Many discussions of a pastor’s tasks start with the advice to plan one’s work. This sounds eminently plausible. The only thing wrong with it is that it rarely works. The plans remain on paper as good intentions. They seldom turn into achievements.
The first step toward effective pastoral time-management is to record actual time-use. The specific method in which the record is put together need not concern us here. There are pastors who keep such a time log themselves, others have their secretaries do it for them. The important thing is that it gets done and that the record is made in real time; that is, at the time of the event itself, rather than later on from memory.
A good many effective pastors keep such a log continuously and review it every month. At a minimum, effective pastors have the log run on themselves for three to four weeks at a stretch, twice a year or so on a regular schedule. After each such sample, they rethink and rework their schedule. About six months later, they invariably will find they have drifted into wasting their time on trivial matters. Time-use does improve with practice. But only constant efforts at managing time can prevent us from drifting.
Systematic time management is therefore the next step. We have to find the nonproductive, time-wasting activities and get rid of them if we possibly can. This requires asking a number of diagnostic questions.
- Ask yourself first: “What would happen if this were not done at all?” If the answer is, “Nothing,” stop doing it. It is amazing how many things busy pastors do that would never be missed.
- The next question is: “Which of the activities in my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?” Ministers, as a rule, do not know how to delegate. They think delegation means turning something over to somebody else. That’s not delegation; that’s abdication. In order to delegate, we decide, “What is the job? What are the objectives? What are the minimal standards? What are the needed results?” Then we seek someone else to do it. That’s managing.
- The third question is: “Am I wasting my staff members’ time?” There is no one symptom for pastors wasting their staff’s time. But there is still a simple way to discover if this indeed is occurring: ask other people. Effective pastors have learned to ask systematically and without coyness, “What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?” To ask this question—without being afraid of the truth—is a mark of an effective pastor.
- The fourth question is: “Which time-wasters result from a lack of a system and which from a lack of foresight?” The symptom to look for is the recurrent crisis, the crisis that comes back year after year. A crisis that recurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again. A recurrent crisis should always be foreseen. It can therefore either be prevented or dealt with by a routine that staff members or other church workers can manage. The definition of a routine is that it makes unskilled people without judgment capable of doing what it took near-genius to do before; for a routine puts down in systematic step-by-step form what an able person learned in surmounting yesterday’s crisis. The recurrent crisis is typically a symptom of laziness.
- The fifth question is: “Am I attending an excess of meetings?” Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization, for one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time. In an ideally designed structure (which in a changing world is, of course, only a dream) there would be no meetings. Everybody would already know what he or she needs to know to do the job. We meet because people holding different jobs have to cooperate to accomplish tasks. There will always be more than enough meetings. But if pastors in an organization spend more than a fairly small part of their time in meetings, it is a sure sign of disorganization.
Many pastors know about these unproductive and unnecessary time demands, yet they hesitate to prune them, fearing they may cut out something important by mistake. But this mistake, if made, can be speedily corrected. If one prunes too harshly, one usually finds out soon enough.
Every new President of the United States accepts too many invitations at first. Eventually it dawns on him that he has other work to do and that most of these invitations do not add to his effectiveness. He then tends to cut back too sharply and becomes inaccessible. A few weeks or months later, however the press and the radio tell him that he is losing touch. Then he usually finds the right balance between being exploited without effectiveness and using public appearances as his national pulpit.
In fact, there is not much risk that we will cut back too much. We usually tend to overrate our importance and conclude that too many things can only be done by ourselves. Even the most effective pastors do unproductive things that should be weeded out.
These questions above deal with unproductive and time-consuming activities over which every pastor has some control. Every pastor and church staff member should utilize them. Then they can move on to the task of consolidating time for the most important tasks.
Peter F. Drucker; Leadership Handbooks of Practical Theology, Volume 3, Leadership and Administration; Time Management; pp 73-75.
