Practicing Peace

The Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day are:

Schedule:

• Rest first
• Driving second
• Maintenance third
• Due dates fourth
• “Important” things last

We are often in debt to our work, but scheduling maintenance third will go a long way to freeing us to focus on the ministry to which God has called us.  The next step is scheduling due dates.  When we get our upcoming due dates scheduled and out of our minds, we can focus better on the things that are actually in front of us.

Here’s one helpful way to think of due dates: due dates are those things that will take less than ten hours and need to get done by a certain date for a certain person.

Some due dates might include:

• Preparing a talk for a special event
• Pulling together your annual report
• Etc.

It’s probably NOT a due date if:

• It’s a recurring event that requires preparation, such as a staff meeting, bulletin, newsletter, or sermon.  All those things should be scheduled as maintenance.  For example, if your weekly newsletter article is due Wednesday, prep should probably be part of your maintenance on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (depending on how much time you normally spend on it).  If it’s maintenance, you shouldn’t have to think about it – it should just happen.  Always schedule recurring due dates as maintenance.
• It’s a one-time event that will take more than 10 hours to prepare for.  Add items like these to maintenance as wellso that you can work on them for weeks in advance.  For example, if the annual meeting is coming up, and it looks like you’ll need to spend 15 hours putting together a good talk and presentation, schedule 1 hour a day in your maintenance for at least four weeks before the meeting.  You’ll wake up one day (probably early), and it will be done without you having had to worry about it.

Schedule Due Dates Fourth

Here are some basic tips for scheduling due dates fourth.

• Always keep track of due dates on your calendar.  Mark them with a special color so that they stand out.
• When possible, schedule due dates a day or two early. You’ll often forget about the actual due date and will actually get things back to people early, which is always a good thing for anyone trying to practice peace.
• As much as possible, say no to out-of-the-blue due dates.  Resist dramatic “I-need-it-tomorrow” demands from your board or congregation and instead treat the issue as something to be dealt with over the next week or two.  That way, if a genuine crisis arises, you will have the ability to deal with it and then get back to a regular routine more easily.  When scheduling due dates fourth each day, look ahead two weeks and schedule time for the due date that is closest to you on your calendar.  If there is more than one, you can obviously schedule some time for each.

If you make the distinction between maintenance and due dates that I am suggesting, your calendar will suddenly be very due-date light.  You won’t have to worry about due dates because you’ll have so few, and you’ll have the ability to manage them with only a moderate amount of stress.

If you have any comments or question, please send me an email or write in the comments section!

Ministers tend to be in debt to their work.  Many of us live with piles of undifferentiated stuff around our offices, overflowing email inboxes, and unanswered voicemail.  Our overdue or unfinished work screams at us like bill collectors, each item demanding immediate attention.  No wonder so many of us decide workaholism is the only way to keep up.  No wonder others of us develop workaphobia and habitually tune it out.

To get out of debt to our work, that is, to get to a place where our work is no longer screaming at us, we need to distinguish between maintenance work, due work, and “important work.”  These are steps three, four, and five in the…

Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day
Schedule:

• Rest first
• Driving second
• Maintenance third
• Due dates fourth
• “Important” things last

In my last post, I highlighted a few differences between what I am doing here at Practicing Peace and what Stephen Covey does in his First Things First.  Since ministry days are so volatile, and since they rarely follow a 9-5 schedule, it is important to spend a few minutes every day to define your day by scheduling time for driving and rest.  These are the hard edges of the day, and into this container we pour our work.  Covey uses the language of rocks, sand, and water to represent the things that are of first, second, and third importance.  I would like to set aside these categories for now and suggest that it is better to order our work day by putting maintenance first, followed by due dates, and only then giving our attention to the “important” things that are screaming at us.

Maintenance work is the stuff you have to get done to keep your soul, your sanity and your salary.  To find what your maintenance work includes, divide a sheet of paper into three columns under those headings and start brainstorming.

Mine would look something like this:

Yours will probably look very different.  I expect pastors will include things like pastoral visitation and sermon preparation.  Please be sure to share it in the comments!

Schedule maintenance third

Schedule maintenance third by adding a maintenance bloc to your daily schedule.  Make a list of the maintenance you want to do daily. Then, around the hard edges of rest and driving, add the time to your day to do it.  I keep my list in an MS Office note, but a text file or a loose leaf notebook would work just as well.  The important thing is that you have your maintenance work out of your head and in a format you can use easily.

