By Laura Stephens Reed
Churches are often busy places. A quick glance at their calendars might highlight worship services and formation opportunities, certainly, but also meetings, chili cook-offs, support group gatherings, pickleball matches, senior adult trips, miniature golf outings, times that food pantries and clothes closets are open, and much more. Packed schedules are signs of flourishing, some might say.
Are they, though?
Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with any of the activities named above, and there might be good reasons to organize each of them. But I have found that sometimes congregations do a lot in order to avoid reckoning with the realities that they are smaller than they once were and that most people no longer place church at the center of their worlds. Faith leaders and their communities then attempt to prove – to themselves and others – that they are vital and worthy through productivity.
It’s an understandable response, but it can lead to scattering person-power and resources across a broad array of efforts, leaving everyone tired and discouraged.
It is possible and good to be more focused and purposeful in planning.
Author Steven Covey offers a tool that could help. Inspired by a speech delivered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Covey’s task management filter allows individuals and organizations to sift possible and actual to-dos into four distinct quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Tasks that are urgent and important. These are efforts that are both time-sensitive and worthwhile because they connect to a larger purpose.
Quadrant 2: Tasks that are important but not urgent. These items can be easy to put off because they show little return in the short run, but making headway on them might actually make a consequential difference down the line.
Quadrant 3: Tasks that are urgent but not important. This work begs to be done right now but is unlikely to have long-term impact.
Quadrant 4: Tasks that are not urgent or important. These activities are essentially busywork and serve as distractions from more critical endeavors.
When we – as individuals or communities – try to prove our vitality and worth through productivity, we usually end up leaning hard into quadrants 3 and 4 with a splash of quadrant 1, indicated by “we (or sometimes you) should do this” and “we (you) need to do this” from a place of reactivity rather than reflection. Then there’s little energy left over for quadrant 2: stepping back to discern and design around what truly is important, including what is most faithful and what will set us up well for the future.
Luckily, I have found that even introducing the Eisenhower Matrix initiates a perspective shift that can lead to making more intentional choices. Here are some questions that church leaders can then use to continue that movement toward greater concentration of efforts and resources:
- What do we value most? In order to be able to name whether a task is important to us, we first have to define “important” for our context. If we know our non-negotiable commitments, we can begin to have a sense of what it might look like to express them well in this next season of ministry. If a core value is “relationship,” for instance, then the decision-making filter for everything from finance to spiritual formation is whether saying yes or no will build stronger bonds.
- How does [this task] help us live into who we are and want to be? If an idea or opportunity emerges or even if we get into the “we (you) need to do this” space, we can run it through the filter of our values and determine whether it rises to the level of importance for our congregation. If a local organization asks the church to gather gifts for families in need at Christmas and our congregation’s core value is relationship, does this opportunity to serve align with that emphasis?
- How time-sensitive is [this task]? If it’s pressing and we’ve determined it’s also important – so the congregation has decided it would fulfill the value of relationship to shop for the gifts and Christmas is in six weeks – then we need to give it some focus in the near term. If it’s essential but doesn’t need immediate tending, we can move on to the next question.
- How does [this task] break down into smaller components? One of the reasons that important efforts languish in quadrant 2 is because they often seem too big to get our arms around. Perhaps, to keep with our example, our church has decided it wants to have a deeper relationship with neighbors than simply providing gifts at Christmas, and the question of how to go about that feels daunting. Large projects like developing new ministries that are more in line with our values and congregational and community makeup then need to be broken down further, and some of those smaller pieces might be moved into quadrant 1 to start to gain traction.
- What resources do we have available to put toward [this task]? We need to have a good sense of all our tangible and intangible gifts, both because they are finite and because sometimes we don’t realize all that we have so that we can use it well. What are the physical, financial, historical, leadership and partnership blessings (among others) our congregation has that can facilitate increased relationship?
As your church considers the Eisenhower Matrix and the questions above, remember that you don’t have to do it all, and you certainly don’t have to do it all alone. But thinking through what really needs to happen and when your congregation needs to show up in the ways it’s being nudged by God can bring some freedom, delight and space for the Holy Spirit to move.