#70 Discipline of Pausing, Pt 6 | Not Everything Is an "A"

You don’t move forward by doing more—you move forward by choosing the one or two things God has actually called you to do.

In this episode of the Bible Leadership Podcast, Carter and Erica unpack Questions 6 and 7 of The Discipline of Pausing: identifying the one or two areas where you must take ground—and naming what isn’t most important right now. Together, they explore how clarity protects leaders from burnout, guilt, and distraction, and why focus is essential for spiritual fruitfulness. This conversation helps leaders stop confusing activity with progress and start aligning their calendars with God’s calling.

📋 Key Takeaways

• Focus fuels momentum: God often moves leaders forward by narrowing their priorities, not expanding them (Acts 6).
• Not everything deserves “A-level” energy: When you treat every task as urgent, your true calling suffers.
• Naming lower priorities removes guilt: Clearly defining what isn’t a top priority helps you say no without shame.
• Burnout often comes from misalignment, not laziness: Trying to give 100% to everything eventually breaks leaders.
• Your calendar reveals your theology: What you protect time for shows what you actually believe matters most.

📖 Scripture Tie-Ins

• Acts 6:2–4 – The apostles clarify their top priorities: prayer and the Word
• Nehemiah 6:3 – “I am doing a great work and cannot come down”
• Ephesians 4:11–12 – Leaders equip others, not fix everything
• Proverbs 4:25–27 – Keeping your focus straight ahead

🛠️ Next Steps for Listeners

Reflect & Journal:

• What are the one or two areas God is calling me to focus on right now?
• What activities feel urgent—but are actually lower priorities?
• Where might I be confusing activity with obedience?

Pray:

“Lord, help me see what truly matters this season—and give me the courage to let the rest go.”

Practice:

• Write your Top 2 priorities for the next 6–12 months.
• Label everything else as supporting, delegatable, or later—and release the guilt.

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Transcript

Mark Carter (00:06):

Welcome back everybody. Welcome to the Bible Leadership Podcast. My name is Carter. I love to connect your Bible to your leadership and your leadership to your Bible. Well, we're still in the Discipline of Pausing series and I want to give you questions six and seven. They're kind of like two different sides of the same coin. As we evaluate how we can do a year more effectively, one of the questions we want to ask are, what are the top two, one or two things that this is the best way for me to take ground? What are the most important two things that I could be doing? The flip side of that is we're going to ask, what is not those? What are three and four? What are five and six? What are the things that are good, but they're not necessarily the top. They're not the most important investments of my time. I think we're going to get a lot out of it again. I'll see you in there. Let's go.

(00:53)
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the BLP. Hey, we've been in this series about taking a pause at the end of the year or sometime in the year and asking some very specific questions about how do I get some perspective on the things that I do and don't do and get God's feedback and perspective on that.

(01:10)
We've been going through these questions. We're getting up to question six and this is kind of the peak of the mountain. This is where you start to edit. You start to pull some stuff away and say, "But these are the things that in this process for the God has been showing me. " So Question is, if you could only take ground in one or two areas here, what would they be?"

Erica Adkins (01:30):

Okay. So again, we've gone from whiteboard to now we're getting actual critical decision making time.

Mark Carter (01:38):

Yes.

Erica Adkins (01:39):

Okay. So what does this mean? How does this look for you?

Mark Carter (01:42):

Yeah. So we had a couple questions ago, we had what are the opportunities? What are the restaurants you could visit? We had, what are the musts or the warnings or the cable loose coming out of the wall and full of sparks? Now we get to what just moves this thing that needs to move forward, forward. How do you get from A to B? You've already got things that are working. You may be adding one or two things, but what is better than this and how do you get there? And that right there brings a lot of clarity, but how do you move forward?

