Mark Gilroy

Bringing Books to Life!

Don’t Wait for the Perfect Time – Or You’ll Never Get Anything Done

Mark Gilroy blogs on not waiting for the perfect time to do something - otherwise you'll never get anything done.
When the clouds are full of water, it rains. When the wind blows down a tree, it lies where it falls. Don’t sit there watching the wind. Do your own work. Don’t stare at the clouds. Get on with your life.
Ecclesiastes 11:3-4 (The Message)

Investors know that timing is everything – but they also know that no one gets timing right all the time. So they preach that successful investing is achieved through consistency and diversity over time. When the sun shines. Even when it rains cats and dogs. Of course someone bought Apple stock at the right time and got rich – but Forrest Gump was a make-believe character. And none of the can’t-miss stock tips I’ve received have made me rich. (Though I may just be listening to the wrong people.)

One of my kids asked me when I knew I was ready to have kids. The answer was simple; when Lindsey, my first child was born. Nothing but the miracle of birth could have prepared me for fatherhood.

Business plans are great. Outlines are wonderful. Planning, pondering, preparing, predicting, and other forms of prognosticating on what is the best path to take are necessary for success. And there are better times to make a move than others. But if we wait for the perfect time – or until we think we know when the perfect time is – we’ll never act.

Phrases that show the importance of timing, like strike when the iron is hot, are insightful, but so is the simple adage that there is no time like the present.

In Aesop’s Fable of the ant and the grasshopper, the ant followed Solomon’s advise to not stare at the clouds but work – get on with your life. Consistency over time.

Marriage. Kids. New home. New city. New career. New workout program. New endeavor. New habit. New attitude. New mission. New you. Plan and ponder. But don’t kid yourself that you can measure every cause and effect to the point of knowing the perfect time to act and do.

The uncertainties of life and the Law of Unintended Consequences mean that even the very best plans get scrapped and rewritten once we start the journey. Doesn’t mean the plans were bad. But it does remind us that the only test of whether something we want to do is possible is trying it. Doing it.

So what’s on your heart and mind these days? And what are you waiting for? There’s no time like the present.

Redundancy and Repetition: The Power of Doing the Same Thing Over and Over

Is it possible that redundancy is underrated?

Most of us value efficiency to a much greater degree. We want to drive redundancy out of our personal and corporate lives. Redundancy means wasted time and energy. Right?

But having spent more than 30 years in publishing, I’ve come to gain a begrudging respect for the sometimes necessary discipline called redundancy.

Just think about the book business. Everything is redundancy! (Is it any wonder I’m crazy after all these years?)

A writer writers a book. Then rewrites the same book. At least a couple more times. Then hands it to an editor who tells him or her how to rewrite it yet again to make it better. (The mean editors smile when they hand off their shopping list of improvements.)

When the writer is finished, the editor edits the same manuscript that has been worked over too many times to count. After that, a typesetter puts the very same manuscript into a professional and polished format, with a proof reader ready to make yet another round of marks.

What happens next? The editor and writer get to read the “blues” and then the “proofs” one more time – and invariably, find yet another error or way to improve the text. In the old days of publishing, when a writer wanted to rewrite at the “blues” stage, the contract outlined a series of fees since “cut and paste” really meant cut and paste back then.

After final corrections and changes are made, the book is printed, and a new person, the reader, pores over the same material – and sometimes finds yet another error.

Does anyone else circle printed errors they find in books?

But the end result of having numerous alert and adept people cover the same book is a work of power and beauty – or at least one that has its best chance of achieving that lofty status. (And yes, occasionally, too many cooks spoil the soup.)

The old cliche tells us that anything worth doing deserves our best effort. I couldn’t disagree more. There are a lot of activities in life that aren’t worth our best time and energy.

But some things are. Many things are.

And when we want to put our best foot forward, redundancy – another set of pushups, another read through and light edit, another prayer, another conversation – can be our best friend.

No surprise the carpenter’s motto is “measure twice, cut once.”

At the risk of being redundant, when something or someone matters to you, some extra attention and repetition – also known as redundancy – can go a long way to affirming that.

A Modest (and Slightly Defensive) Defense of Church Attendance

Not only does church attendance in America continue to decline – now less than 17% on a given Sunday – but the trajectory is even worse when you consider population growth. The attendance line is going south while the population line is inching north.

I’ve heard all the reasons for not going to church – I can experience God anywhere, too much hypocrisy, it’s boring, it’s not relevant, it hasn’t kept up with social patterns, etc. – and I’ve probably uttered more than a few variations of the above comments myself.

But even if all the above reasons to not to go to church are true in varying degrees, don’t you suspect, in light of human nature, some of the objections are simple rationalizations based on people having different interests and priorities? It sounds better to say I don’t attend church because it isn’t what it’s supposed to be rather than I want to go to the lake or get to the game in time for tail-gating.

Interestingly, a lot of religious thinkers are the ones that speak most negatively about the church as problematic, including the charge that church is just too religious. (Okay. I know I’m more spiritual if I say Christianity is a relationship not a religion, but … just saying.) I’m not sure that persona of honest transparency and sophisticated thought does anything to fix real and perceived problems or attract new attenders  –  and the self-flagellation is possibly more effective at pushing even more once-regular attenders away. If it’s that bad, why go?

One local church in my metropolitan advertises on the radio that they are the church for people that don’t like church because they don’t like church either. (My paraphrase, but fairly close.) My guess is if you attend there it will actually feel a lot like … uh, church. I asked someone that attends and they confirmed there is a sermon, some singing, an offering, encouragement to join a small group, and other things that sound an awful lot like every church I’ve ever attended, despite the promise of this being something entirely different. The person I asked was quick to point out they are very friendly. I’ve gone to lots of very friendly churches. Maybe you can drink coffee and wear shorts in the sanctuary but I forgot to ask. But what I find interesting is that in order to invite new people to come to their church, a church would use a marketing premise that basically says many other churches aren’t very good places to be. Arrogant? Irresponsible?

By the way, I know some preachers preach better and some worship leaders lead music better. Some teachers teach better if you go to a Bible class. Some facilities are much better too. But without throwing a guilt trip out there, shouldn’t some of the appeal to attend church be based on what you bring to the table? (Literally.) Oh, and, shouldn’t we regularly show up at a place that emphasizes the importance of God even if some humans facilitate a more conducive setting to experiencing God than others?

On the subject of guilt, I probably shouldn’t bring up what a casual to negligent attitude toward attending church says to the kids.

My point is that some of the most dismissive critics of the church take for granted their own church upbringing. They have a base of understanding and nurture where they don’t have to attend a Bible study or hear a sermon to know quite a lot about God and Jesus Christ and the Bible, but they sure aren’t encouraging someone with no (or limited) religious framework to experience corporate Christian fellowship sufficiently to make up their own minds. At least give someone an opportunity to reject Christ and Christians without warning them off before they show up.

I understand your church experience may have been crummy. I’m sure there’s been abuse, hypocrisy, irrelevance, and so forth. But where else are you going to go?

I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou. I confess I’ve gone to church many times with less than stellar motives and attitudes. But sometimes something special has happened for me despite myself.

I think the writer of Hebrews – who was alarmed that the church of his day was losing its faith – has something powerful to say those of us who have spiritually evolved enough to claim church attendance as an optional activity:

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:24-24, NIV