Here is my list:

Daily Maintenance

1. Take your multivitamin
2. Schedule your day
   a. Rest First
   b. Driving second
   c. Maintenance third
   MWF - Daily Maintenance, Empty @Reply, German
   TR - Daily Maintenance, Blog, German
   d. Due dates fourth
   e. “Important” things last
3. Send Daily Update email to my wife
4. Read a chapter of Proverbs
5. Prayed for my prayer list
6. Process email
7. Process inbox
8. Balance checking and savings
9. Mindsweep
10. Schedule any remaining time in my day
11. Brush my teeth

It takes me about an hour to get through this list, which is down from about two hours when I first started it.  The remarkable thing about having a maintenance bloc is that it reduces the yelling voices in my day.  It tricks me into being faithful, and I can keep my promises better without a ton of stress or worry.

You will notice that I have more maintenance than goes in my bloc.  I need to test out of German when I get to Toronto in September, so German prep is part of my daily maintenance.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I set aside time to answer email that’s going to take more than a passing amount of thought (Empty @Reply), and on Tuesday and Thursday, I set aside a little bit of time for blog maintenance.  The maintenance bloc prompts me to set aside more time for maintenance during the day.

And, yes, I have to remind myself to brush my teeth.  If I don’t, then I won’t remember.  And, that’s the point of these five steps.  It’s not about remembering more – it’s about giving yourself permission to remember less.  Then your brain will be free to focus on your ministry.

“I have to be at Starbucks in five minutes!”

We’ve all looked up from our work and realized we were late for an appointment, and probably more of us than would want to admit routinely show up fifteen minutes late for scheduled meetings.  This creates a lot of stress for us, and, no matter how gracious the people we meet with are, inevitably they wonder what other promises we have a hard time keeping.

Schedule Driving Second

Remember the five steps:
Schedule:

• Rest first
• Driving second
• Maintenance third
• Due Dates fourth
• “Important” things last

I suggest scheduling driving second because along with the time we set aside for rest it sets the “hard edges” of our day (Allen, Getting Things Done).  Stephen Covey uses the metaphor of filling a container with rocks, sand, and water.  Using the same amount of each, he tries to put them all in a container but can only get them all in when he puts them in rocks first, sand second, and water third.  In any other order, they do not fit.  This is, obviously, a metaphor for putting first things first, which is the title of one of Covey’s books.  I suggest we schedule rest and driving first because, as the hard edges of the day, they are the container we fill with our rocks, sand, and water.

Scheduling driving only takes a minute or so a day and has great benefits.  Here are some guidelines.

• Always add five to ten minutes to your estimate to allow for “getting out the door” time.
• Always allow a minimum of fifteen minutes to get anywhere.  This is true even if the coffee house you’re meeting your senior elder in is just around the block.  It’s better to be ten minutes early than five minutes late.  For driving, I always schedule in fifteen minute blocks.
• If you’re going to be late for some reason, always call at the time that you were supposed to be there if not before.  Say, “I’m so sorry that I am running a few minutes late.  I expect to be there in ___ minutes.”

Often, I will set an alarm on my cell phone for about five minutes before I need to leave an appointment with someone.  I let them know up front that I’m doing it so that I can focus on them instead of being worried about the time.  Only do this if it’s really important to leave at a specific time.

An Example Schedule

Let’s walk through scheduling rest first and driving second.

You walk into your office at 8:00 am and look at your calendar.  You have three appointments:

11:30a – Lunch with a leader in your church
2:00p – Coffee with a new member
6:30p – Dinner at home

You don’t think that you will be going back to the office between lunch and coffee, so this is how (at the moment!) the day looks (this is a lot clearer and does not constitute a separate step if you are using a paper calendar or something like MS Outlook):

8:00-11:30a – Office
11:30-1:00p – Lunch
1:00-2:00p – Out of the Office
2:00-3:15p – Coffee
3:25-6:30 – Office
6:30p – Home for dinner

Schedule rest first.  It’s 8:00 now, and you work best in 90 minute blocks, so you begin to add rest to your schedule.

8:00-9:30 – Work in the office
9:30-9:45 – Rest
9:45-11:15 – Work
11:15-11:30 – Rest
11:30-1:00p – Lunch
1:00-2:00p – Out of the Office
2:00-3:15p – Coffee
3:15-4:45 – Work
4:45-5:00 – Rest
5:00-6:30 – Work
6:30p – Home for dinner

Schedule driving second.  It takes fifteen minutes to get to the diner for lunch, so we will schedule thirty – that will be plenty of time to get unplugged from what we are doing and arrive on time or early.  It is only five minutes from the diner to the coffee house, but allow for fifteen just in case you and your ministry leader take longer than expected.  Allow thirty minutes to get back to the office.  Finally, give yourself plenty of space to get home on time.  Notice how the driving times interact with the work and rest times.

