholar Jesus was dialoguing with, I wonder if Jesus actually sounded something like this:
“But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘LOVE OTHERS (Building in tone and volume, for this is the other central commandment in following God, after all)
AS WELL AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF.’ (Crescendoing here, the full weight of Jesus’ tone, volume, pitch, and authority rising in this phrase).
These two commandments are pegs; EVERYTHING (Quick build-up again here) in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs on them” (Matthew 22:39-40, MSG; Emphasis solely mine).
The wisest, most stable, long-lasting, resilient leaders seem to be those who are able to regularly Sabbath, learn, receive care from others, and listen to the criticism of those around them with a desire to become ever increasingly mature. Leaders understand that they not only can feed themselves not only should feed themselves, but must feed themselves personal growth if any lasting transformation will happen to the communities they are entrusted with shepherding well.
And so I ask myself first: Am I leading from a place of starvation? Perhaps it is time to stop, admit I am hungry, and begin to eat again myself. This is a courageous, risky act that a leader must undergo time and time again. Will you join me at the table?
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“The lesson of the starving baker? As selfish as it may sound,
the best way leaders can serve and grow their people is to tend to their own growth first.”
(Tim Elmore, Habitudes, Vol. 1, Image #2: ‘The Starving Baker’)
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Note: I reflect on this idea further in a new “Kitchen Table Story” audio video narration I just completed for EKerk. I hope “The Starving Baker” encourages you as a leader to give yourself permission to tend to your own growth first. It is what you, and the people whom you shepherd, need most deeply.