(02:15)
God moves through leaders that simplify their focus. So if I can just, okay, narrow, get narrower, get less. What can I do? And the apostles are a great example of this. Acts chapter six, when they're essentially telling folks, "Hey man, we ain't coming. We're praying here. Y'all have a problem, and you're competent to fix it out or to fix it. " And so we're going to do what ... These are the two things that we should do. We should be praying and we should be teaching God's word.

Erica Adkins (02:44):

That's good. This is a, we're going to remove distractions and we're going to focus now on these.

Mark Carter (02:49):

Yes.

Erica Adkins (02:49):

Okay.

Mark Carter (02:49):

It's choosing. And these are the most important, of the things we could possibly do that we like to do that are on mission, These are the top two or three that are like, "this is a must for where we need to go."

Erica Adkins (03:02):

All right. I think this also is like actual end zone plays.

Mark Carter (03:08):

Yeah. It's not that something's on fire. It's just like if you want it any better, this is what you got to do.

Erica Adkins (03:13):

Yeah. Okay. So maybe some questions to ask are like, "what is success in every one of your major areas and what leads to that success?"

Mark Carter (03:23):

Yep.

Erica Adkins (03:23):

"And maybe the most goes wrong if you don't do this. Get this done now. "

Mark Carter (03:27):

Yeah. And you've had a lot of time to ask all these questions. Now we're on question six. You've been pondering all this stuff and hopefully there's just some clarity as you've prayed that you do have like, "Yeah, God, I feel your fire again, or I feel like I have a sense of what the calling is, the direction that I'm supposed to do. I can see what has been working. I'm more clear on maybe like that was a detour. We didn't really need to do that." And so now I'm back to, "well, these are our major things," and they're going to be your major things. They're going to be the ones that like, "You're good at this. The Lord anoints you for this. " It's an obvious thing that, yeah, that better makes everything better. So yeah, that's-

Erica Adkins (04:07):

That's good. Can you give me some examples of like, because you just did this in the end of November, beginning of December. What are some things that you feel like the Lord crystallized for you as examples?

Mark Carter (04:22):

Yeah. Excellent. This is one for every year. And there's, depending on the category of life that we're in.

Erica Adkins (04:28):

Sure.

Mark Carter (04:28):

So for me to move the ball forward just in church, I just need to keep becoming a better preacher and preach better messages. I can't do much right. But if I can do anything a little good, it's that.

Erica Adkins (04:43):

Okay.

Mark Carter (04:45):

I need to ... So that's an area at church. Probably we've talked about, it is a must and it's also a goal. So the leadership development engine of our church needs revamped and we're working on that this month. And so there's a plan for the whole year of making that go better. But that's got to be one of my primaries. For that work, it can't be a tertiary. It's got to be a primary. When I think about home life, some of the goals that it's like, nothing goes necessarily wrong if I don't improve this, but improving it would be better. There's just some financial education and some things that I'm doing to just get better at doing the money thing over the years. And this is one of those years I'm like, "Yeah, this is an opportunity. I feel God's fire to do this. I'm going to keep moving in this direction." And so that was one of the ones I picked.

Erica Adkins (05:35):

Yeah, that's good. I think one of the things about this question is, question number four was, "what are the greatest opportunities?" And then question number five kind of funnels that down to, "okay, what's the must?" And now this really is like, all right, we've looked at it all, we're choosing this, now this is kind of more the how and putting feet to the road.

Mark Carter (05:59):

This Is the direction.

Erica Adkins (06:00):

Yes. This is now where we're going. Why is it important to limit your focus only on one or two things, Mark, and really getting these, picking one or two areas?

Mark Carter (06:10):

Yeah. I think because life is so complex and leadership can be very invigorating and exciting. And so if you don't decide now or sometime where you have distance from it, you're going to keep doing all the things. Something has got to be A and here's where you're deciding what is A. Otherwise, you're going to be confused because when you get to D later in the year, it's going to feel like an A. It's moving, it's maybe solving a little bit of a problem. And so that's even okay if you go do a little bit of that, but you don't want to confuse that as an A, that's a D and this is A. Yes. You know what I'm saying?

