My One Word for 2025

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Longtime (or should it be long-suffering?) readers will be familiar with this exercise: for a over a decade now I have had fun with the idea of adopting one word as a theme for the upcoming year.

For 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, I stuck with the same word: early. My emphasis was not on punctuality but was rather about mornings and deadlines.

In 2018 I slightly pivoted and went explicitly with morning. I kept the same word in 2019; that 2019 post is probably my favorite thing I’ve ever written, because in it I was able to talk about how I see the world and why.

In 2020 (poignant now to think about writing that post just a few months before the pandemic) I departed from one word and went with a theme for the decade: “Here’s To the Roaring Twenties.”

In 2021, I went back to one word and picked the word “work.”

That 2021 post was the last one I did in this series—I didn’t pick a word for 2022, 2023, or 2024. In fact, I haven’t written very much in this space these last several years, as I’ve just been too busy with other things. That is going to change in 2025.

 
 

One Word and My Job

Each job is difficult in its own way—all professions have their own challenges. I’m a pastor, and the hardest thing about being in pastoral ministry—by far!—is preaching every week. Just imagine having to stand up in front of a group of people every single week and being tasked with saying something

  • true;

  • helpful;

    and crucially…

  • interesting.

And then having to do the same thing again in just seven days! In only a few months you’ll have burned through every insight, anecdote, and illustration you have, but the calendar never stops—there is always another Sunday. New content doesn’t just appear because you pray for it—it takes work. Then, on top of that, you are preaching God’s Good News, and so your countenance and heart need to reflect that—you’ve got to preach with JOY, which means you have to work hard to guard your heart and your energy so that you can actually be joyful every Sunday. None of that is easy.

But I’ve stupidly made things more difficult for me at Asbury with these scripture reading guides we publish. We say that Asbury is a Bible-reading church, and since I arrived two and a half years ago, I’ve written these guides to help folks get the most out of their daily readings. The problem is that I don’t know anything! I’ve got to read and study a great deal before I’m able to write anything. So, in addition to each Sunday’s sermon, I have these constant deadlines every couple of months or so to turn in a scripture reading guide to our printer so we can print our guides in advance. It’s like I have two different deadlines always over my head—my weekly sermon, and then these monthly reading guides. That has been stressful! I always feel like I’m behind.

Of course, I have regular tasks to tend to as well—emails and meetings and agendas and strategies, etc. (All email written to me—except from staff members—goes to my assistant. I can’t imagine having to also answer all the email she receives on my behalf!) My temptation is to get to these things first and put off the reading and writing I need to do. I like my work and these days none of it is a waste of time or unimportant—the problem for me is that the most important thing I should be doing every day—reading and learning—is easy to push off and allow other things to crowd it out.

So, my one word for 2025 is about getting to the important task of reading right away, every day. Email, text messages, agendas—that all needs to wait.

 
 

My One Word and Marie Kondo

I’m the kind of person who likes clean edges and clear spaces before I can do any kind of deep work. Clutter and mess stress me out. The problem is that I have developed some bad habits that contribute to my own mess! Namely, I will often just put something down rather than putting it away. (Anyone else have that stupid habit?) What this means is that I make double the work for myself in cleaning up clutter, which means I have less time for the really important work that I need to be doing.

One of the things I’m going to do better in 2025 is putting things away rather than just putting them down, and my 2025 One Word will help keep me focused on that goal.

 
 

My One Word and The Snoze Button

I’ve written previously just how important early mornings are for me. I begin the day with prayer and then—in theory at least—I hit my morning workout. In 2024 I’ve been extremely inconsistent with my morning workouts, basically for one reason—I hit snooze when my alarm goes off! (My wife is not a fan of this behavior of mine, by the way.) So, what has been happening is that I still get up early, but because I haven’t gotten up quite early enough, I don’t have time to both pray and hit my workout. So, I skip the workout.

