New Lifeway research shows that Pastors are severely overworked.

It is to the point that many Pastors spend little to no time in prayer or personal spiritual disciplines.

How can we lead the flock God has given us if we are running on EMPTY??

I don’t know if you make New Year’s Resolutions or not, but if you are one of the guys running on empty – now is the time to make some changes.

Here are 3 suggestions for the New Year to help you recover:

1. Acknowledge your time/life management needs some help.

Don’t just tell yourself that – tell others as well. Tell your wife.  Tell your Deacons, Elders or Leadership Team.  Tell your church if necessary.   Tell your dog (poor, neglected fella).

Just let everyone know you are not superman and that you have let your personal management get out of control.  They’ll understand.

2. Prioritize.  Make sure you are “keeping the main things the main things.”

What are the things your church pays you to do that only you can do?  Those are your priorities at the church.

Before that comes family and time with the Lord. If you lose your family or your walk with God you will disqualify yourself from serving as Pastor.

So, get your priorities in order.

3. Get some help. Delegate stuff you shouldn’t be doing & educate yourself.

I mean:  let the church be the church. You are there to equip them to do the work of the ministry [Eph. 4:12]. Let them do what God has called them to do.

Read a book or subscribe to a blog on time management. Stay in tune with the Sermonators. There are resources out there that can help you maximize your time and life.

The ministry is tough, yes, but it can be managed and it doesn’t have to be the death of you!  Minor changes can bring big results.

Make 2010 the year you accomplished more than ever – without 365 days of overworked stress!

Share your comment below.  Others will benefit! >>>

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by Joel Southerland

Preachers can be the worst procrastinators around.

We have all these tasks that need to be done and there are notes and scribbles and mental To-Do lists everywhere of things we need to do . . . . eventually!

When we live in that constant state of procrastination it is extremely stressful.

Neil Fiore in his book, The Now Habit, says:

The procrastination habit catches people in a vicious cycle: get overwhelmed, feel pressured, fear failure, try harder, work longer, feel resentful, lose motivation, and then procrastinate. The cycle starts with the pressure of being overwhelmed and ends with an attempt to escape through procrastination. As long as you are caught in the cycle, there is no escape. You can’t even enjoy the  recuperative and creative benefits of guilt-free leisure time. Suddenly, any time spent on play-and even time spent on more enjoyable work-feels like an uneasy shirking from what you should be doing.

So what do you do about that?

First, make a list. Not a To-Do list but a list of everything written on a note or running through your head that you know you ought to do or need to do that you have been putting off. Just get every single item on one sheet of paper. This one task alone will relieve you of a lot of stress.

Then, work on the list. Do the simplest and shortest tasks first and move on down the line. When another item comes to mind, write it on the list. Don’t worry about order – focus on production.

Before you know it, you will have the list accomplished and the feeling and stress of procrastination will be gone!

You will become  – The Producing Preacher!!

Question:  What are some tactics you employ to fight procrastination?

Leave your comment below…

© Joel for The Sermonators: Preaching Effectiveness & Time Management for Busy Pastors, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: effective, Organization, productivity, Time Management, work

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posted by Joel Southerland

How do you deal with interruptions?

The phone call.  The drop-in.  The IM interruption.

Now, I’m not talking about the real interruption — like the emergency that must be dealt with.  That’s not an interruption, that is ministry.

The interruption is something that interrupts your work flow that could be put off until later.

So, how do you deal with it?

Let me tell you what not to do….

When you get the phone call and someone says, “What are you doing?” don’t respond with a “nothing“.

“Nothing” is almost an automatic response for many. I make it a habit to respond with the truth. “Actually, I’m in my study preparing for Sunday’s message” or “I’m getting ready for a counseling appointment that is coming in just a few moments.”

It lets people know that their pastor is working, and in a nice way you have just informed them that you are doing something that you cannot break away from for long.

And, of course, if you are doing nothing, you are not being interrupted!

Question:  How often do you tend to reply with “nothing”?  What do you think?

© Joel for The Sermonators: Preaching Effectiveness & Time Management for Busy Pastors, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Download audio file (SRM06.mp3)

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In this episode we discuss an important principle of time management for busy pastors.  How many “inputs” do you have?  Are you controlling them or are they controlling you?  Smith and Southerland give three keys ways to manage what tends to overwhelm us and sap so much of our time.

Mentioned in the Show:

Sermonators Group on Facebook

What about YOU?

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Read the rest of The Sermonators Ep 6 – 3 Ways to Control What’s Controlling You (Managing Inputs) (36 words)

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Post tags: inputs, Organization, Time Management

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posted by Joel Southerland

When a special day, project, meeting or event looms on the horizon it can create great amounts of stress for the pastor. The planning, promoting, and organizing can add to the workload of an already frazzled minister (not sure if “frazzled” is a word but you know it when you’re in it).