Erica Adkins (06:49):

Yep.

Mark Carter (06:51):

I think also there's a guilt that comes when you're not doing everything, you Know what

(06:56)
I'm saying? And you have everything to do. And so there's got to be some category or some bucket in your head where you're like, these are not A's. These are great, but I don't have to feel bad about this because I'm telling myself right now, those are not A's. So when they come along, it's like, "oh, that'd be nice. We'll see what we can do as long as I can still do A."

Speaker 4 (07:15):

Yeah, that's good.

Mark Carter (07:16):

I think that pressure when you haven't done that, that's a lot of psychic RAM that you're using up. I also think about how to solve those problems in addition to just the normal problems. And this is what I've done wrong often. I've taken away from my majors to do minors that either someone else could do or didn't need to be done at all. Or even if it'd be nice if they were done, that helps three people who want me to solve the problem instead of, this is really a better investment of my time because it helps a lot more people than that.

Erica Adkins (07:50):

That's good. That's good. So again, we've got all these different things. Every last one of us has a billion different things that we could put energy to. How do you choose between several good things? We talked about this a little bit in the last two episodes, but really-

Mark Carter (08:09):

You may be in an environment or a place where that's chosen for you. Like you're an employee, this is what you're going to do. And so hey, at least it's easy to know, but one is calling. And I think you should be pursuing this over life of like, God, what are you calling me to do? What's that target? We're going in this leader lab process this month. And one of our projects, one of the projects we do with leaders is, okay, we're going to make you a visual map of like, this is your calling, this is what you're supposed to do, this is problem. As you understand in this state of life, these are the things And Getting clear about your calling or your gifts or the things God annoints for you, it just says "no" to a lot of other things if you're really going to do those a ton. So it is choosing the things that you're called to do and you can do and that would help the team or the family or the organization.

Erica Adkins (09:07):

We maybe already answered this, but how does it actually protect you from burnout to ask this question to what is the one or two areas only?

Mark Carter (09:17):

I think leaders just take a lot of pressure. I think they take a lot of pressure to ... Ministry's always coming at you. Ministry's never done.

Speaker 4 (09:24):

Yeah.

Mark Carter (09:24):

And so even when you do this process, you can still forget like by month three when you're on the ground and you're in it, you can just forget that, wait a minute, "I can't be doing everything and I definitely can't be giving 100% to everything." So when you get clear on this, it's really just self-regulation of like, "where am I taking a lot of weight on myself to get stuff done?" You got to take a certain amount of weight, but nobody can just go forever and be giving 100% to everything. And if you do, you're just going to be really miserable and really tired, and you're probably going to want to quit. And I think sometimes that's one of the outcomes is we've had people Try To jump ship because they're like, "I'll ever do is 'go.' " And most often it's not that we didn't try to tell them and warn them like, "Honey, you can't keep going that way."

Erica Adkins (10:20):

Right. That was an internal choice.

Mark Carter (10:21):

"You're trying to just do everything." And people got to learn the hard way sometimes. They got to get bloody a little bit, but that's the result too, is like you get panicked and you're like, "This life is too hard." And you just check out And Then you're out of ministry for three years... Which, Okay, take a break, but I'm just saying, was that the enemy totally getting you off balance so that he could just get you out, versus, oh yeah, you just needed a break.

Erica Adkins (10:48):

Yeah. I think as an admin, I have a little less pressure in my life because I'm not the one making the decisions. I'm receiving the decisions and executing, right? But I think one of the benefits of this is this almost becomes your leader and like don't hear that in the wrong way, but you can kind of go back to my calendar. Okay, well, the Lord and I decided these are the things I can put the rest of those on a list for later, but like these are the things. So it protected me from burnout because I'm singularly focused on the one or two things, versus allowing everything else to be a really loud voice that says, "do this and do this and do this. Nope, these are the two things the Lord has told me, I'm going to go."

