Trillions of Hours Not Serving Jesus

I could do so much more

There you have it, 319,148,263 souls. The estimated population of the United States. 

Now, I'm going to come up with my own estimate of how many of that total are saved. It won't be the 85% who claim to be Christian. It won't be the 50% or so who go to church. It won't even be the 30% who attend evangelical churches. I'm going to go with 10% of those who claim to be Christian and actually attend church more than twice a year.  That number is going to be around 50%. The reason I'm only counting 10% of those is because smarter folks than me have used that number. I'm personally a bit more generous and think it should be 33%, but I'll take the lower number for these purposes. So 10% of 50% equals 5%.

5% of 319 million is about 16 million. If those 16 million could devote one additional hour to kingdom work each week, that would be around 800,000,000 hours per year. Let's divide that by 2000, which is the approximate number of hours a person works per year if they have a 40 hours week and take two weeks vacation.  Divide 800 million hours by 2000 and we have 400,000 full-time employees for Jesus. 

Can anyone imagine what an impact we could have for Christ if we had an additional 400,000 folks working full-time in Christian ministry, JUST IN THE US.

But, you say, those 16 million are probably already working multiple hours per week as Sunday School teachers, Bible study leaders, counseling hurting souls, evangelizing, or even running a ministry of their own. Some are going on short term mission trips.

I would certainly agree. And many of those same workers have day jobs, too. But I look around me at my friends and neighbors who seem to be believers, and their fruit does show it, but I see them wasting multiple hours per week on activities that are of no value to them or the kingdom. In fact, many of those hours are counterproductive to themselves and anything Christ would endorse.

The sad truth is, I'm just like that picture. I work way more than 40 hours per week to bring home a paycheck. I am actively involved in ministry many more hours per week, and I have daily devotional time. But I probably spend at least 14 hours per week in front of the idiot box. 2 hours per day that could go to Jesus. Maybe I should consider offering at least one more of those hours each week to kingdom purposes. Bill O'Reilly, Peyton Manning, and NCIS don't need my viewership as much as God needs more of my work for His purposes.