Where Did All The Passion Go?
It happens in marriages. It happens in jobs. And it especially happens in churches. Vision drifts, passion wanes, and people find themselves stuck in a rut with no way out.
The problem is often not the rut. The problem is that we can’t even see the rut.
If you want to diagnose your rut, answer these questions:
- Have you served in a regular, ongoing capacity in some ministry in the last six months?
- If the answer to the above is “yes,” are you excited about showing up for your ministry?
- Can you state in one sentence why your ministry exists?
- Do you regularly listen to or read about needs in ministries, but shrug them off, saying, “Someone else will take care of it?”
- Have you ever talked about how the church has failed to serve you in some way?
- Has church become more about you than it has about God? Than it has about others?
The obvious answers you should have given are “yes” for the first three and “no” for the second three. But if your answers were reversed, you might be in a rut.
Ruts happen. It’s what we do with our ruts that matter, and it’s knowing we’re in a rut that’s really important. In the words of that great theologian and revived pop icon G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.
I pray that you’ll discover your rut and rediscover your passion. Life’s too short to live in the ruts. Stand up, be counted, and serve!
I completely agree that it’s what you do about your rut that matters. Beyond prayer, take a look at “YOU UNSTUCK,” by Libby Gill, to help get you out of a rut you may be in. The author is an executive coach with a lot of experience in leading people to better lives. Her process is boiled down (though this is way too simplistic) into clarify, simplify and execute: clarify your vision of where you want to go, simplify the most direct route to get there and execute your action plan — with ways to measure your progress. Great stuff.