Otts On Mission

The Thrust of Business

Recently I heard a former Major League Baseball president talk about how decisions are made in front offices with regard to renovations in stadiums. Ultimately, he said the money is ALWAYS put in to the areas in a ballpark that will recoup the money spent on renovations the fastest. More often than not, that money is spent to upgrade the luxury suites and high-end areas of the park. He argued that the other areas of the park are far less profitable. Consequently he argued, they get the least care and upgrades of any part of the park. In other words, you only spend money where you can make that money back quickly, and then some. This is ultimately the way to maximize your investments. To many, this is just the “smart” way to utilize the resources you have.

Certainly, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to see returns on any investment. There is wisdom in investing in the places that provide returns. After all, as Jesus teaches in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, we are responsible for what we do with what we’re given. It begs the question, in a world that largely is run by business, how ought we think about ministry?

Aligned with the Spirit or the spirit of business?

We know that business has a very specific way of functioning within our culture. Proving you’ve produced a sufficient enough ROI is ultimately the marker of success in the business world. It is how CEO’s keep their jobs and get their bonuses. Show enough profit and you reap the rewards. The goal in the larger business world is not alignment with the Spirit of God, it’s profitability. The Spirit of God is largely absent from most business models I’ve ever seen. And to be fair, when a business has no spiritual grounding, one should not expect much different.

But ministry is different. It must be different. When the thrust towards profitability begins to take hold of ministries, it can subtly shift the way we resource ministry altogether. We’ve seen a (not-so-subtle) shift in the approach ministries have taken in the ways they fund various sectors of ministry over the years. In a couple of words – they invest in success.

The Success Metric

Over the years we often saw the ministries that were producing “seeable” success (read: number of discovery bible studies or conversions) were the ministries that received the attention and resources. While this may not seem problematic at first glance, the effect it ultimately has on ministries is the creation of a sharp division between the “supported” and the “have-nots.” The ones that were “successful” were supported, celebrated, and resourced. They were invested in far more than those whose results were not as readily visible. Those without clear and overwhelming “success” were left to continue with very little.

We saw entire organizations shovel resources towards places that had numerical “success.” All the while they pointed their entire staff to do what was producing these results in other places. “God’s working” would subtly shift to “it’s working.” This effectively led entire organizations to shift their ministry approach to follow what’s working…not necessarily what Jesus was doing. In essence, many ministries began to say, “we see more returns when we do “x,” so you should do “x” too.” The fruit of this, whether intentional or not, is a singularity of ministry and subtle curbing of creativity.

When returns or success are the metric, often plans and goals seem to suddenly become shaped by what’s worked rather than the invitations of God. A successful harvest became almost an obsession for mission organizations and the ones who fund them. Obviously, no one really enters into ministry to fail. But the question of who ultimately gets to be the arbiter of success is an important one.

A John 4 Paradigm

When we resource well only that which is providing the best returns, we can miss the myriad of ways that God is working in our world. In fact, it can actually undermine invaluable Kingdom returns. In John 4 Jesus, speaking to his disciples, reminds them that, “the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

In other words, God intentionally calls some to sow the fields (do the hard work). And he invites others to come and reap the benefits of another’s labor. How can we know who is called to sow and who is called to reap? If we don’t intentionally resource those who are called to sow will we not struggle to see the harvest? This is an inherent danger of chasing returns.

Serving in Europe gave us a first hand look at this truth. Countless missionaries put in years of service to see very little “growth” or “success” as the world defines it. But these servants of God were faithful to the work God placed before them. From the outside, the work looked laborious and fruitless. In fact, we know many missionaries who served for years and returned stateside with little to show for their labors. It wasn’t till others came and began to work the land they’d left that fruit began to come forth. Some sow and yet others reap. Were those that sowed faithfully in the hard soil any less important to the Kingdom?

When ROI is the metric by which we fund ministries and missionaries we undoubtedly miss half of the process. I wonder how much more “success” we’d see if we purposefully allocated funds in a more holistic and equitable way. What if we communicated with intentionality this John 4 paradigm to those who invest in ministry. When we focus only on what we can see and what we can know, it seems to shift our attention away from a reaping and sowing paradigm. We then begin to move towards an unbalanced paradigm where we are always “reaping.” The irony of course is that there is no such thing as only reaping in the process of harvesting.

---