Podcast Episode #430
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Pastors have busy schedules, so time management is critical. Today we look at seven items on a pastor’s schedule and how you can best manage the time they take.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- Weddings are hard for pastors to say “no” to, but they can be very time consuming if you don’t.
- Counseling is not something most senior pastors do well. It’s critical to have a referral list.
- If you spend a lot of time on the road for hospital visits, redeem the time with audio books or podcasts.
- Most church staffs meet too much. Many meetings could be emails or a quick hallway conversation.
- Digital study tools like MyWSB can save hours of sermon prep time every year.
The seven time consumers we cover on this episode are:
- Weddings
- Counseling
- Hospital visits
- Meetings
- Sermon preparation
- Social events
- Office interruptions
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Feedback
If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of Becoming a Welcoming Church.
While hospital visits and sermon preparation take a lot of time (or can take a lot of time) that is part and parcel of a pastor’s job and ministry. The exception may be hospital visits, which can be covered with lay ministers, but I find it difficult to claim those two as time eaters.
Pastoral care is the wild card. A pastor can have his entire week lined out and be excited about it, arrive in the office on Monday morning at 7:58 ready to get to work, answer the telephone at 8:05 that day and the entire week is turned upside down! So, prioritizing pastoral care is especially important.
The way I learned:
1. Priority 1: emergencies among the congregation, scheduled surgeries of church members, and anyone in town lost and needing a Savior; stop everything else right now and go to care for those people until done.
2. Priority 2: recuperating emergencies and scheduled surgeries among the congregation, and anyone in town saved but seeking a new church relationship; stop everything (if there are no more Priority 1’s) right now and go to care for those people until done (note: recuperation can take a LONNNNGGG time; so some help from others in the church–card-writers, phone-callers, door-knockers, etc.–for Priority 2 is needed to get done completely).
3. Priority 3: everybody else in the congregation whose life is not in the dumps, whose marriage is not on the rocks, etc. The minister to them, I learned: schedule LOTS and LOTS of eating meetings during the whole year, invite everyone to attend (they will come, if they are Baptists!), and then NEVER EVER sit down during any of those meetings to eat; instead, walk around serving tea and pie to those present (they will happily let you bring them more pie), and talk with them about what’s happening in their lives. Those people will be ministered to regularly, the preacher will know what needs to be preached about (he heard it from those people themselves), and you can eat a bowl of cereal at home later that evening–but go to bed with ‘way fewer regrets about so many people falling through the pastoral care cracks without such an approach.
Pastoral care and sermon prep are two of the most important parts of the calling for most pastors, but I don’t think that he meant that they were time wasters. Even with these things that are essential, there are probably more efficient ways to do them. With pastoral care, you’ve got to have things prioritized. For in-patient surgery, I’ll be there for the surgery, if you’re hospitalized I’ll go. How frequently I go varies according to how severe the illness is. For out-patient surgery, I don’t feel an obligation to go.