Every year, I make a lofty, lengthy list of resolutions for the next 12 months: habits I want to form, skills I want to learn, and goals I want to accomplish. And on December 31, I look back at what I promised myself I'd accomplish and see how close I came. Some years it goes great, other years...well, you'll see for yourself.
So without further ado, here's the scorecard for 2021's resolutions!
1. 1. Translate one Old Testament verse and one Greek verse every day
I made an honest effort at this one in January, only to realize that my facility at Greek has gone from novice to beginner and that at Hebrew it's gone from beginner to 'well, I know what shalom means, but that's about it.'
So pretty quickly I adapted this resolution, promising myself I'd spend 15 minutes per day on languages: studying vocabulary flashcards, reading through my old Greek and Hebrew textbooks, or painstakingly parsing short verses. At 15 minutes a day, I figured I'd be back at the level of a seminary student by the end of the year.
Maybe I would have been if I'd stuck with it. But by March, this resolution had bit the dust.
Score: 0 out of 10
2. Read one systematic theology ✔
Over the years, I've accumulated a decent collection of systematic theologies, the kinds of opuses that scholars spend their entire careers thinking through and writing. They look great on a shelf, no doubt about it. But they're also intimidating—so much so that I own far more than I've read. So I resolved that, over the course of 365 days, I'd wade through at least one of these tomes.
My choice was Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, arguably the most famous of them all (unless you count Paul's Epistle to the Romans.) At 5 pages per day, I made it through the first 200 pages in no time and was well on my way to finishing by the summer.
Then I got lazy. Weeks would go by with that big ol' two-volume set mocking me from my bookshelf, daring me to pick up where I left off. So when Thanksgiving rolled around, I decided it was time to get serious. And at a rate of 45 pages per day during the month of December, I finished the 1,521st page yesterday morning, December 31.
What did I learn? What did I think? Check back in a couple days, when I post my December reading log!
Score: 1 out of 10
3. Spend 30 minutes writing each day
I literally gave up on this one on January 1. Not January 2. January 1.
The most frustrating thing about that is that this particular resolution was an adaptation of one I'd been habitually failing to accomplish for years: writing a book. And ironically, I did write a book this year, a collection of daily Advent devotionals. Alas, for the first time since beginning this annual exercise, writing a book was not the stated resolution. Simply put, I outsmarted myself. No points.
Score: 1 out of 10
4. Read or listen to 5 sermons per week
I'm tempted to give myself half credit on this one, because well into the spring I was still doing this. Every morning I'd find a podcast or YouTube video of a favorite preacher—Charlie Dates, Alistair Begg, Fred Craddock, MLK, Beth Moore, etc.—and listen to a sermon during my morning run.
Unfortunately, my runs started getting more and more inconsistent as the weather got warmer, and by the summer both my runs around the neighborhood and my discipline for this resolution had gone out the window.
I want to give myself half credit for that determined start. But 3 months out of 12 is not 50%.
Score: 1 out of 10
5. Educate myself about hip hop and country music
This resolution came out of an interest in both genres at the tail end of 2021—the former a long-festering curiosity, the latter entirely the result of watching Ken Burns' Country Music documentary. I figured I'd spent the year reading about these two uniquely American musical genres, watching more documentaries, and, of course, listening to a lot of music.
If you were to look at my bookshelf or my iTunes library, you'd assume I followed through on this resolution. Alas, purchasing the necessary media is not the same as putting them to use. For all my curiosity about hip hop and country, I rarely did even the most basic legwork of listening to a song or two throughout the day.
I've acquired everything I need to fulfill this resolution. Just need to, you know, do it.
Score: 1 out of 10
6. Become a coffee snob
Every morning, I wake up to the sound of fresh coffee beans grinding. The living room is filled with a toasty, malty smell, courtesy of Austin's Cuvée Emporium blend. I pour myself half a cup—I drink it black, no flavoring need—and lovingly, slowly sip it as I start my reading for the day.
