For the past few months we have been addressing the subject of our time, especially as we prepare the way for the kingdom by taking up the call to preach the gospel of the kingdom. As we see this present world collapsing into increasing discord and disorder, the kingdom will be marked by increasing peace and order. We must therefore order our own lives according to kingdom principles and be a demonstration of the kingdom. We will see an increasing contrast between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God, and between the lives of those that have been built on each.
As we have discussed, the whole nation, and much of the world, was traumatized by the mismanagement during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. However, it was not just the government, but the large charities as well. I received some heated emails from leaders of a couple of these large charities, which I had named in this Word for the Week, wanting me to apologize, but I do not apologize for the truth. I said what I did to try to help them, not hurt them, but the defensiveness with which they took my comments told me that it was unlikely they would acknowledge their problems, much less correct them. However, that can change and it must. Inefficiency, or burying our responsibility, is a sin, and it is why the one servant in the Parable of the Talents was called a "wicked, lazy slave" (see Matthew 25:26).
I also know that the leaders of these large charities may have been honestly offended by my comments. By this I mean that they really do not see the inefficiency in their own organizations. I believe many in government positions are the same way. In fact, I have almost never witnessed bad intentions on the part of anyone in government charities which are being run inefficiently. Many really do not know how to do it any better, and sincerely think they are managing their operations as well as they can be managed. This is an honest, understandable mistake, which is why I do not get offended by those who get offended at me for trying to address these things. However, we must do better. The church and Christian charities can and should lead the way in this.
To get where you are supposed to go, you have to know where you are. In general, I think the church is one of the most inefficiently run organizations in the world. The simple fact that we tend to build these huge, expensive buildings to be used for just a couple of hours one day of the week, and then mostly sit empty the rest of the week, should tell us something. This expense would certainly be worth it to reach one person with salvation, or to help one family stay together, but why not use our resources to help many more?
We at MorningStar are also wrestling with the same issues. We know that we can do things much more efficiently than we are, and we also realize that it usually takes time to implement needed changes. The first thing that must change is attitude. If all of our staff and employees begin to look at waste as their own tithes and offerings being thrown away, they become diligent. For the most part, I think that attitude has been permeating our organization, but we are also constantly finding bottlenecks and people who are very busy doing things that we don't really need done, or at least are not priorities. That is a key to efficiency—prioritizing. This is needed with our time, our jobs, and the duties within our jobs.
I have come to believe that without engaged, proactive, wise leadership, most organizations will quickly gravitate to spending 90 percent of their time on what bears less than 10 percent of the fruit. It is just as true of churches and ministries as any other organization. We must learn the lesson of pruning. Well-managed fruit trees are pruned of branches that do not produce fruit so that they do not sap the resources that would otherwise go to the branches which are bearing fruit.
As we address budgeting, we need to look first at what needs to be cut off totally. Think about this—almost 100 percent of the people who become wealthy through investing start by learning to not buy anything they do not really need, and putting what they save into an investment. Most of these have a goal within a certain period of time of making more off of their investments than they do from their job, and those who are disciplined in keeping to their plan usually get there much faster. However, the key that most investors attribute to their success is first learning to control spending.
Many people buy cars to carry the maximum people that they will need to carry when they only carry that number of people a couple times a year. They would do much better to drive a smaller car and just rent a bigger one when they really need it. People build homes the same way. They live in huge houses that must be heated, cooled, and maintained, for the once or twice a year when the whole family comes. Instead, they could rent a much nicer resort for a lot less for those times.
Of course, there can be emotional ties to the homestead, but are these brief, fleeting feelings of nostalgia worth what we are paying for them? Maybe they are to you, but perhaps if you and the family thought about them in relation to their actual cost, and how much more you may be able to do for yourself and your family if you were not bearing these costs, everyone would probably vote to sell.
Much of our lives are spent cleaning and dusting things that we really do not use and may not even really like—get rid of them. Prune back. If you are a "pack rat," you are an inefficient person and a lot of your time, energy, and resources are probably being needlessly consumed by this stronghold of insecurity. You will be amazed at how much better you feel when you get rid of some things.
Of course, efficiency is not everything. Sometimes love requires us to be extravagant, as the Lord is sometimes with us. However, inefficiency probably hurts more people than most of our other big social problems combined. Here is something for you to consider: I cannot prove it, but I feel sure that many church splits are the result of the Lord allowing things to happen to prune those churches of things they would not deal with themselves. Let me elaborate a bit more.
One of the enemy's main strategies in the last days is to "wear out the saints." Many are being worn-out by the multitude of projects and causes they are pressured to join out of guilt, but these really are not accomplishing anything for the kingdom. Again, a car can have 300 horsepower, but what good is it if it is stuck in the sand and not going anywhere? Many are putting out a lot of effort and consuming a lot of energy, but they really are not accomplishing anything except expending time and energy that could be going to what really bears fruit.
Again, we were bought with a price, and we do not belong to ourselves, but to Him. We are servants, stewards, and we will be judged by how well we have managed our lives and the resources entrusted to us. The Scriptures are clear that this is a big deal to God and should be to us. It starts with us. We are called to be the light of the world, which means we should be showing the way.
Next week we will continue to address how this should affect us personally, and we will tie it together with global warming, which is becoming one of the biggest issues of our time. I am not saying yet whether I think it should or shouldn't be such an issue, but it is, and if we are the light of the world we should be able to address it with clarity and wisdom.
