This article appears courtesy of Rev Magazine.

20/80 or 80/20?
by Dan Kimball

If you attend enough church growth conferences, you eventually hear the Pareto Principle taught in regards to church growth. Basically, it states that 80% of results flow from just 20% of our efforts.

Considering this, I would say that in church leadership we’d generally agree that 80% of true discipleship and spiritual growth occurs from mentoring, from home groups, from smaller group gatherings, and so on. I’d also bet—if we are brutally honest—that we’d agree that probably only 20% of true discipleship is a result of our weekend services. So why then, do we focus 80% of our time and effort in what produces 20 percent of what we should be considering as results—becoming disciples?

I know that the larger worship gathering is a part of spiritual formation. But what concerns me is that the more I talk with church leaders, the conversation generally revolves around the weekend service. We focus so much of our discussion about the style of music we use, the atmosphere, and our preaching style. We spend lots of time and many meetings coming up with ideas for the weekly event: creative team meetings, band rehearsals, PowerPoint, and tech meetings. The larger the church, all the more time goes to this. Our sermons take 10 to 20 hours a week to prepare. When we evaluate our budget, my guess is that in terms of staffing, where we use volunteers, and money, a great percentage goes to what happens on Sundays at the “big event.” The big event comes, people come, sit, and then go home. But is what we spend 80% of our energy, conversations, and thoughts on producing 80% of what makes disciples?

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus were to look at our time, our focus, what we think about, and what we talk about, what would he say we should spend most of our time doing? If we generally agree that 80% of our results of making disciples come from what we do outside of the weekend event, then what are we doing (for those that do this)?

You may think you don’t do it, but what do you spend the most time on in your week? What do you think about the most? What do you desire to improve the most? I know we desire to make disciples, but could our time be spent in an inverted way, according the Pareto Principle, where we spend 80% of our time on what produces 20% of true spiritual growth?