I hope that you have been enjoying some insight to how Pastor Todd’s brain works. I have enjoyed letting you in on some of the things that make him, him. Anyway, the last thing that is inside Todd’s brain is focus.
Focus, what is focus? The definition of focus is ‘maximum clarity or distinctness of an idea’. I love this definition, ‘maximum clarity’. It conveys that your attention, all of it is focused on one thing. Not several things, one thing. At the very core of PT’s brain is focus.
Now, I got to be honest, at times this trait incredibly frustrates me. Although it has been said, and probably tested and proven, that Men are centrally focused; PT takes it to a ‘hole notha level’. I have been in situations where he is focused on something and trying to divert attention from that one thing is like trying to keep me awake during the opera, it just doesn’t happen. So rather than fighting for the attention I wait patiently until he is done so that everything I have to say will register with him.
Although this trait puts me in competition with other things that might be on his mind, it is one of the leadership traits I admire most about in him. When it comes to the world of ministry, there is always something to do. There is always some where to be, some person who needs you, some ministry who wants more time, or some church member who believes the church should be a certain way (typically their own). There is always something that is going to come up to divert your attention from where it should be (God’s Plan) to where people want it to be (Man’s Plan). Focus can be as distant as the moon and what’s even worse, our lack of focus as leaders has caused the church to become even more congested with ministries deigned for ‘ME church’ people rather than ‘God church’ people.
When PT set out to pastor a church I knew that his ability to focus on what God told him to do would be a defining factor in his leadership. We follow a ’simple church’ model. There is nothing fancy about this model. NO bells and whistles. No quick fixes or magic potions. Just a simple belief in that if we can connect people to Christ, their lives will be better than they ever thought possible. We are not about a religion or rules. We aren’t about a bigger organization at large, we don’t want our name in lights or our church to become a buffet line of ministries that you can come sample as much of the church as you like while giving nothing back. We are about one thing, Connecting People to Jesus Christ. It’s about Him and not us. The only way that this church can be like this is with focus. Our leader, Pastor Todd, is focused on that mission. His focus has become a staple in his ability to lead. If an idea comes along that could possibly shift our focus, we don’t do it. Not because it is a bad idea, but because we set out to do what God wanted us to do, and that’s it.
Has there been a time where you lacked focus on what God wanted you to do? What are your top distractions?