My One Word for 2025 is about getting up right away and getting right to those crucial behaviors—morning prayer and morning exercise. Goodbye to the snooze button for 2025. It’s been fun while it lasted, and I’m gonna kinda miss ya.

 
 

My One Word and The American Buffalo

One of my favorite animals is the buffalo, and one of my favorite characteristics of the buffalo is that, when a buffalo herd sees a snowstorm on the horizon, it charges into the storm. Why? Because then the storm will pass over more quickly.

I love that, and I want to be that kind of man—if there is a problem to be dealt with, might as well deal with it right away. For me, this is a “growth opportunity” as they say in Corporate America—or, to be more candid, I’m not naturally very buffalo-like, but I want to be!

My One Word for 2025 is about facing problems head on—going right toward the hard thing.

 
 

My One Word and My New Book!

I mentioned above that I’ve had two deadlines hanging over my head constantly since I’ve been at Asbury, but that’s actually not the full story—it would be more accurate to say that I’ve had a third deadline hanging over my entire life these past several years.

In 2020 I signed a contract with the book publisher Zondervan to write a book with the working title Love Goes First, and, incredibly, that book will be published this year—the tentative release date is September 16, 2025. For years I’ve had that major project hanging over my head, and it’s hard to believe that I’m very close to actually having a book published.

The idea behind the book is a simple answer to an important question. There is lots of talk these days about polarization, but very little talk about what we actually DO to reach the people that don't like us, the people that might even hate us. My new book is about what to DO. If we want to change the world, we have to go first, because love goes first.

I filmed a 90 second video trailer for the new book:

 
 

I open the book with this quotation, one that I think about all the time:

“Every one of us came into the world looking for one thing: the moment we were born we were looking for a face.  We were born and in the shock and surprise of birth we opened our eyes and we looked for a face, because until we see a face—until another sees us—we do not know who we are, and we looked for someone who would look at us….Every human being…is looking for someone who is looking for us.”  —Andy Crouch

 

If this is true about people—and I believe it is—then what if we moved toward other people so that they felt like we were actually seeing them?

That’s the idea of the book.

Love always GOES.

And that’s the only way to actually change people—to go first.

My One Word for 2025 is also the theme of my new book. I really believe in its message and I believe that going first is the only way forward for the church in a post-Christian culture—we’ve got to move toward the very people that hate us.

 
 

My One Word and The Year Ahead

I’ve got a lot to do this year, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never written a book but after going to all this trouble, I really want people to read it because I believe in the message. So, although the good folks at Zondervan have their own marketing plan, as the author I am also responsible for doing everything I can do get the word out about my new book. One of the things I’m going to be doing is blogging more in this space, both about the book and the need for its message and about other things that catch my attention. Who knows, maybe a podcast might be in my future, too. There’s a first time for everything.

My One Word for 2025 describes what I anticipate to be a year of new things for me.

 
 

My One Word for 2025 is…

Over the last few days I’ve done a year-end review and had a fair amount of time for reflection, looking back and thanking God for all his blessings on the year past and then looking ahead and asking the Lord to guide me and bless my work in the year ahead. I cast around for the right word to give me focus for this new year, but nothing seemed to stick.

And then this morning, it just hit me, and I knew what my One Word for 2025 had to be.

My One Word for 2025 is

first.

 

My One Word for 2021

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Since 2014, I’ve picked a One Word theme for the year. (Last year was 2 words, but you get the idea.)

This year’s word relates to a question I’m obsessed with:

Where does sustained success come from?

To put it another way:

Where does creativity come from? How can creativity be sustained? What does it take to make something of value? What does it take to get things done?

 
 

Jerry Seinfeld on Work

Tim Ferriss’s podcast is hit or miss for me, with more misses than hits. His best interviews are when he doesn’t know his guest personally and is somewhat intimidated by him or her. In those cases he postures and shows off a lot less than at other times, and tends to ask genuinely curious, perceptive questions. This brings to mind what one of Jim Collins’s mentors had to say to him one time: “you need to spend less time trying to be interesting and more time trying to be interested.” (I think one of the best interviews Mr. Ferriss has ever done was with Frank Blake of Home Depot—a good example of being interested, especially in his probing and curious questions about prayer.)

