TRAPPSTR

Anonymous 2-by-4’s

Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by Brett in Leadership

A half-built house doesn’t interest me. Bare wooden planks slung together on an ugly construction site littered with Mountain Dew bottles and cigarette butts. Nothing special there. A brand new, finished home is something to pull over and check out. A house-in-the-making? Not so much.

Yet I’ve noticed a few of my newlywed friends on Facebook who post picture after picture of their new homes during construction.

Oh look! Here’s a picture of the grassy lot before construction begins.

And here’s a picture of the foundation–an exciting concrete slab sitting inspiringly on some exquisite dirt.

Oooooo….  Ahhhhhh….. Diiiiiiiiirt…..

Here’s a picture of the house’s wooden frame, the skeleton of the house.

But I’ve never marveled at the dry bones of a human skeleton. Same with house frames.

Yet to the newlyweds, it’s all beautiful. Beautiful empty lot. Beautiful concrete slab. Beautiful dirt. Beautiful skeleton. So beautiful, they want to showcase it to their 1000 Facebook friends.

Why?

Because it’s theirs.

It belongs to them. They own it. Ownership.

I could care less about anonymous 2-by-4’s and dirt. But to the owner, it’s an inspiring representation of future and family and warm home-i-ness. They care immensely about those 2-by-4’s.

Humans value things they own. People magically begin caring when they have some skin in the game. I think businesses, churches, and even families forget this. If you’ve got people that just don’t care, they probably don’t have any ownership in the process. Figure out a way to make the wood and the nails and the dirt theirs, and they’ll wake up and take notice.