Mark Carter (11:30):

And you brought up the calendar and that's one of the benefits of this entire process is, okay, now I remember what are the one or two things. And so now I can look at the calendar and put those things in the right places. So that means if there's a real big push for this thing around Easter time, I've got to make sure I don't have a bunch of stuff sucking life away from that Thing.

Mark Carter (11:50):

If I need to go train or we want to go send so- and-so and so- and-so to a conference on that particular thing because it's their one or two, well, we're putting that on the calendar. We know when they're gone, we know when that has to happen. For us to leverage our time, you may not be able to give 100%, or it may not be wise to give 100% to your thing every day, constantly, all year long, but there are certain seasons where now dude, you got to crush it and here you can pull back and rest a little bit and go a little slower.

Erica Adkins (12:21):

Yep. Where have you seen asking this question actually lead to success for you?

Mark Carter (12:28):

I think first, there's a better sense now for me of feeling like I'm actually doing the things God wants me to do versus just do everything. And it's not that the Lord didn't want me to do a bunch of stuff when we started years ago and there was just less people doing stuff, but I sense the joy of God that I'm more on mission for me and I'm not just maintaining like a-

Erica Adkins (12:53):

Hamster wheel. ...

Mark Carter (12:54):

Hamster wheel. Yeah. You can just get in like that's what you're doing and it even feels like that. And that can be depressing of like, I just go on the same day every day. I think when you know I'm doing the things, Jesus and I, we've talked about this, we had a lot of time, we're synced, these are the things I'm supposed to be doing That's an area that it has definitely helped me.

(13:16)
It also, it helps you get better at stuff. So like if I know these are my one or two, that I can be like, "I'm gonna put a lot of time in that and I'm going to see God grow that. " And this is probably one of my biggest mistakes over the years is I love to work on God's Word. I love to be in God's Word and preach a thick message and that kind of thing. And there was just different points over the years where people were just, they were distracting for things that weren't really very helpful to the organization.

Erica Adkins (13:51):

Mark Carter (13:51):

It's Like, "Hey, can you come do this for me? Hey, can you come do this for me? " And it's not that I don't want to do stuff for them, I do. But when I take 2% away from my preaching, that made it 2% less good, You know what I'm Saying? Now if you multiply that times four, now it's 8% less good, because four people needed their little thing that was

Erica Adkins (14:12):

2%. And that's a B instead of an A now.

Mark Carter (14:14):

Exactly. Or it's a C because you did a whole Lot more, But I wasn't making the connection of like, "This Is hurting this. " And maybe that's a different way to think about it is like, when you do all these things, you're hurting this.

Erica Adkins (14:28):

Yeah.

Mark Carter (14:29):

I know most of you can't see us, you might be listening. So when you do all the lower priorities, that's hurting the major priorities if you're doing them too much.

Erica Adkins (14:40):

Yeah. Okay. What goes wrong, Mark, when we don't ask this question?

Mark Carter (14:48):

We get to the end of the year and nothing really changed Because We just did all the same things And We didn't think about it any smarter and these particular, we didn't move from here to there, we're still here. I think we dilute ourselves, and I don't mean this in a mean way, but we think activity was progress and that can be confusing because you got to keep sewing, like a lot of ministries just do sewing other seat, just do it again, just do it again. But if we don't ask this question, we're going to feel after a while like, "Man, I'm discouraged because nothing changes and it may be that nothing's going to change until you change what your number one, two, and three are Because You're trying to do one through seven And That's just ... "

(15:41)
The benefit of this process is you clarifying your own thinking four through seven are not one, two, and three. And that's really where we get into the next question is like, what's the next one? What's third or less important? Well, what's third and less important isn't the stuff that is most important. And So either you're not going to do it at all or it's going to be a very light touch.

