I am learning a valuable lesson at the start of this new year. Sometimes lessons are hard to learn, this is one of those cases because it’s exposing an area of weakness and failure on my part. That’s hard to admit and harder to deal with. I’ve been in my role as pastor now for 13.5 months (but who’s counting?). I have loved every minute of it. It’s not work…it’s a passion.

But being passionate doesn’t guarantee success (no matter how you measure it). And being passionate doesn’t mean you’ll do things right. I haven’t. The good news is that not all is lost…not even close. I have great people around me that know what they’re doing and are picking up the slack.

The lesson I’m learning is about the importance of staying connected. When I was in the corporate world this wasn’t nearly as important. People got paid to work and if they didn’t do what we expected they either shaped up or…(you know how that one ends).

Not so much in my new line of “work” (I still hate calling it that). Here, connections are life-blood…critical to keeping anything alive. Over the past few months I’ve made the decision to focus my attention on a smaller number of people…really poor into their lives as best I can. Not a bad call…not one I regret…but I got distracted. Also not an excuse, just the reality.

The consequence is that I lost connection with others. These are leaders that I left in the dust, flapping in the wind (choose your own metaphor). And it’s my responsibility to correct the situation. It will take work. It will take focus. It will take dedication.

But that’s the other great thing about connections…they can be re-established. This is an error that has an “easy” (if not simple) fix…get connected again! So that’s what I’m doing…and I hope I’ve learned my lesson!