Everybody has a different barometer for what success is.  Success to me is that I have raised up some leaders around me who look at life differently, who begin to have life lived through an eternal focus rather than just “how much money do I make,” or “how big the sign is on the front door of my office.”

To many people, quite honestly, success means they’ve grown a youth group to a certain size and have obtained some degree of a few people around them thinking they’re a good youth pastor.  But don’t allow yourself to get comfortable.  I see people do it all the time.  They reach a level, whether it’s 100 people in the youth group, 1,000 people in the youth group, traveling and speaking or getting “x” for a salary and consider themselves successful.  I have never allowed those superficial markers to become places where I’ve set up camp and sat down.  I enjoy myself to savor them, and you’re wrong not to.  But I keep saying to myself, “Lord, how can I be more for You?”

I want to come into Heaven and be emptied out for the cause of the Gospel.  Not burned out, but emptied out.  I want to feel like I really left it all on the field.  So true success for me is just staying hungry.  Not so much for the tapestry of success, but for growth.  I never cease to be hungry to grow.

My prayer for you is that you will reach for true success in this new year…and find it.