Good intentions

I just finished re-reading a book, Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success by Rory Vaden that I would recommend to anyone involved in ministry. So many ministers complain about how things are not what they should be in the church but few do more than complain. Many never take any action to change things, and if they do they often run into opposition. It becomes easy to decide to sit back and do nothing but hope that someday, somehow, things will change, That is the escalator approach that the author warns against. Although taking the escalator might be easier, it often leads to compromise and mediocrity.

This is a book I read when it first came out, and decided it was time to read it again. Even though it had a lot of highlights in it, I was surprised at how many new ones I made as I re-read it. New thoughts jumped out at me in my second time through the book which confirmed I was wise to pick it up for a second reading.

Vaden talks about how often fear keeps us from doing what we know we should do. That has certainly been true in my life at times, and I'm confident it's been true for you as well. Fear tells us we can not succeed so we don't even try. The author told a powerful story about a woman who was so fearful of heights and enclosed spaces that she was willing to die in an apartment fire rather than escape. A firefighter found her, and when she resisted his efforts to lead her to safety, he kept telling her to "Do it scared." That later became the keywords that helped her make better choices in her life.

Sometimes in ministry, and in all leadership positions, we need to do things scared. It's true that we don't know the outcome of our efforts, but if we never put forth the effort nothing will change. Is the status quo really better than the possibility we might fail?

Another point he brought out is that we are much more likely to act our way into healthy thinking than we are to think our way to healthy acting. I've read that elsewhere, and it makes a lot of sense. It becomes too easy to just keep thinking about how we can do things differently but never move beyond the thinking phase. Nothing really happens until we take action. Just like nobody believed it was possible to run a mile in under four minutes until somebody did it, taking action has the power to change the way we, and others, think about what's possible.

It's a good book, and I do recommend it.