I just wrote about the fact that my life has become fractured and my focus was every which way but where it should be.  Today I want to spend some time on what I need to do to determine where my focus actually lies.  Next I’ll look at where it should be.  Hopefully this process can help many of you who wear many hats in ministry as well.  Here are some steps I’m going to take to determine what my current focus is (particularly in music/worship ministry):

• What do I spend my time thinking about?  Do I think about how to encourage, teach, and build up – or do I think about where I’d like things to be in the future and how they’re not there yet?  Vision can’t happen without small steps in the meantime.
• What do I spend my time thinking about?  I know that’s the same question – but this time I ask it wondering what I spend time thinking about when there’s “nothing else” to think about.  Those places can be dangerous and I need to evaluate them regularly.
• Do things I need to do well become an afterthought for something else?  For instance, does spending quality time planning and scheduling become an afterthought for being able to arrange some music or chart out a song?  What’s more important?

There are many more questions I’ll be asking myself to determine where my proper focus should be.  How do you step back and evaluate what needs to be changed in how you approach ministry?

My life has been fragmented a lot for a quite some time and I’m not sure what to do about it.  I work out of town at a full time job that requires my brain to connect and interact with hundreds of customers I don’t know.  I spend time doing volunteer work for my amazing congregation.  I try to lead the music ministry team (need to do much better there), plus try to advance our efforts in marketing, web design, social media, and more for the church.  I spend time trying to stay connected with the hundreds of people I know on Facebook.  I spend time trying to connect with the hundreds of people I wish I actually knew on Twitter.  I watch my favorite television shows.  I spend time encouraging and nurturing my relationship with my beautiful wife and amazing daughter.  Sometimes I spend time in God’s Word.  Whoops.

Something’s wrong with the paragraph above and it’s summed up in a word:  focus.  The focus of my life is backwards and it has been for some time now.  Many of the things listed above should be reversed.  Some could possibly be cut out completely.  The most important thing, for me, has ended up last in the list.

So where do I go from here?  It seems like I’ve asked myself that question many times before facing the exact same issue.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Determine what my current focus actually is, then determine what it should be.  I can determine my current focus by seeing where my time is spent and what my mind is thinking about.  I can determine what it should be by first understanding who I want to be.

Over the next few blog posts I’d like to spend some time on proper focus.  Will you join me in the discussion and perhaps evaluate your own life as well?

As I sit and listen to my wife and daughter enjoying bath time and think about the fact that tomorrow we celebrate our 7 year anniversary, I can’t help but wonder about why I didn’t spend today in better preparation for tomorrow. Some questions linger in my mind:

• Why do I let feeling tired become an excuse for inexcusable behavior?
• Why do I not stop and make sure to look over the music and the service order more often during the week, including today?
• What is my mental block that keeps me from getting as excited as I should for tomorrow’s service?

I think I can sum up the answer to these questions in one word: focus.  My focus has been on myself lately, and that’s not good.  As I get back into blogging and back into seriously thinking about what it takes to be not only an effective worship leader in my congregation but also a husband, father, employee and friend I’m looking forward to spending some time thinking about where my focus currently is and where it should be.

Tomorrow I look forward to letting my one focus be magnifying God and His greatness without distraction.  What about you?  What distracts you and what steps do you take to regain proper focus?