For mother’s day, my wife wanted me to order a Wii Fit. It didn’t like having to make my wife wait a bit for the bulk of her mother’s day present – but she was generously patient and we picked up our pre-ordered Wii Fit on Wednesday this week. All I can say is, “This thing is cool.” The balance games, Yoga instruction, and aerobic activities are all very helpful and even (dare I say it) enjoyable. Yes, we realize that we’re using a video game system as an exercise partner – but I’m a geek, what do you want?

Nintendo put a lot of thought into this product, and it shows. The best example of the wisdom put into developing the Wii Fit is the idea of setting goals. As any fitness trainer will tell you, setting obtainable goals is an important aspect to attaining (and maintaining) physical health. Set the goals to lofty, and you’ll get discouraged. Set the goals to vaguely, and you’ll stall. Wii Fit encourages it’s users to set goals for achieving a healthy Body Mass Index – and helps you get there with proper encouragement (positive or negative as the need arises). I set my first goal on Wednesday, and because I have a marker in sight – I find myself wanting to get there.

Contrast this with the common resolution of “getting in shape.” What does that mean? What’s the actual goal? How will you achieve it? Questions like this are so often left unanswered, because if we answered them then we’d have to change our behavior! Not surprisingly, most people never “get in shape.” Well defined goals are essential to healthy living.

This is true for more than just physical health, however – think of all the small congregations out there which have no goals at all other than, “we want to stay open.” How will they achieve this goal? Is it even a goal worth having? These congregations never answer these questions – and, not surprisingly, always end up in closure (or hovering near it). It’s been a struggle convincing people at Central that well defined (and achievable) goals are not only good, they are necessary for the health of the community! When people are pressed for specific goals – they most often answer with a vague, “Well, we want to be loving.” Or something akin to this statement. This is true across the gamut of ages and backgrounds in this fellowship – ambiguity in setting goals means that people are “off the hook” in actually trying to achieve them, and this leads to greater and greater sickness in the community.

The trick, however, is turning. Just like the Wii Fit has done for my family’s exercise goals, there are people in the Central Baptist Community who are now specific goals, and taking steps to get there. Even, gasp, holding people accountable to the tasks they would undertake to achieve the goals! It’s an amazing concept.

The trick is, however, getting people to understand that while we can celebrate the achievement of our short-term goals they are not the end of our Journey (just like when I achieve my first goal it won’t be the end of my Wii Fit journey). Rather, all of our short-term goals are part of a deeper pursuit of Jesus – his will and his Kingdom. Our goals are merely the outworking of the shared discipleship journey we are all on together. If we can keep our goals as a community and the goal of our faith tightly woven together (with our goals subordinated to Jesus’ goal), we can see some marvelous things happen among us.

Indeed, we already are.