Erica Adkins (16:04):

Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. Well, so that brings us in. We're going to shift a little bit because this is our episodes for questions six and seven. And if you have a junior higher, six, seven, sorry. It's just a thing that's going on right now. Got to say it. But these are kind of two sides of the same coin, right? So we've got the question of only taking ground in the first one and two, and then "what should come or what might be great. It could be neat, could be fun, but should really actually come in the second or third or even less importance."

Mark Carter (16:37):

And for me, so not everyone's like me, but for me, I can get excited about just about anything from a leadership perspective. If it makes anything better, I'm like, "Oh yeah, let's do it. " And if you don't clarify this and get in your head, what are the things that are less important, again, you're just going to be an impulse leader. You're going to create a space where everyone, if you're the leader, they're going to follow you what you do. They're going to try to do everything because you try to do everything. I mean, you've heard the example of where bird's all kind of flying a V, everyone's going the same direction. And if you are the lead bird and you're going all over the place, man, then they're-

Speaker 4 (17:22):

It's going To look like chaos

Mark Carter (17:24):

Yeah. There's a jarring nature to the culture. And so I think that teaches people to, "your calling is to just be helpful anywhere all the time." And that's not really true. God gave you spiritual gifts so you would do your gifts That's what you should primarily do. And that's what I should base my one and two on is where am I actually gifted?

Erica Adkins (17:52):

Yeah.

Mark Carter (17:53):

If I don't make the conscious choice, this is three or four, I'm just going to fight with them all year long.

Erica Adkins (18:00):

That's really good. I think back to our early stages, Mark, when we were kind of more of a young adult ministry before we became a church, and I think so much of your skillset is leadership development and preaching. The Lord has gifted you uniquely in those two. And when we started the church, we did this thing called Joshua's Army and we sat in your living room like 20 of us, tiny little living room, and we all grew exponentially in those days, and that was beautiful. And I think a lot of the health of our church when we started was because you did that well.

(18:36)
And when more recently, we haven't done that in a while because the focus had to shift for a little bit to get the church healthy and all of that. But I think we got away from the one and two things that you were amazingly excellent at and you're building that. As we're talking about Leader Lab, again, that's like a V5, much more improved version, I think, of what we did in the past.

(19:02)
But when we did that survey, the 15 year survey, that was one of the things that I just felt really passionate about is like, "Yeah, dude, Mark, you got to get back to that leadership development and the discipleship characteristics that you are uniquely gifted at." And so as a leader, slowing down to think about what am I uniquely gifted at? You might be a mouthpiece and the Lord really wants to use your mouth. You might be an ear and the Lord really wants to use you as an ear. You're trying to be a mouth and you're not going to be effective at that because that's not how God built you. And so what are the one or two things first and then actually what are the lesser things and prioritizing them well, separating them well.

Mark Carter (19:44):

And I would tell you, I mean, I think that's a great example of getting this wrong. So I think in the past few years, this is now, leadership development for us, a new system is now a must. Now the thing's on fire. And you're right that that giftedness is there. If I would have been more focused on this and COVID jacked with our thinking about everything. But even so, if I would have started in 2022 of like, "Hey, look, this is what I know I'm gifted at. This is what I should be ... I shouldn't be doing all these other things. I should be doing this. " I didn't ask this question in time back then to make that the more important thing. So that's a big miss now.

Erica Adkins (20:28):

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that with this, how does naming those lower priority goals prevent guilt?

Mark Carter (20:37):

Yeah. I think you still have to do the mental discipline of thinking this through, because I think the enemy's always going to come and try to bring you guilt, and he's always going to say you're responsible for everything, and if anybody's sad about anything, that's your fault.

Erica Adkins (20:49):

It's your fault.

Mark Carter (20:53):

But I think when you define what's not the win, the real highest win, then you just know to say no to that when it comes along. So we've talked about this recently with some of the pastors in our church. It can be really easy as a pastor to think your job is to fix people's problems or like, "Here's something really wise you can do in this situation."

