New year. New decade. New start.
New year. New decade. New start.By Shane Bennett
Yeah, it feels a little cheesy and cliché, but honestly the whole new year thing works for me. Fresh starts feel invigorating and hopeful. Things haven’t been screwed up yet!
Are you up for some new beginnings? I’ve started reading through the Bible and I’m doing a tiny bit of daily journaling. Some really big new stuff is brewing for me too, but you’ll have to read the list below to get to it.
Maybe you have so many plates spinning already that the opposite sounds good to you. Remember, Bob Goff is known to say, “You can quit anything on a Thursday!” If you’re reading this when it lands, you’ve got a little lead time to mitigate the damage of the plate(s) you let clatter to the floor!
If “start something new” works for you, as it does for me, here are some ideas. I’ll try to let you know the ones I’m taking up, as well as the ones that I think you’d be a crazy, faith-filled superhero to try!
1. Offer an idea that feels risky.
There’s so much power in, “What if we thought about this…?” Maybe you hang with Francis Chan, Malcolm Gladwell, and Elon Musk (seriously, how cool would it be?) and you never float out an idea that doesn’t get a double eye roll and head shake. But if your tribe is a bit more ordinary, it could be that you are thinking of some things they haven’t already thought of. Yes, you! And maybe God is doling out some chutzpah right now to enable you to suggest, “We could do something really cool. What about this…?” Something for your church, your community, or the world. We won’t complete the Great Commission without some of us somewhere suggesting we do something substantial in a new place.
And if you do get shot down? You won’t be alone. Remember William Carey, for one, famously feels your pain!
2. Launch a prayer effort for an unreached people.
If you don’t have a people on your heart, consider those among whom your friends are working or maybe a group your church is involved with. If you find no natural connection, go to this list of the 31 Largest Frontier Peoples. Pick one, start to learn, and gather friends to pray.
3. Provide Perspectives.
This could legit change your life. It’s one of the crazy, super-hero options on this list! Sit down over coffee with three intrepid friends. Ask God and each other, “Should we bring Perspectives to our town?!?” It will mean a lot of work and some financial risk and you’ll get stretched in uncomfortable ways. But dang, will you leave a dent. If you started scheming tomorrow evening, you might be able to pull off a class in the fall. I would be delighted to dream with you.
4. Nudge your church toward the unreached.
Pastors deal with multiple messes. Truckloads of poo, really. I don’t want us to contribute to that. Nonetheless, you might be able to start the train rolling toward looking at fresh partnerships among unreached peoples. If you could use some help, let’s chat. The cool org I work for, Healing Nations, specializes in helping small to mid-sized churches connect with mission situations. I would love to kick some ideas around with you.
Pioneers, Missions Catalyst’s host organization, would also be a great starting place. And you may know others.
5. Initiate a friendship with someone outside of your normal sphere.
This could be a Muslim, a Hindu, a Democrat, a homeless person, a wealthy businesswoman, someone who’s transgendered, or an old white guy. (If you’re reading this and “an old white guy” would be out of your normal sphere, I’d really like to hear from you. I fear the Practical Mobilization tribe is, on the whole, more pale than I’d like.)
6. Write a book.
Seriously, you’ve been thinking about it! Do it! Just promise me you’ll pay a little bit to get the text edited and the cover designed by a pro. This one is on my goal list for 2020. It all feels pretty vague so far, but I’m asking God for the necessary direction.
7. Learn a lot about something.
I need to implement this one. I have a goal to raise the number of subscribers to the weekly email I write from 2148, where it stands today, to 5007 by the end of the year. I have almost no idea how to do that but am pretty sure that some people do and maybe they’ve written down things I could learn from. If you have some tips or would like to be one of those new subscribers, I’d be honored. Check it out here.
8. Go somewhere.
At the risk of bringing the wrath of Greta Thunberg on my head, I urge you to travel. Get out of Dodge. Visit a new neighborhood, a new city or a new country. Take some old friends and make some new ones when you arrive. If you do number five above at the same time, bonus points for you!
I sat next to a couple yesterday who’d been on more than 50 cruises. They said they liked to spend a third of the year on the water. I hesitate to judge them, but this much is true: If they can do that, you might be able to swing eating at a new ethnic restaurant or visiting a refugee center in a nearby city.
9. Take care of your soul.
Mission mobilizers tend to be an intrepid, hard-riding lot. We’re willing to overlook a lot for the sake of the cause. Maybe we’re no more soul-starved than the general Christian population, but we may be soul-starved while squawking endlessly about the purposes of God. The problems with this are not lost on me, at least right now, since I’m writing about them. I fear I often overlook or discount them, though. Want to join me in changing that?
10. Start a small group.
People need connection, community. Often it takes a catalyst, such as a person who will say, “Buy this book. Come to my house. I’ll make coffee. You bring donuts.” It’s not super complicated. First step could be to pick a good book. You can’t go wrong with either The Magnificent Story or Across the Street and Around the World. Then ask seven buds to read it with you and talk about it over coffee (or a beer if inspired by the Inklings!)
Bonus Idea
Get married! OK, odds are good this would be a bad idea for you; you are already married. I really just put it on the list so I could tell you I’m getting married! After some grueling years of pain, brokenness, and regret I’d never anticipated, light has broken on the horizon. By the time you read the March edition of Practical Mobilization, things will have changed considerably for me.
Conclusion
Let the rest of the tribe know which of these ideas you plan to implement (and the better ones you’ve come up with on your own!) I can’t really speak for all of us, but I’d love a chance to pray you out of the gate.
Readers,