Regrets

I read an interesting article over at Evotional. Mark Batterson is pastor of National Community Church in DC. He has some challenging thoughts from his new book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. Check out his comments below. Are you holding back chasing a lion in your life?

At the end of your ministry, you won’t regret the mistakes you made nearly as much as the opportunities you missed. That conviction is based on the research of two sociologists, Tom Gilovich and Vicki Medvec. According to their study, time is a key factor in what we regret. In the short-term, we tend to regret our actions. Action regrets outnumber inaction regrets 53% to 47% during an average week.

Over the long-haul, however, we tend to regret inactions. When people look at their lives as a whole, inaction regrets outnumber action regrets 84% to 16%.

In theological terms, action regrets are sins of commission. And they cause a twinge of guilt. But it is the inaction regrets or sins of omission that haunt us the rest of our lives. We are left to wonder: what if?

We’re not afraid of making mistakes. We’re afraid of not making mistakes because that means we aren’t stretching ourselves and trying to new things. We view every sermon series as a teaching experiment. Every outreach is an evangelism experiment. Every small group is a discipleship experiment. … I just don’t want to get to the end of my life and my ministry and wonder: What if?

There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. Keep experimenting!

Mike

I am a former design engineer who now pastors Cornerstone Community Church in Galax, Virginia. I'm passionate about following Jesus and I love technology. I've been married to Jennifer for 28 years, and we have three adult children.

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