The High Price of Progress – Reckoning with Sacrifices We Overlook or Underestimate
For my birthday earlier this month my wife and I went to see the final Broadway performance of “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.”
As a native Detroiter and lover of all things Motown I savored every minute of it. The music. The wardrobe. The dance moves. The story. Every bit of it was amazing, and we joined the audience multiple times in extended standing ovations.
In addition to the sheer joy of the show I walked away with a challenging thought that was repeated throughout the show.
The narrator of the story is Otis Williams, the founder of the Temptations (portrayed of course by another, younger actor). Otis tells his story, from six months in juvenile detention to forming his chart-topping group, from being shot at in South Carolina to the untimely deaths of two members of the classic Temptations.
The story is beautiful and tragic, soaring and searing. Which made his repeated line so profoundly resonant.
“There is no progress,” Otis intones, “without sacrifice.”
My senior year in college nearly buried me.
I was student body president, president of the ministerial class, and a residence assistant in the dorms. Additionally as an ancient languages minor I decided to take first-year Hebrew as an undergrad to get a jump on my seminary studies. And that four-day-a-week course sat atop the other classes I needed to graduate.
Most significantly my wife and I were seriously dating, looking towards engagement by the end of the school year.
It was a great year. But I tried to do way too much.
If Otis Williams is right, what did I sacrifice for the sake of progress?
The first thing that comes to mind is sleep. I tried to get by on about five hours a night.
This was the most obvious sacrifice to me, then and now. I remember feeling like a zombie, going from one meeting to another, staying up late and then getting up early to do my homework, always feeling like I was running out of time.
That was a sacrifice I noticed, but underestimated.
A second sacrifice came with the loss of sleep, however, and this one was invisible to me—though not to others.
I sacrificed my temperament.
I reacted much more quickly and negatively to a bad turn of events. More frustration, less patience. More anger, less grace.
My joy was sapped and my capacity to love was drained because all my energy was focused on putting checkmarks on my to-do list.
This was a sacrifice I overlooked.
I thought of myself as focused, disciplined, getting stuff done. But I could be a bear to be around.
So the people who bore the brunt of this sacrifice was everyone around me.
What sacrifices are you making right now for the sake of progress in your church?
What sacrifices are you currently making that you cannot see?
What sacrifices can you see but you underestimate?
For Otis Williams the sacrifices piled up over the years. Early in his career he had to sacrifice his name on the marquee, from Otis and the Siberians to the eventual and iconic moniker The Temptations.
Then he had to sacrifice stability when he realized his manager was taking advantage of the group. When they fired her the path to greatness seemed closed.
When he got married he sacrificed time at home to be on the road, leaving his wife and eventually his son to take care of themselves.
In the tense decade of the 1960s he sacrificed his voice when it came to the war in Vietnam and the racial riots in Detroit in order to maintain the group’s status as a crossover band.
And he sacrificed friendships as he let one member go because of his unreliability and another due to his addiction to alcohol.
No doubt his sacrifice brought about great progress. In 2017 Billboard named The Temptations the #1 R&B group of all time, Three years later Rolling Stone called them “indisputably the greatest Black vocal group of the modern era.”
Even in terms of racial progress The Temptations were instrumental, in spite of their reticence to speak directly about it.
After a performance of “Ain’t Too Proud” in Washington DC, the late US representative and civil rights pioneer John Lewis told the show’s author Dominique Morisseau, “If not for The Temptations’ music, the Civil Rights Movement would’ve been a bird with no wings.”
Progress.
But at what cost?
The most poignant moment of the show came as Otis recalled what happened to his son Lamont.
Throughout the musical we witness the growing estrangement between father and son as the call of the road undermines any hope of a relationship. In spite of his now ex-wife’s appeals to spend more time at home, he chose to keep traveling with the band.
Later in the show, trying to make up for lost time Otis tried to take his teenage son out for a game of catch. But Lamont replied that now he’s the one who’s too busy.
Those days had passed.
And the worst was yet to come.
A few years later his ex-wife called Otis with tragic news. Their 23 year old son, now a construction worker, suffered a workplace accident and died.
Lamont was gone.
Morisseau depicts Otis’ heartbreak in a moving fashion.
Otis stands front stage while the music of “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” plays in the background. Five men, presumably the rest of The Temptations, stand behind him with their backs to the audience, dancing to the music.
One by one Otis narrates what happened to the five. After he tells each member’s story, that person turns to the audience, sings the chorus of the song, and exits the stage.
The last one standing is Lamont, dancing in the background while his mom tells his dad the news of his death.
And then Lamont turns and sings:
Papa was a rollin’ stone.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
And when he died,
All he left us was alone.
There’s no progress without sacrifice.
Right?
“Ain’t Too Proud” leaves the audience with a conundrum: were the sacrifices Otis Williams made worth the progress The Temptations generated?
As the musical recounts the story the answer is a heartbroken yes. Williams created and led a band for the ages that topped charts and even helped bridge the racial divide in America.
But Williams himself told Morisseau that if he could bring one member of the Temptations back from the dead, he wouldn’t choose any of them.
He would bring back Lamont.
Williams was not culpable for Lamont’s death. He did not intentionally sacrifice his son on the altar of progress.
What he did sacrifice was time.
It was a sacrifice he overlooked in those early years.
Or if he did see it, he underestimated it.
But whether you see it or not, whether you underestimate it or not, the sacrifices you make are sacrifices indeed.
And you cannot get them back.
My encouragement to you, friends, is to take stock of the sacrifices you’re making in the name of ministry progress.
Your tabulation should include at least three types of sacrifice:
- Sacrifices you know you’re making.
- Sacrifices you might be underestimating.
- Sacrifices you cannot see.
To account fully for all three you’ll need another person, perhaps three or four, to open your eyes to what you cannot see, to value aright what you may underestimate.
To get beneath the layers of modesty and unearth what “ministry progress” really means to you—what it is you really want out of your work.
And to bring you to Jesus, the One whose self-sacrifice atones and heals and restores.
You are not the Christ.
But by his grace and Spirit you are his.
And he cares about you more than what you have done for him.
So step freely into this accounting of your sacrifices. Jesus will meet you there.
What have you learned about the sacrifices you’re making?
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