Breaking Out the Clutter

This is the week that Kate and I start decorating the house for Christmas, it’s nothing different from what the usual family does. We go into our closets, attics and basements, pull out the decorations and set things up. One thing we have noticed as we unpack decorations is the immense amount of junk we have (not holiday related) and how it’s clogging up the closet. We then make the same statement we always do, “We have to find some time to get rid of this stuff.” And sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t.
The same happens in ministry, if we don’t look at our schedules and programs on a regular basis they get cluttered, because we tend to add things but never eliminate. We overbook, over schedule and over program. It’s like taking a garbage can and never throwing out the bag, we just take our foot and try to cram more stuff into the can until it begins to overflow and make a mess.
When we clutter our programs, activities become too complex to understand, messages become watered down and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what we do.
When we clutter our schedules we tend to leave no time for rest, no time for vision casting, we schedule multiple meetings at once leaving us no time to prepare for meetings. It comes down to discipline and a passage from Proverbs that I’ve been embracing says: Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid. Proverbs 12:1