My schedule has changed dramatically over the past 5 years of church planting. In the fall of 2001 there were some days I would literally wake up and go to my makeshift office and wonder what I should be doing. I started working on Church of the King 2 days after graduating from Bible College. It was not only my first time venturing into ministry, it was my first time venturing into the real world. None of my ministry training classes taught me what I should be doing on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday.
To top that off, my cell phone was the church phone. When we launched that September we mailed out 20,000 invitations to our launch service...20,000 invitations all with my cell phone number printed on them. If Mark Driscoll ever asks me to write Confessions of a Reformissional Rev Part 2 I will call chapter 1 "Jesus, I'm a poor church planter who can't afford one million minutes."
Rick Warren was not giving me any awards. I did not have a purpose driven schedule.
Here's an equation I found to be true:
I don't know what I should be doing + 20,000 strangers have my cell phone number = I do whatever they want me to do.
It only took me a few months of living like this to realize I needed a scheduling strategy. So I started asking alot of questions. I put together a short survey and interviewed several pastors and church planters. The five most common categories of time investment seemed to be:
- Preaching/Teaching (including study)
- Pastoral Care (counseling, hospital visitation, etc)
- Leadership Development
- Community Interaction
- Administration
I still remember my first official weekly schedule. I just divided it into these five areas.
I think it's changed at least annually since then. It didn't take me long to realize that no two pastors are the same. No two church planters are the same. God has made me unique. My mission is the same but my execution of it continues to take its own shape.
I honestly believe that if a leader's schedule looks the same year after year something is wrong. You can't grow in your understanding of your mission without changing the way you spend your time. I don't ever want to just develop one good thing and then settle in to maintain it. I want to continue to create.
This fall my schedule is changing again. At the end of September I'll launch Movements, our new one-year church planting training school. I'll put a chunk of my time into developing our young church planters. Church planting is so intricately woven into my ministry identity that I know I'll continue to spend more and more time building church planters and launching church plants.
I'm also looking seriously into a new cohort opportunity that's being offered by the Center of Leadership in order to go after my Master's Degree.
I keep coming back to these basic questions. Who has God called me to be? Where is He directing my time for this next stretch of ministry? What am I currently doing that I really don't need to be doing? What leaders do I need to raise up to enable me to make the necessary scheduling adjustments?
We've all got 24 hours in our day. That never changes. How we spend it should.
Thanks for posting this. Very helpful.
Posted by: Josh | August 18, 2006 at 05:14 PM