Ephesians 4:1-16
3. Productivity
God gets things done and what God does is good.
Genesis 2:1 – Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
Genesis 1:31 – God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
God is productive. In other words – and this is our definition of productive – to get things done, to do them well and the result is good.
Work is honourable.
If it’s good enough for God it’s good enough for you and me.
God’s work can be seen in four categories:
1 Creation – making new things. When God completed his creation of the universe, the world and everything in it, he embarked on the work of sustaining creation. This work includes making new things and making old things new.
Do we make new things?
2 Providence – providing for families and communities. Definition: God, knowing all, directing the universe and the affairs of humankind with wise benevolence. Caring, guiding and managing resources so that many people benefit.
Do we provide for families and communities? The need is increasing for us to all work together. Some would love for us to compete with one another but we will benefit more from working together.
3 Judgement – Structuring life, organizations, cities…. God gives people the wisdom to order life and society in beneficial ways. God knows what is best for us and helps us to organise ourselves in the best ways possible.
Do we ensure life, organisations, cities, .. work as they should?
4 Redemption – righting that which is broken… God’s mission is to fix the world. That’s why Jesus came. He’s been working on this since Adam ate the forbidden fruit and the end is not yet.
Are we working to right that which is wrong; to fix that which is broken?
When we think of work economically we think of employment. When we think of employment we think of businesses. Notwithstanding that we also differentiate between paid and unpaid employment.
Let’s go right back to basics. What is the purpose of a business?
The purpose of a business is its contribution to society. The economy is a subset of society. Despite calls to the contrary, the economy does not stand alone. Society is not a subset of the economy. We currently have a money economy. Society could operate just as successfully without money.
Anyway, the purpose / justification / value of a business is in the contribution it makes to society.
A business contributes primarily in two ways: by way of what it produces – its product or service, and by way of gainfully employing people to produce and deliver its product – providing work.
A business can make a positive, neutral or negative contribution. The value of a business is in the value of its contribution to society.
Many say that businesses exist to make money for their owners. That may be the main reason many people go into business, but it is actually a by-product of the business, it is not its main purpose. Money is a primary motivation but a secondary purpose.
A business needs to pay its costs and that is all it needs to do. A profit is not a bad thing unless it is produced by paying low wages to its workers, having them work in poor conditions, or charging too high a price for the product. Any of these is a negative contribution. A reasonable level of income for the owner is one of the costs, as is the payment of debt.
A profit can be put back into the business, if there is a use for it there. It can be held over against a lean year to even out the ups and downs of trade. It can be paid in bonuses/higher wages/better conditions to those who helped produce it. It can be given away philanthropically.
Since profit is not the purpose of the business but a product of good management and luck, it is not good for the owners of the business to squander the profits on themselves while ignoring those who haven’t enough to make ends meet. The rich are responsible for redistributing their wealth. Having too much money at their disposal can corrupt people rather quickly. Having too little money can have the same effect. Even thinking that one has insufficient can tempt a person to corrupt practice.
Such is the nature of business. Productivity is what keeps it all going. That is everyone doing their work, doing it well, producing their good product in a good way, and society moves forward.
Productivity is about producing the product, achieving the objective, completing the project. It is not about profit because productivity applies just as much to non-profits and to us individually. As God’s people our lives need to be productive.
Some Bible examples.
The people building the tabernacle under Moses were productive.
Exodus 39:32: So all the work on the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, was completed. The Israelites did everything just as the Lord commanded Moses.
Solomon and his team building the temple were productive.
1 Kings 6:14: So Solomon built the temple and completed it.
Nehemiah and the people with him were productive.
Nehemiah 6:15,16 So the wall [of Jerusalem] was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.
Paul and his team did what they set out to do.
Acts 14:26 From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. Romans 15:28 So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this contribution, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way.
How do you know you’re being productive? What are your measures of success?
For this you need to know what your work is, what is the end you’re working towards (your product), and what it looks like when you’ve completed it.
What does it mean for the church to be productive?
First: what’s our product? Disciples.
The mission of the church is to make disciples out of non-disciples.
The end product is an increasing number of maturing disciples.
How productive are we in this our basic mission?
Dave Mann, in The Elephant in the Room, p.27-8, makes this observation.
“It is often suggested that about 10% of an average congregation might have the gift of evangelism. It was pointed out to recently that this supposed gift of ‘evangelism’ isn’t found in the various lists of ‘members’ gifts’ in the Bible, like in 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12. it is found in only one such list: Ephesians 4. This passage describes a particular leadership gift, recognisable by its fruit. What fruit? There would be recognisable success in mobilising the members of churches to evangelistic action. A case is not hard to make, or defend, that says that there is no ‘regular’ gift of ‘evangelism’ such that we could list it next to various other gifts mentioned in the Bible. The point is that our terminology (coming from various spiritual gifts courses) may have been incorrect – but why is this important?
“Every Christian is called to be a relational evangelist in the same way that every Christian is called to love and serve. Evangelism is supposed to be part of the ‘bread and butter’ of Christian life – not a gift that only some have! To distinguish a member as ‘an evangelist’ is to wrongly categorise something we correctly observe. It might be true that 10% of those in our churches have people-skills and personality types that enable them to talk confidently about spiritual things with people they do not know. But this does not mean they are called to be evangelists in any way that would, by comparison, suggest that the rest of us are not! This is the danger of our current terminology.
“While we might have different relational styles, and different levels of revelation of God’s heart, and also be at different levels in our people skills, … the Bible simply says that we are all supposed to evangelise! The Great Commission of Matthew 28 makes this clear, as does Jesus’ calling to his disciples – which carries a very similar calling and promise as Matthew 28:18-20: “Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19).”
This was a revelation for Dave. It was a revelation for me, too. I got out my Greek texts and checked and did not find evangelism in those lists of gifts. I looked again at Ephesians 4:11. It says: So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.
We will be productive in our mission when we are equipped in these areas. So I keep working to equip you as best I can. I’m primarily a pastor and teacher so I need help from others who are gifted in other ways. Dave Mann is, I believe, gifted in evangelism training so I will continue to get his help in equipping you for evangelism. Let me say it one more time. The evangelism part of making disciples is everyone’s job.
I don’t have time now to go further into our personal productivity. Let me just reiterate that you need to know what your work is, what is the end you’re working towards (your product), and what it looks like when you’ve completed it – and do it.
And two final thoughts.
It might not be easy (after all it is work) but “If you do what’s easy, your life will be hard. If you do what’s hard, your life will be easy.” Or, as we used to say in the old days, “Lazy people go to the most trouble.”
and
Even our troubles can be productive! 2 Corinthians 4:17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.