How To Make Decisions

“The most eternally creative thing you can do is make a decision.” – Dave Miller

Here are a few principles to help you make decisions. Church is two or more gathered [Matthew 18:20] centered around Christ, to acknowledge His authority and presence, discerning and declaring the will of God, making decisions for the Kingdom, declaring those decisions and acting on them corporately.¹ Always start (and complete) the decision making process with our hearts – affections, our minds – attitudes, our souls – ambition, our strength – activity,² centered on Christ. Unless you just want to build your church, instead of His.

Remove fear.

Fear of what people will think, fear of what it will take to do what the decision implies, or fear of making the wrong decision are always bad motivators and will cloud your decision. Fear = Fog. Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real. It will mess you up. Go ahead, imagine what it feels like to make a decision without the weight of “what will they think?” attached to it. I couldn’t help but grin either.

Make sure you clarify what decision you’re making and which ones you are not making.

Decisions always impact other things, but it’s important to not try and make all the decisions that will be affected by a single decision at the same time. It will immobilize you. Just imagine shopping at the grocery store for the next 175 meals in a single shopping trip. Hope you like Spam.

Identify what’s making it a difficult decision

There’s something intoxicating about problem solving that is so detrimental to decision making. Don’t confuse decision making with problem solving.³ Sometimes when I am trying to make a decision, I’ll stop and back up from all the processing I’ve been doing and I’ll listen for the answer that I’ve kinda known God was giving me, but I was mentally debating because I didn’t understand, like, or know how it would work.  If you had to say (ignoring any implications of the decision) what you think God’s saying about the decision…what would it be if you had to make a call right now?

Decide how long of a time frame each decision should take to make. (5 minutes or 5 months?)

Some decisions take time. Some don’t. Some leaders can make decisions quickly. Some can’t. Neither is always right/wrong. Agreeing at the start how long a decision needs to take will help everyone. There’s a freedom in knowing that even though this decision will take 2 months to make, that end date gives hope and forward motion. Never delay a decision that should be made quickly. It’ll be like that email that you didn’t want to respond to right away, that somehow ended up way down in your inbox only to be discovered months later. Never rush a decision that needs time. You can nuke a steak, but it’ll get hard and you’ll feel discomfort in your stomach.

If it’s a complex decision, simplify it by breaking it into several decisions.

It’s the same principle of eating the elephant (How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.)

Filter the decision through your core purpose, your WHY, the big picture.

Every decision. That’s not an overstatement. Every decision should support your WHY. Even if it seems insignificant, or the exception, or your really want it. If it doesn’t support what you’ve decided you’re about, don’t do it. On the contrary, if it does support your WHY, make sure you clearly share that when you communicate the decision.

Congratulations!

So how do you make decisions?

¹Concept from Keith Yoder, Teaching The Word Ministries, ²Verbiage from Myron Augsburger 1968, Faith for a Secular World ³Concept from Doug Fike

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