#UMCGC and the Good, Fast, Cheap Triangle

The Good, Fast, Cheap triangle looks like this:

You can only pick 2

Everyone at the General Conference (GC) desires it to be good, fast and cheap. The fact of the matter is, that is not possible not just for the GC but for all of life. So within the proceedings of the GC, there are camps that are established based upon some underlying values. While we can debate the values, I would submit that these three values (good, fast, cheap) are just as good as any to understand what seemed to happen today at the first day of the General Conference. The reality is that with these three values, you can only have up to two at any one time. 

At the GC, there are those who value this to be cheap and fast. The reality is that we would have a conference of low quality because decisions would be driven by speed and low cost. It would be a race to the bottom, like when we thought the Ford Pinto was a good idea.

There are those who desire the GC to be fast and good, but that is expensive. And that is an attractive way to operate. This is why the fastest cars on the market are also among the most expensive. 

There are those who desire the GC to be cheap and good and that really takes time to create. It is like rebuilding a car that you bought for $300 from the junkyard. You can rebuild it and make it high quality, but it will take a lot of time.

Of the parings, it seems that it is the third group (the one that takes the most time) is the least desirable paring among the bulk of GC delegates. So that leaves the expensive option or the less quality option camps to come to an agreement. 

As I heard the debate today, it dawned upon me that this tension between these three values may be just as valid of a reason to the gridlock we have found ourselves in. We want all three but can only have two. The question that I think about as I compose this reflection at 11pm is what two does God value? 

Digging wells in a bottled water world?

Like buildings, even the artifacts around us shape us. We hear and read about how are brains are being changed by the internet and the technological devices all around us. The internet and smart phones are easy targets to express how we are affected by these cultural artifacts, but there is one little cultural artifact that has changed us perhaps more than we aware. 

The water bottle. 

The water bottle gives us the impression that water is easy to come by. Walk into any gas station and there are cases of bottled water. I can buy a gross of bottles at a membership store and I can even buy water bottles in vending machines. With all this water everywhere, it is amazing that upwards of 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated (cue the irony music).

The impact of the water bottle mentality has leaked into other aspects of our culture. We live in a time where there is little patience for the things that take time. Heck, we even have shorter attention spans than a goldfish. 

Over time we become accustom to get things quickly and those things that take time are dismissed for quicker solutions. There are water bottles all around us and we are always on the look out for the next water bottle device to come along. 

The Church is in the well digging business. The Church is charged to teach the ways of contemplation and meditation and prayer and patience and discipline and reflection and silence and solitude. These disciplines take time to develop and even take time to practice, which may be whey many of us are not interested in them. My concern is not so much that we may not be interested in them, but that we do not see the value of taking time to dig wells when there are so many water bottles around. 

For all the Church is, it is a well digging movement and institution. We dig for the Living Water of Life. The Water that quenches thirst and we never grow thirsty again. We know this is difficult labor and hard work, and we are not sure if the well we dig will reach the Water. We only trust that we are getting closer by digging deeper. 

Too often I feel like I am six feet under digging for water while my people stand on the surface drinking from bottled water wondering what the heck I am doing digging a well. I want to be a Church that picks up a shovel and digs. 

The Bargain Church

Connected to the Stuff You Should Know (Part 4) post is the idea of the "Bargain Church". 

The Bargain Church is all around, and everyone has participated in the Bargain Church.

When we participate in a food drive by giving the box of pistachio pudding we never made, the jar of pimentos we never opened, or the container of almost expired breadcrumbs - then we have fallen victim of the Bargain Church.

Rule of thumb - if we are not going to eat it, odds are no one wants to either.  

If we have ever gotten an angle off an angel tree and then instead of getting the "Super Soaker" water gun or the Nike shoes we saw Dollar General had a sale and we were able to get a 20 pack of 'squirt pistols' or the "Nikeys", then we may have fallen victim of the Bargain Church. The fact of the matter most of the time people on the angel tree get hand-me-downs all year long, they have enough "Nikeys" to last a life time, they have a closet and room full of constant reminders that they are "other" and "second-hand".

Rule of thumb - If someone asks for something and we rather give them something else then we are putting ourselves before others.  

When we think "beggars cannot be choosy" because beggars should just be happy with whatever they get, and so we give them clothes that are full of holes and tears, we may have fallen to the Bargain Church. 

Rule of thumb - if we do not wear clothes because the clothes look like crap, asking someone else to wear them is dehumanizing.

Just because it is called charity does not mean that those who receive charity want the crap that we do not have the heart to throw out.

Rule of thumb - if we are really giving someone something that we just don't have the heart to throw away because we think they could "use it" chances are we are just trying to assuage the guilt we have in having owned the item to begin with. 

When we are building a church or doing a ministry but fall into a conversation about how we could "get that cheaper", then we may have fallen victim to the Bargain Church. The institutions that change the world do not allow their big dreams to change the world become hijacked by those who are just looking to get a great deal. Billy Graham did not say, "yea we could pack out that stadium, but we should just go to a high school gym because they will not charge us to rent the space." 

Rule of thumb  - Dreams on the cheap are really just that, cheap dreams. 

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The Bargain Church makes a mockery of Christ's Church. It makes us feel like we are generous, but in reality we just brag about how much we were able to "save" in the quest of being generous.   

Christ's Church must stay vigilant to the Bargain Church. While Christ's Church is built on extravagant generosity, the Bargain Church is built on a feeling good about ourselves for getting a good deal. Christ's Church is built with great dreams to change the world, the Bargain Church is cobbled together with the change we saved on all the great bargains we were able to get. 

We know when Christ's Church is affected by the Bargain Church because the Church is never accomplishing anything. When you are bargain hunting you go from store to store and spend countless hours looking for that "deal" - time and energy wasted. Most of the time the bargain looks great in the short term, but name me a bargain that you have had for longer than ten years and I will show you an rare gem. 

And this is the real danger of the Bargain Church. Every now and again it "works". We are able to get by on cheap and work the deal and no one is the wiser. And the Bargain Church lives and breaths when we have more satisfaction with getting a good deal than we are changing the world.