The recent Tim Ferriss interview with Jerry Seinfeld was one of his better ones, probably because they spent a lot of time talking about a subject that both men are interested in: what it takes to get work done.

Jerry Seinfeld is a disciplined writer, which is the only reason he’s been able to thrive as a stand-up comic decade after decade. Here’s Jerry talking about the process:

“But my writing sessions used to be very arduous, very painful, like pushing against the wind in soft, muddy ground with a wheelbarrow full of bricks. And I did it. I had to do it because there’s just, as I mentioned in the book, you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem. I learned that really fast and really young, and that saved my life and made my career, that I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy really young. That principle is: you learn to be a writer. It’s really the profession of writing, that’s what standup comedy is. However you do it, anybody, you can do it any way you want, but if you don’t learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.”

 

“If you don’t learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.”

—Jerry Seinfeld, talking about the discipline of hard work

 
 

Putting Your Work In

You see this same principle in the lives of all professional athletes who make it. Sure, there are some people with talent who light up the highlight reels for a season or two, but there are no examples of athletes who stay on top for a career who don’t put in the work every day. There will always be Johnny Manziel types whose natural talent bring them fleeting success, but unless they learn to work, they will never be anything other than fleeting successes.

Recently I came across an interview with NFL quarterback Russell Wilson in which he said this:

“I gotta earn my career, you know, and how you earn it is by the approach that you take every day. There’s no such thing as days off.

“Someone asked me the other day….“How many days a year do you [work]”? The question is, How many days I don’t. That’s the real question. To me, it’s a 365 day lifestyle—it’s a lifestyle choice. I may take 2 days off a year…. That lifestyle allows you to play for a long time….

“Pretty much every day I wake up around 5….I always pray first and then I’m going to the facility or the gym and putting my work in.”

 
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I don’t know of any professional athletes who have made it a career who wouldn’t say the same thing. Natural talent is what gets you in the door, but it’s hard work that allows you to stay.

 
 

My Life As an Artist

Several years ago now, I came to a conclusion about my work, and that is that my work is primarily creative. What I mean by that is that my primary task is to create something out of nothing every single week. I am—in my own peculiar way—an artist.

I know it sounds pretentious, but conceiving my job as a creative endeavor has been helpful to me. Every single week I stand up in front of a group of people—during the pandemic it’s been a much smaller group than before!—and preach. Preaching, to me, is about creating. Where there was nothing, now there is something.

I have the natural gifts to be a preacher—I have a good memory and I’m poised in front of groups of people. But those gifts can only help you to preach a good sermon once. But preaching once isn’t the job—preaching week after week after week, year after year after year—that’s the job. It is not possible to overstate just how hard it is to do this well.

And there is no way to do it well without putting in the work.

But let me confess something to you—that kind of work does not come easy to me.

 
 

My Two Best Sermon Series Yet

In 2020 I think I preached two excellent sermon series, in my opinion the best I’ve yet preached: Genesis (in two parts) to begin the year and Revelation to end it. I feel as if I actually understand those books now, and I felt like I was able to share that understanding with others in a clear and compelling way.

When I ask myself why and where that insight came from, there is one clear answer:

I put in the work, and God blessed it.

 
 

“Just Read for One Hour, You Idiot”

The kind of books I read to support these two particular sermon series are not quick reads—they require lots of concentration. I’m normally a quick reader, but with these books 20 pages might take me well over an hour. And so I committed to getting in one hour of reading per day, no matter what.

One hour of concentrated reading may not sound like much, but for me it was about keeping a sustainable pace, and allowing the hours to accumulate. “Just sit down and focus for one hour, you idiot” was the kind of self-talk I’d use, and it worked.

 
 

Consistency Is More Important Than Intensity

One of the things I really believe is that consistency is more important than intensity. Anyone can throw himself into a problem with frenzied determination for one day, but one day’s determined work is not what most problems need. Rather, most problems are solved with sustained, relentless focus, day after day after day.

To put it another way, the tortoise always beats the hare.

 
 

When You’re More Hare Than Tortoise

The problem is that I’m not naturally a tortoise—I’m naturally a hare. And in the age of the internet, I have to fight hard to keep my rabbit-like attention from flitting from one shiny carrot to another.

 
 

Deep Work

I know that Cal Newport is right, and that in a world of distraction the ability to give focused attention to the problem in front of you will make you that much more valuable.

I know he’s right, and I know that the only way I can survive in the game is if I put in the work.

At this stage in my life, this is more true than ever, because, by the way:

I have a book manuscript due to the publisher by April 1.

 
 

Jerry Seinfeld, Russell Wilson, Robert Caro

I think it’s because I’m not naturally a tortoise that I admire tortoise-like work so much. I find people like Jerry Seinfeld and Russell Wilson to be inspiring—I want to be like that. I want to be a tortoise.

For that reason, one of the books I read over the last several years and most enjoyed was a brief autobiography from the great biographer Robert Caro entitled, appropriately enough, Working. I loved reading about his patient, relentless process of coming to really understand his subject.

 
caro-working.jpg
 

I also want to stand before God one day and give an account of what I’ve done with what he’s given me. I’d much rather be someone with one talent who made ten out of it than someone with ten talents who ended up with twenty.

But, that will only happen through work.

 
 

There Are No Shortcuts

The kind of work I’m talking about is the kind of deliberate practice, putting in the hours, doing the reps, private, unglamorous work without which it is not possible to be a sustained success. I’m not talking about meetings and appointments and phone calls and emails. I’m talking about sitting alone in a room by yourself and just, through force of will, making yourself focus on a problem, and working at it until you’ve wrestled it to the floor.

That’s the kind of work that honors God, because it shows we take his gifts seriously enough to actually develop and hone them.

In fact, I often feel the greatest sense of godly satisfaction when I can look back at something I’ve made and say, “I worked hard on that.”

There is a lot that I want to accomplish in the year ahead and in the years ahead. Like Peter Drucker, I’d like to accomplish more in the second half of my life than in the first. But nothing I want to accomplish will happen if I’m not willing to put in the work, day after day after day.

 
 
 
 

My One Word for 2021

And so, my one word for 2021?

Work.

 

P.S.

It’s 10:00 PM on New Year’s Day, and after I post this I’m going to bed a happy man. You know why?

Because I already put in my work for the day.

First day of the new year, done.

 
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Here's to the Roaring Twenties

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It’s going to be a great decade—the Roaring Twenties!

I’m not naive, and I know there will be hard times ahead. But I also know that life is what you make of it, and I believe these next ten years will be the best ten years of my life.

Why Not?!

Every year I pick a One Word theme for the year, but since it’s a new decade, I’ve decided to be extravagant and also pick a 2 word theme for these next 10 years.

My two-word theme for the Roaring Twenties is, “Why Not?”

Last year, just after Dabo Swinney led the Clemson Tigers to their 2nd National Championship in 3 years, he gave a postgame interview—all of which is worth watching—30 seconds of which have stayed with me since I first saw it. Over the past year I’ve gone back to that clip often.

Some background: Dabo, who grew up poor in Alabama, was a walk-on for the Alabama football team while he and his mom shared an apartment, because she had nowhere else to live. Dabo’s Clemson beat Alabama for both of its recent national titles. Here’s the clip:

 

Dabo Swinney gives a memorable answer in his National Championship postgame interview, January 7, 2019.

 

I love that!

It’s going to be a great decade.

It’s going to be the Roaring Twenties.

It’s going to be the best 10 years of my life.

Why Not?!

 

P.S. What’s your One Word (or two or three) for the Roaring Twenties?

Leave me a comment below.