In Walter Trobisch’s delightful book, I Married You, there is a record of intense conversation between the author and the wife of Daniel, an African pastor. Walter and Esther are seated at the dining table in her home waiting for Daniel to join them following a Sunday morning service in which Walter has given a talk on marriage. Now they sit before a magnificent dinner prepared by Esther.
But the problem is Daniel. He isn’t there. And that fact increasingly irritates Esther, who is aware that her husband is just outside conversing with lingering church members. He seems oblivious that he is ignoring their guest and offending an upset wife who has done her best to provide genuine hospitality.
Unable to ignore the signs of her frustration, Walter says to Esther, “You suffer, and you are embarrassed because of me.”
After gaining her composure, Esther responds, “I love Daniel very much, but he is not a man of schedule. I don’t mind hard work, but I want to plan my day and have order in my duties. He is a man who acts out of the spur of the moment. He is an excellent pastor. People like him very much, but I’m afraid they take advantage of him too.”
At the base of Esther’s concern is the problem of time. She and Daniel disagree on how to properly use it. And the result? They are becoming increasingly ineffective in doing the things to which they were originally committed, and the time problem is beginning to have a corrosive effect on their marriage relationship.
Properly understood and managed, time is easily one of our best friends. Poorly appreciated and mismanaged, it becomes a formidable enemy. Peter Drucker, among others, has made it quite plain that the issue of time is at the very base of one’s effectiveness as a leader and manager. In his book, The Effective Executive, he is careful to remind us that time is inelastic-it can’t be stretched; irreplaceable-it can’t be reclaimed; and indispensable- things cannot be done without it.
The earthly ministry of Jesus Christ points up some helpful principles about the general use of time. It is nothing new to point out that Christ never showed signs of being hurried, pressured, or playing what we call “catch-up ball.” While he was certainly physically tired on occasion, he never appeared emotionally frustrated due to a lack of time, something we see a lot in present Christian ministry.
We read of Jesus ignoring large crowds to confer with twelve men at length. We see him sleeping in a boat, skipping a meal to talk with a woman, yet interrupting an encounter with a large number of adults to visit with children. Interesting uses of time. Surely some must have shaken their heads about the strange ways Jesus invested the hours of his life. But in retrospect, we can see he never missed making correct use of his time, and his mission was accomplished in just thirty-three years. We ought never to forget that.
Today, many people are writing about burnout. Why didn’t Jesus burn out? I think the answer rests in three simple principles: Jesus measured all investments of time against his purpose, he took time for solitude with the Father, and he didn’t try to do too much.
Myths About Time and Christian Leaders
We need to see through certain myths about time that we’ve been teaching one another for many years. Such myths are contrary to the principles Jesus employed in his ministry.
Myth 1. We are individually responsible for saving the whole world. Laugh at the absurdity of it, but many of us act as if we really believe that nonsensical statement. The source of the myth lies in our drive to match the potential we imagine God has given us. Also, we don’t like to be left out of things that others are doing. So we find ourselves wanting to speak at every denominational conference, to be a member of every board that invites us, to consult on every matter that faces our crowd, and to become friends with every luminary on our horizon.
Succumb to the myth-as many do-and the tragic end comes when in discouragement you learn that you never know enough people, can never attend all the conferences, and never find time for all the board meetings. Slowly we learn that we cannot save the world, but rather, we can make a dent on our world.
Myth 2. Time is running out; too little of it is left. Do I run the risk of losing some of my treasured friends in faith when I publicly depart from the ranks of those who think the “midnight hour” is upon us, and we haven’t a moment to lose?
I have stopped admiring the driven man. Now my admiration increasingly targets on the person who, like the farmer, has learned patience; that the best things grow in time, and all we can do is follow the proper sequence of planting, cultivating, and harvesting. No harvest can be enlarged by frantic hurrying about.
All my life I have been hustled by those who predicted world destruction just around the corner. If I had responded to their predictions, I would be a wasted mid-lifer. Although I’m confident that world destruction or the imminent return of Christ could happen even today, I am also just as ready to perform as though another thousand years lie ahead.
Myth 3. A pastor needs to be constantly available for all emergencies. As a young pastor, I was nursed on the notion that a call to ministry meant my time belonged to the congregation night and day, fifty-two weeks a year. Too frequently, I heard whispered admiration for the dedicated man who never took a day off, rarely vacationed, and offered himself as instantly approachable. There was a time when I really believed in that sort of life, and I felt guilty because I resented its demands.
