Crush List

Soph and I both realized lately that we have become buried in our work and hobbies, both individually and together. It seems like whenever we have free time - weeknight or weekend - we try to fill it with things like watching a movie, reading a book, surfing the web, playing a game, photography, etc. We're already super-busy during the week with work and school, so perhaps it's understandable to want to relax.

The effect, though, has been that we're not investing in people's lives the way we once used to. We used to have at least one night a week that we spent with friends, or with people we were hoping would become friends. And that time really was a great way for us to both be encouraged and have fun, but also a way for us to pour ourselves into other people.

If you examine Jesus' life, you'll see that he was almost always inviting someone to join him in *whatever* he was doing. Every moment, it seems, was a chance for him to invest himself in someone else. That's how he made disciples. My Dad refers to this as the "With Me" principle. He even wrote a book on it called "The Joy of Discipleship".

Anway, both Soph and I came to this conclusion on our own at about the same time a couple of weeks ago. So we decided to institute the Crush List. This is a concept we borrowed from a friend of ours from his "single" days. He had 5 women on the crush list, and 5 in waiting. It might seem like a strange concept, but it makes sense. He was basically focusing on the set of people he wanted to develop relationship with. So Soph and I now have a "Crush List" with people that we really want to target developing deeper relationship with. The list changes regularly, and the number of people on the list isn't really a set limit. But it gives us some focus relationally, and gets us off our butts when we have free time.