If you want next year to be different meet people and read books that challenge your “normal”.

Do you have any rituals that help you say goodbye to one year and welcome the next?

For a number of years, I have done a lot of journaling at this time of year, trying to make sense of what I have been through and trying to set goals that might shape the year to come.

This morning rather than trying to evaluate or plan I simply made a list of the things that had happened over the course of the last twelve months. I found the exercise very helpful. The list grew and grew as I reviewed my calendar and my memory.

Perhaps one of the mistakes I might have made in the past is that I tried to understand and evaluate the year without doing the more basic work of naming what actually happened.

With the benefit of my list of the events of the year, I find the kind of evaluation that I have always attempted at this time of year much easier.

As I reflect on the year I see the truth of the quote by Charles ‘Tremendous’ Jones:

“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.”

At the end of this year, I feel like I have grown a lot over 12 months, and I feel like a different person to the one who turned up in a foreign country five years ago

The major changes have been wrought by the books (and podcasts) I have read and listened to, and the people I have engaged with.

One of the things I started doing this year was catching up each week with two guys who are a similar age and have families at a similar stage to mine. Each week we meet for breakfast at the local Banjos coffee shop.

One of the guys, Mark, has mentioned a few times the importance of “inputs.” He talks about how he knows that nothing will change unless he changes the inputs he has in his life. He used his hands to demonstrate two paths diverging and said that he knows that something as simple as meeting with the two of us each week will actually change the trajectory of his life.

As I look back on the past year, and also the past 5 years, I see the profound truth in what both Mark and Charles ‘Tremendous’ Jones are saying.

For 20 years I worked with a very special bunch of people in the mission organisation Fusion. I loved the people I was working with and loved what we were trying to do. I had assumed I would stay with Fusion for the rest of my life.

Fusion didn’t hold me back from the rest of the world, in fact I had a chance to travel and was continually reading and learning, but I now see that all that reading and learning was happening within an established social context with its own “normal.”

My first steps into a different normal happened through the Arrow Leadership program, which both exposed me to new books and thinking but also importantly to people who were coming from very different “normals” to me.

Following Arrow, my family boarded an airplane to a new country thanks to the generosity of the Fusion Canada team. The four and a half years in Canada were possibly the greatest gift I have received in my life.

Being immersed in a completely new “normal” and eventually becoming a pastor at St. Albert Alliance Church and working alongside people who I respected and grew to love changed me.

Sitting under the leadership of Jeremy Peters, someone who was younger than me and also completely different from me, was particularly helpful. I could see that his relationship with God and his intentionality about his life was something I could learn from, and as I watched him and served alongside him for four years I certainly learned a lot.

Having the opportunity to study for my Master in Theological Studies degree at Taylor Seminary meant I had to engage with familiar authors and ideas at a new depth and also exposed me to new authors and new ideas.

The degree also helped to ground all the books I had read up to that point in a historical context that gave new insight and meaning to the individual authors.

Mostly though Taylor deeply shaped my appreciation for, and understanding of, the one book that has shaped my life more than any other: the Bible.

It was a joy to sit under the instruction of people who had spent most of their lives wrestling with the most complex questions people raise about the bible, but also who were able to impart an overview of the whole story from Genesis to Revelation and give enough tools that I was then able to engage any questions that might arise for me personally in a way that meant I could face event the most difficult questions and find answers that made sense, at least for me.

My love for the Bible has significantly deepened over the last five years as I increasingly find answers and life in its story and wisdom.

That love has been deepened by the gradual process of actually memorizing the bible. While I was in Canada my friend and boss, Jeremy, would spend hours using the Scripture Typer App to memorise whole chapters of scripture. I used to think that it was strange.

Only a matter of weeks after arriving back in Australia I read and was challenged by Dallas Willard’s words:

“I would never undertake to pastor a church or guide a program of Christian education that did not involve a continuous program of memorization of the choicest passages of Scripture for people of all ages.”

Dallas Willard The Spirit of the Disciplines page 149

It is not enough to simply read a book or meet new people…

I think the rider I would put on Charles “Tremendous” Jones quote is that it is not enough to simply read a book or meet new people, you have to engage with the book and the people in such a way that your “normal” is challenged.

I am a different person because of the books I have read and the people I have been exposed to, but there are plenty of books and people who haven’t changed me. They are the ones who I only engaged with superficially and who didn’t challenge my “normal.”

We live in a world where any book we can possibly want is available at the click of a button and any person we can imagine can be stalked on social media. The sheer volume of inputs available to us is beyond comprehension. The problem is that too many of us only engage superficially with all the available inputs.

As I look back on my travel and reading before Arrow, my Masters and becoming a Pastor I realise that most of my engagement with people came from a settled “normal” and as a result I wasn’t changed much by the experience.

My 20 years with Fusion had shaped me profoundly, and so had some close friendships during that time, however that shaping solidified into my “normal” and I began to feel like many of the key parts of my life were stuck, including my relationship with God.

The last five years have taught me just how profoundly changing the inputs in your life can actually change your life, and as a result I am becoming much more intentional about choosing the inputs.

Over the last couple of months my son Josh introduced me to “Audible,” which is basically a huge online audio book shop. I am taking the time to listen over and over again to some of the books that address the parts of my life that I know I have still got lots of room to grow in and am finding having the actual authors voice reading their books brings out things I hadn’t seen the first time I had engaged with their books.

I have also joined a gym this year and am actually doing something about getting fitter, which has been on my to-do list for the past 15 years.

The growth I see in myself over the last 12 months is the result of the changed inputs of the last five years.

I would often hit New Year’s Eve with a sense of powerlessness because my underlying belief was that nothing much could actually change. I always hoped, but never really believed… and I was usually right.

This year I see that change has happened, and 2018 has been a good year, not because I have been particularly clever or finally strong enough to follow through on my plans, but because the inputs into my life have changed and that has changed my life.

What inputs are you going to change in 2019?

If you are looking for some books to read or listen to my top 6 would be:

1. Getting things Done – David Allen
2. Renovation of the Heart – Dallas Willard
3. With – Skye Jethani
4. Letters to the Church – Francis Chan
5. Keep Your Love On – Danny Silk
6. Virtue Reborn – N.T. Wright

If you are after some Podcasts to get you thinking my top 5 are:

1. Unbelievable with Justin Brierly
2. Holy Post – with Phil Vischer and Skye Jethani
3. This Cultural Moment – Mark Sayers and John Mark Comer
4. Church of the City New York – Jon Tyson
5. Exploring my Strange Bible – Tim Mackie

Of course you can also listen to my sermons on the Citywide Podcast or YouTube page or watch live on a Sunday morning on the Citywide Facebook page.

Changing inputs changes your life.