Leadership guru John Maxwell says, “We only make a few major decisions. We spend the rest of our lives managing those decisions.” When I look back on my life I see half a dozen major decisions that totally changed the trajectory of my life. For better or for worse, you never outlive the consequences of big choices. But I want to suggest that there is a category of choices that are even more important than big choices. The most important choices you make are the choices you make before the choices you make! I call them pre choices. Let me give you a personal example.
In the early years of my pastoring, when Agape was a church of 40 people, I did just about everything there was to do pastorally. I preached every Sunday. I taught the mid-week Bible study. I worked hard to put together teaching seminars for the church. I equipped the worship team. I even washed the office toilets!
And that’s only half the story. Here’s the other half. I was counselling people in the evenings and attending to every kind of ministry related meetings arfter office hours. For most of the week, I was probably home just one night of the week and that night was usually Sunday night when there was little left of me for my wife or children.
My children were about six and three at that time. And I found it so hard to balance my family and my ministry. Between the kid’s activities and my wife’s schoolwork and my ministry-related meetings, it felt like I was never home!
So I made a tough choice—a pre choice. During that season of my life, I decided to limit my ministry-related meetings to one night a week and no more! I wasn’t going to fight this battle trying to balance family and ministry anymore. It was not a battle worth fighting. And I ended that battle with a pre choice.
I’m not going to lie. It was hard. Almost every week I had to turn down meeting people for ministry or counselling. To compound matters, I am the type of guy who sought to be all things to all people then (that's no longer true now.) So it was really tough. To make matters worse, I had church members who came up to me and said that I didn't have a pastoral heart - that I don’t care enough for my sheep!
So while I ended one battle, I found myself in another battle. But this time I felt, this was a battle worth fighting.
Let me tell why pre choices are so important. If I didn’t limit my ministry-related meetings, I’d be counselling members or meeting with leaders or visiting people or presenting myself at invitations to dinners and birthday parties three or four nights a week. And those are good things, but here is what would happen: I would end up sacrificing the most important people in my life. My wife and children would get the short-end of the stick. And they may not have turned out to be what they are today! If there is a battle I wanted to fight in that season, it was the battle to keep my family from degenerating because of the busyness of ministry.
If you don’t make pre choices you will make compromises and end up hurting yourself and others. Let me say it another way: you will either make pre choices or wrong choices. There is no other option. Choose your battles carefully!
