The blessedness of 'inefficiency'

In secular leadership circles, the holy grail of self-development is the attainment of a "highly productive life".

In this world, productivity is typically measured in terms of how many plates one can keep spinning without everything crashing down.

The “work hard play hard” mantra focuses the mind on the goal of this great quest to be both successful and happy.

Of course, in Christian leadership we have our own version of the quest for productivity, but we’ve cleverly camouflaged this worldly concept in the spiritual language of “stewarding our resources responsibly”, or “labouring for the gospel requires sacrifice” - and some version of the belief that pastoral or evangelistic urgency requires furious efficiency.

Efficiency?

Now, the plight of the spiritually dead, or the ceaseless crisis that engulfs those who are to be shepherded should rightly move those with spiritual oversight and responsibility to be both motivated and careful with the scarcity of resources the church has.

The overwhelmingly high and vast expectations of leaders - particularly pastors - includes being great communicators, academic-grade expositors, multi-disciplinary counsellors, entrepreneurs, innovators, world-conquering strategists, social workers and (if one’s budget doesn’t have much stretch) plate-spinning administrators, accountants, odd-job specialists and general white-van-men. With these extraordinary expectations assumed necessary for a modern church to run, when combined with the scarcity of finance, it means that the average pastor must rely upon heavy spending of the one resource that comes "cheap": time!

The problem is, that it doesn’t take too long before your average pastor is overwhelmed like a first aid post on a battlefield. (Although, perhaps a better analogy would be a novice gambler in a Las Vegas casino.)

A leader invests their time cautiously at first, and is excited by the fruitful return, so invests more time, energy, brain power. Sometimes they lose, but the belief has already taken root deep within them - that if you feed the game enough “time”, the breakthrough is just around the corner.

Soon, the pastor driven by the conviction of the gospel’s urgency finds their pot of time critically empty. They place onto the "roulette table of ministry", chips of time that officially belong to their family, their marriages, their children, their health – with the promise to themselves that when they get the big win they’ll get it all back... even more!

Of course, that’s where productivity tips become like a quick-hit to an addict; they give you a mini efficiency hit that allows you to spend a little more time, and then a little bit more after that.

The problem is, that the approval for a pastor’s gospel-driven busyness is so alluring, that even those who find themselves in abject time poverty find it almost impossible to draw a line and stop.

Too often have I seen incredibly gifted leaders in Christian ministry have a glorious ten years, sometimes more, before burning out spectacularly to the surprise of those around them - onlookers who can only say, “But they achieved so much for the kingdom!” as if fruitfulness was a valid alternative to not attending to one’s family and health in a godly fashion.

What does the Bible have to say?

Although I don’t diminish the necessity of good stewardship of one’s time and energy, it strikes me that the life and work rhythms that God established for His people from the beginning of the Bible are hard work coupled with a "deliberately embedded inefficiency".

For example, the Sabbath day itself marks the people of God as distinct from surrounding nations because they economically bootstrap themselves.

In Exodus 31v14, the instruction to keep the Sabbath and do no work whatsoever on pain of death, was described in such drastically serious terms precisely because it was so counter-cultural and so difficult to abide by.

The Sabbath was a day that your family became economically poorer yet spiritually richer.

The numerous festivals woven into the Israelite calendar have both time and financial implications.

After all, imagine festivals of a similar scale to Christmas repeated multiple times throughout the year; it is both wonderful and disruptive, both renewing and productivity-wise frustrating.

Moreover, there is the Old Testament law’s stipulation in Leviticus 23v22 that farmers are not to glean to the edge of their fields so that the poor might benefit from their deliberate inefficiency.

And of course, no political manifesto has included an economic policy that comes near to echoing the Year of Jubilee, because restoration rarely ever coincides with getting more stuff done or more money made.

Furthermore, the Kingdom of God as described in the New Testament continues this trend of "delightful inefficiency". In Luke 15, the shepherd leaves 99% of his stock in the open country to find the missing one percent; this would be like leaving the corner shop unattended whilst you searched for a missing crate of tinned soup.

Grace is wonderful precisely because it does not equate earthly value with divine effort, but it is, thankfully for us, not black-and-white efficient: particularly when the shepherd spends the equivalent of the financial cost of the sheep to throw a party; the woman spends the value of the coin to celebrate with her neighbours; and the father spends a proportion of his greatly diminished estate to welcome the return of his son.

The Kingdom of God prizes enjoyment of God above busyness - Martha learns that the hard way in Luke chapter ten.

'Where do I go from here?'

So how might this apply to Christian leaders invited to spend all their time on the fruit machines of fruitful ministry? A starter is to remember that God’s sovereignty over His church and His unfolding plan of growing His kingdom should free us from the tyranny of an all-consuming drive for efficient busyness.

For pastors, it is not the poor in the community who should benefit from the fields of our work not being harvested to the edges, but it is our families and friendships who should enjoy the regular gift of us going into work later than normal or returning home earlier than usual.

I have come to think that some of the healthiest leaders I know are not embarrassed to take significant chunks of work time in order to celebrate birthdays, school plays, family extra-curricular victories, starts of new seasons of life or marking the end of old ones.

Being rich in thanksgiving will make you feel "productively impoverished": the more thankful you become, the less you feel like you “own” or “deserve” anything - and that’s actually a healthy, life-giving mindset.

When the world is frenetically glued to the slot machines of productivity on the forlorn hope of the next big win, leaders can model something healthier by intentionally doing a little less.