As part of my one-year anniversary at St. John’s, my supervisor took me through an annual performance evaluation where we looked at how I had done in the past year and what areas needed improvement. Not that I did a shabby job, but here at HealthEast, they have a motto of “If it isn’t broke, make it better,” so there is always room for improvement. Most of this is done through setting goals, coming up with strategies to meet those goals and following through with it all. All of the strategies and goals needed to be Specific, Attainable and Measurable (S.A.M.), which means they needed to focus on particular areas that needed improvement, needed to addressable and changeable by me, the goal-setter, and needed to be able to show the improvement made. So, I couldn’t just have a goal of being a better chaplain, I needed to define what it meant for me to improve as a chaplain, that definition needed to contain factors that I could control and I needed to be able to show exactly how I had improved as a chaplain.
In making goals for my work life, I began to ponder how it might work to make goals in other areas of my life, especially in the area of spiritual growth. Can I make S.A.M. goals and strategies for my spiritual growth? For me, one of the classic scriptural references for how to grow spiritually is this: “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins” (2Peter 1:5-9) So, the question then becomes, can I make goals and strategies to grow in goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love? Hmm. Good question. In reflecting further, I came to realization that many of the goals and strategies like reading more books to growing in knowledge or praying more to grow in godliness were more behavioral changes than heart changes. And while behavioral change is good, perseverance, self control and the rest are best grown from the inside out. What’s more, changing the heart takes not only a lot of work on my part, it also takes a touch of grace from God, and that those heart changes take root as I grow them through fellowship with God and you, my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and in humanity. So, now I want to open the floor to you. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts. You can reply to this email, post a comment on my blog or my Facebook profile. What has helped you grow spiritually? What have you seen work in other’s lives as well? We all want to grow more and more like Christ, don’t we? So, let’s talk about how we can help each other do just that.
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Maybe one of the difficulties with goals for changes in attitudes of the heart is that, while it may be possible to be Specific about some of them, and they may even be Attainable, they would be fiendishly difficult to Measure. To be more forgiving might be a goal and, by consciously striving, you might become more forgiving. But "more" than what?
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