A Leader in His Field - NOT

There once was a man named Arnold who had a sort of romantic notion that he would really like to own a food kitchen.

After all, food kitchens are neat! They help people! They feed people!

In fact, he, himself, had eaten in food kitchens on special "open house" occasions, and it gave him a feeling of excitement to think about the setting up, cooking, and all of the other trappings of running a food kitchen.

He convinced himself that God was calling him to own a food kitchen.

"How hard could it be?" he asked. "You just cook food and serve it to needy people."

So, having been blessed with a certain sum of money, he bought a food kitchen.

It was not a very large food kitchen, but it would be a good start.

There was a guy named Sam at the food kitchen who had been serving as its manager, and the new owner decided to keep him on, at least long enough to get started.

Sam had managed the food kitchen for a few years, during which donations to the food kitchen had risen each year.

Right away, Sam told Arnold that there were certain rules and regulations that the Health Department had regarding food kitchens with which he would have to comply.

"But," said Arnold, "I don't really think those rules are all that serious."

"Sir!" answered Sam, "The Health Department can shut you down or fine you if you do not follow their rules."

"Stop!" yelled Arnold. "I don't want to hear it! Especially not from some prideful dolt like you! Why I could fire your butt right now! Don't think you are anything special. This food kitchen can get along without you! So straighten up, do what I say, when I say, how I say 'cause, and get this well, I OWN this food kitchen!"

"Yes, sir," answered Sam meekly.

And he did what he was told.

As time passed, Arnold saw that not as many people were using his food kitchen as he had hoped.

The first year he operated the food kitchen, receipts went up.

But in subsequent years people did not donate as much.

By the fourth year that he owned the food kitchen, receipts had fallen off by over 60%!

"Must be the bad economy." reasoned Arnold.

"We'll just pray that God will bless this food kitchen, even though we don't follow the Health Department's rules and regulations. He has to bless us, 'cause this is HIS food kitchen."

Still, few people came to the food kitchen.

A professional food kitchen promoter came to the food kitchen one day to help Arnold get donations from the community to support the food kitchen.

"Why, your food is not at all what these people are used to or are looking for," he stated. "In fact, it is very poorly prepared and nobody has heard of most of these dishes."

Arnold responded, "Where I come from, people ate this kind of food all the time. I will feed it to these people and they will like it or lump it!"

"You should at least learn to prepare it properly," said the professional food service promoter.

It turns out that Arnold had almost no taste buds and could not tell which of his meals tasted good and which ones could not.

Nevertheless, he pressed on, believing that God HAD to bless the food kitchen, because he had said that it belonged to God.

Now there were expert food kitchen operators right there in his own staff, as well as around the nation.

There were food kitchen publications and online sites that contained a lot of information about how to properly run a Christ oriented food kitchen, but Arnold was not interested in giving the time to them that was needed to learn from them.

"God has shown me a different way to run food kitchens!" he proclaimed. "Just because others have found certain ways that work, is no reason to think that God wants me to run my food kitchen that way."

So, Arnold went on running the food kitchen the way he wanted to.

One day he got a great idea!

He would go to a neighboring community to wash graffiti off of the walls of buildings.

So he contacted the various news media and asked them to cover his graffiti washing efforts.

A couple of them did, and he got a total of almost two minutes coverage.

But still, the people did not support his food kitchen. Nor did they eat his food.

Part of the problem was that they did not understand the connection between washing graffiti off of walls and the operation of the food kitchen.

They reasoned that they did not want to give money to a food kitchen only to have it used to wash walls.

Not that washing walls was a bad thing.

It was, in fact, a good thing...just unrelated to food kitchen operations.

What Arnold was too proud to understand was that turning the food kitchen around was really a matter of learning the real function of a food kitchen and following the lead of those who had experience with successful food kitchens.

He had some right under his nose, in his staff, but he was too dull witted to let them help, even though they wanted to desperately.

He felt threatened by their knowledge and was too insecure to allow them to exercise it.

Arnold really wanted to be in control...to be the "boss" of a lot of people, a lot more than he wanted to really get to know the food kitchen operation.

And so, the food kitchen languished.

Oh, a few people patted him on the back and nibbled at his food, but for the most part the community just ignored his food kitchen.

And God finally just let Arnold have his way.

Thousands of people who could have been fed, starved.