Kinks

by Eddie Pipkin

I have a great yard, a Central Florida acre that features some fruit trees, plenty of flowers, and assorted colorful tropical landscape plants. I tend this flora for the serenity of it. I’m a person who needs a regular serenity-inducer to counterbalance my natural impatience. Therefore, I try to keep the gardening chores as uncomplicated as possible. Enter my principal antagonist, the water hose. Every time I drag that long hose out for a watering session, the kinks get me. Kinks are the enemy of Zen. They can literally interrupt your flow. Managing them offers lessons in life and leadership, and ministry, after all, is full of kinks, crimps, and unexpected entanglements.

I have a lot of ground to cover, so I have at least three very long water hoses positioned in order to reach all of the applicable watering spots. Right now we are at the end of our dry season before the afternoon summer thunderstorms kick in, so I’ve had plenty of practice at working this problem. The challenge is that if you have a looped hose and pull on the end of it to drag it out to its fully stretched length, a loop will tighten on itself until it kinks and cuts off the flow of the water. This is a complication that can repeat itself several times when stretching out a single hose – each and every loop is prone to kink.

It’s frustrating. You’re usually in a hurry to complete this chore, and you just want to yank that hose off the hose hanger, jog it out to the farthest point, shower those plants and coil it back up. Kinks mean backtracking.

Ministry can, of course, be frustrating in the same way. You have a plan. You want to implement that plan without drama, particularly if it’s a repetitive chore, and you want to ‘get ‘er done’ as efficiently as possible. You’re bopping along and – kink! Entanglement! Unexpected obstruction that brings the action to a halt!

Anything that you must do on a near-daily basis, you should learn to do like the experts! Approaching the same chore with the same frustration over and over, ad infinitum, is a recipe for stress and disgruntlement. It’s really kind of amazing how often in our household chores and in the conduct of our ministry responsibilities we keep on doing the same frustrating things in the same frustrating ways without getting to the bottom of a better approach.

This is a general rule that should be respected: If something (anything) is repeatedly causing you frustration, STOP: don’t keep gritting your teeth and slogging through it because it seems like it would take too long to find a solution or a better strategy. Take the time to research the problem, consult someone with more experience, and do the foundational work to get it right. You will ultimately save time and improve your disposition, both of which are laudable strategic goals.

In the case of hoses and kinks, there are several approaches that can be employed, and each of those approaches has a ministry management parallel:

Take the time to store the hose properly. Whatever your technique for storing your hose, whether rolled carefully on the ground or by using a dedicated storage device, it is important to take the time after every use to store it with care. This ensures a longer hose life and lessens the chances of kinking.

Ministry Parallel: We have far greater odds of getting through a ministry project or event with minimal tangles if we plan carefully beforehand. That’s a given. But it’s also critical to have a post-event or post-project period of setting things back to normal. This means we replenish what was used (people who need rest, equipment that needs repair, cleaning, or replacement, and we invest in what we need to do the same thing better next time.)

Use a well-positioned, well-made hose hanger or hose reel. It is not by any means necessary to use specialized storage equipment, but such equipment is available both as an aid to usefully coiling your hose and as an aesthetic choice. The type of device you settle on will be a matter of personal preference; I find big portable hose reels to be a pain, but some people love them; I prefer a well-made, heavy duty hose hanger. Whatever you choose, placement is critical for efficient daily use. Sometimes a hose needs a dedicated space.

Ministry Parallel: Sometimes the success of a ministry project or event comes down to having the right equipment or the right outside assistance. If you can save yourself a ton of grief by investing in a piece of gear or by renting a special item, do it. If you need to temporarily bring an expert on board to ensure the success of a big vision, by all means do it. These investments will pay for themselves.

Upgrade your hose. The better a hose is made, the less likely it is to kink under any circumstances. This is, of course, a matter of investment. There is a sizable price difference between a cheap dollar store hose and a professional grade heavy duty hose. For most people, a workable balance will fall somewhere in the middle.

