The not to do list

Someone joked yesterday that there should be more "To do" things than "Not to do" on a pastor's list. (everyone else laughed)

I thought about it and in that moment, I wasn't sure that I could agree. I might be able to tomorrow, but still I'm in a place where I'm thinking my "Not to do" is at least as large, and growing larger. There are so many things that I look back on and think, "I shouldn't have done that in starting this church." So here's the short list.

1. Leadership structure. We aren't mobilizing leaders well, working on that.
2. Focus on the machine. Probably a result of my pride (not a shocking revelation), the "If you build it, they will come" mentality really short-circuited the "If you serve them, they will know you by your love" attitude of Christ. I would focus more on mission.
3. Contacts. While I'm out in the community all the time, I haven't been intentional about contacts in the community. A contact is a personal face to face encounter with people. The result is that I don't really know my community. I did demographic studies, but have recently been taught the process of really getting firm knowledge of a community. It has less to do with numbers, and more to do with conversations. Knowing your community requires 1200-1500 contacts. I'm only at around 300-350. That's a major goal going forward.

So those are a few of the "if I could do it again...", or more so, because I've learnt it, I'll be doing these things in the present and future.

--Ben