Summary: When it comes to leading in ministry, your past practice is the prime indicator of your future success.
You have a past. Your reputation precedes you. If you do not realize it, let me be the one to bring you up to speed. You have a reputation. You have earned it. A reputation is earned through time plus consistency of any behavior, whether good or bad. Your boss has a set of data points about you. Those data points have been laid by you and have your fingerprints all over them.
When it comes to leading in ministry, your past practice is the prime indicator of your future success. If you are prone to dropping balls and shoddy work, your boss should expect your future to be about the same. At this point, you might cry foul and say, “But Josh, I am changing!” Good for you! Here is a quick reality check. It takes quite a bit of time and quadruple the data points to shift the graph.
Think with me for a moment. If you have 100 points of bad data, you have to have 100 points of good data to offset the bad and “shoot the middle''. At this point, you are not even close to shifting the tide and overcoming your historical track record. You need an additional set of 300 good date points to shift the line conclusively in the positive direction. Making up for lost ground is actually quite hard. Bottom line: Stop sucking and start winning right now.