Consider the pastor with a priority.
At 8:30 on Tuesday morning he’s at his desk, refreshed, motivated, and abounding with energy to tackle what he considers his most pressing problem. His church sits at the edge of a growing medical complex in a southern city with a large ratio of retirees. The potential—yea, the need—for ministering to these people weighs on him. Very little has been done.
Now he sees some light. One gifted leader has volunteered to get involved. A businessman on the board has hinted he would give heavily to support such a ministry. The board itself has endorsed the idea, and dozens of church members have signed “I’m interested in helping” cards. One person added an enthusiastic note to the card.
So with yellow pad in hand, our hero considers his priorities for the week:
1. Call the businessman; have lunch soon. Too bad! He just left for two weeks in Hawaii.
2. Call the board chairman; light a fire under him. The board chairman must wear asbestos pants. He wants to know if it can wait until next week.
3. Drop by and see the volunteer at her office. She runs a small accounting firm. Oh, no! This is the first week of April. She’s probably working right through lunch hours and into the evenings.
4. Sound out the woman who scribbled the note on the card. Well, so much for that. She had almost forgotten she wrote the note. Compulsive type, probably, who wrote it in a fit of enthusiasm. But she’s already up to her earrings in community club work.
Frustrated, the pastor turns reluctantly to another task. Well, at least he can work on next Sunday’s sermon. He doesn’t depend on anyone else for that.
The People Problem
The problem will return, however, to plague him, just as it does every other church leader. It’s the gap between what we think should be done first and what we can actually do. It’s the pull between priorities and our ability to move the resources needed to attack the priorities.
We know what’s important—but without the right people in the right place at the right time, we can’t get very far.
Now I think I hear a few solemn counselors of Job dismissing the problem with “We must wait for God’s timing” or, “You must always put people first.” Those answers are much too simplistic. For the pastor who has already waited on God to confirm a set of goals and priorities, this is a multifaceted problem.
For one thing, the church, from a human perspective, is a volunteer organization, and pastors must understand how to work with volunteers. An entire genre of literature has developed on this topic, and as you read it, it’s easy to conclude that if you follow the rules, you’ll get as much from volunteers as from paid staff. Not true! Some volunteers are highly committed, but in most cases they have at least one other major commitment—earning a living—that cannot be shelved.
Bill Templeton, pastor of Northside Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, says flatly, “It always takes longer with volunteers.” Templeton’s organizational skills plus his highly motivated style turn on a lot of laypeople. “Yet,” he says, “I’m a realist. I allow volunteers more time than I’d like and certainly more than if I were doing it myself, so I’m not disappointed.”
Templeton must have heard of Murphy’s Law, which says that if anything can go wrong, it will. A contemporary sage has formulated O’Toole’s Comment on Murphy’s Law: “Murphy was an optimist.” My own corollary to Murphy’s Law is that the more people involved in a program, the greater the probability that something will go wrong. People get sick, they forget, have accidents, take on too much, lose interest, have second thoughts, and fail. These are the joys and the drawbacks of working with people.
There is no quick solution to the problem of making things happen via volunteers. But if you continually find yourself frustrated because people aren’t available when you need them, step back and ask why. Are the people working? On vacation? Involved with other projects? Forgetful? Uninterested?
Keep a log of the various reasons/explanations/excuses/alibis for a month; then tally them up. It may tell a lot about your own management style and leadership ability. Are you expecting too much? Are you unreasonable in your time demands? Or do people need more personal seed-planting, probing, and encouraging?
George Lambrides, a pastor in Davison, Michigan, says, “Rather than pursuing my own burning desires these days, I go around planting seed thoughts. I’ve found that anything of any magnitude has to grow out of someone’s gifts. And someone else besides me has to own the idea.”
The chances are that when you analyze your frustrations, you’ll find yourself stymied a smaller percentage of the time than you thought. A colleague of mine, Ed Dayton, has postulated Dayton’s Law: “At least 50 percent of the things you plan will go right. Rejoice!” (Baseball hitters should do so well.)
Divine Delay
I’ve always set goals in my work, and once a decision is made to do something, I want to see it done. I might have mellowed a little with age, but I’m still inclined to mobilize all the resources I have and push full speed ahead. My enthusiasm translates into a desire to see results. So when I hear a manager excuse failure by saying it wasn’t God’s timing, I tend to scowl.
Yet I’ve had to admit more than once that what I thought was the right time to solve a problem or reach a goal was not God’s timing. He does make us wait sometimes. The pastor in our first example may have to wait a little longer to begin a ministry in the medical complex. Meanwhile, the delay may provide valuable gestation time. While he’s waiting for the people to move into place, he can do some good old-fashioned thinking about it.
Unfortunately, we often skip this phase of problem solving. In our world of instant answers, we move directly from bright idea to action plan with little time between.
Priority Questions
To have to revise our project list doesn’t necessarily mean we made a mistake in the first place. We make decisions on the basis of the information we have at the time. We constantly need to update. Accidents, new information, unforeseen opportunities—even the weather—sometimes force us to reevaluate what we attempt first.
We can’t do any of this, however, unless we have a clear basis on which to function. Over the years I’ve set three broad levels of priorities that have often helped me make day-by-day decisions.
The bottom level, which is the foundation for everything else, is my personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Knowing Jesus, becoming like him, worshiping him—these are first and most important.
Second, I’m committed to the church, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Observers in New Testament times were astounded at the way Christians showed love for one another. This is the mark of the Christian, by which my behavior and attitudes are to be evaluated.
My third priority is the work God has given me. It rises directly from my commitment to Christ and his church.
Usually, if I appear to have a conflict, a clash between what I think I should do first and what I’m actually able to do because of the people involved, I need to examine these levels to see if my priorities are in the right order. This forces me to put people before programs. If I find myself frustrated in driving toward a goal, I need to check and see if I have put level three before level two. Have I put the work of Christ ahead of the body of Christ? That’s very easy for any of us to do, especially in light of the fact that our families are part of the body.
Here are four red flags to keep us out of the ditch of misplaced priorities.
- Are my motives pure? Why do I want to accomplish a particular task or promote a program? Will it make me look good? Will it move me up a rung or give me a little more leverage? We may frown at the idea that we could be less than sincere, but motivations are complex. We all struggle daily against the desire for recognition and power. The same program, for example, that will comfort the sick may also score points for the pastor. This is where our human reasoning often fails us, and we need to ask the Spirit of God to search our hearts. This is a time to pray as David did, “Search me, O God, and know my heart … and see if there be any hurtful way in me” (NASB).
- Do the goals of the program fit my theology? Time magazine told about a church in Florida that runs a bar in its parish hall. The pastor believes it brings people together in a good setting and contributes to the life of the church. That’s an extreme example, and most of us would fault the practice. But the issues are often more subtle, and while we’ll always have well-meaning people who will think up off-the-wall programs, we must test all proposals through the grid of our theology. If we don’t—and find ourselves stymied along the way to implementation—perhaps we have skipped this important question.
- Will the program enhance the lives of the participants? A ministry to the medical complex might change the lives of many patients, but it may also jeopardize the workers. We have to ask whether this or that program will put novice Christians in leadership roles, tempt the weak with celebrity status, or pull mothers and fathers away from their children one more night of the week. These are tough questions, but they provide the checks we need to avoid putting level three before level two.
- Have we been seduced by our culture? Do we have a numbers orientation? Are we prone to think bigger is automatically better? Has society’s worship of size, success, speed, production, promotion, and glamour crept into our evaluation of church programs?
The pressure to succeed by secular standards, to measure success by visible accomplishments rather than by biblical guidelines, is subtle and often insidious. But in the light of eternity, our effectiveness is based on our being members of the mystical body called the church and the love we have for one another.
From the book Renewing Your Church Through Vision and Planning, copyright © 1997
