Simplify Life and Ministry with Endings
Have you watched your closets and drawers grow more disorganized and messy despite your best intentions? I have. I purchase something and add it to what is already there; as a result, I multiply my stuff without adding needed storage space and create a mess that makes it difficult to find anything. Let’s call it the multiplication principle. I have found that it applies to life and ministry just as it does my closets.
Objectively observing ministry reveals the tendency to move away from simple, clean, and organized toward overloaded and difficult to navigate. We begin with focus, keeping things uncomplicated and easy to direct. Soon someone suggests a new area of ministry, an additional program to meet specific needs or age groups, or ways to enhance what we are already doing. Before we realize what is happening, more work hours for staff and volunteers are required to brainstorm, to organize, and to plan and carry out the needed work for the ministry. Often the people we intend to reach and teach become confused about their choices—the multiplication principle.
Life is also beset with the same tendency. We complete a task well, and others ask us to take on more. In time we end up with a complicated calendar and a too-busy life that we can’t escape. Time with God, family, and friends is lost in the mess.
What to do?
I recently finished reading Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud. Although he primarily speaks to the business audience, the author’s suggestions apply to the problem of multiplication in any situation. Cloud writes, “The tomorrow that you desire and envision may never come to pass if you do not end some things that you are doing today” (xiii).
De-cluttering your closet so that you can find what you need requires getting rid of what isn’t essential. Focusing your ministry where you can maximize your volunteers and produce excellent ministry with the greatest fruit means ending some programs. Simplifying your life so that you have time to follow God’s kingdom purposes involves saying no to everything that doesn’t fit his priorities.
Choosing what is best demands letting go of all else. Determine what is best and what is only good. Ask this question about everything, “Why do we (I) do this?” Will you be courageous enough to get rid of the clutter in your ministry and in your life? What holds you back from saying no and creating necessary endings?
Kay Daigle
Kay is a life-long Texan whose favorites are Tex-Mex, books that feed her soul or make her think, good movies and travel to new places. Her great joy is to serve God by teaching the Bible and developing women as servant-leaders. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries, which provides free videos, podcasts and articles as well as low-cost Bible studies to prepare Christian women for leadership. (beyondordinarywomen.org) Kay spent ten years leading women’s ministries on church staffs, most recently at Northwest Bible Church in Dallas. Kay is the author of From Ordinary Woman to Spiritual Leader: Grow your Influence, a practical guide to help Christian women influence others by applying foundational leadership skills to their lives and ministries, and a number of Bible studies for women, some are available at bible.org and the newer ones are found at beyondordinarywomen.org. Kay earned an M.A.C.E. from Dallas Theological Seminary and a D.Min. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Effective Ministries to Women. Kay’s family includes a husband, two grown children, one son-in-law, two hysterical granddaughters and a Goldendoodle.
2 Comments
Karen King
Decluttering
You had me at the closet! Mine is desperate to be decluttered and I find myself continuing to add to what is in it already. How true that is of life. And the more we add to our ministry and life, the more likely that closet will stay cluttered. Thanks for the thoughtful article. It made me want to go work in my closet! Since I've been home sick for awhile, the rest of my life is not so cluttered right now but I've been there many times in my ministries!
Kay Daigle
I feel your pain
Karen, it was hard to write about decluttering life when my closet is staring me in the face every time I enter it. I plan to work on it today. As far as life, I have found, as you have, that God uses sickness to help us declutter. I hope you are better.