The Price of Time
Admittedly I am a busy person. Okay, I’ll be even more honest, I’m probably borderline workaholic. But I LOVE it! I have work I enjoy (after several years of work that I hated). I enjoy it. I’m good at it. I help people and my contributions are valued. Who wouldn’t get a high from that?
But as I age and more importantly as my children age, I have found that the price of my time is more expensive than any job can pay. There’s no amount that can compensate me for missing family dinner ( I refuse to miss it). There’s no amount that can compensate me to not establish a routine of nightly devotion (I refuse to miss it. Even when I have to pry my 6-year-old from the TV). There’s no amount that can compensate me for preserving a Saturday for time at the park (Even though it’s incredibly hot and humid and Louisiana mosquitos have apparently developed an immunity to anything that could possibly kill them.) And most importantly there’s no amount that can keep me from quality time with my husband whom I am learning to treasure more and more as the years go by.
I MUST make time for my family.
I MUST make time for time with God.
These are two non-negotiables I am developing this year.
Creeping into the back of my mind is the realization as a leader of another essential non-negotiable for healthy ministry. Though this one is coming behind God and Family in order of importance, it is nonetheless important: TIME FOR THE PEOPLE.
Outside of ministry, my vocation consists of a lot of technology, automation and strategic system development. Somewhere along the lines, the line got blurred.
Technology, automation and strategic system development became the heartbeat of the way I conducted much of my ministry. Schedules, software, data-collection— those became the things that got my attention the most.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot that the heartbeat of Jesus is people and therefore the heartbeat of His body on mission must be that as well.
I am attempting to turn the ship.
I am attempting to see the person behind every slot on every schedule. To check in with them, to know what’s going on in their life, to have a PULSE on Jesus’ people. And I’ll admit it, it’s not super easy. My tendency is to try to develop a schedule around how to do that.
But the dividends of this type of ministry are exponential. After all, isn’t it the fact that someone kept a pulse on you the reason you got saved? Whether directly through evangelism or indirectly through prayer an invitation to church or someone’s example, every believer became a believer because SOMEONE had a pulse on their eternal destination.
Jesus did the HARDEST part. He provided the path. But He has left the responsibility of seeing people along the path to US. And the weight of this responsibility is especially heavy for leaders (James 3:1).
But it’s the ONLY way people can be transferred from an eternal destination of hell to an eternal destination of heaven and it’s the only way people can GROW in their pursuit of becoming more and more like Christ.
Life’s challenges are too great to expect people to flourish without SOMEONE personally checking in on them, someone calling, someone showing up at midnight. People NEED people to thrive and grow. Leader, people NEED YOU. Not just your preaching, leading or serving, they need your coffee date, your birthday party visit, and your phone call out of the blue.
They need to know you see them and they need to know you CARE.
James 3:1
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
John 4:35
Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
Romans 10:14
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?