A Game for All Christians

So I just got back from a men's conference with Campus Crusade for Christ. It was basically one of the best conferences I've been at; I had fellowship with men from across the upper midwest, got to see some of the men from summer project(!), and learned about how to be an authentic man of God. I also got to step on the Timberwolves' new practice court before they did (they had just finished it earlier that day) and spent hours outside in a snowstorm wearing shorts! A good time was definitely had.

Anyway, after getting back I had a lot on my mind. Most pressingly, I had realized that all the stress and busyness of this semester had really been distracting me from God and derailing the relationship with Him I built this summer. How could I bring the craziness of my life "together under one head"? (Ephesians 1:10) Then suddenly a fully-formed and brilliant idea sprung into my head (possibly the spiritual gift of wisdom at work). I came up with a cross between a life inventory and a pen-and-paper game.

It's pretty simple. Take a piece of paper. On the top, write your overarching goal in life. (I put "God's Kingdom", but you could put other similar things like "Glorifying God" and the like. I suppose non-Christians who have a defining life goal could also do this to see how consistent they are.) From this overarching goal, maybe write some broad applications below it (like deepening your walk with God or improving your witness) and connect them. You can have subgoals inside of goals and all that. Then, on the bottom of the page, write the things you do, as many as you can think of. My (incomplete) paper looks like this:

The goal of them game is, while being as honest with yourself as possible, to connect all the things on the bottom of the page with the goals on the top of the page. Use links (subgoals) if necessary. Hopefully it will be surprisingly convicting--if something on the top of the page doesn't connect with anything on the bottom, then maybe you aren't doing something in your walk with God that you should. If something on the bottom doesn't connect to the top, then you should think about why you're doing it at all. I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, just help you evaluate how you're living your life in relation to the mission God has called you to. I have no idea if this will help or not, but I think it's a cool idea.