First Things First

Some things are more important than others. Leadership is required to filter what’s most important and keep first things first.

I received this email the other day from the folks at North Point Community Church who run the Drive Conference (We took our team to Drive earlier this year for a great few days of training):

We’re canceling Drive 2014
We’re in the middle of two major campus construction projects. The unusual amount of rainfall we’ve had this summer has caused the completion of the projects to bump up against Drive. Since we are a local church first, the building projects take priority.

Both of the construction projects are for different campuses than the one where Drive is hosted. It’s not like the building to host Drive would be unavailable. So why would they cancel Drive?

After all, Drive generates almost a million dollars in revenue from conference admissions, plus hundreds of thousands more in resource sales for North Point Ministries. It’s also a major rallying point for thousands of leaders who look to North Point for direction. This decision seriously hampers their platform. Why would they do this?

Because they are a local church first.

With the other projects going on, Drive–a good thing–would be a distraction.

This is an important lesson for pastors and church planters. It’s easy to be distracted by networking with other pastors, getting involved in multi-church events, speaking at outside events, writing blogs or books–all good things.

But often the cost is that the local church–a pastor’s first calling–suffers.

Whatever you’re calling, work hard to focus on that calling. Put first things first.