If you have seen the movie, The
Minority Report, this article has nothing to do with law enforcement in the
future utilizing some esoteric psychic technology to arrest and convict people
even before they commit a murder! Rather, this has more to do with
service to the Lord from a spiritual standpoint. So, let me ask you a question;
have you ever noticed with any volunteer organization that the bulk of the work
is done by a few people?
I am not going to offer reasons as to why
that is because you already know or have a good theory. Unfortunately, it has
been my life’s observation and experiences that there is always a minority
doing the majority of the work. When was the last time you enthusiastically got
involved in some projects where there were more than enough people to complete
the work from beginning to end? I have never experienced it, but you may have.
There was this Italian economist by the
name of Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) who made an observation back in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He found this to be the case in other countries as well. The Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule
gained traction in the twentieth century by putting some numbers to his observations
of disproportionality around the world. No wonder why foolish people were
buying into socialism! It has been observed that the fundamental problem with
socialism is when you run out of the other guy’s money.
Ever since then, the 80-20 rule took on
a life of its own expanding beyond economics into other fields not because it
was popular but it was an observable phenomenon, experienced by many. Now to be
clear, this was never a hard and fast rule or meant to be a precise ratio but
more of a general understanding that roughly 80% of the effects (output) come
from 20% of the causes (input). In other words, the majority will do less while
the minority will do more, and that’s the idea here.
The truth of the matter is there have
always been the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor. No human
ideology has ever successfully decreased the disparity or bridged the gap
between the haves and the have-nots or the minority and the majority.
Let’s look at some examples of how the
80-20 rule has been applied, particularly in the realm of productivity, spiritual
or physical. If the minority is carrying the bulk of the load as it relates to
believers serving the Lord, then this verse below is being ignored by 80% of
believers or the majority of those claiming to be servants of the Highest!
And whatever you do, do it heartily, as
to the Lord and not to men (Col 3:23; cf. Col
3:17; Eph 6:7).
That verse should shatter Pareto’s
principle since it applies to all believers, yes? You would expect 100% participation.
It doesn’t take rocket science to see that this is one neglected verse! Now, if
I was a betting man, only a minority of believers truly and completely obey
this verse.
Now, that’s pure speculation on my part,
but consider this; Pareto’s principle is expansive. Again, this is not a
precise ratio, but there are many ways of expressing the imbalance between
input (cause – the minority, 80% comes from 20%) and output (effect – the majority, 20%
comes from 80%).
80% of sales come from 20% of its customers.
80% of a company's sales are made by 20%
of its sales staff.
80% of the effects come from 20% of the
causes.
80% of the world’s income comes from 20%
of the world’s population.
20% of the population accounts for 80%
of crime.
20% of all software code contains 80% of the errors.
80% of a company's output is by 20% of employee input.
20% of a church’s congregation will do 80% of what needs to be done, et cetera.
Again, this is in general, not a hard and fast rule, but you
get the idea of an existing gross imbalance in society and among organizations. Instead
of identifying the 20% and maxing-out those resources (the minority), each
believer in the 80% bracket should be taking personal responsibility to make a
conscious effort to decrease the negative majority and increase the positive
minority. Good luck with attempts on equality of load distribution and
increasing input. Whoever figures that out without adopting the Egyptian brick-making
methods (Ex 5:18-19) could be a very rich person! Some productivity algorithms
can be brutal taskmasters, Egyptian in spirit.
How about this general rule; 20% of the
congregations give 80% to the work of the Lord while the remaining 80% make up
the difference – 20%, theoretically speaking. That would probably be an overly optimistic
way of looking at most church budgets; however, it would not be surprising that
80% would make up 20% of the giving, but not only that, there is a subset of 10%
or less of the 80% (or majority) that even give according to a basic metric of
10% of income (often referred to as the “tithe”) of each individual. It is a heart problem (cf. 2 Cor 9:6-7).
It makes one wonder why did it take
until 1906 for the 80-20 rule to surface? We might pose a similar question why
did it take until 1687 for Isaac Newton to present his theory of universal
gravitation in a way no one else could? Everyone knew what went up came down
since the Garden, but Newton said it in a way that got people’s attention. In
1915 Albert Einstein would give a more accurate description of gravity. From
gifted men in history, we can look back and visualize the power of an idea
unfolding in God’s timing. Someone had said that nothing is more powerful than
an idea whose time has come.
A key metric in business decision-making is analyzing and detecting any imbalance between input and output, getting the most productive bang for the buck. If 80% of output comes from 20% of the input, then the remaining 20% of the output comes from a whopping 80% of the input! If such a gross disparity was evident in any business model, there would be job-threatening repercussions for gross incompetence and mismanagement. Even if we had never heard of Pareto, most of us had already figured out without putting some kind of relational number to it that there is a disproportionate ratio going on whenever we get involved in a project with others.
Pareto’s
80-20 rule simply puts some kind of non-scientific number to this lopsidedness.
Anybody in business knows it is more effective to leverage a course of action
with numbers rather than an opinion. Not surprisingly,
the local church is not immune to Pareto’s principle because the church from an
organizational point of view, not from an organic perspective, is filled with
imperfect people like any other! Is this glaring minority report surprising
that most of the results are determined by a small number of causes? Perhaps it
is one of the underlying reasons people are reluctant to volunteer; they turn
out only to be “worked to death.”
Perhaps from this principle, we perceive a secular viewpoint of why salvation based upon good works would be
untenable. This would mean that 80% of the world population would be in
jeopardy of their salvation since their good would be less than their bad!
Let’s do the math: 20% yields 80% of good works and 80% produces only 20% of
good works. It looks to me that 80% are hellbound because their good only
amounts to 20% if you believe in working your way to glory! So much for hoping your
good works outweigh the bad ones for 80% of humanity.
The bottom line of any self-redemptive plan is that the majority are not going to make it to heaven if they are trusting in good works to gain access to glory. Now, that is interesting in light
of this passage,
(Mt 7:13, emphasis mine) Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is
the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.
(Mt 7:14, emphasis mine) Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the
way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Ah, this gives us insight on just how
tough the law of the harvest can be; a man reaps what he sows in life. The
self-redemptive plan of working out your personal redemption is heavily tipped
in favor of a 20% minority rather than the 80% majority, based on the whims of human nature! In other words, 80% are not going to make it; 2 out 10 are based
on a belief that you can achieve heaven if your good works outweigh your bad! Those
are some steep challenges! Thank God for grace, the unmerited favor of God,
(Rom 10:13) For WHOEVER CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED [emphasis mine].
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