Clarifying and Celebrating Wins

Over the last few years, I have developed a little hitch in my step when I walk. It has come from age and tightness, especially in my hips. I don’t have any pain except for the pain of people asking me what’s wrong with me and having to explain I’m just tight.

For a while, I tried stretching a little more and incorporating that into my workout routine. My goal was to get rid of the hitch and, more importantly, to stop having to answer the questions, “Did you injure yourself?” Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work. The hitch is still there, and I keep getting asked the question. Since I don’t like stretching, I’ve going back to just lifting weights. When I am lifting, I feel a greater sense of achievement when I lift more weights and feel some gains. I feel like I’m winning.

This is human nature; we want to win. We find it easier to take action in places where we see progress. I believe this is God’s imprint in us. God gets things done. He is victorious in his word and what he sets out to accomplish.

But in ministry, it can be tough to know if we are winning and making progress. We are in spiritual work, and it’s not always obvious if we are winning souls or converting hearts. It’s not always obvious if we are succeeding as God calls us to succeed.

This is why we must “clarify the win.” Clarifying the win is a concept we learned many years ago from Andy Stanley and his book Seven Practices of Effective Ministry.

First of all, let’s clarify our ultimate win. Our ultimate win is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Our win is turning irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ. Our win is reaching more people for Christ and helping them grow in their relationship with him. This is the mission of the parish. As we note in our book Rebuilt, forgetting about this win is what gets us off track. Parishes lose direction when they forget the ultimate win is making disciples.

Reaching the lost and making disciples is our ultimate win but it’s so big and such a huge task it can be hard to know if we are accomplishing it. Clarifying wins means thinking in small steps or shrinking the change so we can recognize it.

To clarify, a win means we clearly identify a few key positive responses to an event or program or ministry. For example, a win for a weekend Mass is that someone comes to church for the first time and wants to come back. Or a win can be someone stops by our welcome desk to receive a gift and tell us they are new. A win can mean a student tells you they prayed for the first time on their own. A win can mean you identified five new people to serve as greeters. A win can mean that ten people did what you asked them to do in a homily.

We also clarify wins by simply setting some goals and having metrics. One of the fun things about raising money for a capital campaign is you clearly see if you are winning. But you can also use that principle with finding greeters or recruiting for a parking team or getting people to join a small group.

Once we clarify wins, we want to celebrate any and every progress toward them. I admit that this doesn’t come easily to me. Father Michael once perfectly summarized me this way: “You maximize expectations and minimize results.”

I don’t want to change when it comes to expectations. I think God wants us to have big goals and dreams. However, I do need to learn to celebrate wins. Over the years, we have worked both at Nativity and at Rebuilt to celebrate wins along the way.

So how can you grow by clarifying and celebrating wins? Let me offer a couple of possible next steps.

First, take one or two of your most common tasks and ask yourself, what is the win here? What progress do we hope our people make in their faith journey as a result of this ministry, program, or event? Start with your most common program or ministry task. What’s the win for your preaching? What’s the win for a student program or confirmation class? What’s the win for a children’s liturgy of the word session? Identify the big win of seeing life change in Christ or a whole family coming back to engage in the life of the church. Clarify the small wins too, such as kids leaving with a smile and knowing they were noticed by someone at church.

Second, celebrate wins in your culture. Each week at Nativity we have a “wins” meeting in which we go around the room and share wins from the weekend. Our leadership team at Rebuilt starts each meeting with prayer and then good news; this can be personal or related to our work. When our ministry groups huddle up before Mass, we share with them information about that weekend as well as wins our volunteer ministers shared from the previous week.

Ministry is a marathon, not a sprint. To keep moving forward, we need to feel that we are winning and succeeding. Clarify wins and celebrate them!

Rooting for you,
Tom