Last week we talked briefly about goals.  Goals are a good thing, but not all goals are good.  Huh?  Often times when we set goals we come up with things that are too broad – kind of like the broadside of a barn…the broadside of a barn is easy to hit, but it is to large of a target to know if you hit the place you wanted to hit on the barn.

The first way to create a good goal is to be Specific.  We had a couple of gals list their goals last week and both did a great job at being specific.  Look at their goals there are specific things that they want to accomplish.  A lot of times we think of this as a goal: “I want to lose weight.”  Is that a good goal?  It’s an admirable goal, but it’s not a good goal – why?  Because it’s not specific.  ”I want to lose 10 pounds.”  That’s a good goal.  It’s very Specific.

The second trait of a good goal is that the goal needs to be Measurable. When setting goals there needs to be a way to see if we are progressing on that goal – so look back at the goals listed last week.  Are they measurable?  Can they be adjusted to be measurable?  ”I want to lose weight” isn’t a good goal because it’s not Specific or Measurable, but “I want to lose 10 pounds” is both – that’s why it’s a good goal.

What is something you’d like to do?  What is a goal you’d like to accomplish – start thinking about it.  How can you move from a general statement of what you’d like to see happen to creating a specific measurable goal.  Again, I encourage you post it down below.  Next week we’ll talk about how we take a good goal and make it even better…keep in mind – If you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time.

Who has ever heard “If you shoot for nothing you’ll hit it every time?”  I remember seeing that for the first time in my 7th Grade Science class.  It’s just as true today as it was then…if you aren’t aiming for anything then you’ll probably hit it.

Did any of you sit in a meeting with a High School Guidance Counselor and review possible jobs in your future?  Fun times right?  In that meeting how many of you said: “When I grow up, I’d like to be lost and drifting along with little ambition or purpose in life.”?  I doubt very much that any of you said it, but I’m sure we all know someone who acts like that is their purpose in life.

The truth is that everyone does better with a goal.  When we have a goal we know what we’re trying to do.  Please understand, a goal is not always about being promoted or gaining more prestige – a goal is something we place in our life to help us move forward.  It could be something as easy as organizing your junk drawer or something as monumental as becoming President of the united States (granted that won’t be a good goal in our criteria for good goals).

Over the next several weeks we’ll talk about the five criteria a goal must meet in order to be a “good goal.”  Those criteria spell out the word SMART. Goals need to be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Specific.  As we talk about these, think of the things you’d like to accomplish in life, at your job, at home and refine those desires into “good goals.”

The first step to setting any goal in our life needs to be prayer – so take some time to pray and if you want, post a goal down below so we can watch the evolution of the goal over the course of this discussion.  Think of a goal like this: Setting a goal is making a decisive choice to step out in faith into the things you feel God is asking you to do.

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.  The important thing is to never stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein

In the last few weeks I’ve shared some thoughts on evaluation – I genuinely value evaluation.  It helps us know what we need to work on, where we can improve, and what we are doing well.  If we don’t evaluate – how can we know what’s going on?  But evaluation on it’s own is fairly useless – it’s the implementation of the changes made through evaluation that brings the real benefit.

Last week we implemented a new roster system to help us track visitors better and follow-up with regular attendees who miss consecutive weeks.  It seemed like a good system, until I had a small group leader come talk to me about it.  The new rosters took a larger portion of their time on class to complete, thereby shortening the amount of time they had in the lesson.

Let me be 100% transparent – I have never run a large group/small group format.  I inherited the one we currently have functioning.  When I first got to Bethel I asked a team of Children’s Ministry workers what needed to change and what needed to stay.  There were a lot of things on both lists, but one of the things that they said needed to stay was Small groups.  So with me being new and small groups functioning well, I did not make any changes to the small group.  We have a great group of teachers leading the groups and they were functioning well – so I didn’t give them a whole lot of thought.  It was a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it moment.”  Now we have made some changes in curriculum and format, but overall they have remained unchanged in the last year.  So the small group leader coming to me about the roster system was helpful – I hadn’t anticipated the problem and it got me to thinking:  Why do we have small groups? and How do we fix the problem?

The first question was a paradigm shift for me – a paradigm is a model, theory, assumption, or frame of reference for how we see things.  Not having had a small group system, outside of midweek and Sunday School, my paradigm for ministry was Large Group.  I saw everything through the lens of how large group went – I kept small groups, but made subtle changes that did affect small groups.  Since I’ve been at Bethel we have lengthened large group by ten minutes…not a huge change, but for small group it was a huge problem – especially when I added the new rosters.

So back to the question – why do we do small groups?  Here’s what I came up with:  We do small groups because it takes the lesson from large group to a deeper level.  It also allows the small group leaders to build relationship with kids that cannot be developed in large group.  In essence the small group leaders and assistants are pastoring their kids in a way I can’t. EUREKA!!! The ‘Why?’ was hugely important – it shifted my paradigm.  My lens for small groups was expanded – because of evaluation.

Question two was “How do we fix the problem?”  Well, we could either drop the roster system or we could find another way to compensate for the time.  So that’s what we did – we took ten minutes off of the large group time.  That’s what shifting a paradigm does – it lets us get our focus right.  I needed to get out of my “Large group” paradigm and into a shared model. I’ve got that now…and it was a great Sunday this last week.  We did what we needed to do in large group and the report I got back from small groups was that they had the time they needed.  Evaluation and Implementation were key in making that happen…

So, what can you evaluate in what you are doing that will move you forward?  What’s your eureka!?

“If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward”.  -Thomas A. Edison

Some of you may know Mr. Charles Norman – he’s been over benevolence at Bethel for a long time.  Mr. Norman is a wonderful man, he has such a sweet spirit and tenderness about him – he’s perfect for the position he’s filled for 24 years.

Something I love about Mr. Norman is his encouraging heart.  Everyday that he’s in the office, he’ll come by and make sure he gets to give me a hug.  He also tells me two things: First he says “and please remember, if there’s anything I can do for you please let me know” and he means it.  Second he tells me “and remember the best is yet to come!”

Mr. Norman is right – the best is yet to come.  Yesterday was a good day, but yesterday is gone.  We can choose to relive yesterday in the future or we can learn from yesterday and make things better.  Over the last two weeks I’ve met with each area of Children’s Ministry to talk about growing our ministry.  If you recall in talking about being excellent in all things – I mentioned that we need to constantly evaluate things.  How can we do this better?  How can we improve here? How can we simplify this?  We need to constantly evaluate – if we take the time to learn from what we’ve done well and what we haven’t done well, then we can move forward.  One of my favorites quotes comes from the end of “Meet the Robinsons”.

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
–Walt Disney

We keep moving forward, taking new ground and growing in things so that when we look back we can see a bright future that knows – The best is yet to come!