Pastor Glenn McDonald: VNPs--Very Nice People

Most of the people you will encounter today fall into the fourth of Gordon MacDonald’s five relational categories. Almost 40 years ago, MacDonald proposed that it’s worth noting how various kinds of people affect our personal energy on a daily basis.

Spending time with a VRP (Very Resourceful Person) is like pouring jet fuel into a lawn mower. MacDonald arbitrarily assigns an energy value of +3 to such mentors, because they have an extraordinary way of restoring both our perspective and our perseverance.

A VIP (Very Impactful Person--a good friend or trusted colleague) is someone who shares our vision for life, and offers us +2 energy units.

Then there’s the Very Trainable Person – someone who is eager to hang around us, and sees us as a mentor. While a VTP yearns to draw down some of our time and attention, MacDonald thinks such an apprentice relationship still nets us +1.    

Which brings us to VNPs. They would be the Very Nice People.Nice people are just so very…nice. And your world is absolutely teeming with them. Here we need to remember that someone who is a Very Nice Person to you may well be the light of someone else’s life, or their best friend, or a freaking relational nightmare.

But to you, a VNP may be the checkout person at the grocery; or the neighbor you barely know; or the colleague at work with whom you have lively chats about the thermostat and your pet cats, but little else.

MacDonald suggests that VNPs typically have little effect on our lives. Their energy impact is zero. Nothing. Nada. And that’s something that can occasionally create a crisis.

If you’re a team leader, or a teacher, or a pastor, or a community activist, or someone collecting donations for a vital social cause, and you can imagine nothing more wonderful than inspiring a crowd to dynamic new levels of commitment, you’re likely to be disillusioned.

The VNPs in your life will smile at you. They will listen politely. They will take notes on your heartfelt summons to be part of something awesome. Then they will say, “That’s really nice. So, how about those Pacers?”

Jesus seems to have prepared his disciples for such disappointment. His Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20) is a frank admission that no matter what we say or do, only a fraction of our most earnest and prayerful spiritual efforts will yield a harvest in other people’s lives.

In Bible times, farmers would “broadcast” their seed--that is, throw handfuls of seed in broad arcs over their gardens and fields. Every seed, if allowed to grow and reproduce, was possessed of sufficient biological power to yield an entire field of wheat. But it all depended on where it landed. Some surfaces doomed the seed from the start. Other surfaces, because of the condition of the soil, guaranteed lavish fruitfulness.

In the same way, Jesus says, the “seed” of the new life contained in his teaching has the potential to turn somebody’s life inside-out and upside-down. Or it can land with a disappointing thud. It all depends on the condition of our hearts.

What’s the difference between a heart where God’s life never takes root and a heart where we continue to come alive? It’s character. It’s staying power. It’s our willingness to open ourselves to God’s Spirit even when we don’t feel like it.

Character is the ability to follow through on a worthy decision long after the emotion of that decision has passed. Very Nice People may seem to lack such character. Most of us can expect to have little transforming impact on the majority of the VNPs around us. Which is why they seem to have such little impact on our lives. But there is hope.

The thrust of the Parable of the Sower is simple and profound: Keep sowing seeds. You may not be the person whom God will use to enliven someone else’s heart. But you can make sure the seeds are there when it’s time for that happen.  

So, always be gracious with others. Always express appreciation. Always gently call others to greatness – to leave their comfort zones for God’s sake. For we never know when such seeds will germinate.

And suddenly, someone who always seemed to be just a Very Nice Person is standing before us as one of God’s champions.


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