Mark Carter (21:16):

And We've just had to come back to the reality, that's not what a pastor's win is. A pastor's win is to equip that person with God's Word, whatever God's word says about that trial. It's not for me to get them out of the trial. If it's possible, praise God. But if I'm entering that interaction with the not really my number one of fixing their problem versus equipping them with the Word, I'm getting the wrong answer. I'm probably stressing myself out because I'm trying to fix their problem, which I ain't God, dude. I can't do that. You know what I'm saying? And so that's just having the wrong understanding of, "what am I entering this to do." I'm entering with a three or seven or not even possible goal instead of getting clarity on ...

(22:05)
In other words, what we should have said is, "Hey, here's what's not the win. Here's what's not one or two, getting them out of their problem." Here's what it is. It's helping them process life through God's Word and cling to it.

Erica Adkins (22:18):

And that helps you interact so much more healthily and wisely because you're, "Oh, okay, that's not what I'm supposed to be doing. I can do this. "

Mark Carter (22:26):

Yeah.

Erica Adkins (22:27):

That's good.

Mark Carter (22:27):

Plus, I mean, just on a sidelight, that tremendously, I think it messes with your own self-perception and their perception. You're not a Messiah, dude. You know what I'm saying? There's one Jesus. You're to point to him and not just fix their problem, and then point to him. It is, well, this is how disciples do it. They greed God's word and they go to God's word and they get a hold of God.

Erica Adkins (22:50):

Yep. And I think, so if you're not in the ministry world, how I would maybe equate that for you a little bit is, not getting distracted by all the other things that people bring you, keeping your priorities one and two, because you don't have to solve the problem of your workers. If they bring it to you, again, equipping them with the tools that they need, but they go solve that. Their number one does not need to become your number one on that day because of their urgent error.

Mark Carter (23:20):

And I think maybe just to pan out and talk about, because what we're talking about really is building the calendar, it's building the schedule. I don't want to imply that we shouldn't take interruptions or that we shouldn't. God makes your day different than you planned it. And That's just fine.

(23:39)
So it's not that you're not interruptable. It's not that you don't go help with this thing or, "Oh, I just found about that. I'm going to go help that. " It's that in the plan of the year, the primary things you're doing are one and twos and not spending a lot of time doing a bunch of four through sevens that really just, this was not God's wisest way for you to handle the calendar this Year.

Erica Adkins (24:03):

Yeah. That's really good. I think we're kind of alluding to this already, but what do you put in this bucket? What are some things, how would you choose that they would be three, four, five, or six on the list of importance?

Mark Carter (24:23):

Yeah. One, if it's ... I'm old enough now in the Lord, to be sure I've got so far to go, but I'm old enough now in the Lord to just know there's certain things I'm just not anointed to do. You know what I'm saying? I just know that's not going to go well if I say yes to that thing. And so I'm not going to try to do that. So if it's a non-gifted area, I'm not going to do that. If it requires a lot of organization for the sake of being organized, I just know-

Erica Adkins (24:53):

That's not your gift mix.

Mark Carter (24:55):

Everyone will hate that. Everyone will be frustrated. So I think level one is just like, "what do you know you're not great at?" And you got to have time, you got to grow and figure that out. I don't think you necessarily just know that when you're 21, but that's one is, "what am I definitely not good at?" Okay, that's in the bucket.

Erica Adkins (25:18):

What about like, "it's only going to improve it by this much?"

Mark Carter (25:22):

Yeah. Or even if I do it, it's tremendously depleting. So I can do it. It's Not that it won't even be good. It's just that it's tremendously depleting.

Erica Adkins (25:37):

It's going to sap too much out of you to pull it off.

Mark Carter (25:39):

Right.

Erica Adkins (25:39):

Okay.

Mark Carter (25:39):

Yeah. I can figure it out. I can go online and I can watch a video, but I hate it every moment. You know what I'm saying?

Erica Adkins (25:46):

grates against you?

Mark Carter (25:47):

Yeah.