I still believe in reasonable accessibility as a pastor. On the other hand, I am no longer afraid to be out of touch with my people when it comes time for me to pursue solitude, family time, or the enjoyable moments of living in this wonderful world. In my twenty years of being a pastor to three congregations, I have faced only a few situations in which my presence was instantly needed.
The pastor is not the only minister in a congregation of committed laymen. I was reminded of this fact on a recent evening. While I was conducting our midweek service, four of our shepherding elders were anointing and praying for a patient at a hospital and two other elders and their wives were spending the evening with a man dying of cancer. In neither case was my presence demanded or required.
Myth 4. Rest, recreation, and leisure are second-class uses of time. Do you remember the intimidating question many of us used to be asked as young people? “If Jesus came while you were doing that (attending a movie, kissing your girlfriend, or hanging around with the gang at the local drive-in), would you want him to find you in that situation?”
The question has a nagging way of hanging on into adulthood. It now can spring from the conscience when we ask ourselves what Jesus might think if he came and found us playing racquetball, canoeing on the Penobscot River in Maine, attending a Boston Pops concert, or, dream of dreams, watching the Boston Celtics play in the NBA playoffs.
Why such uneasiness about rest, recreation, and leisure? Because we have inadvertently sorted our time into good, better, and best classes. Ministry we think is first-class time; all other activity is second-or third-class time. Wrong! On the whole, the God of the Bible has to be just as pleased when his children play as when they work, when each is done to make possible the greater effectiveness of the other. “Come apart and rest. … ” are the words of Christ. “And God rested and refreshed himself. … ” are the words of Moses.
Myth 5. It is glamorous, even heroic, to burn out, break down, and even relationally blow up if you can prove that your friend, your spouse, or your congregation left you because you were faithfully discharging your call.
Although I don’t wish to diminish the saint who has given his or her life for the sake of the gospel, it is just as right to pursue a long life of regular service that peaks in old age with a mass of wisdom and experience to be handed on to the next generation. We need the example of the man who has left all “and followed him,” but we also need the pattern of a man who maintained a good marriage, discipled some godly sons and daughters, and has something to say from the respectable platform of old age. If there is inspiration in a Henry Martyn and a David Brainerd who both died at early ages, there is much also to be said for a Stanley Jones and an L. Nelson Bell who died in their eighties, leaving a reservoir of disciplined and accumulated insight.
Myth 6. The family of the Christian leader automatically surrenders its right to spiritual and familial leadership by the father (or the mother). An earlier generation of missionaries often left its children in the care of others and went off to other parts of the world. They labored under the illusion that if they would be faithful to ministry, God would guarantee the growth and development of their children. Tragically, a significant portion of those people found it didn’t work that way.
We in Christian ministry have no business having families if we are not committed to taking care of them and raising them properly. They are not someone else’s business. When I was first beginning my life as a young pastor, I once approached an older preacher and asked him, “What is more important, my family or the Lord’s work?” His response has never left me: “Gordon, your family is the Lord’s work.”
I remember a young would-be pastor who went to an older pastor to ask if he could have a chance to preach somewhere on his wedding night as a symbol of the priorities in his marriage. Wisely he was instructed as to the absurdity of his notion and informed that there were better things a bride and groom could attend to on their wedding night.
When it comes to learning to use time well as a person in ministry, there is more than enough material and resources available. But another dimension of our lives in ministry often goes begging. That is the question of how we use the private amounts of time that belong to us.
A business executive says to me, “I’m alarmed at the poor quality of my time away from my work. It seems as if all I do is run to this or that church or civic meeting. I have almost no time to just sit quietly and talk to my wife, to catch up on my own thoughts. Frankly, we’re both so tired with this incessant running that even the sexual dimension of our lives is hurting. We’re perpetually exhausted.”
Here is a place where pastors and business managers have a similar problem. Our work and the demands upon us seem to expand to fit all the time that we possess. And as long as we permit that to happen, we will always be behind wondering where and when it all ends.
The World of Private Time
“What are some of the necessary non-work times each of us in ministry needs?” Would it be surprising if I suggested that my first need as a person is for alone-time? This includes spiritual solitude, where I can commune with God as Christ himself did; but it also includes time to think, to exercise, and to keep company with my own self. When we are constantly amid the noise and rush of persons and programs, we can hardly ever brood or think, and the lack of time to do such things inhibits our growth.
