focusing your ministry energy

[DeanZF]

Great indeed when they come far enough out of their shells to recognize God's calling or God's gift in their lives.



I often pause to think that it's rather sad that the 80/20 rule applies to the church, where we are to indeed give our all, not our some, that we're to serve and love on and dote on those in the body.



For any who don't know, the 80/20 rule is a long established principle in business, in volunteer groups, and any other organization where there is a "group dynamic", and that is that 80% of the work (or the donations given, or the time given, etc.) is done by 20% of the people of the organization. Works in the corporate world, too.



We had a teacher at our church a couple of years back. He was a really special guy, ex-convict bad man in his pre-Christ life, who had turned around to make a very successful ministry to those in prison and those coming out. VERY successful in reducing the recidivism rate (returning to prison, usually from the same sort of crime) from the normal 50% or more to less than 5% of those who completed the program. And that continued even up to 10 years after release from jail! His name was Frank.



Frank talked about people in two groups, the givers and the takers. Pretty simple really, easy way to divide sheep from goats in one sense. His basic sense of it all was that we should be ministering to takers and fellowshipping with givers. The goal is, of course, to help folks heal enough to become givers and leave the "taker world" behind. He also admitted a time or two that the ratio in most churches he knew was still about 80/20!



Found that this is a good way to look at how we spend our church time, too. Helps keep from draining our vital energies. This gets more and more important to me as I get older and more tired. No silly there!



Much is expected of whom much was received! Takes energy to fulfill the "much is expected".