Greetings, Visitors and New Beginnings Family! If you want, pour yourself a cup of coffee and then pull up a chair for the latest edition of Coffee with Gary entitled, “Working Smarter.”

Every season of the year has its own challenges when it comes to yard work. The winter has snow and ice removal. The spring has winter clean-up and yard beautification. The summer has lawn mowing, and the fall has leaf removal.

Several factors combine to make leaf removal especially challenging. The first is the timing of the trees. Not all my trees shed their leaves at once. Then, as the weather turns colder and wetter, not every day is suitable for raking leaves. Depending on my schedule and with less available daylight, the weekend may be the only time I have to rake leaves. The next factor is the wind. Whether raking leaves is easier or harder often depends on the direction of the wind. Lastly, the city does not hold to a firm schedule of picking up the leaves alongside the curb.

The annual removal of leaves is non-negotiable. Every year this work must be done. How I accomplish this, though, is entirely up to me. For instance, I have neighbors who blow their leaves to the curb almost every day. As for me, I wait for more leaves to fall and tell my wife that my goal is to “work smarter, not more.”

As an example of working smarter, I recently noticed a lot of leaves accumulating along my neighbor’s fence that I planned to remove on a specific day. When the day arrived, there was a wind storm, and I decided to do the work another day. The next day I looked out my window to find the leaves alongside my neighbor’s fence gone! Furthermore, the wind stripped many of the leaves from my trees earlier than would have otherwise fallen. It’s as though God, through the wind He sent, raked my leaves for me!

The Great Commission of Jesus Christ is a Biblical non-negotiable (Matthew 28:18-20). Before His ascension, Jesus commanded His disciples to “go” and “make disciples” of all nations. Along with those two commands, Jesus assured His followers that He has all authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus also promised His disciples that He will always be with them. That said, I believe that God gives us a certain degree of Biblically-appropriate flexibility in how we fulfill these two commands.

Over the years, I have used drama to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. In this way, I was fulfilling the “go” clause of The Great Commission. Furthermore, I have found drama to be a creative, effective, and dare I say a fun way to share my faith in Jesus. This then is how I “worked smarter” in obedience to The Great Commission of Jesus Christ.

The “make disciples” clause requires the church to cultivate relationships with fellow believers and, in turn, train them to “go” and “make disciples.” The Sunday School format of Bible training can be an effective model for making disciples. However, it is not as effective as it needs to be without a sufficient number of qualified teachers. Now I am not trying to repudiate the Sunday School format of Bible training. What I am saying is, why not ask God for an alternate method to effectively disciple His people?

God will never command us to do anything that He does not empower us to do. I have been meditating on a “mentor centered” model of discipleship over a “classroom centered” model. Perhaps a hybrid of the two will teach Bible knowledge through the classroom, and Bible application through a mentoring relationship. If it’s resources we need, please remember, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills! (Psalm 50:10)

Finally, if raking leaves has you down, don’t keep spinning your wheels. Instead, find a way to “work smarter.”   

Your fellow pilgrim in looking for a country of our own, (Hebrews 11:13-16)

Gary