New Opportunities

My church had a pastor from South Dakota in over the weekend. Our church has a partnership with his church. He came down this last weekend to talk about all of the ministries and ministry opportunities that he was dealing with in his church.
As I listened, my head started filling with ideas. Good ideas (or so I think). I had taken the leadership team to his presentation in order to brainstorm ideas for a possible mission trip. We generated a lot of ideas altogether.
These ideas are all good, and after this pastor’s talk, we discussed our different ideas with him. He seemed quite elated with them. Now we have a lot of ideas to sort through and start to put together as we plan a mission trip for our church.
The question now becomes this: How do we balance this new opportunity with the opportunities already in front of us? How do we decide between them? How much time do we put into planning this ministry opportunity and what role will the leadership team have in it?
New opportunities are a great thing. They keep us fresh, keep us thinking, and keep us working for the Lord. Beware though that they don’t replace existing commitments and thought processes that you are currently working on.
The challenge for my leadership team now is to balance this opportunity with a mission trip to Peru in June of 2010, some projects that we are working on individually, and the amount of time we devote to it now, as opposed to in the near future.
My challenge is to juggle the logistics and planning of such an endeavor with the leadership training opportunities that such a trip will present. How much do I hand over to the leadership development team? How large will this trip become?
These challenges are good and bad. They will try our leadership team and stretch us. We will learn. On the other hand, some of us will lose focus. This is the first time that I’ve allowed so much to be on the team’s plate. It is overwhelming to most teenagers.
New Challenges are great. I personally love them (my gifts set is particularly fitted to new ministry opportunities). In fact, I get giddy about them. But there is a dark side, and if we’re not careful, new opportunities rob us of our ability to keep on track with existing projects. They can also take up too much of our time.
Just some thoughts. Would relish your thoughts as well.

In the Trenches,
Matt