In this teaching I’m going to give you 10 key principles of bi-vocational time management. These principles will help you make it through what might otherwise seem like an overwhelming situation.
When I started ministry I graduated from a place called Eugene Bible College in Oregon, and I was on staff at Roy Hicks Jr’s church as a youth pastor, teaching pastor and worship leader. However, seven years before I went on staff at Roy’s, I was with Youth For Christ and had to raise all of my own support. After being on staff with Roy, I then moved to Hawaii and had to raise my support all over again. All they could afford to do was give me a housing allowance, that’s it.
In ’95 I went over to Honolulu, 250 miles north, to plant New Hope Oahu. We had already planted ten churches when the Lord said, “Plant one more.” So I thought, “No problem. I’ll just build some leaders.” He said, “Close but no cigar. You go back to the dirt and you plant again.” The church had grown to two thousand people. We had just finished construction of our church building on the twenty acres of land we’d purchased, and the Lord said, “Start all over again.” It took me a year to wrestle with that, but finally I said, “Okay.”
My wife and I, together with our family, went to Honolulu and started all over again. For the first year we took no salary. I had to work and raise support until the church took off. So I understand raising support. I understand working part time. I’ve been there. It was only eight years ago that I finally went fulltime.
Being bi-vocational while in ministry is no problem, as long as you understand certain principles. These principles that I’m going to cover will fall under the following three categories: home work, hard work and heart work.
Time management in bi-vocational ministry will require work if you want to succeed. It will require home work. It will require hard work. And it will require heart work.
A. HOME WORK
Under the topic of home work there are five principles I’m going to give you. Now you could say, “I’d rather have corporate principles.” Corporate principles are fine, but in ministry things have to start much deeper.
1. PUT IN THE BIG ROCKS FIRST
You’ve got to make sure you put in the big rocks first. Now you ask, “What does that mean?” Probably many of you know the illustration of the physics teacher who gave his students five big rocks, a wide-mouth mason jar and a container of sand. He said, “You’ve got fifteen seconds to put all of the rocks and sand in the jar. Go!” They poured the sand in and started stuffing the rocks in, fourteen seconds, fifteen seconds.
“Times up.”
“We’ve got three rocks left.”
“Times up.”
“Can’t do it. It’s impossible. We’ll break the glass.”
“No, it can’t all fit.”
“Yes it can.”
“No it can’t.”
“Show us.”
He took the rocks out and poured out the sand out and he said, “Always remember students, you must put the big rocks in first.” He put the five rocks in and then he poured some sand in and shook the jar. Then he poured some more sand in and it cascaded around the rocks and filled in all the holes and all the spaces. Finally he put the last few granules in and shook it again until it leveled out at the top. He then put the cap on and said, “It fits. It will always fit if you put the big rocks in first.”
In bi-vocational time management we have a tendency to get caught up with the sand of life, and if we do, nothing will fit. I use an acrostic P.E.P.R.D. (a misspelling of how you season your food) – but nevertheless it helps me to remember my five big rocks. You need to decide for yourself what your big rocks are. These are mine:
PRAYER
EXERCISE
PLANNING
READING
DEVOTIONS
If I do nothing else during the day, other than getting my five big rocks done, I’m a happy camper. If I do everything else in a day but I don’t get these done, I’m foolish and I’m squandering time. Remember we all have the same amount of time every day and we must utilize it well.
PRAYER – I have a habit now, when I get out of bed as I did this morning, I don’t touch the floor with my feet; I slide to my knees. So the first thing that touches the earth after I get up every morning is my knees because I have to remember, Jesus didn’t have to wake me up this morning, but He did. That means my assignment on this earth isn’t done yet and there’s a reason that I’m here today. So I slide to my knees and I say, “Thank you Lord for another day wherein I get to serve you and love you with all my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength. Thank you that you gave me this day and help me to start serving you today, like I’ve never served you before. Help me to really start serving you today.”
Each new day is full of potential. Up until now I’ve really done nothing. Sure things have been accomplished along the way but there is much more still to be done.
You can’t always be looking back at your past accomplishments and polishing your trophies, they’re empty of potential. They are empty. You can polish your trophies as long and as often as you want but they’re empty. What drives you, what gives you new vision and new insight? It’s the unused potential, things you can still do. Not what you are, but what you can still be. Not what you’ve done, but what you can still do. Not what you thought could be done, but what you think can still be done. There are so many things you still have ahead of you – things yet to be done.
