How do you measure time?
When I first graduated from uni, I shared a house with some wonderful women. One of my housemates worked for a large multinational corporation. She worked long hours under high stress. Her biggest pressure was the need to engage in “billable hours”.
It wasn’t enough to be on company time; she had to do work that mattered to the company. And what mattered to the company was time that clients could pay for, not her company’s central accounts. That was ‘billable hours’.
“ministry that tries too hard to emulate a corporate model can end up treating people like commodities”
Years later, in ministry a long way from any multinational headquarters, I felt a similar pressure. Our ministry team was small, and the ministry needs were big. There were always more opportunities available than we had hours to accomplish them.
During that time, a team leader encouraged us to consider our time as currency. Under this guidance, every pastoral meeting needed a clear agenda. Informal conversations meant we were losing the ministry race, not winning. We needed to operate with a ministry equivalent of ‘billable hours’: if it wasn’t a formal program or event, it didn’t really count.
Unfocused time with people was a waste. It all had to be planned, controlled and purposeful, and everything had to be working towards our carefully developed five-year plan.
It nearly killed me.
When Efficiency Becomes the Enemy
Don’t get me wrong: ministry without purpose is like wandering blind through a dark cave without a torch. But ministry that tries too hard to emulate a corporate model can end up treating people like commodities; like assets instead of humans.
People who are ‘good assets’ may feel used by the amount they’re called on for meetings and teams. People who come to our churches with lives affected by grief, trauma, broken relationships, disability or illness can end up getting trampled.
“This seems to be the shape of many Western churches today.”
Inadvertently, we can transmit the idea that Church membership mandates able-bodied commitments to long hours of volunteering, or the capacity to ‘get down to business’ in every meeting.
Kelly M. Kapic, in a recent edition of Christianity Today, says this: “The phrase ‘Time is money’ is not biblical, yet we in the church have embraced this slogan and baptised a gospel of efficiency.”[1] This seems to be the shape of many Western churches today.
God Works in the Unplanned Moments
Programs and teams do have their place in our ministries when they serve the people and not the other way around. But even so, sometimes the most profound ministry moments happen during informal, unplanned spaces.
God works in quiet conversations. He turns up in fun, social times. He’s present in the impromptu prayers, in the ER waiting rooms, over meals and everywhere life happens.
While we’re waiting for the ‘main event’ to begin, or after the programmed teaching time ends, God brings us to another part of his work: to love, to be encouraged by the faith of others, and to help others love Jesus no matter what life throws at us.
“I learned more over a cup of tea than I had in months of formal meetings.”
Informal space doesn’t mean an absence of an event. We can build connection over a shared task. Working Bees are classic examples of this. It’s not a teaching event, one focusing on the Word of God, yet great conversation happens while you’re pulling weeds and painting fences. Informal spaces provide the opportunity to get to know others properly.
It was in an informal space, for example, where I learned that one of our most faithful church attenders — someone who had sat quietly in church for 40 years or more, and had served on rosters, teams, events and so on — did not yet understand the gospel. I learned more over a cup of tea than I had in months of formal meetings.
Making Space for Real Human Connection
Ministries — and Christians — need informal space just as much as formal programs. In this social media-dominated world, informal real-world spaces are where we teach people how to relate as real humans.
Social media allows us to rehearse being a certain type of human that we select and display. Informal, in-person connection brings us into contact with humanity in a way that can break through the curated façade.
It can be a difficult experience at first, especially when we are used to showing only that small, public part of ourselves we call ‘busy’. But informal spaces are where God’s people transform from coworkers or clients into brothers and sisters. Is it messy? Yes. But we follow a Saviour who became incarnate in all our human messiness.
Jesus certainly had a mission, and it was one that made time for both formal and informal times with others. He taught, he healed, he purposely headed for Jerusalem with his world-altering mission. But he also laughed, feasted, wept, stayed in people’s houses, and slowed down to hear the cries of the people who stopped him along the way.
Practical Steps to Waste Time Well
So how do you plan unplanned time? It sounds impossible.
The first step is to give yourself permission to waste time in your diary. Not in the “I’m going to check my Instagram feed” sense of wasting time, but in the “I’m going to be with people for the sake of it,” kind of time-wasting.
It may be as simple as opening space at the beginning and end of meetings for informal social connection. It may be reducing the number of commitments in your diary so you have time for people. Or it may be inviting people around for meals, or hanging around longer after church.
Sometimes the biggest hurdle for those of us caught in Western Efficiency Mode is simply to give ourselves permission to relax and slow down. Then we can begin to see that people matter more than points on a meeting agenda.
“Your hours aren’t ‘billable’. They are a gift from God.”
The second step is to remember that this is God’s mission, not just ours. Sometimes, our need for efficiency stems from a wrong-headed notion that we are solely responsible for the success of our churches.
It is hard to let go the reins of control and allow some informal space into our weekly schedule. So use it as a step of trust. Give your diary to God, and ask him to help you wean off that need for control.
As part of a ministry team, I learned that asking a simple question (“How are you going?”) could be an entry to rich, encouraging connection with others. But it meant that I had to stop placing them at arms’ length; I had to stop seeing myself as the professional providing a ministry service, where my time was money to be spent with as much thrift as possible. Instead, I had to see myself as a fellow disciple of Jesus, walking together with faithful people as they struggled or strived to serve him too.
Your hours aren’t ‘billable’. They are a gift from God. So too, is his gift of the people he’s brought into your life. So make space for informal times of relationship; you may find you learn more about God than you expected in the process.
[1] Kelly M. Kapic, ‘Unlearning the Gospel of Inefficiency‘, Christianity Today LXIX.4 (2025): 43–47
