Growing Your Church

Time management is one of the main areas where leaders exercise poor stewardship in their congregations. The sad thing is that we often time find ways to justify the dreadful job we are doing at being such poor managers of our time. Time, though precious, is either abused or squandered.

The management of time is relevant to all of us, leaders or not. Pastors for example have a great deal of freedom in how they use their time. Pastors decide what they do on any given day. Effective management of time is critical to the pastor. It determines how well (s)he is able to carry out ministry responsibilities.

Given all of that, pastors are among the most frustrated persons when it comes to managing time. I know. Juggling family commitments, church ministry demands, community activities, sermon preparation, bible studies, counselling sessions, meetings and visiting the sick and homebound is the perfect recipe for madness. We are never the brightest in realizing that we are trying to accomplish the impossible.

Very often family and personal life end up being badly neglected. In fact, I have heard some very unwise boastings by some male colleagues that they have never taken a vacation since they have been in ministry. What did I tell you about madness! I’ll leave that for another time.

The fact is too many church leaders are in control of their time. As such, we are not able to have a sense of where we are really at. We are either feeling out-of-control, overwhelmed, or on the edge of burnout. Time for assessment is rare.

Well if you paused to read this, then take some more time to look at the two things I now share with you.

RescueTime - is free time management software particularly for those who spend a lot (ok way too much time) online. This one is my favourite. I am always hitting my head and going “Oh no, I can’t believe I spent so much time doing that…”. If you’ve uttered that a few times then RescueTime is definitely for you.

Then a friend sent me this link as his indirect way of commenting on my ‘things-to-do-list’ that I shared with him. It was a timely reminder and I’ve started the little exercise as well.

Let me know how you are making out with them.

Marvia

Popularity: 12% [?]

Never miss another great post again. Stay updated when you subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting.