The Guardian have reported on the ‘surprisingly large’ health benefits of relatively small shifts in behaviour. They cite examples such as getting an extra 11 minutes sleep per night, 4.5 minutes extra of brisk walking or adding just 50g of vegetables to your daily diet. These things are noted as having a huge impact on cardiovascular health and significantly reduce the risks of heart attack and major cardiovascular “events” such as strokes.

Researchers are particularly keen to push these results because, not only are they significant, they are also more sustainable than much oft-cited health advice. There seems to be a real health benefit even in making relatively small changes to lifestyle and behaviour. These small changes are far easier to implement and sustain than targets that appear unobtainable on paper to the average person.

Clearly, I am neither a doctor nor an academic, and I certainly don’t have any training in a remotely related field to assess the credibility of any of this. I can affirm only that it feels instinctively true, and there is now some scientific research saying it is so, but what do I know?

I suspect this feels instinctively true to me because I think it holds true in the fields in which I do have some training. I was never much good at biblical languages, but I have it on good authority that if you are competent even using Hebrew or Greek for 5-minutes a day means you are much less likely to lose your skills. Similarly, I am quite certain that much of the knowledge I had when I was immersed in my niche areas of history and politics have long since been consigned to the dustbin of stuff I once knew intimately but haven’t retained because I stopped thinking about it the moment I graduated. If I had just kept up with it even a bit, I am quite sure more of it would remain than I can actually recall.

But as a pastor, these things are most definitely true. I am quite certain even small shifts in our behaviour would have enormous benefits to us spiritually. If you increase your bible-reading habits by just 5-minutes per day, I would be staggered if that didn’t significantly benefit you. If you determined to pray for an extra 5-minutes per day, I am adamant that will have a meaningful impact on both you and the world around you. If you determined to share the gospel with just one or two extra people per week, that would come with some major spiritual benefits. These are small, but eminently sustainable, shifts in behaviour that could have major spiritual value for us personally and more broadly.

Before I say more, what I would hate anyone to hear at this point is that this is some new law or legalistic burden we must now all strive towards. Let me be clear: these specific things are not in the bible. Sure, praying and sharing the gospel definitely are, but there are no figures, no set times, no specific modes. This isn’t a spiritual guilt-trip to make you feel inadequate or a means of geeing you up by bringing you down. I am purposefully presenting these things, for it what they are, as things that might benefit you should you want, or be able, to do them.

Just as I might not have room to add an extra 11 minutes to my sleep schedule or feel I eat plenty of veg making that 50g a day more feels overkill, perhaps that is where you are at with reading the bible or scheduled prayer or whatever. And I am not knocking that because I think the easiest thing in the world is to ask, ‘why wouldn’t you want to do more?’ as if there is no end to the amount anybody could possibly do of these things. But it pays to remember Jesus didn’t exclusively sit reading scrolls or attend prayer meetings.

If you already run marathons, the extra 4.5 minutes of exercise probably isn’t going to be so important for you and if you read the bible for hours every day already, the extra 5-minute thing probably isn’t going to be the most relevant. So hear this for what it is – sustainable, relatively small behaviour changes that, for most of us, would likely yield significant spiritual value that are not required or demanded of us, but we may nevertheless find helpful.

But just imagine what committing to 5-minutes a day of bible reading, 5-minutes a day of prayer, finding one person per week to speak to about Jesus intentionally would do for you spiritually and what it would do for your community more broadly? I cannot imagine it would do anything other than work to your benefit and it is hard to think 10-minutes a day would be impossible for most of us to do. Small changes that yield huge fruit – perhaps we should give it a bash?