Reflections on My Average Week

by | May 8, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management

Tracing one’s time is a tool I often suggest to people when they are making the first steps in getting a hold on the use of their time. I regularly suggest that one begin with keeping a record of how they have spent their time during a week in thirty-minute increments. Go HERE for the Excel file I normally use for this purpose. So, when I am wanting to reflect and examine my own time habits, I usually do a running “tick-tock” of how I spend my time. This go-round, I actually published it to the web rather than merely kept the list on a piece of paper. What I Think Went Well: In essence, the majority of what I planned to accomplish I was able to accomplish. I did not find myself forwarding many of my tasks to the next day, I was actually accomplishing them. I was able to meet with twelve people for discipleship purposes, our pastoral team in several significant meetings, the majority of my Sunday School class for a fellowship and one of our shut-ins. According to my e-mail statistics I received 63 legitimate e-mails (not spam) to my church account and sent 25 e-mails from that same account. I made or received 31 phone calls on my cell phone, and 60 text messages were sent & received. Through various means, I did a lot of talking. I was able to have significant times of Bible intake and prayer during my devotional time and consistently read from John Owen’s book, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers. I finished Augustine’s Confessions and made progress...

An Average Week in the Life of An Average Pastor: The Lord’s Day

by | May 7, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management

The Lord’s Day is my favorite and most exhausting day of the week: 3:00 a.m. Awoke to shower and dress, with one major change – Brie woke up and was ready to eat. She has been sleeping until 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. but not this morning. So I fed her, had her changed and back in bed asleep by 3:30 a.m. 3:30 a.m. Showered and dressed. 4:00 a.m. Devotional Time 5:00 a.m. Prepared for leading the music Sunday morning and finalized preparations for teaching my Sunday School Class. 5:30 a.m. Worked on my sermon manuscript for preaching Sunday PM. 7:00 a.m. Finished dressing and preparing to leave 7:20 a.m. Left for church 7:30 a.m. Rehearsal with our instrumentalists 8:00 a.m. Rehearsal with our choir 8:15 a.m. First Worship Service. I lead the music which included leading our choir in an anthem. 9:45 a.m. Sunday School class. I lead a group of young adults in a dialogue teaching format. We discussed how to Study the Bible inductively as we prepare to launch into a new inductive study of Genesis. 10:30 a.m. Prepared choir for our Second Worship Service 10:45 a.m. Second Worship Service. Our two morning services are identical in format. The service ended this morning about 10 minutes after noon. I stayed to talk with people after the service until almost 1:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m. Back at home – had lunch with a young couple from our church. 3:30 p.m. In my study, I caught up on the day’s news and a few blog headlines. I then began finalizing my sermon manuscript and preparing for the evening service....