by Eddie Pipkin

Image by Interior Lens from Pixabay

Home organizers have plenty of tips about how to keep yourself sane in a house full of people and their constantly expanding stuff. Sometimes the advice is straightforward, like “Tidy up every day!”  Sometimes it’s counterintuitive.  For instance, the value of empty space.  You’d think that in a world of optimization and productivity, a person would want to use every square inch of available storage capacity.  But au contraire, say the professionals: sanity comes from always leaving some auxiliary square footage, what we in ministry sometimes call “margin.”

The concept of margin is a popular one for those who promote healthy discipleship.  It’s the idea of leaving space in our schedules, in our budgets, in our obligations, so we’re not out on the edge of our capacity – at the end of our rope all the time, as it were.  Whole books have been written on this subject; here’s a sample of a description of the importance of maintaining margins from the Experiencing Revival website:

Creating margin and times of rest, allows us to live into our purposes and live the good life God intended for us. When we have margin in our days, we have the time, energy and resources to not only take care of our needs, but to build relationships with others, serve our community and give generously. It is hard to live into the purposes God has for us when we are burnt out, with no time or energy to take care of ourselves and be intentional with how we spend our days.

Even Jesus, who was God in flesh, intentionally set an example of creating margin. We see in this passage of the book of Matthew how even with the many demands and difficulties Jesus faced, he was able to stay focused on his purpose because of his times of rest and margin.

As discipleship coaches we remind people, “You can’t respond to opportunities to be generous if you’re spending more than you’re bringing in” and “You can’t serve when you see a need in the moment, if every single moment of every single day is scheduled.”

It’s a principle that is in opposition to the modern cults of optimization and productivity.  We’re supposed to be leveraging every second of our routine for useful and productive activities; there are a million influencers and bloggers offering us tips on how to squeeze one more doable task into our jam-packed check-off list lives; even better, we should be multi-tasking as often as possible, checking off multiple to-do items at the same time!

It’s madness.  You know it, and I know it.

Discipleship is not an optimization and productivity scheme (and when we let that popular culture chaos creep into our small groups and Bible studies to the tune of “the heroically productive Christian is the good Christian,” we are losing sight of the model Jesus gave us for how to love others and live for God.

Even when we do manage to embrace the concept of margins for individuals, however, we too often forget about it as a guiding value for the institutions we serve!  Our churches – sometimes even as they are communicating the power of margins to their members – are operating with budgets stretched beyond their means and assigning workloads to staff members and volunteers that are unhealthy and unsustainable.

What’s beneficial for an individual disciple is beneficial for the organization that supports their discipleship.  The principles are universal.  The local church can’t be healthy and happy if it is overextended, overcommitted, and overstuffed.

It’s perhaps easier to see the path to creating margin for an individual.  Here are some key steps:

  • Prioritize.
  • Simplify.
  • Set Boundaries by learning to say “no.”
  • Schedule downtime.
  • Declutter.
  • Embrace minimalism and frugality.

All of these practices lead to reduced stress and, arguably, more productive productivity (if by that we mean being productive in areas that truly matter and not wasting time on so many things that don’t).  This is true for John Doe Disciple, and it’s true for the church itself.  It’s easier perhaps to see these challenges executed in an individual life or an individual household than it is for a complex organism like the local church.  Organizational margin can look like tentativeness: a spirit of uncertainty and hesitation.  Drift and inactivity can, on the surface, provide faux margin.

The keys are mindfulness and intentionality.  We should be thoughtful in our decision making and clear in communicating our reasoning and our vision, both for what we are planning on doing and what we are choosing NOT to do.  We should always be able to articulate those choices with confidence.

Just because we leave margin does not mean we are wandering about willy-nilly, lying fallow, twiddling our thumbs.  We are actively creating and preserving space to give us room for more bandwidth and resources when needed.  The illustration of this for home organizers is the empty shelf in the entryway of a well-organized home.  That empty shelf serves as a temporary space, to hold what needs a place to go until we have a moment to redirect that thing to a more permanent landing site.  The system only works if it is accompanied by the discipline of regular tidying and organization.  If you just pile up your empty shelf with junk and have no procedure for clearing that shelf on a regular basis, it’s eventually only another junk-laden, stress-producing horizontal space.

Likewise, an emergency fund for your home (a classic margin tool) is for temporary use as needed.  If you are dipping into your emergency fund to pay for vacation or pay regular bills, it’s not an emergency fund.  And when you do have a real emergency which requires those funds, you should immediately replenish it as quickly as possible, post-emergency.

In the high-flying days of the tech boom, Google famously let its employees operate under the 20% rule: they could spend one day a week working on whatever they wanted to work on, wherever their passions and interests were leading them.  That’s an illustration of margin, folks!  If a project had reached a critical stage, they could temporarily give up their “me” time to get that project over the hump.  So many amazing, creative things happened because of the ideas that were pursued during that 20% window.  Imagine if church employees had some version of that – what results might follow!

Do you build margin into your own life?  Does the organization you choose value and promote this concept?  Does it practice the principles of margin as an organization?  What are some ways that immediately spring to mind that you would love to see the organization you serve living out these principles.

Share your ideas and comments.