Reverse Engineering

Before David and I graduated and "grew up" we were part of a great church in Raleigh, NC. That church, Vintage21, was a Jesus-centered place where our faith was challenged, and grew in leaps and bounds! We are both very grateful for our time there and all we learned from our experiences. One of the things we learned while we were there is something called "Reverse Engineering". If you're anything like me, you hear the word "engineering" and you turn to the math-minded person in your life for explanation. Lucky for us, there is no math involved! The concept of Reverse Engineering is prompts us to take charge of our lives instead of just letting it all happen. We are challenged to be more missional and purposeful in all that we do so we are constantly glorifying God. Sounds like a pretty stellar plan to me!

One of our goals of this Christmas break was to reverse engineer 2012 in the Mobley house. If you know us, you know we're not "by the wayside" people. We don't typically sit back and let things happen. But in our young marriage we've taken some time to figure out who we are and what we want from each other, our marriage, our faith, our families, etc. We figured we figured out the growing pains (for the most part) and it was time to be more purposeful with all that we do. We reverse engineered our lives when we were engaged and still in school, so we knew a bit about what we were in for, but man-oh-man things have changed!

There were many different topics to consider from the template. To name a few: guiding principles, guiding practices, marriage, family, friends, health, financial, learning, ministry, changes, and people. I told you it was detailed! We knew it was going to take a while so we made a date of it and headed to a local coffee shop (love supporting the locals!) and settled in.

We went through each category question by question. It seemed tedious at first, but we kept reminding ourselves of the importance of it. If we didn't write it out, would we really stick to it? So, we kept at it and almost three hours later we finally finished. It felt so good to have a plan in place! A plan for our house (yay for listing out new projects!), a plan for our budget (essential in a marriage!!), a plan for our future family (keyword: future), a plan for our ministries, and plans for so much more. This Type-A organizer was over the moon (and very jacked up on coffee, I might add).

Would I call our reverse engineered plan for 2012 a success? Definitely! Will it change? Possibly, but at least we have a place to build from. Too many relationships get away from putting God at the center and instead focus on worldly things. Today, David and I were challenged to put him at the center of everything we do and I am super excited to see what comes out it! How are you planning for 2012??

If you're interested in seeing the template shoot me an email, I'd be more than happy to connect you!