You must have heard the phrase. It’s what we do when we sweep away all the constraints we have and think in an expansive way without worrying about the minutiae of detail.
It makes you wonder what your ministry would be like if you swept away all the history, traditions and practices of your church and started with a blank piece of paper. What would you do differently — what would you stop doing (Christians are notorious for doing things because they did them last year) if you were given a free hand?
Lost the plot?
Realists, at this point, are probably saying this writer has lost the plot and it’s time he woke up from his dream. But, at the start of a new year, it is very easy to do things simply because you did them last year. You fill up your diary for 2007 by copying the dates from 2006 and putting them in the same slots. Phrases like ‘That’s just what we do around here’ seem to surface. But, in your future planning, it sometimes helps to forget about what has gone before and deal with your situation as if it were brand new. After all, when the wandering Israelites reached the promised land, many new ways of living had to be sorted out.
