There are many ways to talk about the differences between faithfulness and accomplishment, but I want to highlight one I've been thinking about as of late. The issue which has struck me lately is how often we do things for what we hope to accomplish through them, rather than doing them because we believe we are called to them. In other words, God often calls us to tasks but, I think, rarely calls us to a specific outcome of those tasks. To be truly faithful, we need to hold the outcomes with very open hands.

In evangelical circles, this is controversial. We tend to think that if God is behind something, then it will necessarily lead to x, y, and z. Soon we skip any sort of really faithful calling and move right to effects - seeking to accomplish what we imagine God wants us to - rather than seeking to be faithful and holding the outcomes loosely.

The bottom line is that it is just easier to focus on outcomes - it is easier to make a list and cross it off, to keep one's motivation and to congratulate oneself when goals are reached - but it is often a lot less fruitful. Something I believe God has been teaching me over the last several years is that his ways are longer than ours - they are deeper and wider - while ours are short, shallow and narrow. God's work of reconcilation and redemption is long winded, working over years and decades, through family lines and across generations - while I want goals finished this week or even this hour. But it makes sense that this would be the case because we are dealing with love and reconciling people, broken people, to each other and to God. And love, as it were, takes time.

What does this mean for how we think about church? What does this mean for how we think about evaluating ministry? or our lives?