During my time serving in Australia, Missionary Don Winans taught me a very important lesson about ministry, and work-ethic. We were doing some projects and running a bit behind so I began trying to get them done as quickly as possible. He turned to me and said “That’s a ‘That’ll do’ job” (short for that will do).
I understood what he meant of course. A “that will do” job focuses on accomplishing as many things as possible during the day by emphasizing quantity (how many things get done) instead of quality (how well the job is done). Of course the name comes from doing as little as possible to get the problem fixed, then saying “that will do.”
That will do jobs aren’t really sinful….
but they are incredibly dangerous because we embrace being average (or just good enough) instead of excellence
Doing a job the right way with excellece is difficult
- It takes time
- It takes lots of HARD WORK
- And it usually involves spending lots of money
- It’s just easier to do things the average way
However the problem with the “that will do jobs” is they don’t last for long. Soon you will be doing the same job a second time (or third) and end up working HARDER than you would with the excellent job.
Though the average job is easier in the short-term, doing things the right way will bless you more in the long run.
I recently had some body work done on my vehicle because of a minor scrape-up. Some friends encouraged me to have him do body work on the entire car, smoothing out dings or dents and scratches. Then another brought up the idea of getting a new paint job. Parts of my car (the hood especially) had severely faded areas from paint, so both of those jobs definitely needed to be done.
There was no question the complete body work and paint job were necessary. But that would be a BIG job, which meant I’d be without my car for an extended period of time. Part of me wanted to choose the “that will do” job by just having a small area of the body work finished. But my heart knew putting in the time, and effort to get the whole job done was better long-term.
It took over three-weeks to get my car back!
But it’s worth it!!!
Looking at the vehicle that looks better than it was when I bought it, I’m reminded doing things the right way (often the hard way) is better. And I am incredibly thankful Don Winans and others who taught me “that’l do jobs” rarely work well.
Johnhwilburn.org 