Time management for church planters

Time management for church planters

Church Planting

Note: This blog entry is excerpted and adapted from my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Church Planting Journey. We’ll be posting excerpts about once a month here and we’d love to hear feedback from you. We hope you are getting as excited about it as...

Annual time budget

Leadership, Prioritizing

The questions have been asked before: What are the big rocks? The core contributions we’re supposed to be making? How do we allocate significant blocks of time to do those? The higher you are in leadership, the more important it is to look at your whole year. Most of...

Trust the process

Leadership, Networking, Prioritizing

I have found this to be true among ministry leaders. The greater the fruitfulness, the greater the need to pull away and reconnect with God for perspective and re-prioritize. As leaders, we need to find ways to protect ourselves and our time, while still providing...

Not every good thing is a God thing

Missional, Outreach

There are many, many good things we could do. So many, in fact, that it can actually cause a problem in one of two ways. One is that we could overcommit and not do anything well. The other is that sometimes when we are faced with too many options, we paradoxically...

What are your criteria?

Leadership, Teambuilding

If you simply gather your team or pull people together to do an evaluation of some particular ministry event, people will give assessment: this was good, this wasn’t good. That is everyone coming at the issue from their own perceptions. Each person has their own...

What about the other 167 hours?

Leadership

Take a look at the ministry flow chart below. It puts the role of celebration– the worship service– in context. That’s one hour out of the week… the rest of the week is 167 hours. Consider where you are putting your time and energy. How much is being...

What is God putting on your to-do list?

Leadership, Prioritizing

  It’s easy to feel overwhelmed looking at your to-do list, especially if you are faced with the prospect of additional demands. The best starting point is first finding out where you are currently spending your time. Record what you are doing and how much...

Quitting choir

Leadership

  When I was a junior in college at UCLA studying chemistry, I had a spiritual awakening. I became involved in campus ministry, a youth choir, and other activities. Life was very full, and I enjoyed the vast majority of what I was doing. Before sitting down to...

Annual time-budget seasons

Leadership, Prioritizing

  For many people, the way they spend their time isn’t consistent from week to week or even month to month. Some people are bi-vocational or have a trans-local ministry that requires more time during one season and less during another. They may have two or three...