Reflections on closing the office door

Yesterday was my final day as Director for Language Services (DLS). Even though I feel little sadness in leaving that role, it was still a bittersweet moment as I left the office and shut the door at 5 o'clock. That was the moment that I ceased being a clearly defined “job,” and entered a period of vocational identity limbo, which won't end until I begin my new job in Dallas in September. (From now until June 18, I'll finish packing and getting ready to leave Papua New Guinea; and then from mid-June through September 1, our family will be traveling around the US, reconnecting with friends and family.)

For the past three years I have been reconfigured from an ethnomusicologist into an administrator, and there were some good things about that. Leading the Language Resources team in PNG has given me a front-row seat for many of the great things that have happened in Bible translation and language development. It was my privilege to be the face of our organization at meetings with government officials in the capital city, Port Moresby, at training course graduations, at Bible dedications, and at universities and conferences around the country. I've enjoyed helping colleagues find exactly the right jobs, and then watching them thrive in those jobs. Seeing how the organization works from all sides has given me (I hope) more patience and understanding, in whatever kind of role I have from this point on.

I accepted the DLS job in part because I knew that Language Resources needed a consistent leader. It had been a long time since we'd had one person in the chair for an extended period, and it's hard to make long-range plans when the leader changes every 6 months. A short while before I took the job, we'd had a period in which there was no director at all. All of us had to divide up the bits and pieces of the director's job—signing time-cards, creating and overseeing budgets, responding to emails, and so forth—and try to keep things running. It was not good for morale. Therefore, I was willing to step into the role for three years, and I'm happy to see that consistency in leadership—even when that leader was me, with all my shortcomings—has indeed brought the whole team together in greater strength than I've seen before in my 12 years in PNG. I'm glad now to hand the responsibility over to my successor, who is committed to being DLS for the next two years. That stability is so important.

It's also been an extremely challenging job for me, and there were many days when I wondered if I would make it to the end of the three years. An “open-door” office policy is the right way to lead, but for a focused introvert it can sometimes be challenging to turn my attention instantly from one task to another as someone drops in unexpectedly, in need of an answer or a solution or, most often, just a leader to spend time listening. And while I've mostly seen colleagues at their best, very occasionally I've also had to help people who are at their worst, and that's not nearly as pleasant.

Getting to know the inner workings of a large organization has been difficult. As I said, it's been a privilege to have that perspective, but at times it's been a heavy burden. I was watching an episode of Doctor Who recently, in which the Doctor says, “Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones.” It was a dumb episode, but I really resonated with that line, because as I and the other directors made decisions together over the past few years, very often it seemed that there was no good option. Many problems, especially in a cross-cultural situation, are unsolvable, and even when a decision has been made there is no way to know whether it was the best choice to make. Compromises are difficult when the stakes seem so high and so many of the people involved (including myself) are idealists.

So there has been a lot of success during this final field term in PNG, and also a lot of feeling not very good at what I'm doing. I now really look forward to a road trip with the family around the US—which is always good medicine, even though it means living out of a van (not down by the river) for a few months. And then I can't wait to move into a job that I expect I will enjoy and feel very good at. I'll be glad to be “merely” a worker for a while, though I am grateful for the administrative experience—and who knows where it may all lead...