Ready, Fire, Aim!
March 1, 2010
I am still getting over my disappointment over the Colts’ loss in the Super Bowl. It seemed to me that they were playing it safe, or playing not to lose, rather than playing to win. The Saints, by contrast, took the risk of going for it on 4th down, starting the second half with an on-sides kick, and playing to win.
Life is a high risk / high reward reality. When we risk loving those who are hard to love, we often find the reward that comes from such a risk. When we risk giving extravagantly, we often receive in return. There are no guarantees - that is why it is a risk - but there is where the rewards come.
Taking the risk also helps us to improve our aim. In fact, some business leaders have described this philosophy with the phrase, “Ready, Fire, Aim!” As I understand it, that philosophy means we try, we learn from our “miss” (our mistake), and that helps us to improve our aim as we try again.
I thought of all this as I watched the Cabinet and Directors of our Indiana Conference talk about the problems with the PO Boxes in each district to receive the tithes and district apportionments. They had worked out a nice plan to allow churches to mail their funds to a “local” PO Box in each district, as a way of avoiding having all funds sent off to Indianapolis or to some other destination which might seem far removed. In particular, some local churches had given input that they did not want all of their connectional giving sent to the Conference Center.
It sounded like a good plan, but it has not worked well. The delay (mostly caused by those PO Boxes forwarding mail to a central location) has meant that funds given by local churches have taken two weeks or more to show up in the proper bank accounts for the Annual Conference. For routine giving that delay has been only a nuisance, but for mission giving (like the many dollars coming into the Conference for relief in Haiti) such a delay is unacceptable.
So the Cabinet and Directors decided to say, “Nice try, but we missed the mark. Let’s try again.” They decided to skip the whole idea of having funds sent to a district address and to have all funds sent now to a professional banking center in Illinois which handles funds on a regular basis (many of you probably already send your Visa card payments to this same center). Will some of our Indiana Conference churches complain about sending their money to an address in Illinois? Maybe, but getting the funds handled more efficiently and more quickly is probably worth it.
My point is this: risk-taking helps us to improve our aim. But doing so requires us to admit our first effort was not perfect.
When was the last time you took a risk in mission and ministry or in your life? When was the last time you admitted an error, learned from it, and tried again? Or, perhaps I should ask the question this way: When was the last time that taking a risk, and missing, improved your aim?
