When Martha complained that her sister wasn’t doing enough, Jesus shared the power of a narrow vision: “You are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.”
The authors of The Four Disciplines of Execution call the trouble of many things “the whirlwind,” and the focus of the one necessary thing the “Wildly Important Goal.” Their premise is that most individuals and businesses (I’d add churches) spend so much time on the whirlwind (many things), they don’t have time for their Wildly Important Goal (one thing).
What if we patterned our lives, our ministries and our churches after Jesus and really drilled down to the one thing?
We will always have the whirlwind to contend with, Jesus certainly did, but imagine the power of spending at least 20 percent of every day on our one Wildly Important Goal?
Here are the questions we could ask:
What is the one thing our church (or ministry) absolutely must accomplish in the next year? How will we know we accomplished it?
What measurable activities will lead to accomplishing that one thing?
How will we keep score? How will we know we are actually accomplishing what we say?
How will we hold each other accountable to the one thing?
In over 30 years of ministry, I’ve encountered very few churches with this kind of focus and discipline.
I wonder what would happen if we actually followed the pattern of Jesus and focused on the one thing.
