Tithing Our Time

One of my favorite songs is “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” by Chicago on their first album in the early 1980’s. (Click the URL and listen) I know, for some readers, the 80s is reaching back before memories began. Another, more recent, song about time is from the musical Rent “Seasons of Love.” (Click the URL for the Lyrics and song.) It begins with an enumeration of the minutes in a year, Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes How do you measure, measure a year?

For years I have said my motto is “Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and today might be the last day of my life. It must be lived with faithfulness and intensity.” When Jesus was asked about when will the Son of Man will come? He responded, But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (Mt 24.36 NRSV)

Today we are never far from a time piece be it a watch, a clock or our ever present digital devices. In many churches a clock is hung on the back wall so the time is ever before the minister. I once served a congregation which wanted the worship service at 11:55 so they could beat the Methodists to the restaurants. In western Pennsylvania, during football season, nothing can intrude on the time the Steelers’ game is to begin.

I was recently in a discussion with the participants in the polity class I am teaching for the Commissioned Ruling Elder program done in cooperation with Pittsburgh Presbyterian Seminary and the Synod of the Trinity. The discussion centered on the length of Session meetings. They reminded me that many elders want the session meeting to be finished in an hour or less.

While I believe many meetings can become too long, I am more concerned about the content of the meeting than its length. If the Session is merely a board of directors then a pro forma meeting might be sufficient. However, if the Session is a gathering of elders who are concerned not only with the temporal/organizational matters of the congregation things might take a bit longer.

What if the Session meeting were to include a real devotional time rather than a brief opening prayer? What if some time were taken to build upon and support the fellowship among the session members? What if some time were taken to study and discuss portions of the Book of Confessions and/or the Book of Order? What if time were taken to study and discussion issues before the church and/or community? What if the Session were to trust its committees rather than functioning as a committee of the whole and reworking every recommendation from its committees?

The drive to get in and get out of a session meeting in an hour or less may indicate that time is more important to us than faithfully carrying out our responsibilities as elders. It is the same drive which calls for Sunday morning worship to last no more than an hour.

We only have the time which God has given us. Each day has 1,440 minutes. What if we were to tithe our time each day? That would be 2.4 hours given in service to God. Service to God does not mean it all has to be directly related to "church work." We are called to love God and our neighbors. What difference could we make in our life, in the life of our family, in the life of our congregation, in the life of our community, in the world if we were to intentionally use that 2.4 hours intentionally fulfilling those two prime directives? (Yes that is a Star Trek reference.)