FAILING TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL
When it comes to business the business plan is the key. When it comes to church planting, planning is the key. As someone said until we have found the source of telepathy a business plan in
our brain is not a business plan. People often complain about lack of time when
the lack of direction is that real problem. We are living in a world where
spirituality is understood as spirituality of noise. We don’t need to raise our
voice when we can improve our arguments. The bad news is time has wings and the
good news is that you are pilot or the bird.
This above quotes “Failing to plan is planning to fail”
attributed to Benjamin Franklin the father of time management is music to our
ears. One of the questions often worries my heart is that, is there room for Holy
Spirit when we plan things ahead? We live our life today with the culture of
glorification of instant. Instant Coffee, Fast food, Use and throw culture are
some of the attributes of our generation. Can we have a goal setting process
when we think about spiritual things or in connection with the church and
ministry? Can we let God participate in our strategic planning? What does the
Bible talk about planning ahead?
In my personal experience in ministry for many years, I
have found that planning works better and it maximizes our time together. Every
time I stand and preach there is a burning desire in my heart about time
consciousness. This is how I see the preaching or time together. The time you
preach multiplied by the number of audience you have. Example: If you have 100
audiences listening to you multiplied by 30 minutes (You’re preaching time).
100 X 30 minutes = 3000 minutes. That is 50 hours of productivity. What can we
achieve comely as a productive citizens of God’s kingdom with 50 hours of
productivity. I hope you now understand my stand point about the wise use of
our personal time and time together.
Once I made a radical comment in my local church which
created further discussions among our friends. I said this in the context of
having around 15 to 20 hours of corporate regular prayer meetings in our local church
in a week. (Sunday 4 + Tuesday 3+ Thursday Night 2.5+ Friday 3 + Saturday Youth
Meeting 2.5 + Special meetings = 15 + hours). This was my statement: As
Christianity grows in India the productivity and agricultural demands and
dependency for the neighboring state (Tamil Nadu) also will grow. I also said
this in the context of not having the spirituality of sowing but the
spirituality of reaping the harvest. We have conventions and crusades but no
seed distribution. Here the question is
who will plant the seed? Who will water it? I am sure God will let it grow. If
we don’t plant the seed, if we don’t water it when we go for reaping the
harvest we will be getting the wild Poison Ivey. We may misjudge the crop
between good and bad. Unfortunately Christianity has a lot of them inside the
church. Christians not genuinely repented of their sins. This motivated Gandhi
to say "I love your Christ but I hate your Christians because your
Christians are unlike your Christ".
Recently I attended a church camp where the preacher was
making audience ready to receive the Word for two or three sections. Almost all
the time allotted to him. I wonder how come the Spirit did not tell him that we
are ready for this camp with anticipation for a spiritual awakening since three
months. The management and planning is the ability to control how we spent our
time effectively to accomplish our goals. I remember one of my mentor said we
can have the gun powder spread it on a table and fire it and the effect will be
very minimal where as the the same gun powder can be inside a pistol and we can
destroy the target. Some of our preaching's are like gun powder spread it on
the table.
When I learned Transaction Analysis (TA) few years back,
I have learned the psychology of time management and planning. People are
driven by subconscious scripts learned early in life, which govern the
behavior. Some of them are Hurry up; Be perfect, Please people, Try hard, Be
Strong etc. These may be imprinted in our psyche because of the repeated instruction
from our parents. This is also copying parents. TA also talks about time
structuring. When people get together people spent their time in six different
ways, such as: Withdrawal, Rituals, Pastime, Activities, Games and Intimacy.
When a person withdraws s/he take a rational adult
decision and physically present but does not transact. The only possible stroke
is self-strokes in order to avoid psychological risk of rejection. This meets
their personal needs for time to be alone. This will rejuvenate the person’s
thoughts and feelings. This will also lead to a fantasy world to enjoy
uncensored pleasure, violence, creative imagination, learned fears and
catastrophic expectations. Ritual is another stereotyped complementary
transaction from communicating “hi” to complicated religious rituals. Basically
the structural rituals belongs to parent ego state and functionally they
are from adopted child ego state. The Pastimes has no structures like rituals
but leeway’s to make their own embellishments. What happened in the pastime =
past-time. When men come together they talk about Car and motor vehicles and
women prefer kitchen or fashion cloths or ornaments. People enjoy pastime
because it mostly generate positive strokes. The Activity is mostly a transaction
from adult ego state and mostly the goal is “here and now”. This will generate
conditional positive and conditional negative strokes. The next one is
psychological Game people play. The common outcome is at the end of play both
parties feel bad. This is the replay of childhood strategies. This mainly comes
from the negative adopted child, controlled parents or negative nurturing
parents. The final time structure is Intimacy in which there are no secret
messages. This can be understood as a hug or kiss at the end of a quarreling.
This is not intimacy in the real sense of intimacy. The quarreling starts as
part of the game. In the real intimacy both accepts his or her responsibility.
There are a lot of stroking and the real intimacy is from the adult ego state.
When it comes to planning we have the following excuses
such as It is too hard, It’s too unpredictable, It’s time consuming, It’s not
necessary. When it comes to planning we often say it should be SMART. Smart
stands for the following specifications, such as S- Specific: What, where and
how? M- Measurable, from and to when? A- achievable: can it be done?, R-
realistic or feasible. Time- timely: When?
Benjamin Franklin gives us the advice to ask the
following questions in the morning and evening? What Good shall I do today?
What good have I done today? Is it not
the same we should ask as a church and community of people of God? Tell me and
I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn, Said Benjamin
Franklin. He also said “Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until
they are seventy five.” This is same when it comes to organizations and people.
When we do the glorification of "4 standards" are we not carry the
new wine in the old wine skin.
The Bible talk about the importance of planning in Luke:
14: 28-33 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down
and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he
has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock
him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what
king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and
deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against
him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off,
he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. ... In Prov: 21: 5 says: The
plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes
only to poverty.
Time is money and it is the most powerful resource given
to us by God. Let’s use it for good and useful for the Kingdom of God. Failure
to prepare is preparing to fail.
Blessings,
Binu Peniel
2016 (C)www.binupeniel.com
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