8:00-9:30 – Work in the office
9:30-9:45 – Rest
9:45-11:00 – Work
11:00-11:30 – Drive/Rest
11:30-1:00p – Lunch
1:00-2:00p – Out of the Office (flexible time)
1:45-2:00 – Drive to the coffee house
2:00-3:15p – Coffee
3:15-3:45 – Drive/Work
3:45-4:45 – Work in the office
4:45-5:00 – Rest
5:00-5:45 – Work in the office (shut down for the day, if possible)
5:45-6:30 – Drive/Rest
6:30p – Home for dinner

If you have some Drive/Rest time, enjoy it.  Listen to the radio.  Sing, pray, whatever.  Try to relax a bit.  If you have some Drive/Work time, use it.  Return a phone call.  Drop something off at the Post Office.  Listen to an audio book you are using for continuing education.

Above all, to practice peace, let your staff and everyone else whom it may affect know when you are going to leave during the day.  Stick to it, if possible.  Keeping these little promises during the day goes a long way towards practicing the peace that you preach.

This semi-weekly column is devoted to ministry hacks.  If you have a hack you would like to share, please email Jason (Jason [at] peacefulministry.com) so he can add it to the blog!

Use Recurring Events to Keep Your Prayer List Current

As ministers, people ask us to pray for them regularly.  This happens so often that if we are to keep our promises, then we will have to find some easy way to keep those names and requests in front of us.

An easy way to do it is to set up a recurring calendar event as a prayer list.  I use MS Outlook, so these steps come from my familiarity with that program.  If there are drastically different steps on your Mac, please help us out by putting them in the comments section below.

Setup

1. Open a calendar event for today.
2. Mark the event as an “all-day” event.
3. Type “Pray for these” in the subject line.
4. Start adding prayer requests to the notes section.  I include an opening sentence and closing prayer before and after the requests, like this:

For all who have commended themselves to our prayers; for our families, friends, and neighbors; that being freed from anxiety, they may live in joy, peace, and health, especially…
1. Sally, that you would heal her broken leg.

2. Bill, that you would give him peace and grace in his job transition.

3. Jonathan, that you would show him your love.

4. Etc…
Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask: Help us to ask only what accords with your will; and those good things which we dare not, or in our blindness cannot ask, grant us for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

5. Once you have it filled in, find the recurrence option and set the event to recur at the interval you choose.  For me, I have the event recurring daily.

Use

1. When you want to use the list, open it.  In Outlook, it asks if I want to open the series or just that occurrence.  Open the series.
2. As you pray, add, edit, or rearrange the requests.
3. Save and close the event.  This makes sure that all your edits are carried forward.
4. Delete the event – but only that occurrence!  All of your changes have already been made in the subsequent events.

The great thing about this hack is that you have your prayer list always available and editable, but you also have a constant reminder on your calendar (so it’s harder to forget) and a way to mark it “complete” (for the sense of closure).  Half of faithfulness is tricking yourself to remember to be faithful.  Give it a try and let me know how it works for you!

Burnout Plagues Workaholics and Workaphobes Alike

Burnout is one of the often-cited causes of pastoral turnover in US churches

and ministries.  Burnout happens when a minister gets sick and tired of his and her work.  On average, this happens to pastors every 4 years (of course, these numbers are old; interestingly the average minister stays in his or her job as senior pastor for 7.7 years), forcing them out of their current position into another ministry or career.

There are two internal states that lead to burnout: workaholism and workaphobia.  While each of us will move back and forth between these two poles over the course of our working lives, we probably have general characteristics of one or the other that define the majority of our work time.  Either we can’t seem to stop working, or we can’t seem to start.

While these problems may seem quite different, they are the same in one crucial way: both workaholism and workaphobia show a lack of peace about our work.  We workaholics do not believe that we can delegate our work to anyone else – if the ship needs cleaning, we think that we can do it best.  We workaphobes, on the other hand, cannot find the edges of our work and so alternatingly go comatose from sensory overload or flit from fire to fire, trying to keep the ship afloat but neglecting to look toward the horizon.

Neither workaholics nor workaphobes know how to practice peace.  Both tendencies need to know how to schedule rest first.

Schedule Rest First

Reality drives ministers doubly insane.  The five steps to a peaceful ministry day are:

• Schedule Rest first
• Driving second
• Maintenance third
• Due dates fourth
• “Important” items last

Scheduling rest first is the most important (and, therefore, the most difficult) part of practicing peace.  Scheduling rest first cuts to the heart of the twin disorders of workaholism and workaphobia.  Scheduling rest first embodies God’s way of dealing with the world, and symbolically and really humbles our grand notions about our effectiveness in the world.

Scheduling rest first has a paradoxical effect: it causes the workaholic to stop and forces the workaphobe to start.  When we practice this discipline, it begins to infuse our day with peace.