After you start to increase your potential you start to get excited. Do you understand all of the things we can accomplish today? If you are constantly thinking about yesterday, the sorrows of yesterday and the setbacks of yesterday, it steals not only your today but also your tomorrow. It drains your potential. One of the things you have got to do in bi-vocational time management is learn how to increase your potential.
Increasing your potential has so much to do with how you think and how you pray. So I pray. That’s the first thing I do. It doesn’t have to be for four hours. Some people pray for four hours, that’s fine. I pray for about 25 – 30 minutes, then I’m up off my knees and I’m praying all day long. In the Bible it says we are to “Pray without ceasing.” That’s the word “adeoleptos” in the Greek. Pertaining to a cough it means, “without ceasing.” It’s a doctor’s term. If I cough and then a minute later I cough again, so that every sixty seconds I’m coughing, it’s called a bad cough. If I cough every thirty seconds it’s called a chronic cough. If I cough every five seconds you’d say, “he’s always coughing” or “he’s coughing without ceasing” that’s the word “adeoleptos.”
Concerning prayer, what it means is, when you decrease the intervals between your prayers then you are praying without ceasing. In other words, don’t wait so long before enquire of the Lord again. Pray without ceasing. The intervals between your times of talking to God should be shorter and shorter until you are always talking to Him. Then you arrive at something that Enoch arrived at – “and he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” So I pray every morning to not only dedicate my day to God, but to also rededicate my life to Him.
EXERCISE – Sometimes I’ll exercise aerobically in the morning. Things like jogging are aerobic. If you want to do anaerobic exercise it should be done in the evening. Aerobic exercise actually aerates your blood and enables you to think better. Anaerobics, like lifting weights, actually steals oxygen from your blood. What it’s doing is tearing your muscles. So if you’re going to exercise do aerobic exercise in the morning.
The smallest blood vessels in your body are where? They are in your brain. So if the viscosity of your blood is thick, when you try to think what happens? You get a headache! Why? Because the blood is too thick to flow properly through the brain. Well, when you get a headache, what do you take for it? Aspirin. What does aspirin do? It thins your blood. Aerobic exercise is a better way to thin your blood since it increases the viscosity of the flow of your blood by adding oxygen to it. So I try to do aerobic exercise in the morning to increase my energy level. If you’re going to obey God you’ve got to have a better energy level than what you now have.
If you are out of shape get in shape for the sake of the kingdom of God. Not to become Miss America or Mr. America, but get in shape for the sake of the Kingdom of God. If you don’t have energy and the Lord says, “Do two services.” Your response will be, “I can’t. I’m tired. Come on.”
“Well get in shape.”
So I got in shape and He said, “Do three.”
“Okay three Lord, but not four.”
And He said, “Get in shape.”
I started running more and He said, “Do four services.”
I said, “Okay Lord but that’s it. I can’t do any more.”
He said, “Get in shape do five.”
So now we are doing five live services, and again He said, “Do more.”
I said, “I don’t have any more time.”
So He said, “Okay, satellite them out.”
So now we do sixteen services every weekend. I do five live services and eleven via video. In all of the satellite locations people gather together, have live worship, and live Sunday school. They then have a video of the same message being preached live at our central location. This enables us to now handle the amount of people that we have, through not only staying in shape, but by also having a more innovative mind to initiate some creativity.
When you aerate your blood you think a lot better. So after running, when my blood is freshly aerated, I’ll do my devotions and things fly off the page. What would take somebody else four hours to study I do in about 45 minutes because my mind is sharper. It’s been well aerated. The octane level in my fuel is much better. Now things just fly off the page when normally I would be thinking, “Ah boy, I don’t know what it’s saying here Lord.” My study time goes way down.
As you can see, it’s important to understand how God created you if you’re going to have wise time management. Everybody has the same amount of time. It’s how they use their time that makes the difference. You just have to learn how to use the time wisely by cooperating with God’s chronological process. You’ve got to position yourself to be able to absorb as much as you can for every increment of time. Where one person could absorb three widgets, if you position yourself well, you could receive 30, 60 or even 100 things. You have the same time factor, but it’s the absorption rate that I’m talking about. Are you catching the importance of exercise?