Ministry Parallel: Sometimes you just don’t have the right personnel for the job. It’s tough to let people go and rotate new people in, but if it’s what it takes to get to the next level, you’re not doing anyone any favors by delaying the inevitable. This is true for people. It’s also true for gear, from tech to transportation. It takes a lot out of you and your ministry partners to keep duct taping a vehicle or sound board together or to keep putting up with an individual who is no longer a good fit. Bite that bullet and figure out how to upgrade.

Repair weak points in your old hose. If you have a permanent crimp in a hose, a weak area that marks a kinking spot that appears again and again in the same place, the integrity of the hose fabric is in the process of failing, and the hose will eventually leak or burst in that spot. Such sites should be repaired with a hose mender kit (which, like hoses themselves, come in various levels of quality). It’s tempting to throw out a hose and start fresh when a leak is sprung or a hose catastrophically fails, but it’s poor stewardship. It’s really a pretty basic undertaking to do a hose repair that will last for years.

Ministry Parallel: Whether we’re talking about facility maintenance, tech gear support, or other elements critical to ministry (i.e. church vans), it’s important to be diligent about maintenance and repairs. You don’t want a small thing to become a huge issue. The key is to have someone tasked with managing these projects, and there is always someone in a local church setting who loves worrying over these things. Let them use their gift and take it off your hands! Beyond equipment and facilities, though, people also need occasional “repairs.” They need downtime, rest phases, and access to good mentoring that can help them get through rough patches.

Learn more sophisticated hose looping techniques. Ask the Navy. Or YouTube: Here’s a video that demonstrates the over-under counterintuitive technique that will allow you to stretch your hose in a straight line every single time. (You’ll want to fast forward through some of this couple’s banter, but it’s worth it for the hose coiling lesson.)

Ministry Parallel: Never stop learning. You may have decades of program and event experience, but there are always new techniques to be absorbed and new styles for doing what we’ve always done. Stay current. Seek out cutting edge experts and don’t be afraid to learn from them. Learning never stops!

Practice patience. Respect physics. Serve the hose. Patience is a Godly virtue, a featured fruit of the Spirit, and any chore or task goes better when you begin with patience in your heart and the calm awareness that there will be unanticipated entanglements. If the hose gets hung on something (a root, a plant, a piece of yard art, a toddler), resist the urge to yank on it! Yes, this violent and satisfying technique can sometimes work, but not often. Most always, yanking and flailing will only make the problem worse. Take the time to walk back and find the source of the problem and deal with it patiently and calmly. Especially if a toddler is involved. Even if the issue is a series of increasingly compressed loops that you’re trying to push to the point of shrinking loops becoming kinking loops, stop living on the edge; walk back to the source and hand straighten those uncooperative loops.

Ministry Parallel: Just like the laws of physics in the natural world determine the push-and-pull of interactions, there are basic principles of relationships that govern how people interact when they are trying to work together. Know and respect those principles. Don’t be surprised when people are who they are and act accordingly, and don’t try to force people into roles for which they are ill-suited. Understand the gifts and strengths of staff and leaders and give them responsibilities in which those gifts and strengths will shine. Everybody wins!

If you have a tangled hose that wants to loop in unhelpful ways, stretch it out fully on a warm day and let it remember what it feels like to be perfectly straight and pliable. This works for any hose or cord. Get it straight, then loop it correctly with precision. People need that kind of ‘stretching’ in the warm rays of love, too. They need to be able to ‘uncoil’ from their regular stresses and take a break and a breather, to remember what their true purpose is, and to loosen up on occasion. Help them make that happen, and they’ll be ready to get back to the task at hand with a smile and rejuvenated heart.

Do you have strategies for keeping your ministry from getting tangled up in a big, unmanageable mess? When you run into a kink in a project, what is the word or phrase that would best describe your attitude in dealing with it (patience problem solving or belligerent frustration)? Looking at the tips above, which ones seem to you to be the most useful, and which ones seem impractical in your ministry setting? Share your own insights and hose coiling tips in the comments section below!