Imagine that you’re getting ready for a new Sunday School class on the book of James.  Feeling like you’re not quite sure where to go?  Fill in the blank: “I’d let anyone else run this Sunday School class, as long as they….”

• Stuck close to the text
• Encouraged class participation
• Built bridges between the biblical world and our world
• Encouraged the class to find application for their own lives
• Didn’t feel rushed or unprepared walking into class on Sunday morning
• Etc.

Can you think of anything else?

The trick of this question is that it makes you objectify some things, what David Allen calls “principles,” at a very high level of focus.  Clarifying these principles enables you to make better decisions about what you’re getting into and even generates ideas or actions that you might not have considered before.  That “didn’t feel rushed” principle: how are you going to do it?  What has to happen so you don’t feel rushed heading into class on Sunday morning?  By filling in the blank, you’ve given yourself an excuse to be a better teacher than you were before.

Now, imagine taking the question onto your church’s board or vestry retreat.  Put it at the top of your whiteboard: “We would let anyone else run this church as long as they….”  Imagine the input you will generate from your leaders (both good and bad).  As you work through these thing together, you will clarify for yourself, and for them, what the church is really about and where it might be heading.  Plus, you get the added benefit of having a reference point for future decision-making in the church (e.g. it will be a lot harder to justify a large, new debt if the whole governing board agreed that “We would let anyone else run this church as long as they were … fiscally responsible”).

Now, take it one step back and apply the question to your life.  “I would let anyone else live my life as long as they….”  It’s amazing the clarity you’ll receive when you imagine someone else stepping into your body and going through your day-to-day interactions.  Not only will you clarify things about the way you handle your maintenance tasks, you’ll also realize the ways in which you would want that person to think, grow, live, and love.  You will be amazed at the new energy it releases for the simple parts of your life, and the balance you’ll feel as you start living the principles you would want someone else to follow in your shoes.

And, here’s the thing.  The person you will be tomorrow WILL BE a different person than you are today.  Your church in six months WILL BE a different church than it was on your leadership retreat.  Why not send those people a letter with some things clarified about how you want your life lived, your church handled, and your Sunday school classes taught?

Sometimes I think we all need to lighten up a bit about goals, plans, and priorities.  Do your best to capture, clarify, and organize what you can, have the basic conversations you need to have with yourself and other key people at the horizons that are calling you, and then just get moving.  If and when you find yourself off base, course-correct and then get going again–ad infinitum.  Frankly, that’s what you’ve been doing all along and will continue to do, so let’s not set ourselves up with overly romantic or idealistic standards for attaining some perfected state of total clarity about everything we’re doing, all the time.

[...]

Ultimately, motion is key.  Truly, taking any action will give you more of a sense of control than hanging back in hesitation, even if the action might not be the “right” one or best one to take.  One of the critical things that I learned while training in the martial arts was that being in motion is the optimal state in which to be effective.  It takes less energy to change direction 180 degrees while moving than it does to start in that direction from a standstill.  That doesn’t mean, however, that you should allow yourself to get wrapped up in frenetic busyness [!].  There are times when slowing down and retreating into a more reflective mode are called for.  That’s not actually slowing down, however; it’s slowing the body down, so that the mind can continue to be active at a more dynamic level (191-92).

“Good administration is ultimately pastoral.”

There is something about this that feels right to me and resonates deeply with the mission of Practicing Peace.  This blog is mainly about self-administration, and the underlying assumption throughout has been that if you can manage yourself, then you will be a better pastor in every single way.

But good administration is not just about us.  Many of us have been called to be pastors, and as pastors we are called to be “pastoral,” a funny word that derives from the same Latin word as “pasture.”  To be pastoral is to take care of or tend something, like a shepherd takes care of his or her sheep by leading, feeding, guiding, and protecting them.  Our task as pastors is to take care of and tend souls in those same ways.  In being pastoral, we take care of a congregation by leading, feeding, guiding, and protecting it as a shepherd does his or her flock.

What does being pastoral have to do with administration?  Administration is about handling details, not for the sake of the details themselves, as micro-managers do, but for the sake of the ministry.  Bad administrators ignore details.  Decent administrators catch as many details as possible.  Good administrators know where they are going and handle the details in such a way that getting there is half the fun.  Administration is about movement.

The shepherd does not merely manage his sheep, as though keeping them in good order were enough.  Instead, he moves the flock to where it needs to be, keeping a watch on the old and the young together and making sure that all the details are in order, so that the flock may find itself drinking from the waters of life.

Good administration is ultimately pastoral.

But why would we need to say that it is “ultimately” pastoral?  We need to say it as a reminder to ourselves, because we have so thoroughly segregated our minds into sacred and secular, spiritual and physical work, that we ignore the details in our own lives, either hiring a secretary to clean up our messes (rather than as a partner in ministry) or claiming administration is not our spiritual gift or strength and therefore finding an excuse to ignore it.  We have to say that good administration is ultimately pastoral because so few of us believe it is pastoral at all.  Yet, every piece of drudgery, every piece of mundanity, every piece of pain that no one sees but that comes from administering well is pastoral.  We cannot separate one from the other.

