Remember the first week you went back to elementary school after summer break? Two things were guaranteed to happen: you would get a new lunch box and you’d have to write a paper titled “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”. I know we’re only half-way through summer and I’m not going back to school but I wanted to let you know why I haven’t been blogging for the last couple of months.
First, a little background that might help it all make sense. In November of 2008, after 11 years, I stopped working in churches or being “in the ministry” as all good Baptists would say. The reasons why aren’t important, but if you’re curious check out Fish Bowl. Anyway, I went back to the marketplace and decided to just chill for a while.
It didn’t take long before I started getting the itch again, not to start working in a church but to do something. I had gone from working 60-hour weeks and then stewing about work while I was at home, to walking out the door on Friday at 5 and not thinking about work until I went back on Monday. In fact, I just finished a great 10-day vacation without getting a single phone call or email from work. To tell you the truth, it was a little weird. A few days ago my wife was talking to someone who used to work with me and said “Sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with himself.” That was a great synopsis of the last few months. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with myself.
I narrowed the list of possibilities down to two things: a consulting service to help churches by doing secret shopper visits and teaching/training men. Great! I had it. But in a just a few days the nagging feeling of being unfocused returned, so I decided to try doing nothing. No blogging, no trying to get secret shopper visits with churches, I stopped working on my book, nothing.
I honestly didn’t do this with the purest of motives. In the back of my head I was thinking “Once God see’s me doing nothing He’ll go Old Testament on me and reveal what I’m supposed to do with some grand display, maybe I’ll even get a burning bush”. So I waited. And Waited. After a few weeks it became apparent that I had seriously misjudged God. He was taking the very parental strategy of allowing me to do what I wanted. If I wanted to sit doing nothing, that was fine with Him, He’d wait me out. And you know what? He did.
Inactivity finally got the best of me, so I did the only thing I knew to do, I sat down and did a pro’s and con’s list of the two opportunities because I had to choose. There weren’t enough hours in the day for me to do both effectively. In the end the decision came down to be realizing that I could help churches do Sunday mornings better, I have the abilities and experience to help pastors get their systems working better. OR I could train up men to help them. To me teaching/training men has more capacity to make the largest impact.
So I shut down the secret shopper part of my website. I purchased an iPhone 4 because of the front-facing camera which will make doing videos much easier. I literally took my Moleskine out, turned to a blank page and asked the question “How can I teach/train men?” No preconceived notions, no thinking I had to do it a certain way, just a “clean sheet of paper” approach to a huge project.
One of the first realizations I had is I’m going to have to say “no” to some things I’ve been doing that aren’t bad, they just don’t fit the mission. I’ve got a few more commitments to finish up in the next few weeks that I won’t be re-upping for and that’s a good thing. It’s step one to gaining focus and I think it’s the step that so many guys stumble on because they wrongly think they’ll be letting people down.
One thing is for sure; I know what to do with myself now. And that’s how I spent my summer vacation.
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