Sounds like the behavior of a coffee snob, right? I can put a checkmark next to this resolution, right? Wrong. This was my exact routine a year ago. I changed precisely nothing.
The goal was to go deep on coffee snobbery: to buy a French press, learn how to make a pourover, familiarize myself with where the best beans come from, that kind of thing. Instead, I stuck with the same grind-and-brew machine Lindsey and I got as a wedding present 11 years ago.
But can I let you in on a little secret? I'm kind of fine with it. Our Cuisinart isn't as cool as the glass Chemex you see on sale at your local hipster coffee shop, but it's plenty good for me. Sure beats a Keurig, I promise you that.
Score: 1 out of 10
7. Plan and reflect upon each day
Every self-improvement video on YouTube insists you should start the day with a written plan and end the day by journaling about that plan. And they're probably right—I mean, it sure sounds like a good idea.
But I ran into two problems with this one. First, the nature of pastoring is that your plan for the day gets dashed to pieces by 10:00 AM at least once a week—all it takes is one phone call to make a study day into a day spent in a hospital waiting room. Second, I'm just not a journaler by nature, never have been. I can log activities all day long, but pouring out my innermost thoughts on paper has never come naturally to me nor been something I seemed to get much out of.
I still think there's something to be said for this resolution, but it's likely to be something I do more informally moving forward, not something I commit to paper.
Score: 1 out of 10
8. Put my phone down
"That's right, children, Daniel made this resolution every year without fail until the day he died. And legend has it, if you listen to the wind on cold nights, you can still hear him whispering, "This year I'm going to be more present and less focused on screens.'"
Score: 1 out of 10
9. Do one nice thing for Lindsey every day
At the beginning of the year, I wrote every date of the year in my journal so I could write down the nice thing I'd done that day for Lindsey. Seeing all those blank dates was my path to accountability on this resolution, my way of ensuring I wouldn't neglect this important daily task.
...at least until I feel woefully behind and finally gave up. Then those 5 pages in my journal became an annoying, ever-present reminder that I wasn't going to hit 100% on 2022's resolutions. Not even close, as it turned out.
Doing nice things daily for your spouse remains a good idea. But the reason I'm leaving it off the list for 2023 is something I discovered this year: it's easy to become legalistic and make it more about checking the box than actually showing kindness. Better, I think, to engage in this practice organically and thoughtfully rather than as a daily requirement.
Score: 1 out of 10
10. Say what I mean and mean what I say
Ok, this one stings a little. I resolved that in 2022 I was going to be braver with my speech, less worried about people's opinion of me than about being honest. It was a well-intentioned resolution, written so that I wouldn't fall prey to the temptation of being a politician instead of a preacher.
The problem is that choosing your words carefully is an inherent part of being a pastor. My job is to rightly handle the Word of truth, and to do that means exercising some degree of caution. Furthermore, I have to deal with people, including in times of stress and conflict—and the last thing anybody needs in that situation is for the pastor to be reckless with his words or make an anxious moment more fraught with an ill-advised comment.
I'd say there's still room for me to abide by the original sentiment of this resolution, to preach more fearlessly and worry more about my integrity than about people's perception of me. But "say what I mean and mean what I say," straightforward as it sounds, is easier said than done. Better sometimes to be careful than frank.
Score: 1 out of 10
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Final Score: 1 out of 10, or 10%. Let's see how that stacks up against previous years:
2018- 8.5 out of 13, or 65%.
2019- 3 out of 13, or 23%.
2020- 5.5 out of 13, or 42%.
2021- 4 out of 9, or 44%
So yeah, 10% is a big yikes, an all-time low. However good my intentions were going into 2022, I clearly lacked the plan and the will to turn those intentions into action. Honestly, given how busy and tumultuous 2022 was, I'm not particularly surprised at the low score. But I am embarrassed by it.
Learning from the past year, my resolutions for 2023 will be SMARTer (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound). Tune back in tomorrow to see what those resolutions will be!