PLANNING – In planning out my days and weeks I don’t use a PDA as my planner. I find it’s too small. It took me three palm pilots and lots of money to figure it out. I’ve gone back to a regular planner. I can see my whole month as I plan it out. I write down all of the things the Lord is telling me to do. Long-term things I put it in the back of the planner. Anything the Holy Spirit tells me to do over the next month: see some one, call someone, write a thank you note, I actually write it down and put a box next to it. Not only can I tell you what the Holy Spirit has asked me to do, but by looking to see if I’ve marked off the box, I can also tell you whether or not I’ve obeyed. It’s simple. Keeping things simple is an important aspect of time management. To manage our time well we must become less complicated.
In my planner I also write down books that I’m supposed to read each month. At the beginning of the year I ask the Lord what books should I read, and I also call people and ask them what they might recommend. From that I make myself a list and then I choose twenty-four books that I want to read at two a month. At the top of each month’s page I write down two books with a little box next to each one. I then buy all twenty-four of those books so that I have them ready on my bookshelf. It’s my goal to read two a month and I check them off as I finish them. It’s one way I can hold myself accountable.
If you go to the Mentoring at a Distance page at http://www.enewhope.org I actually post, in the “I’ve Been Reading” section, the books I’m currently reading. I’ll give you reviews about certain books. If it’s a bad book I’ll tell you, don’t waste your time reading this book. If it’s a good book I’ll tell you why so that you can decide if it’s something that could be of benefit to you.
So, I use my planner for much more than just my daily agenda. I can open it up and see my whole month at a glance. It gives me great visual context. I still have a PDA but I load it with Bible software. It becomes my concordance and my library. I’ve got tons of Greek and Hebrew helps on it. When I study I just open up my PDA and I have all the study helps I need, right in front of me. I find that a PDA doesn’t give me enough context. I need more context.
When I plan, I don’t just put in my appointments like: dentist, pick-up kids, meet so-and-so. That’s called defensive planning. We need to be offensive planners. For example, "Jesus what are you saying to me. Who should I speak to this week?”
“You need to see Joe he’s struggling.”
So I’ll write, “See Joe.”
I’ll call him up and ask, “Do you want to meet Thursday afternoon?”
“Yah great.”
“What else, Lord?”
“Take your wife out to dinner. You haven’t taken her out to dinner for a long time.”
“Ooh, I better get that in there.”
What I’ll do is take a pencil and write in what the Holy Spirit is telling me. I just put it in my planner where it will fit best in my schedule. If I’ve got Thursday night open I’ll write down, dinner with Anna, in pencil. Putting it in pencil tells me that these have not yet been confirmed. They can be erased and moved if necessary. Once they are confirmed they are then written in pen. If you don’t have a pencil, write it in pen and put a box next to it, which means that until the box is checked it hasn’t been confirmed. I set up my planner offensively booking in things like my time with my wife and meeting with my son Aaron. In this way I am being led by the Holy Spirit and I’m using my planner as an instrument of obedience rather than just for already booked appointments.
READ – As you just heard I read every day. I keep the books I’m reading close at hand. I usually have one of those books with me so anytime I have a few moments I can read a little bit.
DEVOTIONS – Doing your devotions is going to be one of the most important things that you’ll ever do. In Luke chapter 10, Martha is a wonderful example of poor time management. Although she was involved in the things of God, she was scurrying around serving God, but she got upset when Mary was seated at the Lord’s feet listening to His Word. Martha said, “You tell my sister to get involved in the ministry. We need help in the ministry. There’s a bunch of stuff that needs to be done.”
And Jesus responded, “Martha, you can worry about so many things, and albeit good and altruistic, there are only a few things that are necessary.” Do you remember that? “There’s only a few things that are necessary, really only one, and Mary has chosen the good part which will never be taken away from her.”
What was she doing? She was seated at the Lord’s feet listening to His Word.
The best program that we’ve done for our church is to teach everybody to develop a self-feeding program. Otherwise they depend on you every Sunday, and that’s too big of a burden for you to carry. You are not the Messiah. Sorry. I know that might come as a shock, but you are not the Messiah. You must teach everyone to have a self-feeding program. That will help you more than you will ever realize in time management. We too frequently think, “I’ve got so much to do.” when only a few things are necessary – really only one.