Erica Adkins (25:47):

Yeah.

Mark Carter (25:48):

Okay. And I think it keeps you from empowering other people. So one of the benefits of finding your three, four, five, six, and seven is you know what you actually need to empower someone else to do.

Erica Adkins (26:00):

These become delegations Maybe?

Mark Carter (26:03):

Ideally.

Erica Adkins (26:03):

Yeah.

Mark Carter (26:04):

Yeah. And that's not always possible in life, but that's a little clue of like, this is where I need support. These things do need to happen. And so for me, that means go back to the drawing board and how do we create systems so those things do happen with really gifted people and I'm not taking 2% away from my majors.

Erica Adkins (26:25):

Yeah. No, that's really good. So Mark, how do you help staff and volunteers embrace the idea that not everything can be urgent, not everything can be the number one and number two?

Mark Carter (26:36):

So this is a minor drawback of having really ferocious, awesome people. The ferocious, awesome people are just, dude, they will work you under the table. They're Just ready to go.

(26:49)
Yep, yep. Having those people, they're going to work.

Mark Carter (26:54):

They're just going to find a way to do it. You know this, this is your whole life. We feel good. We feel a little bit high if we're getting stuff done. So for those people, though, you can say it and they don't really totally hear you, but you got to keep telling them, "not everything can be urgent." Then I think also as hopefully as a leader, you can come alongside and say, "Hey, just want to remind you, not everything needs to be urgent. What are you working on right now? What can we deprioritize?" I think another helpful question I feel like goes well is, "how can I take pressure off you today?" And then I bring something up and I can just reshape that of like, "Well, that's good, but how about we just don't even do that? Or, "Let's just do that later."

Erica Adkins (27:36):

You did that for me a few weeks ago and that was so helpful because I was in a tizzy and felt all of this pressure to do all of these things and you're like, "Yeah, that can get kicked next week. That's okay."

Mark Carter (27:47):

And probably having a chill attitude. So I've been under leaders, you've been under leaders where everything is like they're a little freaked, they're a little irritated, freaked out, like panicked, Everything's Going to go wrong here in a second. And I think if that's the case in the kingdom, that's okay, but you got to press into Jesus and like grow that a little bit.

(28:10)
If you're a leader in the kingdom, you want to be growing in peace. You want to be the person you walk in the room, people calm down because they feel like this is going to get better in a minute.

Erica Adkins (28:19):

Wow, that's good. I think another thing that you do really well with your teams and your direct reports is checking in and helping them crystallize again their top two and, "Oh, okay, that's a cool idea. Let's leave that on the whiteboard for now. Let's come back in. " So you have a lot of different types of personalities on your teams, so how has that gone well for you to do these check-ins?

Mark Carter (28:46):

I think the hard part of that. So it's great to do it, and it's even fun to do it most of the time. What's hard is when you have to say no. And when you have real ferocious people, they don't always like to hear no, you know what I'm saying? Because they're jazzed about this thing. And so come alongside and just saying, "dude, this is why there is this process, the one, two, three, four. You think this is a one and you're excited about it and you're stoked. I'm just telling you that's not really your one or your two and you're going to take 20% from your one if you do this right now." So that's a challenge, but I think it's also the right thing. I think people need to, we all need to, even the workhorses among us need to get loose and flexible and we're led through our leaders and they have wisdom hopefully from the Lord.

(29:43)
And so you got to say it, you got to check in with them, you got to say no from time to time. Yeah.

Erica Adkins (29:51):

That's good. That's really good. What is maybe one neat, great idea that often tempts leaders to over commit?

Mark Carter (30:01):

So I mean this sweetly.

Erica Adkins (30:05):

Here comes the smack-down. I'm just kidding.

