Learn how to leave a legacy with the Gray-Hair test.

I was involved in a church leadership team some years back that stood at a bit of a crossroads. For years the leadership team had consisted of two main pastor-elders that had planted that church and faithfully led it for years. The problem was that this particular church was at a plateau. Growth was static and in order to take the church to the next level they needed to get some dynamism into the church – enter the young guns. At the time, three young pastor-elders, including yours truly, were set into the leadership team and this gave the church the boost that it needed. Years later the church still has much of that dynamism still there. I read somewhere that mature vintage wine is treated to a few drops of new wine now and again because the vintage wine is “excited” by the addition of the new wine and develops a better taste. This happened in the church that I was a part of, and this leads me nicely to my next point.

I have been thinking lately about what it takes to leave a legacy in your chosen area of competence, and how to have a vision that caters for what happens when you hand-over the reigns to someone else. Many times in life we are more concerned about how well we do a job, and what success will bring us, than about what happens when we leave the scene. In my old church, the leadership there was not thinking of succession as such, but one older generation did raise up a newer generation of leaders, and the changes were all for the better. In the not-for-profit world this issue is even more pronounced, as someone’s involvement in an organization may stem solely from a deep rooted personal need to serve, and dynamics such as succession planning are only motivated and stimulated at an ideological level, rather than by any profit maximization considerations.

I have developed my own theory for leaving a legacy – call it the “Gray Hair test”, if you will. The premise of this theory is that the ratio of gray hairs to non-gray hairs on your noggin reflects the ratio of the time that you should spend on mentoring and reproducing yourself rather than actually doing the work, or actually being involved in “ministry” (to use a good old fashioned churchy word). Look in the mirror mister – are you sporting a good set of silver up there? If so, you should be all about raising a future generation of leaders where your ceiling becomes their floor, and they take your mission to the next level. Now if you are bald like me, the above may not apply.

If this theory is true, then consider this a model time-line for “ministry”:

1. Childhood to 30 years: These are the formative years where you get rooted and grounded in the motivations behind your mission, and also get competent enough to fulfill it in an excellent way.
2. 30 to 50 years: These are the performing years, where the actual job is done and the mission is advanced during your tenure.
3. 50 to 70 years: These are the mentoring years (Reference the gray-hair test), where you take young aspiring leaders under your wing and nurture and mentor them in order to reproduce yourself in them.
4. 70 years and over : These are the legacy years. During this season in your life you’d better get real busy and write as many books as you can, recording your legacy for as many generations to come as possible. During these years you are a mentor to mentors, a pastor to pastors, and a much needed source of wisdom, guidance and inspiration.

So there you have it – the Gray-hair test – a rough-and-ready measure of what you should be doing with your life. What does mirror, mirror on the wall tell you sir?

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