Give generously, for your gifts will return to you later. 2 Divide your gifts among many, for you do not know what risks might lie ahead. 3 When the clouds are heavy, the rains come down. When a tree falls, whether south or north, there it lies. 4 If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done. 5 God’s ways are as hard to discern as the pathways of the wind, and as mysterious as a tiny baby being formed in a mother’s womb. 6 Be sure to stay busy and plant a variety of crops, for you never know which will grow — perhaps they all will.
(Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 NLT)

I try to avoid sports or military metaphors. It’s not that I don’t like them. Not everybody can relate. As far as I know, Jesus never used any (though Paul did). My post about adaptive leadership used a metaphor that I much prefer: wine.

Side note: Here was the conversation after my wife, Jodi, read that post:

“You didn’t tell them what to do.”

“Yes, I did. I told them to make lots off wine.”

“OK.”

So here’s the follow up. Jim Collins and Morten Hansen came up with a pretty good military metaphor in their book, Great by Choice.

Fire bullets, before cannonballs.

Bullets are low risk, low cost, low distraction efforts that help test the validity of a new initiative. It’s trying something out, without investing a lot of time, energy, resources or risk. You fire a bullet and see what happens. Then you adjust your aim.

Cannonballs are higher risk, business defining ventures. Uncalibrated cannonballs are high risk gambles. Calibrated cannonballs are calculated risks taken after rigorous testing (firing lots of bullets).

Collins and Hansen aren’t saying that you shouldn’t fire cannonballs. In fact, they say that organizational greatness depends on these types of large scale initiatives. But the great organizations go about it a certain way.

If you fire a bullet first, you use less “gunpowder” and you can test your aim. Gunpowder is time (or distraction) and money. For the church I would note that gunpowder also includes political capital. And we only have so much gunpowder.

So you fire a bullet, see what happens. Adjust your aim, fire another. Adjust again. At some point you have enough information to really go for it (fire a cannonball) or to look for another target. Notice this is not machine gun fire. That’s neither rigorous nor calibrated and uses nearly as much gunpowder as a cannonball.

So, ready, fire, aim works much better with bullets than cannonballs.

In Ecclesiastes the metaphor is agricultural, not military.

If you stand around observing the weather, waiting for the right time to plant, you’ll never do anything (vv3-4). You can spend a lot of time planning, but if you never act, nothing will happen. When you plant a crop, there are a lot of variables that determine the harvest: soil, weather, seed quality, weeds, etc. One thing is certain. If you don’t sow any seed, you won’t have any harvest.

So The Teacher tells us to diversify. Plant a variety of crops. Some may grow. Perhaps they will all grow. We don’t know. Using the bullet metaphor, conserving our gunpowder allows us to try more things…to diversify.

In the late 1990’s I was a pastor in Chesapeake City, MD. I had several people, including my daughter, approach me to say that we needed to start a youth center. It wasn’t my vision, but I’m no dummy. I could tell God was working on these folks.

We did three things that were low risk, low distraction and low cost:

• We formed a team to pray about it.
• We decided to go to the ecumenical association so that we could work with other local churches.
• We tried “something.”

That “something” was a Friday night coffee house in the Episcopal church fellowship hall. We did it once and it seemed well-received. So we did it again. And again. Each time we learned something.

We ultimately opened the Generation Station Youth Center, a ministry of the Chesapeake City Ecumenical Association, in the fall of 1999. The “Station’s” primary function is an after school program for at-risk kids. It has served hundreds of students over its 17 years.

All because we did “something.” God can use that. God rarely uses inaction.

Making a difference means we have to be willing to act. But doing it wisely is the difference between mediocre (or worse) and really making an impact. Try something. Test it out. Make an adjustment. Try it again. Make an adjustment or shut it down. You do this enough and you will see God do amazing things.

How is planning like standing around watching the weather?

What is the balance between planning and acting?

What little initiatives can you try, that could lead to something big?

If you found this helpful, please share it with someone else that might benefit. Thanks!