Those of you who know me well know that I am a super-disciplined person.
I complete projects well in advance, I show up to meetings and events early, I live by my routines, and I follow rules.
Yet I am an undisciplined leader.
That’s right. While focused on a personal level, I can be guilty of fuzziness on the congregational level.
That’s why earlier in the history of Good Shepherd we would follow the latest trend, embrace the most recent fad, and follow a season of blessing with a season of anarchy. Our “wins,” when we had them, were disconnected from whatever came before or after them.
There’s some good news in all this. Once Will Mancini and his team at Auxano helped us unearth the mission of inviting all people into a living relationship with Jesus Christ in 2011, I suddenly had a leadership focus that didn’t mimic anyone else but came from within our community.
So these days we are resistant to trends, fads, and anarchy. We much better able to connect one ministry “win” with the next one. Everything we do, from evaluating facilities to hiring staff, now gets filtered through the grid of inviting all people.
I even know that whatever sermon series I preach — whether it is Love Handles, Bragging Rights, and even How To Tell A Mountain From A Molehill — will somehow reinforce what it means for people to have a living relationship with a returning King.
The discipline that brings such comfort in my personal life can now bear fruit in my leadership life.
When you focus on your mission, you can flourish in your discipline.