Skip to main content

How We Lose Focus

Bob Briner's Leadership Lessons of Jesus has a fascinating example on why it is very difficult to maintain focus on our projects and goals :
Consider a Sunday school class formed with a very simple mission: to study God's Word. One hour a week is set aside for the sole purpose of Bible study by a homogeneous group. There is a simple mission with a very sharp focus. Yet here is what often happens. Someone says it would be nice to open the class with a song or two. Fine. The class begins with singing.

A suggestion is then made that the class should promote fellowship among its members. Fine. Time is set aside at the beginning of the class for coffee and fellowship. Class time is taken to discuss and plan for fellowship opportunities outside of class. (“Should we have a potluck or a picnic? How does two weeks from Friday fit into everyone's schedule? How about three weeks from Friday?”)

The church leaders recognize that many who come to Sunday school do not stay for the worship service so they see class time as perfect to make general announcements. Time is set aside for this. Furthermore, since the Bible admonishes us toward good works, the class decides it should support a charitable endeavour  Which one? How much should be given? When can someone bring a report on how our money is being used?

You get the idea. The focus on Bible study, the real purpose of the class, has been lost. Bible study is, at best, relegated to a lesser role, and the goal of a discipled class has been dissipated. 
Once the focus is lost it is very difficult to get it back. Maintaining focus becomes very costly and painful. In the example, it won't be easy for that Sunday school class to regain its original vision—especially when those other worthy goals have been added. The human tendency is always to drift away from our original commitments. And when we sense this happening, the cost of moving against the tide will be enormous. Bob Briner, alluding to the Lord Jesus's statement in Mark 9:45 says trying to get us back on track is "like cutting off a hand or plucking out an eye". 
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Spiritual Leadership

J Oswald Sanders (1917-1992) was a Christian leader for seventy years.  He wrote more than forty books on the Christian life including one book I dip into often, The Incomparable Christ. He was the director of the China Inland Mission (Overseas Missionary Fellowship), where he was instrumental in beginning many new missions projects throughout East Asia.  Spiritual Leadership encourages the church to pray for and develop Spirit empowered leaders. People who are guided by and devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ. The book presents the key principles of spiritual leadership. He illustrates his points with examples from Scripture and biographies of men who have led the people of God in history.  The book has 20 chapters. I have tried to summarise the main conclusions of these chapters under five key questions. Most of the ideas presented in this article are directly from the book. But I have  communicated these ideas in my own way, except where direct quotes are given. Towards the end, I off
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Inconsistency of Moral Progress

If morality, if our ideas of right and wrong, are purely subjective, we should have to abandon any idea of moral progress (or regress), not only in the history of nations, but in the lifetime of each individual. The very concept of moral progress implies an external moral standard by which not only to measure that a present moral state is different from an earlier one but also to pronounce that it is "better" than the earlier one.  Without such a standard, how could one say that the moral state of a culture in which cannibalism is regarded as an abhorrent crime is any "better" than a society in which it is an acceptable culinary practice? Naturalism denies this. For instance, Yuval Harari asserts: "Hammurabi and the American Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in th
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →