This weekend I flew to Minneapolis for the Starting Right conference. I took 15 pages of notes, which will probably take me 15 years to process. Speaking of process, the first line of my notes reads “process before product.”
When people say things like “it’s all about the process, not the end product,” I assume they are lazy and/or incompetent. I have never been able to distinguish process from product. The notion of a good, healthy process without a quality product at the other end is completely foreign to me. Doesn’t even compute. I mean what’s the point of the process if not to produce the product? That doesn’t mean the integrity of the process is unimportant. I don’t believe the end justifies any means, as the end product reflects the totality of the process. But I do think I have been willing to take certain shortcuts so long as no one noticed when they looked at the outcome. This is especially true in my job, where often the final product isn’t even acknowledged. But that is not a Kingdom, God-oriented perspective. He takes notice of every detail in His Kingdom, especially those things done in secret. I need to view the process, not just the product, as my offering to my King. While my efforts may go unnoticed by the world, they are important to Him. Ultimately, it is the little things – the details of the process – that shape my character.
The other piece to this is that I am so obsessed with the visible outcome that I don’t really allow God in the process at all – unless of course I encounter some problem along the way that sends me running to Him, begging Him to fix the mess I’ve created. Involving Him in the process – keeping it between me and my God – means that I leave the final product to Him. After all, He is now invested in the outcome. It’s not just my reputation on the line. Of course, as was so astutely put this weekend, God is confident in the durability of His reputation. He has even been known to drag His reputation – along with that of His servants – through the gutter (think Elijah shacking up with the widow of Zarephath or Ezekiel lying around for over a year and then using human excrement as fuel to cook his meals). Okay, so maybe now I see why I may have been reluctant to hand the process over to God.
