Striving for Inefficiency
I'm writing this from a waiting room while my son is in surgery.
All morning, messages have been coming in — texts, prayers, check-ins from people who heard and wanted me to know they were thinking of us. I stopped at one point and counted sixteen people who had reached out before noon! And sitting here with not much else to do, it struck me: those people didn't just happen. They are the fruit of years of choosing community over convenience, relationship over efficiency and presence over productivity.
Most of these texts came from people – who I have intentionally found ways to spend time with in the last month – through walks, coffees, small group, date nights or maybe simply just texts to check in.
Anyone who knows me knows I love being EXTREMELY efficient. (For example – using an hour in a waiting room to write this article 😊.) But – I keep being given life lessons – as God helps me grow – to realize that building Christian community sometimes requires us to strive for inefficiency and to slow down and put other people before our to-do lists.
Look at how Jesus spent His time. He didn't build a scalable organization or optimize for reach. He picked twelve people and said — come be with me. Mark 3:14 puts it simply: "He appointed twelve that they might be with him." That was the strategy. Presence. Proximity. Unhurried relationship.
Jesus stopped for people everyone else walked past. He lingered in conversations that had no agenda. He turned water into wine at a wedding because the party mattered to his friends. He ate dinner with people — slowly, repeatedly, with no rush to get to the next thing. He built relationship that could only be formed over time, around tables and in ordinary moments.
The early church taught this. Acts 2:42 says they devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. Devotion means it cost them something. It meant saying yes to gathering when they could have been doing work and getting other things done. And that kind of consistent, costly investment is exactly what produces a community that shows up when it matters.
Galatians 6:2 says it plainly: "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."
That verse doesn't happen automatically. It happens because someone decided, long before the crisis, that the people around them were worth the time.
So here's my challenge to all of us:
Be inefficient on purpose.
Call the person when a text would be faster. Show up when sending a card would be easier. Have the long conversation even when you have somewhere to be. Invest in people before there's a crisis, so that when the crisis comes — and it will — they (and you) are not alone.
The world will tell you that you don't have time for this. But this is exactly the kind of thing Jesus made time for — again and again. A slower way that will cost you some efficiency.
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34)
That kind of love doesn't happen without intention. It happens in the hundred small moments where you chose the person in front of you over your to-do list.
Reach out to someone – this week. Grab coffee, make a phone call on your long drive, meet up to golf or fish, show up to one of your friends’ kid’s sporting events. Just intentionally leave something on your to do list undone – so you can show up for someone else.
The investment you make in slowing down to connect with others today is the community you'll have tomorrow.
**Based on devotionals by Pete Greig