Heather Zempel, the Discipleship Pastor at NCC and my new boss, has asked me to come up with a list of goals for the fall semester, so I thought I’d share them here.

First, I want to spend more time with God. I’m usually not very good at doing this consistently, and I know that it is absolutely necessary, especially as I am moving into full-time ministry. While there may be some things I can do in my own strength, I will never be able to minister as effectively out of spiritual emptiness as I will out of spiritual fullness. As a corollary to this, I want to make sure that I don’t rely on the time I spend with God at work. I want to model the type of life that I am encouraging others to lead, and since most people can’t stop in the middle of their work day to read the Bible, I want to make sure that’s not the only time I spend with God either.

Second, I want to be a better husband. I know that this is something that I should always be striving to do, but I want to make it a special focus over the next few months as my schedule will be pretty crazy, meaning that time with Rachel is harder to come by.

Third, I want to have the first draft of my book written by May ’09. This is the big, hairy, audacious goal of the year. I’ve never written a book before. I might be overreaching. I wrote about three-and-a-half pages on Sunday night, which I’m guessing is 7-10 book pages. In addition to being a short-term goal, writing and publishing a book is also one of my life goals. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to tackle this one so soon, but an idea for a book came to me. And I decided to run with it.

Finally, and this one is more of a ministry goal than a personal goal, I want to figure out how I can support the men’s ministry at NCC. The guys who have been heading it up have been doing a great job, and I want to figure out how I can assist and support them. What I don’t want to do is to come in and take anything over. My hope is to figure out what I can do to enable them to do what they’re already doing even better.

Let me take this opportunity to encourage you to set goals and pursue them, to chase your dreams. You can sit there and let life float by, or you can make things happen. Figure out what you want and go after it. Make sure that it’s the right thing. Make sure that your goals are Godly goals, that your dreams are Holy Spirit inspired dreams, but then don’t just sit back and wait for God to act. Move. He’s probably already given you the tools you need. You may have to take a step of faith. You may need to step out and trust that the resources will be there. Does this mean that you will necessarily succeed? No, sometimes even God ordained dreams fail. Don’t forget to “Pray like it depends on God,” but don’t forget to “Work like it depends on you” as well.