Chaplain Brownlee’s sage maxim, and the way it is carried out at Wycliffe, ensures that I can walk into our chapel every morning at 8:30a and meet Jesus.  Her administration is not at this point only pastoral in some distant sense, but it is pastoral in the here and now.  At 8:30 in the morning, good administration IS pastoral, full stop.

But, what happens when it doesn’t work?

If you are like me, you will engage in the disciplines discussed in “The Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day” series and experience a week or so of success before the fateful, gigantic, and inevitable crash.  The crash can be caused by a number of factors, the number one being unexpected, pastoral events.  What should you do after you find yourself back in your office exhausted, staring blankly at the computer screen, hoping for your day back?

First, breathe.  Since you were keeping up with your maintenance before the crash, you won’t experience it with the severity you might have otherwise.  Breathe and remember that it could be worse.

Second, clear thirty minutes on your calendar to write your mind.  Pull out a sheet of paper or open your computer screen and write, putting down everything that comes to mind, anything that’s grabbing your attention and causing you stress, keeping at it until that knot in your stomach begins to loosen.

Third, take a walk.

Fourth, go back through each item on the page you wrote, line by line, adding appointments to your calendar (for due items) or items to your to-do list (for important items) until the entire sheet/document is accounted for.

Fifth, wad the paper up and throw it away.

You’re current.  Now you will be able to resume your work confidently, knowing that the next crisis, whatever it is, won’t be because you missed something during this one.

Internet Monk

Some of you are going to wince here, but getting rid of the pulpit was a bad idea. In fact, I can’t think of a single change in architecture that says more negative things about worship than the removal of the pulpit, or replacing it with a clear plastic podium. The desire to make worship into non-worship was facilitated more by the removal of the pulpit than anything else. All the “barrier between the pastor and the congregation” rhetoric is specious.

The pulpit speaks of the centrality and importance of the Word of God proclaimed, and it relativizes the preacher into a proper place: disciplined and called to stay behind the Word. Harness the personality to the Word. The preacher stalking the stage with an open Bible is a scene out of balance: the preacher and his personality are overly emphasized. The Word is literally being “used” by the preacher before our eyes.

…[M]any evangelical churches will never have a balanced and disciplined liturgy because the church must be the preacher’s stage.

Read it all.

Discuss:

1. What do you think about the preacher and the pulpit?
2. Is iMonk’s claim valid, or is he romanticizing an imaginary past?

I don’t know how helpful, stringing “free modifiers” along after my “base clause” will be to my construction of sentences, but the course is fun, distracting, and helpful, and another fantastic entry in The Great Courses catalog.  Having listened to Philosophy of Religion, Story of Human Language, and Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, I can say it with authority: Great Courses make great brain fads.

Pastors need brain fads.  We grow stale, the rhythms of regular ministry eating our imaginations, the cries of our congregants distracting our wills, the drudgeries of administration atrophying our souls — souls which desperately need space to grow.  (How was that for a sentence?) We need brain fads to keep us fresh.

Eugene Peterson suggests books, setting aside time on our calendars for appointments with Faulkner or Pascal or Dostoevsky.  I suggest audiobooks, where you can reclaim your commute and allow yourself personal space by filling your mind with new ideas and fresh expressions and apprenticing yourself to masters.

But, be warned.  Brain fads can be dangerous.  They can interrupt our lives, sparking conversions, revolutions, renovations of our thinking, and, potentially in the process, annoying our parishioners.  If you haven’t done it already, you will be tempted to air your new insights in every situation, including each sermon you preach during your brain fad.  While sermons are your platform, remember that they are for the Gospel, not your brain fad.  The brain fad is an aid, not a new message putatively expressing or replacing the Gospel of Christ.

Airing your brain fad is for Sunday school.

Also, don’t try to administrate your church through brain fads, thinking the new thing from California or England will save your congregation.  It won’t.  In your ministry, stick to the basics, staying on top of your work, writing effective sermons, teaching good adult education, overseeing quality children’s and youth ministries,  administering the Sacraments.  These don’t change and never grow stale.  But, you can grow stale.  Get ye, therefore, a brain fad.

Over a month ago, I had mailed a document they needed to finalize my loan application.  Having heard nothing from them or from the University of Toronto, I decided, in response to prompting from my wise wife Dr. Ingalls, to call to make sure everything was all right.

It was, and it wasn’t.

They had received the letter on September 11.

But it was not signed properly.

The kind person on the other end of the line then took me through the process of digitally signing the document, which I had done already in August and the result of which was the exact document they received September 11.  Three weeks had passed since they received my documents, and no one bothered to call or email to notify me of any problems.

