Natural and Spiritual Efficiency
After the COVID-19-induced shift to home offices last year, I, an ardent advocate of on-site teaching and networking, quickly began appreciating the efficiency that working from a home office offers.
No longer did I lose time commuting between rooms and campuses. No more random hallway chats that eat up time during the day. Officing at home gave me a 20-30 percent boost in efficiency that directly translated into increased (research) output.
But the results were not uniformly positive. Instead of being happy about this newfound time, I simply increased my workload. Worse, my obsession with efficiency led to increased impatience with people who handled online meetings less effectively than me.
The most inefficient meetings of all were those with ministry groups for church after work. There, after 10-12 hour shifts of online teaching, administration, and research work, I met with people who seemed delighted to e-meet with other people.
They felt no urgency at all. They forgot video call etiquette completely while discussing lengthy issues in calls with more than ten participants. I was sitting in the same room in front of the same camera I had used so very efficiently during the day, and this inefficiency in the evenings silently infuriated me.
The low point came with our church’s organizational meetings for a “Love After Marriage” seminar. My wife and I volunteered as small group leaders. While I was looking to end the last of a long day of meetings efficiently, most of the participants thoroughly enjoyed seeing each other on the screen, making what could have been discussed in a mere 20 minutes a conversation for an entire evening.
I was angry with the lack of chairing skills of the main leaders; I couldn’t help voicing my opinion when others in the church asked how I was doing (“Fine - but this xyz group’s organization is driving me crazy…”).
The weekend of the seminar came, and from the minute it started, I forgot all the lack of organization and preparation that I had sensed before. We enjoyed a wonderful weekend in which the Holy Spirit worked powerfully in the hearts of the husbands and wives in our group - including ours. One couple was close to breaking up. When the seminar began, they could barely stand the presence of the other spouse in the same room. By the end of the weekend, God had healed many wounds, and they enjoyed each other’s company again.
I couldn’t help but realize that efficient, quick management of meetings isn’t the most critical aspect of preparation or leadership. The spirit and unity in which a large prayer team had accompanied the seminar in silent (and sometimes not-so-silent) prayer had outweighed what seemed so important to me with my “business-goggles” still engaged. I sent a message to the main leaders apologizing for my bad discernment and conduct during the preparation.
Obviously, God’s efficiency is not bound to just saving time. He lavishly spends time and invests resources into people to save them. He turns them into multipliers of the message - which is not at all inefficient. God also honors us when we lavishly invest our time with him in prayer and worship. Then He works on our behalf, which is again quite efficient.
With my “business goggles” off and God’s goggles on, I can see that God’s spiritual efficiency far exceeds my natural efficiency.