Four Ways Efficiency Is the Enemy of Spiritual Fruitfulness

I heard once about a national worker who said to an American missionary, “I’ve noticed that you Westerners like to perfect your technique and measure things.”

He was right, of course. It is baked into our DNA to seek the most efficient way to do something – which means reducing it to metrics – so that we can replicate it elsewhere.

While striving for efficiency is admirable, even necessary in some endeavors, our urge to be efficient can actually be counterproductive in some other crucial arenas of life. Efficiency is, ironically, remarkable inefficient in the area of our spiritual formation.

I think there are at least four ways efficiency can be the enemy of spiritual fruitfulness. (And here I must credit two of the men I’m discipling: I discussed this with Don Lewis and Nathan Rude, who helped me compile this list.)

1. Efficiency is the enemy in evangelism.

It’s true that spiritual birth is the work of a moment. Jesus himself coined the phrase “born again.” But if we think of evangelism as an event, it’s easy to apply all the measures of efficiency to the process: what’s the most efficient way to get someone to the point where he or she can receive Christ?

But evangelism is actually a subset of the long-term process of disciple-making. And disciple-making is a process, not an event.

Evangelism in my sphere of influence – my workplace, my school, my neighborhood – means I must cultivate friendships so that I can create the depth and space necessary for a spiritual conversation to take place naturally.

If I turn my evangelism into an exercise in efficiency, I turn my friendships into projects. That’s not loving my non-Christian neighbors; it’s using them to achieve a goal.

2. Efficiency is the enemy in family life.

The family is the perfect arena for disciple-making. The intimacy of living together exposes our sinful hearts, and God uses the hurly-burly of family life to rub off our rough edges. A Christian husband and wife are a brother and sister in Christ discipling one another. Christian parents not only want to discipline their children (that is, prepare them for adulthood), they also want to disciple their children (live and proclaim the gospel before them so that they can respond in faith).

But because we are all sinful, self-absorbed creatures, the relationship-building that sustains family life is nonlinear; our brokenness ensures that when we do make progress in relationships – in our marriages, in our parenting – it is a herky-jerky, three-steps-forward-two-steps-back kind of progress.

Not efficient.

Parents must remember that they are playing the long game. Successful parenting is never about how well your children are doing in the moment; it’s about trajectory. And we help our children set that trajectory not in dramatic turning points but through dozens of interactions every day, in the habits and customs that make up our family culture.

I have sometimes encouraged parents with wayward children to trust God for the “last chapter.” The chapter they’re in right now may be dark, but this dark moment is only a chapter. Parents must remember to trust God for the last chapter, the chapter we trust Him to write in His love and wisdom and power.

That same long-term approach applies to marriage, which is shaped not so much by dramatic, romantic gestures as by daily habits of encouragement, patience, and service. If the three most important words in marriage are “I love you,” the four most important words have to be “How can I help?”

This is true even in distressed marriages. In my counseling of men in troubled marriages I drill down on a four-step strategy:

1. Love your wife from a distance (whether that be physical or emotional or both).

2. Trust God to heal her wounded heart.

3. Be patient with the non-linear process; don’t interpret a setback as a catastrophic failure.

4. Celebrate small victories.

Whether you’re building strong family relationships or restoring broken ones, you’ve got to take the long-term approach.

I must abandon efficiency if I want to cultivate meaningful relationships in my family.

3. Efficiency is the enemy in how we trust God to keep His promises.

Our addiction to efficiency tempts us to see delay as denial.

I remember when I read through Genesis a few years ago, I finished with a new sense of how God is always playing the long game. The saga of the patriarchs begins with God’s lavish promises to Abram, promises that He reiterates to his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. By the time the story of the patriarchs ends, Jacob’s clan has settled in Egypt, and his people are still waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled.

It will be centuries before God fulfills His promise to give the Land to Abraham’s family. In the meantime, generations have come and gone, and thousands upon thousands of Hebrews have died without seeing God’s ancient promises fulfilled.

Before the first century was over, Christians were beginning to wonder about Jesus’ promise to return. In his second letter, Peter reminds his readers to take the long view: “With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Pet 3:8).

I have a name for this patient waiting on God to fulfil His promises: I call it a “settled life posture.” That kind of life posture isn’t efficient, but it is how we must wait for God to bring about His wise and good purposes.

I may profess that I believe that God’s timing is always impeccable, but my addiction to efficiency tempts me to be impatient with His timetable.

4. Efficiency is the enemy in our spiritual disciplines.

I have railed against “checklist spirituality” elsewhere in these pages, and that’s an easy target. The moment I make my spiritual disciplines all about efficient task-completion, I set myself up for failure: I either “succeed” and move toward spiritual arrogance, or I “fail” and drift toward despair. Neither arrogance nor despair is the aim of spiritual disciplines.

I saw a book on worship that was titled A Royal Waste of Time. That’s what worship actually is: it is a waste of time because in the time we set aside for worship we must temporarily abandon our quest for productivity, and it is royal because we are spending that time with the King of the Universe.

Given our drive for productivity, it’s easy to see why our anxious, restless hearts sometimes grow restless at the thought of spending time alone with God, in engaging Scripture, in prayer: what am I accomplishing here? There are things that need to be done!

No, said Jesus to Martha. Mary got this right.

Growing in Christ isn’t about productivity; it’s about worship.

Yes, it is natural for us in the West to seek the most efficient way to do everything. But in the realm of our spiritual lives, we must set aside efficiency and productivity in favor of a quieter pace, not the restless, frenetic pace that treats each day as a sprint, but a pace that walks in the quiet power of the Spirit.


Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor