Efficiency or Effectiveness?

Western culture values efficiency. Production speed often drives decision making rather than quality. Profit displaces beauty. The question too often is, “What works?” rather than, “What is best, what is beautiful, what will endure?”

The Kingdom of God values effectiveness more than efficiency. If we are not aware of the huge difference between Western culture and the culture of the church, we will fail to ask, “What are we to be and what are we to be doing?” and be satisfied with plugging in components promising religious efficiency. Jesus was effective, training a hand full of men and women for the work of establishing the Kingdom of God in culture. Jesus would never be invited by efficiency experts to address corporate leadership teams on growth techniques, the worth of his process took several generations to be proven effective and we don’t have time.

I am musing on the last 45 years as a pastor, and more than 60 years as a disciple of Jesus. During that brief span of history and experience, the church has embraced a series of “fool proof” methodologies, including “buses, Bibles, and banana splits;” Sunday School contests (intramural and intermural); crusade, mass evangelism; divine healing and Second Coming conventions and seminars; shepherding leadership; cell groups; and pilgrimages to places where something was happening. I am convinced each methodology or emphasis addressed an absence of a truth or response to human need which the church was then overlooking. And, there is some fruit from each “fool proof” method.

Collectable heirlooms made by artisans have been replaced by composite wood substitutes and laminated plastic, affordable stuff posing as furniture. The mystique created by missionaries traveling by freighter to distant continents has been replaced with jet travel. Some missionaries I heard in my youth carried their equipment in caskets, never expecting to come home. Boots on the ground servants who visited us every four or five years to report progress in the Kingdom of God are now visited by groups of church members annually. Visiting church members speak about having a “missionary experience,” without a single deprivation of missionaries a single generation ago. Are short term missions experiences bad? No, but they are not as effective as the person who carves out an expression of his calling over 50 years of unselfish service.

Slow moving surface mail has been replaced with digital communication. Efficient, yes, but materials are now posted at the click of a couple buttons without a time lapse created as film developed, type was set, and paper was printed. (I doubt I would receive as many communiqués if paper, postage stamps and a trip to the post office were required.) The delays of a few years ago allowed the author to assess, “Should this be sent?” Efficiency asks, “Can we?” Effectiveness asks, “What should we send and why?” Efficiency often says, “If we don’t someone else will!”

If we err in our way of doing ministry, let us err in our attempt to be excellent and effective. It seems as if the weeds in my lawn mature within hours, conceive and have babies. In contrast, the person who plants an acorn will not live long enough to sit in the shade of the mature oak. In a society driven by efficiency, we must deliberately think through decisions asking in-depth questions, waiting in prayer, searching the Word, engaging in conversations with those who have more life experience, reviewing history’s lessons, and then acting on the impulse of the Spirit. If we don’t, today’s methods will be discarded just like the big box store vinyl covered stuff sold as furniture to an unthinking public. I believe Jesus and the Kingdom deserve better than that!