Often times theology and practicality are pitted against one another – theologians vs. pragmatists. One side says the other is all tied up in strategies and techniques and needs to delve more deeply into God’s word. The other side points out that all that study and knowledge doesn’t actually get much done. Matt Perman, in his new book, explains that this is actually a false fight, two sides warring that actually complement one another perfectly.
In What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done, Perman lays out what he calls “Gospel Driven Productivity”, the idea that a whole understanding of the gospel actually fuels practical productivity. The book is biblically rich as well as full of concrete ideas and strategies. It is a wonderful resource for Christian leaders, those in vocational ministry, or Christians who simply want to be the best employees and workers they can. Here are twenty of the best quotes from the book. You can read the first installment of 20 HERE.
21) Make your productivity systems streamlined, but don’t spend time over-optimizing. Act.
22) You can fail at your life goal and still succeed at your mission, and thus your life. Your mission is a matter of principle, and it is something you can do in failure as well as success.
23) Since we didn’t create ourselves, we can’t define our own purpose, either. God created you and defined your purpose. Your role is to know what that purpose is, embrace it, and state it in a way that captures your own individuality and uniqueness.
24) Something passes muster as a core principle in your life if it is something you would hold to even if you were punished for it – even if it were not advantageous to you in an external sense.
25) Make mistakes of forward motion, not mistakes of sloth. Try things, be bold, and see what happens.
26) A basic routine, governed by your mission and roles, is the framework within which you should operate.
27) By all means, harness your whims when they do come. But don’t wait for them.
28) Excellence happens when you go beyond your schedule. Competence is doing what you need to do. Excellence is knowing what you’re supposed to do, getting it on autopilot, and going beyond. It means having that extra touch that goes beyond simply what you could write down in an article or in a manual. It’s doing what not everyone can do, even if they know all the steps.
29) God designed the world so that there will always be more things for us to do than we are able to do. This isn’t just so we can learn to prioritize; it’s so that we learn to depend on one another.
30) Delegation is a key way to build others and help them be more effective, not just you.
31) Maybe people seem “incapable” of responsibility because they are just reflecting back to you the way you are viewing them.
32) If you are doing a lot of work you have to force yourself to get done, you are probably in the wrong job.
33) The best way to overcome procrastination, then, is to love what you do.
34) When people are self-motivated (as the people you hire ought to be) you don’t have to worry about their wasting time. They love what they do and are driven to do it. They don’t want to sabotage themselves.
35) The biggest reason people skip planning is because they are busy. This is a trick. Feeling busy is the reason you ought to plan; it indicates that you need planning all the more, not less.
36) One of the key purposes of a weekly plan is to enable you to seize unplanned opportunities.
37) Our aim in increasing our own productivity should be to increase our ability to do good for others.
38) Personal effectiveness has an impact on the spirit and culture of an organization, creating an environment that calls forth the best from everyone
39) Bad management hurts people and bad leadership hurts people; in fact, doing anything badly hurts people. Doing anything poorly that pertains to the practical arena is unloving because it brings harm to others.
40) The chief arena in which we serve God is the vocation of our everyday lives. At the same time, as we see here, God also calls us to go beyond and meet needs wherever they are as we have opportunity to do so.
You can read the first installment of 20 HERE.
This was originally posted at MinistryGrid.com.
