Are you in a mastermind?

Now, I know what you’re think­ing: what’s a mastermind? 

Actu­al­ly, it’s more like­ly that you know what a mas­ter­mind is and are a mem­ber of a great one. Or per­haps you are like Fes­sik and say, “I am the mastermind”. 

Regard­less of your par­tic­i­pa­tion or lack there­of, a mas­ter­mind can be a valu­able resource. A mas­ter­mind is a group of peo­ple that come togeth­er to learn from, encour­age, chal­lenge, and stretch each oth­er to a com­mon goal or pur­pose. I know that sound­ed very dic­tio­nary of me, but hon­est­ly, it isn’t copied from Mr. Web­ster. When I first learned about mas­ter­minds, I thought they sound­ed like the church, com­mu­ni­ty groups, or clubs that we engage in as indi­vid­u­als in a com­mu­ni­ty. We all have com­mu­ni­ties that stretch out from us and inter­sect with oth­ers. Here is a break­down of what a per­son­’s com­mu­ni­ty cir­cles might look like:

1. Indi­vid­ual — no man is an island. So even though I say indi­vid­ual, the fact is that as crea­tures made in the image of God, we have been cre­at­ed to live in com­mu­nion with God. So even at the indi­vid­ual lev­el, we have relationship. 
2. Fam­i­ly — either you have a fam­i­ly you live with or you have a core group that you inter­act with on a dai­ly basis. This is your tight­est cir­cle. These are the peo­ple who know when you are hav­ing a bad day.
3. Bosom Friends — I’m using Anne Shirley’s term of bosom friend here to clar­i­fy that we have some friends that are clos­er than a broth­er. These are the friends that we call on the bad day. The friends that aren’t afraid to tell us the truth.
4. Friends — The rela­tion­ships that you have that have spawned from a com­mon inter­est. You might have met in school, go to the same church, or are in the same co-op.  These peo­ple tell you what they think you want to hear, they meet you at the park and you talk about your com­mon inter­ests, rarely do you dis­cuss things you don’t agree on.
5. Acquain­tances — the vast major­i­ty of the peo­ple that we see on a semi-reg­u­lar basis fall into this group. These peo­ple are a friend­ly face in a sea of mad­ness, they may ven­ture in and out of your life. They are most like­ly in sim­i­lar groups with you, but you’ve nev­er made the step into friend­ship. You see them in pass­ing at co-op or church, but rarely know much about them. You dis­cuss the weath­er, local events, and kids with them, rarely more.
6. Towns­folk — This is what we may think of when we say com­mu­ni­ty: The nat­ur­al selec­tion of peo­ple who live clos­est to you. But this isn’t how Jesus defined neigh­bor, rather, a neigh­bor is the per­son that God has placed in your path.

Each of these cat­e­gories can rep­re­sent a cir­cle around you. Some of these peo­ple are in sim­i­lar “com­mu­ni­ty groups” like church, etc, and most of them have some­thing in com­mon with you. How­ev­er, com­mu­ni­ty is some­thing that we engage in and cre­ate. It isn’t sim­ply a pas­sive place­ment on a chart.

So why the chart? As we start to think about anoth­er year and shap­ing our lives, it helps to think about who we are sur­round­ing our­selves with. The peo­ple you inter­act with on a dai­ly and week­ly basis con­struct your own per­son­al mas­ter­mind. Let’s ask the ques­tion a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly now: 

Are you pleased with your mastermind?