Everything is an Experiment
Just wrote a short article for a conference I'm speaking at in December. Thought I'd share it with evotional readers.
One of the major themes of In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day is the whole idea of inaction regrets. At the end of our lives, our greatest regrets will be the lions we didn't chase.
I want to approach life and approach ministry as a lion chaser.
Here's the article:
At the end of your ministry, you won't regret the mistakes you made nearly as much as the opportunities you missed. That conviction is based on the research of two sociologists, Tom Gilovich and Vicki Medvec. According to their study, time is a key factor in what we regret. In the short-term, we tend to regret our actions. Action regrets outnumber inaction regrets 53% to 47% during an average week. Over the long-haul, however, we tend to regret inactions. When people look at their lives as a whole, inaction regrets outnumber action regrets 84% to 16%.
In theological terms, action regrets are sins of commission. And they cause a twinge of guilt. But it is the inaction regrets or sins of omission that haunt us the rest of our lives. We are left to wonder: what if?
We have a dozen core values that guide the way we do life and ministry at National Community Church. One of those core values is: everything is an experiment. And that experimental approach to ministry gives us the freedom to fail. We're not afraid of making mistakes. We're afraid of not making mistakes because that means we aren't stretching ourselves and trying to new things.
We view every sermon series as a teaching experiment. Every outreach is an evangelism experiment. Every small group is a discipleship experiment. Building the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill was a $2.5 million experiment. Even our vision of meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops throughout the metro DC area is an experiment in doing church in the middle of the marketplace.
I just don't want to get to the end of my life and my ministry and wonder: What if?
There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet.
Keep experimenting!
One of the major themes of In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day is the whole idea of inaction regrets. At the end of our lives, our greatest regrets will be the lions we didn't chase.
I want to approach life and approach ministry as a lion chaser.
Here's the article:
At the end of your ministry, you won't regret the mistakes you made nearly as much as the opportunities you missed. That conviction is based on the research of two sociologists, Tom Gilovich and Vicki Medvec. According to their study, time is a key factor in what we regret. In the short-term, we tend to regret our actions. Action regrets outnumber inaction regrets 53% to 47% during an average week. Over the long-haul, however, we tend to regret inactions. When people look at their lives as a whole, inaction regrets outnumber action regrets 84% to 16%.
In theological terms, action regrets are sins of commission. And they cause a twinge of guilt. But it is the inaction regrets or sins of omission that haunt us the rest of our lives. We are left to wonder: what if?
We have a dozen core values that guide the way we do life and ministry at National Community Church. One of those core values is: everything is an experiment. And that experimental approach to ministry gives us the freedom to fail. We're not afraid of making mistakes. We're afraid of not making mistakes because that means we aren't stretching ourselves and trying to new things.
We view every sermon series as a teaching experiment. Every outreach is an evangelism experiment. Every small group is a discipleship experiment. Building the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill was a $2.5 million experiment. Even our vision of meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops throughout the metro DC area is an experiment in doing church in the middle of the marketplace.
I just don't want to get to the end of my life and my ministry and wonder: What if?
There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet.
Keep experimenting!
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