How do you define success in your career?  Widgets sold, haircuts given, school year completed, project executed, franchise opened, etc.  In a church its tough.  One thing our culture pushes over and over is that bigger is better.  In fact to be legitimate, your enterprise needs to be large.  I have gone to lots of conferences and seminars and I can not remember them asking a guy to speak whose church was around 125.  This type of things begins sending a message.  A message I have to be careful I do not by into.  The message has various sounds and tones, but overall is something like this.  Your outcomes determine your worth.  Judge someone else’s outcomes and then assign worth.  Production is secondary to obedience.  So I was inspired by something I watched to make sure these three things are in front of me:

1. my legitimacy is not from the impact of my ministry and its outcomes; my legitimacy is because I am a child of God
2. avoid the temptation to judge the legitimacy of another ministry or my own, based solely on outcomes
3. find strength in obedience not in results