Time Management Requires Process

I’ve heard many times from both staff and lay leaders, “If I only had more time to get this done, we’d really make an impact in our community.” When I ask what they think they need to do to gain more time, I usually get the response of “we just need more people to help” or “we just need to get past this conference/holiday”. For Anthony Coppedge, he notes that he would like to see more advanced planning in preparation for weekly services. As we all know, there is always more to do than we have time and resources. Want to break the cycle? Here is my approach:

1. Make an assessment of what your ministry does. Do this by first taking an inventory, and then rank each item by the time it requires to execute each week, with 1 indicating the most time consuming. Be honest with yourself and be prayerful. This may take more time than you expect, so block out at least an hour to be sure.
2. Review your list and strike through half of your list the things that you do today that you can live without. You must remove at least half of your items, and if you have an uneven number, round up. Be brutal and honest.
3. With the remaining items left, circle half of those remaining that require your attention, or the attention of your ministry, on a consistent basis. Again, be brutal as you will often think that everyone on your list is important.

Tough exercise, isn’t it? Hard to imagine your ministry does all of those things and it is probably even harder to imagine the ministry not doing these things, right? Let’s face it – every ministry is doing way more than it needs to with less people than it should. And, as the leader, you may be the one doing most of the work! If not, it could be one or two superstar staff members or volunteers doing it all. Take it from a leader who did this himself – stop, take the assessment above, and start removing things that your ministry doesn’t really need. Apply this process several times a year, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed. You’ll be glad you did, and so will those that you serve!

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