The Rubber and the Road

Pull out a sheet of paper and apply this general rule: Schedule 10 minutes of rest for every 1 hour of work.  Lunch does not count.  If you like working in hour-long chunks, schedule a break of ten minutes at the end of every hour.  If you have like hour-and-a-half chunks, schedule fifteen minutes at the end of every block.  Have fun, and feel free to mix and match the lengths of time.

Next, schedule one hour for lunch.  If you are not working during lunch, take it off.  Get away from your computer and get some rest (for some ideas, see below).

Finally, schedule when you will quit for the day.  This may be the most important part because it is easy both for the workaholic and the workaphobe to feel like they are never done with their work.  Choosing to be done for the day is a large part of practicing peace . . . that and your significant relationships will thank you.

You should jot out your schedule on the sheet of paper, something like this.  The summer is low-key for campus workers, so, as an example, here is the schedule I have been keeping:

9-10:30                 Work

10:30-45               Rest

10:45-12:15         Work

12:15-1:15           Lunch

1:15-2:45              Work

2:45-3:15              Rest

3:15-4:45              Work

4:45-5:00              Rest

5:00-5:30              Clean things up and go home.

The amazing and counter-intuitive thing I have found about scheduling rest first is that I have been more productive and peaceful in my ministry life than I have ever been before.

Once you have set your schedule for the day, set an alarm for the beginning of your next break.  This will free your mind from having to watch the clock and free it to pay attention to the tasks you have set for yourself.  When the alarm goes off, set it again for the end of the break.  This will have the same effect – you can pay attention to your rest (and really rest!) while not having to worry about when you will need to start again.

And when you rest, really rest.  Do whatever you need to do to experience some peace in your day.  If you work in an office, this would be an ideal time to go chat with your co-workers or grab a cup of coffee (but take your alarm with you!).  Pray.  Read a novel.  Take a walk.  Listen to some music.  Sing.  Read something funny.  Do what it takes to experience God’s peace.

And then, when the alarm goes off, get back to work.  You will be amazed at the results.

The five steps are cumulative, and you will have an easier time adoptingthem if you take it slowly.  Make the effort to practice scheduling rest first every day this week, and leave your experiences (good or bad) in the comments section!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How can I schedule rest first when I do not have enough time in my day as it is?

A. This is the workaholic’s quintessential question, and it’s a good one.  We will in the next several weeks be addressing this question in more detail, specifically in relationship to getting out of debt to your work.  Briefly, you will always have enough time to do what God has called you to do, and I believe that God has called you to peace.

Q. What about the people who say that I do not work enough as it is?

A. This tends to be the question of the workaphobe.  In time, we will address getting buy-in from the leadership in your church or your ministry supervisor for new patterns of work and rest.  Many of these leaders are workaholics who generally feel that workaphobes do not know how to keep their promises. (If we workaphobes were honest, we would agree that we make more promises than we either keep or even remember.)  In the meantime, be honest with the people to whom you are responsible for your work and assure them that scheduling rest first is the first step to increased productivity and responsibility in your work.  Being intentional will go a long way to easing their concerns.

Q. What if I can’t find a good way to stop working at the end of the day?

A. We will get to this soon.  In the meantime, check out this fantastic post at Cal Newport’s blog, Study Hacks.

Reality drives ministers doubly insane. We have to deal with our own workflow, projects, and due dates, which is enough to keep most other professionals in their offices 60-80 hours a week. But we ministers also have to deal with the workflow, projects, and due dates of the people to whom we minister. Churches and parachurch ministries are voluntary societies, which means that, whether we like it or not, the people we work with do not have to be a part

of our ministry. Our normal insanity is compounded, and we often get burnt out. Reality drives ministers doubly nsane.

Thankfully, part of the answer is found in the problem itself. In fact, in good Baptist form, I have hidden the five steps to a peaceful ministry day there: Reality Drives Ministers Doubly Insane.

The Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day:

Schedule:

• Rest first
• Driving second
• Maintenance third
• Due dates fourth
• “Important” things last

The steps are designed to be used at the beginning of every ministry day. We will unpack these basic steps together over the next few weeks. They are the first steps to practicing peace.

Needed for next time: notebook paper and something with an alarm feature, like a cell phone.

[Originally posted at peacefulministry.blogspot.com]

Very soon, I will start posting here on a weekly basis. Practicing Peace is a weblog designed for both parachurch and church ministers who are struggling with the demands of ministering in the 21st century. I will share tips, tricks, and “hacks” for simplifying your ministry, keeping it focused, and keeping yourself practicing the peace you preach.

-Jason

[Originally posted at peacefulministry.blogspot.com]