Let me say at the outset that this post is not intended to suggest we should arbitrarily limit ministry to a certain number of hours per week when good stewardship of that ministry calls for more. It is intended to help us order our weeks and is particularly intended for those who are ministry students or bi-vocational ministers. Building on the suggestions from my previous post, let’s take a few more steps toward increased effectiveness with our use of time.
The Misnomer of Time Management – Since time progresses at a steady rate regardless of how we use it, time cannot be managed. It only can be utilized and allotted. What can be managed are tasks and self – choices, priorities, actions, etc. as they relate to our use of time. Narrowing from the broad focus of my last post, I want to concentrate on managing self, managing tasks, and using time in the pastor’s workweek. Reaching back to the concepts of time budgeting, logging / evaluating, and overlapping activities, we are trying to answer three questions.
How much of my 168 hours per week gets allotted to ministerial work?
How do I handle myself during those hours so I accomplish with them what I need to get done?
How can I use my time and manage myself and my tasks in ways that glorify God and extend the Kingdom?
Gauging Weekly Ministry Time – If you are new to pastoral ministry, you may wonder how much work there is and whether or not pastoring is a 40 hour per week job. Research on pastors’ workweeks verifies it is, and 20 years of my own experience confirms this. Time for worship services, preparing multiple sermons per week, visiting people, doing outreach, praying for the church and its work, and administrative tasks easily run 40 hours or more each week. Now, let me come at this from a student and a non-student perspective. Before I started my doctorate, I regularly worked more than 40 hours per week. While in my program, however, I had to try to limit my work to 40 hours each week. Some workweeks exceeded 40 hours, but that was my goal. I suspect larger churches, struggling churches, and church plants or re-plants need more than 40 hours per week of work, and I also feel some smaller churches may be led and cared for in fewer than 40 hours per week. For the pastor in school or the bi-vocational pastor, you are trying to walk a fine line. On one side, you need to put everything you can into being a good steward of the call and the flock and its work – ministry and the Lord deserve your best rather than minimal effort. On the other side, you have the God-given responsibilities of your school or secular vocation. Having a goal and an allotted time for ministry each week can help you set boundaries while also dedicating focused time to the ministry. By way of caution, we cannot refuse to do additional ministry when it is called for simply because we have hit our “magic number” of hours in a given week.
Allocating Weekly Ministry Time – The next issue is how to allocate the time we need to give and should give to the work. Personally, I have come at this from two directions. From one side, I have tried to determine how much time I need to give to each area of responsibility in order to handle it well and in light of our church’s present reality. This works in estimating total work hours for the week, as well as for dividing the hours of work. From the other side, I have worked from a time budget approach. In other words, if I have a target available time of 40 hours, how should that 40 hours be divided? What has to be limited in one area to give adequate attention to another? How is that different this week because of unusual circumstances (someone’s surgery, a funeral or wedding, a special church event or meeting)? Working at the issue from both sides can help you focus your effort in order not to allow one area of work to get out of hand, and it can help you make sure to attend to every area of responsibility. Here are a few possible frameworks for allocating time.
Divide your workweek according to your written and unwritten job descriptions.
Divide your workweek based upon your church’s vision statement.
Divide your workweek based upon basic church functions – prayer, worship, teaching, ministry, fellowship, and evangelism.
Currently, my major workweek divisions are prayer, corporate worship, worship preparation (sermon preparation and general preparation), inreach, outreach, communications and marketing (church publications and social media), and systems and support (planning, meetings, and administrative work).
A Few Additional Points – As I write, I do not want to give the impression that ministry only deserves a certain amount of time per week. Ministry is a call as well as a vocation, and it requires sacrificial and often inconvenient service. Second, I do not want you to get locked in to one set pattern – mine, someone else’s, or the one you come up with at this time. I believe a measure of structure is vital, but so is flexibility and understanding ministry is often fluid and unpredictable. That said, let me offer a few additional points.
Plan with prayer and intentionality, keeping in mind the Lord sometimes uses interruptions, and we often get unexpected ministry opportunities we need to take. Sometimes, we accomplish more for the Kingdom in what we did not plan than in what we planned.
Don’t simply allot time for each area, but schedule it.
Be careful that you do not simply put in your time each week, but serve whole-heartedly.
Be careful not to over-budget time for tasks you enjoy in order to under-budget time for work you find less pleasant or more challenging.