Have you ever heard the phrase – minimise your inputs, maximise your outputs? The context I heard was in a ministry setting. The basic idea would be that in ministry, you do not have time for a whole lot of input but you need to deliver a lot of output. That could be sermons, Bible Studies, devotional thoughts at meetings and prayer meetings, other shorter talks, one to one Bible Studies etc. So, for example, this term you would study Mark’s gospel, and ONLY Mark’s gospel, and from that one source deliver material in multiple different settings. Sermon Series for all Sunday services, bible studies, devotional thoughts at the start of the meetings, personal devotions, newsletters etc etc.
I love the idea of maximising your outputs. I love the idea of thinking creatively about how we can use the material we are studying and learning in a lot of different contexts. There is a lot of wisdom here. It is wisdom that I use in content creation and I know that a number of others do as well. If I were reading a book, like The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, then I could devote time to this input and from that I could write blog posts, produce podcasts and YouTube videos and newsletters as well as social media content all from that one source. There is great value in using your source of study to generate material for a wide variety of contexts.
The issue I have is with the first half of the statement – Minimise your inputs. Now, let’s get the obvious caveat out the way, all of us, whether a teacher, lecturer, content creator, writer or minister, will have limited time and capacity to devote to reading, learning and study. We will all have a maximum level of input. This maximum is going to be different for different people and different circumstances. But, I would want to guard against setting up a straw man and burning it down or caveating ourselves out an application. Minimising and restricting our inputs is an over reaction to this problem, and a potentially dangerous one.
There’s another phrase that you will have heard – you cannot pour from an empty cup. Here’s the point, you cannot maximise your output if you minimise your input. This is true in every discipline of learning and teaching. Here is the logic and the evidence that supports this argument:
Minimising your inputs over time, limits the scope of your output
If you take the approach of minimising your input over the long term, for example as a minister focussing on the synoptic gospels or the epistles of Paul, then when it comes to your output over time, the scope of it will be limited and hamstrung. The topics you can cover, your ability to speak into situations and help people, all of this will be limited by the limits you place on your input. In short, minimising your inputs, will restrict your output. I am not talking about developing a specialism, as one person I know for example has become an expert in the Psalms.
Minimising your input will eliminate the benefits of ‘cross-pollination’.
Cross-pollination happens when things you study and learn in one area or discipline, give you insights into other areas or disciplines that you would not gain if you limited your focus. The benefits of this often compound exponentially. Two examples from my own life and experience, related to Bible Study, would be that having studied the book of Deuteronomy in depth, I realised that I could now gain a much clearer and deeper understanding of Paul’s letter to the Romans. If I didn’t study Deuteronomy, then my ability to understand and teach Romans would be hampered. Equally, an in-depth Bible Overview studied over the course of a year, enabled me to feel the force of Jesus words – The time is come, the Kingdom is near – in a way that I never would have done without this. In short, if you minimise your inputs, then you minimise this cross-pollination and linking effect and so your output will be weaker.
Minimising your input stunts your own growth
All of what we are talking about does not merely relate to your hearers or the people you are creating content for, but also for yourself. The benefits to your own growth and self development of maximising your study and learning cannot be overstated. One of the reasons for the minimise your input approach is to do with efficiency. As your output is all that matters, you only need input for the purpose of producing output. This is a potentially dangerous view as it sails very close to the idea that all my study is about what other people need to hear, not about what I myself need.
Minimising your inputs to focus on outputs, restricts your ability to allow thoughts to develop over time.
If your study and learning is focussed solely on what you are producing at the present time then there is no possibility for your understanding of the matter to develop over time and to receive insight from other avenues of study (cross-pollination). Since your input is focussed on an immediate output, there is no capacity for this.
When it comes to Bible Study and Bible teaching, there is a need and a mandate to teach ‘the whole counsel of God’
This is quite specific but in a church scenario, the aim is that, over the course of time, you teach ‘the whole counsel of God’. It isn’t possible or appropriate to be prescriptive about what this will look like in a local church context, however, I would want to suggest that for any of us, as components of that equation, to deliberately limit our input when it comes to the whole counsel of God is unwise. For all the reasons listed above, in order to correctly fit whatever we are teaching within the whole counsel of God, in order to develop and maintain healthy theology that is led and informed by the whole counsel of God, I would again state that minimising your inputs is unwise. You would be especially vulnerable were you to do this in a ministry context where you were involved in a rolling program of teaching that focussed on the same material in a repeating pattern. Thus your input and study could end up limited to the same material in a repeating pattern for a long time.
So, I would rather say, as far as is reasonably practicable, that we maximise our inputs to maximise our outputs. What this might look like will very greatly over time. If you are younger, then whilst obviously at present, the greater proportion of your input will need to be directly tied to your outputs, you have the gift of an opportunity in the now to build habits that will maximise your outputs for a lifetime.
I would recommend the following practices to help maximise your inputs:
- Allocate some time for study and reading that is not directly tied to something you are immediately needing to use.
- Consider the possibly of preparing material in advance to be used later. I am beginning to build a library of blog posts, that are sitting in a drafts folder and they are there to be reviewed and published at a later date. I know of one church minister who prepares his sermons 3-6 months in advance to enable time to reflect and review.
- Do not restrict the areas you will study and learn from. This is especially true for those in ministry when it comes to the books of the Bible and theology.
I cannot help, once again, but think about the difference between our modern ministry culture and the culture of those who came before us. In generations gone by, 200-300 years ago, the most common approach to this was to focus primarily on your study and your learning. From this would come your teaching material. We have now upended this and focus on what we intend to teach and then plan our study from that. It is the difference between having a well or even a reservoir that you fill over time and then draw from as you have need, to having a a cup that you only fill when someone needs a drink.
I would also say that it is wise to seek to maximise your outputs.
- I have turned old blog posts into Podcasts and I will turn some of the same into YouTube videos. Doing this is actually essential to enable time to maximise inputs as described above.
- Material that you have written in the past, can be drawn upon to help you write material in the future. An old sermon I preached was used as part of a blog post I produced. I was once asked at very short notice to preach 2 sermons at a church in the North East that was in an interregnum. The required length was shorter than was required for the original sermons but I used these old sermons. Some years later, a different church made a similar request and I accepted as I had the sermons largely ready to go.
- Do not be afraid to utilise the things you are currently studying and learning in contexts where things do not need to be quite so polished. A friend was once helping me work through some difficult questions I was grappling with. In order to do this we talked through some parts of Hebrews as that is what our church was preaching through. I have a newsletter that gives my early thoughts and musing on things I am studying or thinking through, before I would be ready to publish on them.
So there you have it – MAXIMISE your inputs to maximise your outputs.
