Farewell

There has never been a Kingdom Kids Christian Preschool without Lisa Mills at the helm. She helped develop the plan for our school back in 2000 and 2001. She was the first employee hired. She then found just the right four teachers to shepherd the thirty-five students who enrolled for the 2001-2002 school year. She has led this preschool through many ups and downs since then. Her vision and skillful leadership have brought us all the way to the 2016-2017 school year, in which we had an enrollment of 509 students under a staff of twenty-nine.

Kingdom Kids staff, May, 2017, with Lisa front and center

Numbers aside, Lisa has been our “fearless leader” for…well, forever. As near as I can tell, she hired every one who has been hired. She has been faced with the daunting task of shepherding a staff of people who are almost to a person wired differently from her – and I mean significantly differently! I have always enjoyed looking at our staff strength finder results graph and seeing Lisa’s lines so different from all of ours. As I took a look at the results from the beginning of this past school year, I observed that all but a couple of our staff have one of the following strengths in their profile: includer, harmony, positivity, empathy, or connectedness. Sixteen of us have more than one of those characteristics! Lisa has none of them. Her number one strength is responsibility, and it has served our preschool well.

Lisa set a high standard for her own behavior as a director, and she also has had high expectations for us. She has a keen eye to see our shortcomings – or, she would probably say “areas for potential growth.” In her short observations in my classroom, she would see and share with me positive feedback in addition to ways I could improve or ideas for doing things a different way. I appreciate her insights and her higher view of problems. She was also very protective of her staff when there were difficulties with parents or students. She would gladly take the brunt of verbal complaints and abuse to spare us that pain. Again, her efforts were often unseen by the majority of the staff.

Lisa is tough. She fights for what she believes in, but we didn’t always get to see her in those battles. Sometimes they were behind the scenes, and all we saw was the end result, after she went to bat for us and "lost." Sometimes we didn't care for the end result, but she always conducted herself with integrity and commitment to do her job as directed. She’s a team player.

Lisa is also a lot of fun. We mostly saw her serious side while at work, but in the staff outings (like Bunco) or on trips (like to conferences), we saw her lighter side come out. I honestly cannot imagine Bunco night without Lisa. I hope she returns for a guest appearance. When I had the privilege of attending the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) conference with Lisa a couple of years ago, I considered it the equivalent of winning the lottery. The four of us who attended were fully immersed in learning by day and having fun by night. It was an amazing opportunity, and I thank you, Lisa, for making these opportunities possible for us as teachers.

One of the things I admire the most about Lisa has been her steadfast commitment to staff prayer time. It is by Lisa’s design that we have an intimate time of sharing our praises and our requests with each other as a staff. Not only that, she has pulled us out of our comfort zones a bit on Tuesday and Thursday mornings to have us rotate through as leaders of the prayer time. She also set an example in sharing big and small prayer requests of her own, and encouraged us to do the same. I cannot fully express how precious that prayer time is to me. When I have to be in early drop-off, as we all do from time to time, I miss it deeply. Whether the requests are big or small, we always know we have a group of sisters who will share the burdens with us, and laugh or cry with us along the way. Lisa built that haven of prayer, that culture of prayer, intentionally and thoughtfully. I thank her for that.

Lisa’s heart for her people is a hundred miles wide. I started at Kingdom Kids in the fall of 2008. In the years since then, my dad and both of my husband’s parents have passed away. Each circumstance was different, and each time Lisa walked alongside me. At the time of my dad’s death, she found subs for me in addition to attending the visitation. She also provided ongoing support and love through my father-in-law’s suicide, though it happened during the summer when I wasn’t even working. And when I got news of my mother-in-law’s death while I was at work this past December, she stopped everything to pray with me and made a way for me to leave work immediately to go be with my husband. I have seen her do similar things for others, always without drawing attention to herself, fully invested in what would be best for the person affected. Her sincere compassion for her staff is boundless.

Lisa told us that when she took this position, it was supposed to be short-term. She didn’t expect to be the Kingdom Kids director more than a couple of years, but God had other plans. I have noticed that He often has some pretty amazing plans, that God of ours. 

(This part is straight to Lisa....) I don’t know what the next adventure will hold, Lisa, but you can rest assured that you will have a room full of prayer warriors at your disposal as you go forth. You will do amazing things. We don’t have to look any further than our very own Kingdom Kids Christian Preschool to know that. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all your devotion to this ministry, to the people who serve in it, and to the people it serves.  Oh the Places You’ll Go!

“And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...

be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray

or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,

You're off to Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So...get on your way!”

 

 Oh the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

The above text was copyrighted in 1990.