How many keys do you need?

When I was in my late teens I worked on a couple of different janitorial crews. Those who worked these jobs had some things in common: We wore the same color shirts, we knew how to change a belt on a vacuum, we carried walkie-talkies (yes, before cell phones) and we had a HUGE quadruple ring of keys.

The keys were a dead give away. Every different door had a different key, and in order to access the whole campus, you needed, like, 45 keys of all shapes, sizes and colors. Our belts had to be in good working condition, or the weight of this mass of metal would literally assist gravity in making us guys on the janitorial crew look more like “plumbers” (if you know what I mean).

I thought this was a necessary part of the job. In fact, I believed that having every key that would get me into almost every door in the building was a mark of trust, authority, and power!

I thought that until I discovered something called the “Master Key”.

Little did I know that a secret existed that only the top leaders in our organization had access to. There was one single key that would open every door that I needed 45 different keys for. Those who had this didn’t need to spend a lot of time searching for just the right key when they came to a door, they knew exactly what would give them access quickly. One key to rule them all…. 

Having 10 pounds of keys wasn’t a mark of trust after all; it was a designation that there were some places I couldn’t go. Only those who could go EVERY PLACE could carry the master key.

As I matured in life and ministry, I started appreciating having a master key to the places I worked, and, in some type of regressive recompense, I made it a life goal to carry as few keys as possible; 3 or 4 keys max. Optimally, one for work; one for my home, and one for my car would be perfect—but now my car has an electronic key, so 2 keys is optimal.

But as I grew in ministry and paired down the number of physical keys I had to use, I started ramping up the theoretical keys I needed to keep available. Little by little, people would tell me “THIS is the key to your ministry” or “THIS is the key to your marriage”. Most of these really were great keys, but after a while I started to feel like my heart and my spirit were sagging under the weight of the effective keys I had been provided by others.

What I needed was 3 or 4 master keys.

So I started leading that way. I started looking for simplicity in the midst of complexity. I started to figure out which one thing could serve me instead of needing perfect recall to figure out what key might work. I began to look for the answer that would tie a whole lot of questions together. And I’m continually looking for those answers.

Lately I’ve been given a trust to lead 140 churches in Southern California, and as I engage my new assignment everyone has keys for me. “If you just embrace this ministry, it will transform your pastors”; “My idea is what your district really needs to make it to the next level”, and so on.

Many of these ideas are truly brilliant on their own, but I can’t (and shouldn’t) possibly carry all the keys I’m being offered. I need to look for a couple of master keys and work from there. Then, whatever door I may need opened (including all the ones that others are offering me individual keys for) can be accessed by one of these grand keys. It may take me a while, but I’m prayerfully looking for a few really effective keys that will help us to open all we need to open and that will make my job a joy and not a burden.

Have you discovered the principle of the master key? What are the few keys that you use to streamline your life and ministry and make it effective?