Mark Carter (30:10):

It's right hearted in one sense because people want to please Jesus. They just like, if this pleases Him, 50% more, please Him 50% more, which isn't really true. So I think there is a right heart of like, I want to please Jesus, but there can also just be a pride, dude. You need to be encouraged. You need to hear, "atta boy," "atta girl," from time to time. But you don't need it so much that you're like, "yeah, look at me." You don't need a swagger with it. You know what I'm saying? So I think one of the reasons people take stuff on is just because they're like, oh, I can do it. I can do it. And that's really, that may be pride and you might just want to check that out.

Erica Adkins (30:54):

Yep.

Mark Carter (30:54):

Because the Lord withdraws from from the proud, Which Means you're on your own baby.

Erica Adkins (30:59):

Yep. Yeah. Okay. So over committing isn't wise. Having too much on your back is not smart.

Mark Carter (31:10):

Right. And then we've talked about it a little bit, but it's a people-pleasing attitude. It is just someone wants something. Someone mentions something in staff meeting. I got to pull that off. Just having real crystal clear communication. I'm asked by Jesus to serve and help the people around me and the people in our church. But when you have a people-pleaser-spirit, you're taking pressure from every direction. And that like you got to have more of a stout heart, you got to have a calloused heart inside. This is, that's a tough problem. Good luck. I'll pray for you. Not in a cruel way, just in a ... God's got stuff for everybody to do. Everybody gets trials and you got to go through your trials.

Erica Adkins (31:54):

Yep. And I think that like we've kind of mentioned Nehemiah, but keeping those top two things, the top two things are like Nehemiah saying, "I'm doing the good work. I can't come down." Your three, four, five, six, and seven ideas are great. Cool. But this is the job that I need to do and I cannot pull my attention from it to do a lesser thing for what God has called me to do. Right?

Mark Carter (32:21):

And I think that might be a solution sometimes is to be able to tell people, "Hey, I can't come down. If you need me to do that, then you can't do that."

Mark Carter (32:32):

If you only need my encouragement to do it, then yeah, I'll encourage you from time to time, but mostly I'll just challenge you to do it. So it's a more hands-off leadership. It is a, for you, this doesn't necessarily matter that this gets done on time, but you're not like ... You can just be like a mentor or a helper to too many people for things that aren't your ball. And I just think there's a distinction between my advice and my encouragement, my consultantness is helpful versus you can't do this without me, which really means I have one more thing to do.

Erica Adkins (33:07):

Yeah. That's good. I think, okay. It's good to ... Again, all of these questions are helping us to crystallize, "God, what do you have for me? What is your plan for my life, for my organization, for my people?" And these help to get that in your brain in the right way so you can move forward and be an effective steward of what he's given you to do.

Mark Carter (33:36):

Yeah.

Erica Adkins (33:38):

All right. So again, we're these two ideas. Question six. "If you could only take around in those one or two areas, would they be?" Question number seven, "what would be neat, great, become in third or less importance?" Mark, with these two tensions in mind, do you have any other final thoughts that you want us to consider?

Mark Carter (33:54):

Yeah, I would encourage and challenge everybody. It's okay to be blurry about this from time to time. You know what I'm saying? Life's coming at you quick. And I think it's the discipline of getting out and asking the question, which is just really important. It's less important even just to get it perfect. It's more important just to get the question, plus it produces connection with the Lord. I really just would challenge everybody, the earlier in life you can do it, you can waste a lot of time working on a bunch of stuff that isn't really necessarily your top things. And I don't want to put anybody in fear about that. I'm just saying, do it soon so that you're working on the right things.

Erica Adkins (34:39):

Yeah. That's really, really good. It's good. All right guys, we have one more question left to finish up our series on The Discipline of Pausing. So come back and join us for question number eight: "What does this make possible?"

Mark Carter (34:53):

Yiddy up. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Hey, if this was helpful, would you consider liking and sharing, putting it places where other people who need this kind of content are going to find it? Also, you may know that we have a lot of other places you can find our stuff, TikTok, Instagram, all the things. So go ahead and check those out in places where you're going to be anyway, and don't forget to lead strong today.