As we near the end of 2017 and prepare to welcome 2018 it's important to make sure we do certain things. If you are a pastor I hope you have already begun sermon planning for the new year. When I was a bivocational pastor I tried to have my sermons planned out three months in advance. It's much easier to prepare sermons if, on Saturday night, you're not still trying to figure out what you are going to preach the next morning!
New Year's resolutions seldom accomplish much past January 3rd. Setting goals is far more helpful if you are serious about enjoying success in any area of your life. When you have written goals you have direction in your life. Like the old saying goes, if you aim at nothing you'll hit it every time. Productive, successful people have goals they work on every day.
In yesterday's post I mentioned one goal I have every year: to read 50 books that year. This year part of that goal includes re-reading some of the books that have had the greatest impact on my life. I have a bad habit of reading a book and never taking it back out of the shelf unless I'm using it for research for a sermon or a book I'm writing. If a book impacted my life once chances are it will again, so I plan to re-read some of them this year.
One other goal I encourage you to set is to schedule time with your family. If you are in a leadership position, or just busy like most people, it's very easy to try to work in some family time. That seldom happens. Set a goal for how many vacations you are going to take, how long each of them will be, and when you are taking them. Write those in your calendar now so those times are already scheduled.
I also want to encourage you to be intentional about your own spiritual growth in 2018. Persons in ministry often seem to think that their work will automatically cause them to grow spiritually, but that is not always the case. If you want a congregation of people growing in their faith, you also need to be growing in your own faith. Set aside time for regular devotions. Study material that will stretch your faith and increase your knowledge of God.
Some other practical things you should do includes checking your driver's license for the expiration date. In November of this year I began wondering when my license expired. It expired in August. The next day I made a quick trip to the license branch to get that little problem corrected.
The start of the new year is also a good time to clean up old records. Even though many of our records are now on computer, chances are you have some paper ones as well. Pitch the ones you do not need to keep and file the others. If you'll do that early in the new year it will make filing your taxes much easier later.
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