In 2023, the Texas Rangers won the World Series after 51 years of mostly mediocre baseball and not a few moments of devastating heartbreak. In 2023, my family went on a few fun trips to Phoenix, Chicago, and the Pacific Northwest and made some joyful memories there. In 2023, Lindsey and I welcomed our third child, Isaac Lynn Camp, to the world.
Unfortunately, those are pretty much the only things I will treasure from 2023. It was NOT a good year for me. If you know, you know.
As a result, I thought about not posting my annual New Year's Resolutions Scorecard, or at least shortchanging you with something so brief it would barely be worth reading. But leaving a blank page here feels like it would be giving 2023 one last win, a perpetual black mark that would annoy my in 2024 and beyond, every time I posted a new set of resolutions or reviewed the previous year's.
So I'm doing the thing. The score will not be good. But that's how accountability works—sometimes you celebrate your victories, and sometimes you sit with your defeats. Here's how I did with my resolutions for 2023.
1. Pray for and contact every resident member of my church every month.
I started strong here: I made a spreadsheet, tracked my progress, and shared it all with our deacon body for the sake of accountability. But by the spring I'd fallen behind on the task, and by the time the first crisis of the year rolled around, I'd given up entirely.
Look for me to revise and revisit this resolution in 2024. My heart was in the right place and I need to give this another go.
Score: 0 out of 10
2. Listen to 350 albums.
I tracked every album I listened to into the month of October, and was up to 202 when I finally decided there was no way I was going to get to 350. Between that dedication to the task and the number reached, I'm comfortable giving myself half credit here.
In retrospect, 350 was WAY too much unless I was willing to toss podcasts (my primary source of audio entertainment) aside entirely, which I wasn't. An album a day doesn't sound too ambitious at first glance, but when you have almost no commute, it winds up being a pretty steep hill to climb.
A summary of my listening for 2023: in the Year of Taylor, I listened to T-Swift's entire discography for the first time. I did the same thing for the Beatles, Switchfoot, Kanye West, Metallica, and a few other artists. I tried to go through the complete works of Willie Nelson and the Rolling Stones before getting overwhelmed by the volume. Lots of classic rock, less hip-hop than I expected, a lot of country in the summer months, and, like for most people, a noticeable tendency to gravitate toward the music I liked when I was 16 years old.
Score: 0.5 out of 10
3. Exercise 6 days per week.
Tempted to give myself half credit again.
Going into 2023, I had gone from being a runner (3 miles a day, multiple half marathons under my belt, even one full marathon) to an essentially sedentary lifestyle. Faced with that decline, I resolved to run every other day and to go to the local gym on non-running days, with Sunday as a rest day.
When it comes to the running, I reached my goal. After redownloading and working through the C25K app, I am back to running 2-3 miles without breaks, and I do so 3 times a week like clockwork. Rain or shine, my neighbors know I'll be out there at 6:30 AM pounding the pavement. Success!
But when it comes to the gym, I had fully given up by the fall. As it turns out, I still hate going to the gym. I hate the time it takes out of my day, I hate the monotony of the exercises, I hate watching muted episodes of First Take on the TV. I just really hate the gym. So by September, I made it official and stopped going entirely.
Ok, now that I've typed that all out, this feels like the definition of half credit. I am once again a runner, so mission accomplished on that end. And I have completely abandoned any idea that I would go to the gym on days when I'm not running. Sounds to me like I accomplished exactly half of this goal.
Score: 1 out of 10
4. Carry a journal everywhere. And use it.
Without fail, I now carry a Field Notes journal in my back pocket everywhere I go. When I'm sitting at my desk, my journal is never out of reach. And when going to a meeting, I always walk in with that same notebook and pen in hand.
But am I jotting down as much as I planned to? Not exactly.
My intention with this resolution was to make my journal(s) an extension of my brain, to fill up several notebooks with random musings, lists, ideas, etc. In reality, I kept far more thoughts to myself than I was willing to commit to pen and paper.
There's a lot of room for improvement on this front, but I made a concerted effort all year long. Half credit.
Score: 1.5 out of 10
5. Cut my iPhone screen time to 2 hours per day.
This is a resolution I was conscious of all year long. Unfortunately, being aware of a goal is not the same thing as reaching it.
It turns out, 2 hours is not a lot of screen time in 2023. When your phone is your GPS, your music player, your portable encyclopedia, a library of reading material, your primary means of communication, and an intentionally addictive toy, it's incredibly hard to keep your screen time under 2 hours without constant vigilance.
So there was a pretty typical pattern every week in 2023: I'd have 5 or so days per week where my screen time would be between 100 and 130 minutes, right in line with my goal. But then it would all be spoiled by that other day or two in the week, the one where after a long day I'd sit in bed vegging in front of TikTok or YouTube for an hour.
