When I was small, my grandparents lived within the town limits. The railroad ran behind their house. I remember loving to cross the tracks to play in the dense woods. Sometimes trains would stop, sometimes pass slowly, and other times speed through. As an adult, the fascination no longer exists. Matter of fact, trains now bother me because typically I am the one that gets stuck at the crossing for a stopped or slow moving train to pass before I can proceed.
While there aren’t many tracks to cross in the DC area, if you will, I’ll give you the visual: You’re waiting at the crossing for the train to pass. It will be a while, that much you know, because the train is stopped. You hear the train creak and see the wheels begin to turn ever so slowly. It seems to take forever for the train to gain any speed. That’s the problem with a train: it takes so long to get going. The locomotives seem to barely be able to handle the load. But once the train gets moving down the tracks at 70 miles per hour, those same engines have no trouble maintaining the speed. It’s the principle of inertia at work: Things at rest tend to want to stay at rest and things in motion tend to want to stay in motion.
The inertia that a moving object builds is called momentum. It takes lots of energy to build momentum but far less energy to maintain it. This is more than a principle of physics—we can apply this principle to our personal lives and to the life of our church as well.
Church leadership expert John Maxwell has a book titled The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. One law is that of momentum. Maxwell argues that to lead, one must create and sustain momentum among those in the church. Churches experiencing a lack of momentum, where there is little spiritual or numerical growth, are often referred to as plateauing. But this doesn’t last long—negative momentum (going backward) soon follows.
Momentum was in one of the stories Jesus told: A wealthy man who went away for an extended period of time called together three associates and gave them money to invest while he was gone. One was given five talents, another two, and the third was given one talent to oversee. You know the rest of the story, so here’s the lesson: We’re to invest wisely what Jesus gives us in opportunities, finances, abilities, gifts, relationships and time. Jesus indicates that when we try to do something with what we’ve been given, we’re going to end up with more. Once we have experienced the fruit of our investment, we willingly continue to invest. That’s the principle with momentum.
The one who works and takes risks to multiply what he or she has been given by God has even more, and the one who doesn’t do anything to gain more will lose what he/she has. Sometimes the greatest risk is in doing nothing. Will you commit with me as we begin 2012 to invest at least one thing in your life for the work and ministry of the Kingdom?
