57,600 Seconds and One Priority

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.” —Three Dog Night

Every time our son sends me a book, I read it. Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less was the most recent. Drew had a feeling I’d resonate with its core message. Turns out, McKeown unintentionally speaks my native language, Oikocentricish.

McKeown describes the importance of leading by design rather than by default. In other words, if the leader doesn’t set the priority mission for any organization, somebody else will. McKeown doesn't write specifically to pastors. He’s not even writing to believers. But his big idea is one we should all pay attention to.

The priority mission for every Jesus-follower is clear, because Jesus (the Head of the Church) gave it to all of us. He led by design, not default. He didn’t allow anyone to tell Him the best direction to lead His Church. And, ever since He gave us His directive, no one has ever called it The Good Commission. I say that because, typically, local churches are not doing horrible things. The problem is, the good things they are doing have buried the only great thing that Jesus actually gave us.

McKeown added this. “The word priority came into the English language in the 1400’s. It was singular. It refers to the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next 500 years. Only in the 1900’s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Ironically, we reasoned that by changing the term we could bend reality.”

So, what are the priorities at the church you lead or attend? Actually, a better question may be this. What are your priorities as a believer? The truth is, none of us get to have priorities. It’s a simple numbers game. No one can ever have more than one first thing. Anything else that may be important, by definition, is less important than that.

All of the wisdom in Scripture? Very important. All of the character-building disciplines in Scripture? Very important. All of the relationship principles in Scripture? Very important. But I want to be clear. They all have the same singular endgame. They all make us better at fulfilling the Church’s one priority. 

I’ve always been impressed with Jesus’ focus.

“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’” (Luke 10:38-42)

Can you identify with that phrase, “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made?” Martha was distracted by what she considered her many priorities. It wasn’t that she was doing anything horrible. Jesus rebuked her for what she lacked.

Focus.

Every day, we are all given 86,400 seconds to live. Generally, we’ll spend around 28,800 of them to sleep, which leaves us around 57,600 seconds to make decisions. And since the average person makes over 35,000 decisions each day, we will make a decision again today about every 1.6 seconds.

So, what if someone put $57,600 dollars into your bank account every morning when you woke up. I’m talking tax free, just there for you to spend. The only stipulation is that, when you went to bed every night, whatever you didn’t spend would be removed. No rollovers. No carrying a balance into the next morning.

What would you decide to do?

When you think about it, that’s the way our lives are right now. We are all given a limited amount of time to spend. For those of us who are privileged to lead, the season we’re allowed to do that is limited as well. Leadership is a stewardship. We don’t lead a local church forever. I was given that opportunity for 38 years. That may seem like a long time at one place, but it sure flew by. And when I stepped away, it was suddenly gone.

All I’m saying is that, quite frankly, we don’t have time for distractions. We simply cannot afford to spend our 57,600 today on things that really don’t matter that much. It’s not that they can’t matter at all. They just can’t matter as much as the one priority.

There’s a little Martha in all of us who needs to pay attention to that.