Dave Brisbin | 5.21.17
Reading an article by a pastor who now consults and coaches other pastors on growing church attendance, building programs, and time management created a moment of dissonance that I needed to process. In coaching pastors on protecting their time, to focus their time on necessary growth, the author stated that a pastor can only have meaningful relationships with 120 people at a time, and in a church that group is always changing and needs to be managed to the point of actually changing phone numbers and cutting off access to those outside the current 120. Sounds harsh, contains truth, sounds antithetical to Jesus’ principles, but Jesus had inner circles as well. Hence the dissonance. How to balance?
Reading an article by a pastor who now consults and coaches other pastors on growing church attendance, building programs, and time management created a moment of dissonance that I needed to process. In coaching pastors on protecting their time, to focus their time on necessary growth, the author stated that a pastor can only have meaningful relationships with 120 people at a time, and in a church that group is always changing and needs to be managed to the point of actually changing phone numbers and cutting off access to those outside the current 120. Sounds harsh, contains truth, sounds antithetical to Jesus’ principles, but Jesus had inner circles as well. Hence the dissonance. How to balance?
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And what does it say of our view of time? The ancient view of time and timekeeping was so different than ours, it may be hard to make hard and fast comparisons then and now, but it again points to the necessary balance between mother and father, accomplishment and relationship that is key to kingdom living. Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes that we modern people are fixated on space, of filling formless time with things and accomplishments, but that God sees time as holy in itself, that the first thing God made holy was time—the Sabbath, a palace in time. To see time in a new way may help us to create a better, more holy balance between space and time in our own lives.
