How Listing Your Oikos Can Change People’s Lives

“I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.”

—JESUS (JOHN 4:35)

I hesitated to use that title for this post. It’s kind of a misleading. What it suggests is true, but still a bit misleading. When you read it, you may think, “If I make a list of the people in my oikos, their lives can change.” And the list will certainly be a good first step in that direction, to be sure. But the life that changes rather quickly is yours. Not necessarily the life of the listees, but undoubtedly the life of the lister!

And this is how.

We make lists all the time. There have been lots of times I’ve actually made a list of one thing. For example, if Sheryl calls and asks me to pick up something on my way home from my office, the first thing I’ve learned to do is write it down. Had I even remembered to make the stop, if I hadn’t written it down, the chances would be pretty good that I’d walk into the store and just stand there, wondering what it was I was supposed to pick up! I’m not sure that a “one-thing list” is as much a list as it is a reminder, but either one helps solve the same obvious problem. We’re not that smart.

Maria Konnikova wrote an article for New Yorker Magazine entitled, A List of Reasons Why Our Brains Love Lists. “Lists tap into our preferred way of receiving and organizing information at a subconscious level; from an information-processing standpoint, they often hit our attentional sweet spot. When we process information, we do so spatially. For instance, it’s hard to memorize through brute force the groceries we need to buy. It’s easier to remember everything if we write it down in bulleted, or numbered, points. Then, even if we forget the paper at home, it is easier for us to recall what was on it because we can think back to the location of the words themselves.”

Listing your oikos is an admission of one of the limitations we all share. So, you could say, our lists not only make us smarter, they change us into humbler individuals.

But that’s not all. Listing also makes us happier people. Konnikova continues. “But the list’s deepest appeal, and the source of its staying power, goes beyond the fact that it feels good. In 2011, psychologists Claude Messner and Michaela Wänke investigated what, if anything, could alleviate the so-called “paradox of choice”—the phenomenon that the more information and options we have, the worse we feel. They concluded that we feel better when the amount of conscious work we have to do in order to process something is reduced; the faster we decide on something, whether it’s what we’re going to eat or what we’re going to read, the happier we become. A list promises a definite ending: we think we know what we’re in for, and the certainty is both alluring and reassuring.”

But that’s still not all. (My apologies for making this sound like an infomercial.) But making a list also tees up the most efficient strategy to build the Kingdom of God.

I’ve told people this for my entire ministry. “If you think your job is to witness to everybody, you probably won’t be intentional about witnessing to anybody.” That’s why most of us don’t. None of us are influential enough to change the world. So, I’ve typically continued, “But you are influential enough to change your world. And the first step in the process of changing your world is framing your world.”

The oikos principle states that 95% of Kingdom work takes place in the context of people we know pretty well. If that’s true (and I firmly believe it is), then making a list of the people in your oikos is one of the most fundamental, yet overlooked disciplines of the Christian life. For some reason, God has assembled your oiko-group in some very specific social arenas. As a result, those people are the most likely to see the way you live your life as well as hear about what’s important to you. So, identifying the ones who are closest to you shows that you understand metrics. Listing your oikos changes you into a more focused data-driven individual.

Even though the average size of an oikos tends to range between eight and fifteen people, please don’t get hung up on the specific number of people on your list. Those of us who are more outgoing may push the envelope way beyond fifteen. Those of us who tend to be more introverted may struggle to come up with even a few names. The exact number is not important. The important thing is to recognize that God has given each one of us “our own people,” a relatively small group who are watching us, as they say, “up close and personal.”

Football legend, Emmitt Smith, was one of many who championed some iteration of the phrase, “It’s only a dream, until you write it down. Then it becomes a goal.” All of us who follow Jesus’ dream about making an impact for His Kingdom. The list helps that dream become a goal.

So, give it a try. If you haven’t done it recently, take some time right now and prayerfully consider who is sitting in your front row! Or, in Jesus’ words, just “open your eyes!” Then just write down what you see. Evidently, by the time your list is completed, you’ll be smarter, humbler, happier, and more intentional about the Great Commission. You have to admit, that could be a positive change in anyone’s life!

(Making a list of your oikos is just one step in The Oikos Challenge, a five-step strategy to change your world. You can read more about The Oikos Challenge in any of Tom’s three books.)