Tag Archives: Pareto Principle

Does Our Work Show Our Love?

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In the church setting, people will often look at what a person does to determine how much they love God, or their spirituality. Even though we admit that we are not saved by works, that seems to be the one thing people look to in order to gauge spirituality.

Let’s look at a story I saw on Facebook:

A father looks upon his two sons without them knowing and watches them draw him pictures. The first son has drawn a nice picture of him and his father holding hands as stick figures and the father is proud. The second son has drawn something a bit different. He has used the entire box of markers, glitter, glue, craft paper… he skipped his free time to create the most audacious thing for his father and the father is proud. The first son then looks at the second’s picture and feels the need to point out how unnecessary the attention to detail and the use of different materials were in the creating of the picture. “It was a waste of time, Father will love my gift no less than yours, simple is better, he will not be impressed.” To which the second son replied, “I didn’t do it to gain his love, that we both have. I did it out of my love for him in the best way I knew how”.

Both sons loved their father, and they showed it the best way they knew how. For some, it is elegant, for others, it is very simple and basic. Show we compare how we show love to our Father? Of course not, yet we often do that within the church.

faith_or_works_smDon’t get me wrong, James 2:17 tells us that faith without works is dead. If we have faith, then works will follow, but works do not get us to closer fellowship with God.

The question becomes, do we gauge one’s spirituality by the works that they do? I would hope not.

I knew a pastor that was concerned that some members of the church thought they were more spiritual than they were, or would look down on others because of their lack of involvement. His proposed solution, create levels, and as people met certain goals (fellowship with others, giving, service, etc.), then they would be deemed to be on that level (i.e. more spiritual). I questioned that solution. After all, how is the solution to people elevating themselves and creating “classes” of spirituality, creating levels of spirituality?

The Pareto Principle (80-20) seems to feed into this class of spirituality, where those who serve and do more must love God more and be more spiritual. But like the two sons in the story above, maybe people are showing love to God the best way they know how. Let us not look down on people, rather build them up and help draw them closer to God. May they follow me, and follow you, as we follow God.

Show God that you love Him the best way you know how to today.

 

The Pareto Principle Trap – Misinterpretated

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The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule…) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.  – Reference, Wikipedia. This one in a series of posts discussing the Pareto Principle “Trap” and why churches fall into it.

The Pareto Principle states that generally 20% of the effort equals about 80% of the result. church-splitThere are many illustrations in the business world, but I believe that it is often misapplied and misunderstood in the church, because of the “Mary – Martha” scenario I posted yesterday. When we focus on “we who do” and those who don’t”, we build a natural divide between the two groups, like Martha tried to do. We tend to look at where we are involved and see the “lack of volunteers” in our area. When we do this, we are being short-sighted. We focus on our small portion of the entire work being done for the Kingdom of God. Let’s look at the “church” scenario: Continue reading →

The Pareto Principle Trap – Modern Day Pharisees

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The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule…) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.  – Reference, Wikipedia. This is the beginning of a series discussing the Pareto Principle “Trap” and why those in churches fall into it.

 

80_20_pareto_principleI’m sure you’ve heard it stated that 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work. It has been repeated over and over again within the church as members burn-out or seek to guilt others into serving. As I hear this principle slung around, it seems to me that the people shouting the loudest are those who believe that they are part of the 20% doing 80% of the work. When I hear this, I can’t help but think of the account of Mary and Martha when they entertained Jesus in their home. Continue reading →