I became a full time pastor in 2005. Prior to that I was a computer programmer. As a computer programmer I had many projects going on at once. I read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It was very interesting and gave me great insights into managing my tasks. Years later someone gave me Getting Things Done by Dave Allen. The idea behind GTD, in a nutshell, was to split all the tasks I had into manageable chunks. Then write all those chunks down and do them. This worked very nicely for writing computer software and I became very proficient at getting things done. Part of using the GTD system is to manage a calendar for date specific things.
As my experience and knowledge of being a pastor grew, as I began to change into the role of a full time pastor my tasks list became honed and I knew what had to be done and when it had to be done. The danger I began to discover, however, was the being a pastor is not just completing a checklist, no matter how extensive a checklist is. I believe that in many ways the calendar is more important than a task list. Not only do I have meetings, Bible studies and a church service to attend at specific times, I am beginning to believe that scheduling time for prayer, for study, for exercising, for time with family, for time with self and time for getting my tasks done is better served by a calendar. Perhaps the calendar needs to be the top manager and the ToDo list subordinate to that.
Along the way, Stephen Covey released First Things First an expanded explanation of one of the seven habits. This book helped me prioritize and choose the difference between urgent/unimportant, urgent/important, non-urgent/important and non-urgent/unimportant. A graphical representation of this concept is displayed here.
Put all this together and I was an organized, managed, disciplined computer programmer who met all his deadlines and who released quality code.
Then in March of 2005, I was asked to be the pastor of a church in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was asked to be a full-time pastor as apposed to a bi-vocational pastor. I put in my notice at my job and after two weeks I was a full time pastor.
Because I had come from the world of tasks, I initially saw my job as a pastor as a series of tasks. Preparing sermons and Bible studies, visitation, potlucks and other events were all just items on a checklist. This was a good way to figure out what needed to be done and kept me fluid enough to respond to needs in the church.
Please note that I became a pastor in 2005, 2 years before the smart phone revolution. So, even though I had a Palm device, most of my task management was kept in a Daytimer, initially and eventually in a Franklin-Covey Planner. Eventually I got an iPhone (the 3Gs was my first) and put away my paper tasks lists and schedules and began keeping all my tasks on my phone. The phone was smaller and easier to setup than the paper system. For example, if I wanted a weekly event for a whole year, that was a few taps on the phone, but lots of writing in the paper system.
As my experience and knowledge of being a pastor grew, as I began to change into the role of a full time pastor my tasks list became honed and I knew what had to be done and when it had to be done. The danger I began to discover, however, was the being a pastor is not just completing a checklist, no matter how extensive a checklist is. I believe that in many ways the calendar is more important than a task list. Not only do I have meetings, Bible studies and a church service to attend at specific times, I am beginning to believe that scheduling time for prayer, for study, for exercising, for time with family, for time with self and time for getting my tasks done is better served by a calendar. Perhaps the calendar needs to be the top manager and the ToDo list subordinate to that.
The biggest difficulty I had with the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was that it did not work well for a junior level programmer. Even when I became a manager in tech companies, I still could not make the decisions to follow those habits. Now that I am basically self employed and responsible for making the decisions for the church, I am thinking that a revisit to Covey's tome might be a good thing. I plan on rereading the 7 Habits book and the First Things First book, this time in electronic format, and see how they apply now, ten years out of the tech industry. I will set aside time, each week, on my calendar, to read. I think it will mean to more to read for two hours instead of making a ToDo entry that states: "Read one chapter."
I am looking for the fluidity that I had when I first started serving full time. I will see if changing my style of scheduling will help.
It is my desire to publish my thoughts on these things on a blog. Initially I will record this journey on Blogger.com, which is free, but limited. The URL will be PastorMichaelsThoughts.blogspot.com. It is my desire to write something twice a week. Initially I will choose Monday and Thursday. Monday because it will be after a glorious day of worship on Sunday and Thursday because that is after my intense study for teaching two Bible studies. I will write about my scheduling progress, things I am teaching and preaching on, a pastors perspective on things in the news and stuff like that. Because I still use technology, if I find anything that would help those serving the Lord, I will list those also. Some posts will be long and some short...we'll just have to see.
--
Grace and Peace,
Dr. Michael Wilson
Pastor
Cornerstone Fellowship
180 Lewelling Blvd
San Lorenzo, CA 94580
http://www.livingfreetoday.org
Comments
Post a Comment