I have to remind myself of this very thing at this time every year.
September & October can be consumed with looking ahead, forming goals & objectives for the coming new year and creating a budget that (theoretically) is supposed to help me accomplish these goals. I’ll be honest. The close of this year has been tough.
I’ve had it pretty easy in the past. I’ll just own that. The past several years I’ve grown accustomed to creating goals and achieving them. Not that the goals have been easy. We’ve had to work hard to achieve them. And many times my goals were realistic but my time frames were not. What I expected to take 3 months, ended up taking me 12 months. But I still accomplish the goal within the year I set it.
Not. This. Year. *sigh*
I’m very close to exiting 2011 without accomplishing many of the things I set out to accomplish. Is it failure? I guess it depends on how you view it.
When I set these goals in September 2010 I operated under the assumption that I would have a full staff team in place by the 1st quarter of 2011. That didn’t happen. Still hasn’t happened.
As I continue to seek God, talk to people and search for the right people for these staff positions, learning to be patient has been the toughest part. During this search I’ve talked to some amazingly gifted people. Yet for very different reasons they’re simply not the right fit… maybe for the role, or the team, or the season. And as hard as that is to swallow, there’s one thing I know about leading a team… it’s far easier to wait for the right person, than to work with the wrong person. So I continue to wait.
I have to remind myself that even though I’m forming goals for 2012, and several of my 2011 goals are simply being transferred over… this year isn’t over yet. I still have 2 1/2 months to push through, remain focused and chip away toward accomplishing these goals.
At best… I actually achieve one more and can knock it off my 2012 list.
At worse… I make some headway going into 2012.
A win either way.
So here’s my challenge to you today. Have you reviewed your 2011 goals lately? Pull them out & dust them off. If they’re still relevant to the direction of your ministry, there is no reason to dismiss them. At one point you believed these were the right steps to take.
If you didn’t set goals for 2011, it’s never too late to start! There are 12 more weeks in 2011. What is the most important thing has to happen in your ministry for you to walk away from 2011 and say, “That was a GREAT year!”?
Write it down and go after it. 🙂
