I Want to be Great — Pat Dryburgh

This past weekend I put a lot of thought into something I hadn’t thought about in several months. Ever since I left Connexus, I’ve felt like something was missing. There are obvious things I miss, things like doing music week to week, being in a community with people I love, seeing and experiencing new things all the time. While I do miss all of these and more, there’s something else; something a little less tangible.

I miss the feeling of striving to be great.

I am not arrogant enough to think that I was great at what I did at Connexus/Trinity. I think I was good, and that I was (hopefully) getting better as time went on. But there was a constant week-in, week-out desire to do something incredible, to be great. This was as much a personal thing as it was a corporate thing. While I wanted to see Connexus do great and amazing things, I also wanted to develop into as strong of a leader as I possibly could.

I struggled a lot, trying to organize 5 weekend services every single week, trying to keep on top of 2 locations every Sunday morning, as well as a youth program every Sunday night. Every Wednesday and Thursday night, I showed up at rehearsal as early as I could to get every piece of equipment set up so that my teams wouldn’t have to (they had put in amazing commitment as it was, they didn’t need to lug gear as well!). I even drove 20 minutes out of town quite a few times just to borrow drums so we could have rehearsals. Through the worst winter I had ever personally experienced, I worked hard to hopefully enable my team to really do great things every week. I won’t say I was perfect, because I wasn’t, but I honestly tried.

And I miss that. I miss the struggle and the challenge. I miss the problem solving, trying to figure out how we’re going to make this crazy thing work. I miss learning, reading, thinking critically about what I am doing and trying to improve on the systems and workflow.

So, this weekend I put a lot of thought into my direction in life. Am I in a place now where I am using the potential I know I have in me? I know I love to learn, I know I love to think. Am I growing at the same rate I was 6 months ago?

In the next few weeks and months, I’m going to be doing a lot of hard thinking about this. I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts, worries, fears, challenges, and dreams of where I want to be. Hopefully along the journey, you too will be challeneged to think critically about where you are, where you are going, and where you hope to be.

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