I'm tempted to give myself half credit on this resolution, since mindfulness is half the battle in reducing screen time. But after charting my progress all year long, the reality is that I didn't see much improvement, just a lot of guilt—I'm just the smoker who perpetually says he'll quit next week. Expect a slightly revised version of this resolution to reappear in 2024.
Score: 1.5 out of 10
6. Learn how to use Photoshop.
The idea here was to take advantage of what was available to me through the church's Adobe subscription and learn a new skill that would serve both me and the church. Thing is, Photoshop is complex enough that it was going to require several hours of training to get beyond the basics. And Canva (which I also have a subscription to) has gotten pretty darn good and is way more intuitive—it certainly can't do everything Photoshop can, but it meets most of my basic graphic design needs.
In short, I never even tried to accomplish this resolution. And I probably won't in 2024 either.
Score: 1.5 out of 10
7. No buying lunch for just me.
There was a twofold purpose to this resolution. First, in line with resolution #1, I wanted to use lunchtime as an opportunity to connect with church members. Second, I wanted to save a little money and eat a little healthier, two things that my gravitational pull toward fast food was hindering.
Unfortunately, I'm an introvert who really really hates packing a lunch from home. So my high- minded intentions quickly gave way to my baser instincts, and I found myself scarfing down Whataburger in my office, the exact thing I'd promised to avoid. Instead of viewing lunchtime as an opportunity to enjoy good food and good fellowship, I saw it as the half-hour when I could turn my brain off and do what I wanted.
I knew when I made this resolution that it would be the most difficult to keep, that it went against my natural inclination, that I'd find excuse after excuse to violate it on any given day. I was right.
Score: 1.5 out of 10
8. Floss.
I bought a WaterPik. I used it when I felt like it/thought about it...which was decidedly not every day.
Don't think that's enough to count this as a win. My dentist would agree.
Score: 1.5 out of 10
9. Apply for Truett Seminary's PhD of Preaching.
Nope, this didn't happen. Why not? I saw two things shift, one as a result of circumstances and the other after a lot of thought and reevaluation.
First and most obviously, this was not the year to start a new degree plan. Between an unexpected death in our family, a new baby in December, and a stressful, tumultuous year at the church, I didn't have the time, inclination, energy, or money to invest in post-graduate education in 2023. There's never a good time to start a new degree, but this would have arguably been the worst time to do so.
Second, if I'm going to get a doctorate, I'm thinking more and more that it should probably be a Doctor of Ministry instead of a PhD in Preaching. If the goal of education is to learn, I think it's probably more important for me to learn about effective ministry than about the philosophy of preaching. The things I would read, learn, and discuss in a DMin program would likely benefit me more as a pastor than a PhD of Preaching would, even if the program isn't as immediately attractive to me.
I have no plans to apply in 2024—I need more stability at church before I'm ready to take on something as strenuous as a doctoral program. But if getting a doctorate is in my future—and at this point, I still think it is—then I think Truett's DMin program is probably the way I need to go.
Score: 1.5 out of 10
10. Lead my church to grow.
This is undoubtedly the most painful failure on this list, and the one that caused me the most stress and heartache in 2023. In a year where I set out to lead my church to grow, we shrunk instead—a few members passed away, several families decided to leave the church, and multiple ministerial staff members moved on. What I had hoped—and resolved—would be a year of reaping a harvest instead was a year of pruning.
I won't make this a formal resolution again in 2024 for two reasons. One, growth cannot and should not be the sole responsibility of the pastor—if 2023 taught me anything, it's that I can't do this by myself (and that, when I try, it doesn't go well.) A church that hasn't united around a shared vision for growth won't get there just because the pastor wants it to happen, because leadership starts with persuasion, not unilateral action. Two, growth should never be the primary goal—a church's first priority should be faithfulness. As Edward Abbey once said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Healthy churches grow when they are singularly focused on doing God's will, not when they're focused on building their brand or marketing their product. I'm a pastor, not an entrepreneur—for better or for worse, I'm going to self-correct and lean into that in 2024. Hopefully God blesses that effort.
Score: 1.5 out of 10
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Final Score: 1.5 out of 10, or 15%. Let's see how that stacks up against previous years:
2022- 1 out of 10, or 10%
2021- 4 out of 9, or 44%
2020- 5.5 out of 13, or 42%.
2019- 3 out of 13, or 23%.
2018- 8.5 out of 13, or 65%.
To my surprise (and helped by some generous half-credit scores on a few resolutions), this wasn't my worst scorecard. Nevertheless, this is two abysmal years in a row. I would really like to see a turnaround in 2024—it's time for a change.
So tune in tomorrow to see what's on my personal and professional agenda for the New Year!
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