With some regularity, I have built into my schedule a day alone to walk, to sit, to paddle a canoe on a wilderness river. How vitally important it is to be silent for a period. In the alone-times, my mind and inner spirit become once again a fountain of ideas and possibilities. I am able to catalog the issues with which I am personally struggling, whether they be matters of faith, job, or relationship.
Naturally, this alone-time enlarges to include one’s spouse. In our home, we believe our marriage is in itself a gift to our congregation as a model of Christian relationship. Therefore, my wife and I have understood the importance of maximizing our opportunities to commune with one another, so our relationship remains healthy and whole. We pursue alone-time, for example, on a daily basis with conversation about the events in both of our days when I return home from my study. We call this encounter our marital quiet time; and, because we find it important to make it happen the minute I arrive, I usually phone my wife as I leave the office.
These same principles apply with our two high school children, and we also work hard at being with them. Suppertimes are known as inviolable on all of our schedules, and although we are all extremely busy people, we all know the family will rendezvous each day at supper for an hour. Incidentally, while we are together for that hour, the telephone is always off the hook.
I have become aware that in my private life there is also a need for what I call down-time. None of us in leadership is without down-times, those periods in our lives which inevitably appear soon after we’ve put out unusually high levels of emotional energy or brought a major effort to a conclusion. Down-times also may occur following a highly intense period of people interaction, when one has been drained by incessant conversation, decision making, and advice giving.
A most obvious down-time for preachers can be Monday morning. The heavy exposure to people on Sunday invariably exacts its price on Monday. Thus, on that second day of the week, a pastor is more likely to be highly self-critical, to feel generally negative to various matters in the church, or to sense resentment when people try to intrude upon his day.
I suspect that there are even general down-times during seasons of the year for all of us. I have found that May is a low month for me, and it seems to stem from the fact that I have been “carrying” a lot of friends and congregational members through the late winter months and into the spring. They have been having their own down-times, and while they were down I had to be up. May seems to be my turn.
What can be done about down-times? Well, for one thing, we can accept them as a part of the rhythm of life. Second, we can keep them in mind when making up a schedule. If Monday mornings are depressing, then avoid scheduling commitments that drain more of what was already given on Sunday. Work or rest should fit with the generalized mood of that period. If I look at my calendar and see a ten-day period in which there’s going to be a heavy output of schedule and full pressure, I immediately try to block off one day at the conclusion of that period so I can begin to restore the energies that will be drained during the difficult period.
The most important thing to remember about down-times is they are not necessarily signs of personal or spiritual immaturity. They are as essential for the mind and emotions as a pause is for a person who engages in heavy physical labor.
Another sort of private time I regularly seek I call sabbath-time. I love the words in Exodus concerning God and his own sabbath time.
(The Sabbath) is a sign forever between me and the people, that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.
Sunday is no sabbath for any pastor, nor for many in the lay leadership of large congregations.. It is time that many of us in ministry grow more serious about the genius of the sabbath experience.
I see sabbath-time as a more deliberately planned piece of time for silence, reflection, spiritual discovery, and the joyful recounting of past achievements and activities. Sabbath is definitely not a time for catching up on household chores, exhausting recreation, or parties. Sabbath is retreat, withdrawal.
In it, one worships, meditates, and seeks a filled inner spirit. At its conclusion one is refreshed.
We have strayed so far from the biblical concept of the sabbath that one is almost stymied to describe what events should occur during such a time. I can hear someone saying that there is no time for this idealistic pursuit. If that is true, then we have overloaded our lives with more relationships, deadlines, and responsibilities than God can possibly be pleased with.
Lately my wife Gail and I have pursued the ideal of one day a week which we call our sabbath. It is more than a day off; it is restoration time replete with reading and meditation. It is a day of recharging our souls so that when we come away from the “mountain” we have something to give away in terms of spiritual energy to the people whom we serve.
I am impressed with the obscure statement of John, “When Jesus finished saying these things, they all went to their homes, but he went to the Mount of Olives” (John 8:1).
Our Lord knew he had spent himself and needed a sabbath restoration. Others went back to their noisy and people-filled routines; Christ pursued quiet, where the voice of the Heavenly Father could be heard. When he returned from the mountain, he had new and fresh things to say.
