Rebuilding 10: Another New Gadget [Devotional]

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“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
Steve Jobs

We will be reading through Nehemiah 6:1-9

We are at an interesting time for Nehemiah. The enemies of God had tried to ruin the plans to rebuild Jerusalem once before and that didn’t work. Nehemiah had a calling from God, was driven, and so it was time to take him out. They tempted him to lure him out, but to no avail. They tried again, and again, and again.

Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.” But they were scheming to harm me; so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.
Nehemiah6:2-4

Nehemiah knew his mission and success could not be a distraction that would actually end up killing him. But the ministry was too great.

We don’t do that in church tech, do we? Well, there is that shiny new wearable we could get. Could we maybe incorporate that with the ministry and justify the expense? We do need a planning app. While what we have now is currently working, we could upgrade to that flashy platform everyone is talking about. I need to better craft our blogging and social media messages, but this other thing I heard about would be fun to play with.

These are distractions, if they are not needs. We have a mission to serve. We should definitely have the right tools to do it well, but unlike any other ministry, we can be highly distracted instead of serving.

While no one may die, we are not building up the church. Our mission itself is dying when we stop serving others and instead become self-serving.

Use these reflection questions for the comments section.

1. How are you focusing too much on yourself and distractions rather than ministry?
2. Why is it important to avoid distractions in church tech? What are you losing out on?
3. How can we keep our eyes focused on the mission, staying the course, and not letting temptation tear us down?

Jeremy Smith

Jeremy is owner of ChurchAndMentalHealth.com and the Co-Occurring Program Coordinator and a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor at a community mental health center. Jeremy has a history of working as a ministry director for Youth for Christ for 8 years and then working as a mental health and substance use adult counselor in Colorado and Ohio, specifically running an Opioid Residential Treatment Center.