One of the solutions I have found is to choose project managers for these types of events. When I have a special event or project, I use a lay volunteer to be the Project Manager and Coordinator. The PMC meets with me to get my vision of the project, and they begin the task of putting it all together. You may think this risky, but I’ve found that they often go far beyond my expectations.

Whey they have a question, it can usually be handled through a quick phone call, meeting, text or email. A week or two before the event – or “due date,” if it’s a project – we have our final meeting to go over everything in detail.

It works seamlessly. Our goal is to have a project manager for every event we do. And, we want to keep the PMC from year to year. That way, they can be thinking about their one event (instead of my 65) all year long.

Pastor, whatever your next big day is, look for a volunteer to be the PMC and follow this plan:

• Choose a volunteer that has the capabilities to handle the project. If you are unsure, take a gamble on someone about whom you feel relatively confident.

• Have an initial meeting with them to go over all of the details – date, budget, etc.

• In this initial meeting, paint a picture of what you would like the event to look like, what you would like to accomplish with the event, and explain why the event is important.
• Give them the first task to do and set a regular schedule of “check-backs” where the PMC will contact you and give you an update.

• Work with the PMC through the regular updates to continue to iron out the details.

• One or two weeks before the event hold a meeting to go over final details.

• During the event, if possible, give the PMC credit for all of their hard work.

• After the event, hold a meeting to go over what went right and what needs to be corrected before the next event (if it is reoccurring). Encourage the PMC to work on ideas to improve the event throughout the year.

If you’ll do all of that, you’ll get to keep your clean desk!

© Joel for The Sermonators: Preaching Effectiveness & Time Management for Busy Pastors, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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posted by Scott Newton Smith

“I handle the problems in my church from the pulpit,” the pastor said to me confidently. And he will get up there Sunday next thinking, “Boy, I’m really gonna tell ‘em today! This one will get ‘em.”

He’s planning yet again to “fix” his opposition with a hard sermon.

What a joke. If that’s you, stop kidding yourself.

If you are taking 90% of your sermon time to try to fix the 10% of your audience who are opposing you, that is bad ministry stewardship on display. It doesn’t work. Would you invest 90% of your money in an investment that loses 90% of the time? Of course not. Where instead would you invest?

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Read the rest of Don’t Neglect the Sheep for the Goats (160 words)

© Scott for The Sermonators: Preaching Effectiveness & Time Management for Busy Pastors, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: church, church conflict, ministry, pastor, pharisees, Preaching, pulpit

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Download audio file (SRM04.mp3)

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In this episode of The Sermonators, we discuss 3 key ideas for maximizing a personal assistant to streamline your workload and gain time in your week. Unless you already have these three ideas fully implemented, you could gain as many as five hours or more in your week.

Hey, bi-vocs… we also discuss how to find and use a volunteer assistant this week if you don’t have one yet.

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Read the rest of The Sermonators Ep 4 – Three Ideas For Maximizing A Personal Assistant (also McDonalds vs. Starbucks) (11 words)

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posted by Scott Newton Smith

Up front disclaimer: We’re not endorsing nor bashing Driscoll here at The Sermonators. We’re not groupies for any particular preacher “celeb.” You won’t find us pushing a particular preacher, nor a group of them. That’s not what this site (or our show) is about. Our job is to find and develop good content for busy pastors.

So, Mark Driscoll. Love’im or hate’im, there is something to learn from Driscoll’s experience in regards to our primary topics of time management and preaching management in ministry. The following sound bite is worth a listen.

Here’s the background: At a recent Resurgence Conference, Mark Driscoll, preaching pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA indulged an interesting Q&A session about the more practical aspects of his ministry. I know that most of our audience here are not pastoring mega-churches as he is, nonetheless we get some good insights from his answers.

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Read the rest of Mark Driscoll speaks about his time management habits and preaching (322 words)

© Scott for The Sermonators: Preaching Effectiveness & Time Management for Busy Pastors, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Download audio file (SRM02.mp3)

Download mp3 or click the play button above to stream audio.

In this episode of The Sermonators, we discuss five tips to bulletproof your study time each week. Making sure that you block uninterrupted time to do your sermon preparation each week is crucial for effective preaching.

We promised the script for the phone message that Southerland (Joel) leaves on his cell phone as a “temporary absence” message while he is in his study. It reads like this:

“Hi this is [your name] and it is [date] and you have caught me in my study. I’m not able to take calls right now, so if it is an emergency you can call the church office at [your church phone number]. However, I will be returning phone calls later on, so if you would like, leave me a message and I will call you back later in the day. Or, you can email me at Pastor AT [whatever your church] DOT [com, net, org or we-hope-not-gov] & I will be checking those occasionally. Thanks for understanding and have a blessed day.”

© Scott for The Sermonators: Preaching Effectiveness & Time Management for Busy Pastors, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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