Pastors should pursue something else in the private sector of life, which I will call growth-time. Begin with growth-time in terms of the body, for example. For me, physical growth-time occurs between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. several mornings each week when I run (well, to be more honest, jog) for thirty to forty-five minutes.
Usually my mind and emotions conspire against the notion of running, and, like my prayer life, I’ve never found a way to automatically want to run. But once I’ve run more than half the time I’ve allotted (I run a certain period of time rather than a certain distance), I manage to convince my mind and emotions that we’re really going to do this all the way and that they might as well finish the course along with my body. When we all cross the line together- body, mind, and emotions-I have an amazing feeling each morning of personal victory.
Growth-time means exercising my mind also. Each month I try to take a few hours at the public library to come in contact with new titles and the broad expanse of available knowledge which may be good for me and for the congregation. I have deliberately embraced a hobby in mid-life, one that guarantees privacy, diversion, and mobility. For me it is photography. For my friend John Stott it’s bird watching. For another pastor friend of mine it has been woodworking, and for still another, antique clock repair. I like my hobby because I can take advantage of my travels to expand the range of places for taking pictures.
Growth-time also means taking on challenges that stretch one’s imagination. My family and I have canoed the wildernesses of Canada and Maine. We have accumulated tremendous memories of near disaster and spiritual euphoria on those trips. They are memories which undergird all of our experience and we have all grown through them.
Discipline and Time
How have we maintained any sort of semblance of order to our public and private times? Several random observations about things we’ve learned as the years have passed may be helpful.
First, we believe in the necessity of a calendar. Gail and I have maintained a master calendar for many years. Six to eight weeks in advance we write in major blocks of various sorts of private time. We get these on the calendar before the events of church life begin to appear.
Second, we believe in taking the phone off the hook at various times in our home. Our telephone is “unringable” during suppertimes, during moments of family discussion, for periods when study or meditation is extremely necessary. In twenty years I can hardly ever recall a moment when being instantly accessible was a necessity. We have learned not to let the phone become our slave master.
Third, my wife and I learned several years ago that we needed to follow that discipline of what I call marital quiet time. Our children have been good to recognize our need for this, and they have refrained-as they’ve grown older-from unnecessary interruptions when Mom and Dad touch base with one another. Because my wife has centered the majority of her life in the home as wife and mother, I think the marital quiet time is an absolute necessity, so I can share with her the things I have been doing out in the world, which she made possible by maintaining the home base.
Fourth, we have learned the law of quality time. When together as a family or as a couple, we are careful to be sharp and alert in our mental attitude, our dress, and our common courtesies. These are the things we would have done for church members; why not for our own intimate associates? It used to be my habit to fall apart on Monday mornings and come to the breakfast table unshaved, unwashed, and generally undressed. Gail pointed out that if I dressed for God and the congregation as I did on Sunday, what was I communicating to her by the way I dressed or didn’t dress on Monday morning? I certainly got the point.
Too many children and spouses see the Christian leader only after a day’s work when he or she is exhausted and has nothing left to give. We have tried to schedule ourselves so we give each other some of the very best times of the month when our minds and our emotions and our bodies are alert and alive.
Fifth, we have learned to match our recreational pursuits with family needs. I saw early in my family life that I could not pursue a recreational life with friends and still have adequate amounts of time to pursue a second recreational life with my children. Therefore I made choices early in the years of our family to do things recreationally that my children could join me in doing: canoeing, camping, hiking, and other activities where our exercise and togetherness were able to be maximized. I fear too many fathers spend enormous amounts of energies on tennis courts, golf courses, and health spas with other adults and then wonder why they never have prime time with their children. I will admit, for the purposes of being transparent, that this has been an easy doctrine for me to embrace since I am a terrible tennis player, and I have never broken a hundred in golf (even for nine holes).
It is an age old admonition: know thyself. But just as significant is the proposal: know thy time. By not knowing it we are unable to budget it; like unbudgeted money, time therefore becomes hard to account for, and it is needlessly and tragically squandered. That cannot please God; it cannot maximize our effectiveness as spiritual leaders. But by learning how to order the private time in our lives, we may increase the chances of being more alert, being more effective, and therefore being more the kind of people God wants us to be and our congregations need.
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