An intentional investment of time

I know I haven't written much lately. We had a two day staff retreat last week followed by another meeting the next day. Plus, I'm taking a DMin class in August, and all the work for that class has to be turned in on the first day of class. The fact is I've just been too busy the last few days to blog. I apologize for that, but I also know you understand being busy. After all, you are probably a bivocational minister or you wouldn't be reading this blog. So, you know what being busy is all about!

While writing a class report this afternoon I found myself thinking something that I wanted to share with you. It has to do with being more intentional with our time. As I've noted here before, time is the greatest challenge bivocational ministers face. There are so many demands on our time that we can sometimes struggle to know what to do next. One of the problems is that some of our time is wasted on activities or people whose lives we really are not going to impact very much.

As an judicatory minister I have some people who want a lot of my time who are never going to change. There are certain people I know who will call me at least once a month, if not more often, wanting advice or my help on some matter. The problem is that they never take my advice or learn from their mistakes or benefit from any assistance I give them. Like clockwork they will soon call back needing assistance again, and likely as not, for the same type of problem as before.

People call whining about people in the church. One man called from a church that had just forced their pastor to resign. He was upset because, in his opinion, this was all caused by one person who had done that before to other pastors. When I asked him why the church didn't stand up to this person he responded they couldn't do that. The person had too much influence in the church and community. I have to admit I wasn't very pastoral at that point. I told him if the church wouldn't stand up to this person then they would just have to live with it. I wasn't going to interfere.

As bivocational leaders we need to decide if we are going to spend our time doing things that offer little benefit or are we going to invest our time in the lives of people and activities that will make a real difference. The older I get the more committed I am to investing my life in things that are really significant. I want to invest it in future leaders who will soon have the baton of leadership passed on to them. I want to invest it in churches that want to move from a maintenance mindset to a missional one. I want to invest my time in people who are going to make an impact in the world. Finally, I want to invest my time in those who love me the most, my family. I want to be make sure I leave a legacy for my family that will impact them long after I'm gone.

How do you want to spend your time?