*Ugh*

When I later related this to Dr. Ingalls, who had been dealing with multiple issues of corporate and individual irresponsibility from others that week, she said to me, matter-of-factly:

“Welcome to being responsible for everyone else.”

Dealing with other people

As a pastor or minister, you have to deal with other people all the time.  And, not just any type of people: volunteer people.  Volunteers have priorities above and beyond your ministry, and they usually make sure that you know it.

Adding to that, you also have to deal with the corporations and individuals that help you run your ministry.  Whether it’s a web designer, a tax consultant, or the cleaners, you have to deal with people all the time who have more than just you to think about.

So, what should a pastor do?

Make it easy for other people to keep their promises

There are a series of two-minute tasks you can do to help other people keep their promises.

For appointments, put this on your calendar for the day before, “Confirm [fill in the name].”  When you come to that in your schedule, type out (or copy and paste) an email something simple like this and customize for the purpose:

Dear Lisa,

I’m looking forward to our 2:00 pm meeting tomorrow at the 21^st Avenue Starbucks.  I hope you’re well!

In Christ,

Jason

It’s easy to vary this for due dates you’ve given other people.  Just put the reminder on your calendar a few days to a week in advance.

Dear Tony,

I’m looking forward to seeing the Sunday School roster on Monday like we talked about.  I hope you’re well.

In Christ,

Jason

Sending email reminders are the easiest way to help other people keep their promises.

Following up

But, what happens when there’s no due date specified?

Make one up.  If you send an email that really needs a response from the other person, put something like this on your calendar a week or more after you sent the first email:

Did Michael get back to me about the ground estimates?

If he didn’t, just forward your last email with a note asking whether or not your contact received it and if there has been any motion on the project.

The basic rule of thumb is this:

If there is something you’d miss not ever receiving, remind yourself about it in a timely manner so that you can follow up on it.

What I should have done with Sallie Mae is put a reminder on my calendar to call them a couple of weeks after I sent the initial documents.  Getting everything settled two weeks ago would have avoided a long phone conversation in the middle of a work day and saved me a lot of stress.

“Welcome to being responsible for everyone else.”

If you know me, you know I love David Allen.  His book Getting Things Done revolutionized the way I work.  I went from being the flighty pastor who over-promised and under-delivered to someone who is known for being “organized.”  This personal transformation convinced me that organization is not innate, but a skill.  If anything, David Allen taught me this one thing:

It’s all in your head.

I had organization confused with organization technology.  I thought if I would just use my paper calendar or my Palm Pilot, then I would be organized.

I was wrong.   It was all in my head.

But, it wasn’t about keeping things in my head.  Organization isn’t remembering a lot of things.  All it is is remembering to do five things over and over again:

• Collect – get everything out of your head.
• Process – decide what to do with everything, and if takes less than two minutes, do it.
• Organize – if it takes more than two minutes, put it in a trustworthy place where you can find it later, like a calendar and/or to-do list.
• Review – look over your calendar and to-do list so you know what’s there.
• Do – do the thing that’s best for you to do given your context, time, energy, and priorities.

These things have to happen in your head (whether you’re aware of it or not) before any organizational system or technology will work for you.  One of the values of an organizational system like the Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day is that it fleshes out the steps REVIEW and DO for ministers.  It is an implementation of something that happens between your ears.

So stop buying Palm Pilots or iPhones to get organized.  Remember: it’s all in your head.

Tish is a colleague of mine from InterVarsity.

We’ve had a bit of a hiatus here at Practicing Peace due to my wife Monique’s and my recent move to Toronto.  Now that classes are starting soon, I should have the space to begin posting again.  Please let me know what topics you would like me to cover.

In “The Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day,” I outlined a five-step thought habit that will help you figure out in what order you should tackle the mountain of responsibilities you have.  Scheduling rest, driving, maintenance, due work, and important things, in that order, will make sure that you have your bases covered while still giving you time to pursue new ministry initiatives.  It really is possible to be a pastor who is known for keeping their promises.

Today, we’re talking about the stuff you’ll need.

1)      An inbox – this needs to be a box or tray that is easily reached on your desk.  This is for everything physical in your office that requires a decision from you.  If it’s “stuff,” it goes here.

2)      A collection device – whether it’s a notebook, a flip pad, or just a bunch of loose sheets of paper, you need to keep something with you to collect your thoughts as you have them.  I’m currently using a spiral bound journalist pad.  It lives in my pocket.  I jot down one idea per page, and then tear the pages out and put them in my inbox.  That way, I know it’s somewhere I won’t forget.

3)      A calendar – it doesn’t matter what kind of calendar.  The only requirement is that it has space in which to write a goodly number of items per day.  Put to-do items like regular maintenance and due work on each day (e.g., as “All-Day” appointments in MS Outlook”) and then schedule them out as we’ve discussed already.

4)      A to-do list – This is a list for important things.  Remember that important things are things that need to be done, but do not have a day or time attached to them.

Those are the basic items you need to manage your workflow.  We’ll be talking more about how to use them soon.