When you manage your life you will manage your time

Several years ago our region created the Church Leadership Institute to help develop lay leaders and bivocational ministers for our churches.  Nearly each year I teach a class on "Personal and Family Health" that addresses the importance of maintaining balance in our lives and ministries.  The first assignment I give the students is to keep a record of everything they do for one week and write a brief report on what they learned from the exercise.  I provide them with a chart to help them track their activities in 15 minute segments.  The students often complain when the assignment is explained that they won't be able to track their time, but in their reports they usually note that they learned a lot from the exercise.  What many of them learn is that there is a lot of time each week that is used in things that really don't matter very much.  They recognize that instead of complaining they don't have time to do all the things that are expected of them, they really have plenty of time if they just use it wisely.

That is true for many people.  There is no question that time management is one of the most critical issues facing most bivocational ministers.  So many things demand our attention.  If we're not careful we can spend so much time dealing with urgent issues that we have no time left for the things that really matter.  More than one pastor's family has been alienated from the church because of the amount of time church work took away from them.  Several years ago I read the comments of a pastor's wife who said if her husband was having an affair she could fight that, but she wondered how she was supposed to fight when her husband's mistress was the church.  She is not the only pastor's spouse that has asked that question, and similar questions often come from the pastor's children as well.

In my class I stress there are five areas that bivocational ministers must keep in balance: our relationship with God, our relationship with our families, our church work, our other jobs, and our own self-care.  Neglecting any of these can lead to bad results, and focusing too much on one area while only giving an occasional glance at the others will lead to an unbalanced and unhealthy life.  What is needed is for us to set goals in each of these areas to ensure that we maintain a healthy balance.

When my students complain about having to track their time for one week I can usually get them to stop complaining when I tell them I tracked my time every day for four years!  It was part of a goal setting program I got from Zig Ziglar's organization.  Not only did I track everything I did for four years, in the book that was part of that program was an area where I had to mark down whether or not I had done something in eight different areas of life.  Those eight included the five I mentioned above.  Nobody would mark down they had done something in each of those eight areas every day, but at the end of the week it was very obvious that something was out of balance if one or two of those areas had no marks for the entire week.  It just provided me with a quick overview of my week and how well I was able to manage my life and my time.  Did I stay focused on the priorities I had set for myself, or did I allow myself to be pulled away from the things that were most important to me?

It is true that time management is really life management.  One can only manage his or her time if that life is lived with purpose.  Setting priorities and goals help prevent the urgent from taking us away from what is really important in life.  Living life in such a way helps one reach the end of the day feeling as if he or she accomplished something important that day.  It ends the frustration one feels when at the end of the day it is felt that nothing worthwhile was done

You can read more about this in my book The Bivocational Pastor: Two Jobs, One Ministry. One entire chapter is devoted to this topic and it includes some of the information I give my students.  If you're struggling with time issues in your ministry I would certainly recommend you read this book and begin to implement some of the suggestions you'll find there.