“Am I already home?”
Chances are, you have asked this question before as you have driven into your driveway after a long day at work. Perhaps we were mentally consumed with a problem or just singing along with the radio, but the truth is that we can’t remember ANYTHING about our drive home! It isn’t that you are a horrible driver. You slipped into autopilot.
Truth is, you often operate by autopilot with your family, job, and relationship with Jesus.
At the end of the day we are left wondering, “What did I do today??”
Another way to describe autopilot is with the idea of muscle memory.
Muscle memory is a stored physical response that you draw upon when the time is right. Think about a golf swing – thousands of practiced swings compound into the next swing as the golfer seeks to swing perfectly each time.
For a while, our family ministries have operated on autopilot. Much of what we do is out of muscle memory – our processes, events, and programs.
Now, muscle memory is not a bad thing! The goal is to make great habits second nature. But often, we pickup inefficiencies or take shortcuts and it starts to negatively affect our muscle memory. Great athletes and artists have perfected muscle memory to hone their skills. Michael Jordon worked on the fundamentals of basketball daily to perfect his game.
For ministries and discipleship groups, we often forget about the fundamentals – meeting people, maintain our personal walk with Jesus, being intentional with visitors, striving to offer clear communication.In a rush to do more ministry, we tend to neglect the foundations that support solid groups.
Before you start planning your next quarter, your group or ministry should take some time and discover who you are, what God wants your group to be, and how you will operate.
Here are a few questions you can pass along to your group or ministry and get the conversation started:
- If we had unlimited funds, volunteers, and resources, what would God want us to do?
- In what ways has your personal spiritual life fallen into a negative cycle? Pray that God will reveal to you how you should break the negative habits you have developed.
- What were opportunities the group failed to capitalize on last year? (This could be as simple as following up with absentees…)
- What are the needs of our community – physically, emotionally, and spiritually? How can/are we meeting needs to provide an avenue for people to meet Jesus?
Now What?
These are a few questions to kick around and get the conversation started. Retraining you ministry’s muscle memory will only happen when you engage the entire group in conversations about where God is leading your team.
You must log in to post a comment.