Teaching people to have a self-feeding program is incredibly important. Everybody knows that they should do be feeding themselves, but not everybody knows exactly how to do it. We have various types of journals. In the front of each journal there is a daily reading program that, in a year, will take you through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice. All of the instructions as to how to set up and use the journal are also included.
When doing our journals we use an acronym SOAP:
Scripture – After you read the portion of Scripture for the day you write down, from the chapters you’ve just read, the Scripture the Holy Spirit highlights for you. You might say, “Well I don’t understand 90% of what I’ve read.” Great, write on the 10% you do understand. Start there, because if you are faithful in little you’ll be faithful with much. Start with what you do understand not what you don’t.
Observation – You then write your observation of the Scripture that you’ve written out.
Application – How am I going to be different today because of what I have just read? How does this passage apply to my life today?
Prayer – Write out your prayer. Apply what you have just read to your life and ask the Lord for help and guidance to see it through.
Write your journal in manuscript form. You only need to take one or two pages. Remember, getting started with this devotions program has to start with you. Don’t try to start it with your church until it has become a part of your life. Start with you.
Do you know that 82% of pastors do not have a systematic devotional time in the word of God? We are too involved with other things. The Lord is telling us it’s time to get back to the Word.
Often people ask me, “When is the best time to do your devotions?” The best time for devotions is when you are at your best. You want to give Jesus your best. If you are an evening person, do it in the evening when you are at your best. If you are a morning person, do it in the morning when you are at your best. You want to have your mind at its best so that you can receive all that God has for you. Ninety-five percent of my sermons come out of my devotions. Things that I have mined out for myself. If you will be faithful in your devotions you will have all of the resources necessary for your sermons. It’s very easy.
After you have done your journaling for the day you can flip to the table of contents at the front of your journal and enter what you have just done. With the table of contents, when I travel, if some one says, “Wayne, speak to our men’s group.” I just have to open up my journal, look at the table of contents and find something that will be appropriate for the group I am about to minister to.
Here’s my devotional entry from this morning. It’s called, “Errors in Judgment.”
Scripture: Rom. 14:10 - 13 “But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God. Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this — not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way.”
Observation: That spoke to me, especially when he said, “Stop judging people anymore. Don’t regard others with contempt. Stop.” That hit my heart because we have a tendency to do that. We silently hold people in certain categories of likeability or dis-likeability and then when someone says, “You know Tim.”
“Yea, I know Tim” in a tone of voice showing that I don’t approve of him.
“Isn’t he a great guy?”
“Well. I know things about Tim you don’t know.”
“Really!”
“I’m not going to touch that, but just know.”
It says in this passage, “Stop putting a stumbling block in a brothers way.” But we all do it. It’s like no big deal to us. “Don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with the girls that do, don’t drink . . .” We all do this, but we get down on people for other things. I’d rather have you smoke a cigarette and love people than not smoke and slander.
Wait a minute. If you smoke will you still go to heaven? Apparently you’ll go faster than others.
Application: Jaywalking in San Francisco is a $75 fine – or that’s what I was told. But if one person does it, it’s risky, but if ten do it what are the authorities going to do. The conclusion – don’t jaywalk alone. Invite your friends. It’s a wonderful party. Not really.
But it does seem that when so many of us break one of God’s laws it sort of becomes tolerated at first and then it becomes acceptable. It becomes vogue. We see that with immorality, pornography and now with homosexuality. We shoot at those who attempt the slow corruption of righteousness when it comes to homosexuality or other things, yet we miss the real issues within our very own ranks by a mile. Romans 14 reminds me about what the Bible has to say about judging each other, slandering and putting stumbling blocks in front of one another. We regard a brother with contempt to the point where we soil and sabotage, albeit religiously, the reputation of another we disagree with.
James echoes these sentiments in James 4:12, which concludes with these words, “There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?”
What options then does the Word of God give us with regards to another? We can: reach out, love, reprove, encourage, rebuke with love, disciple, not associate with, forgive, weep over, pray over – all of these are options. But it does not say we can judge. No bloodletting, no gossiping, no slander, no maligning, no backbiting, no sabotaging and no speaking against.
Sure there will be Judas Iscariots, but simply treat them as Jesus did. There will be Alexander the Coppersmiths who have done us much harm, but treat them as Paul taught Timothy in 2 Timothy 414, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.
It says each of us shall give an account. I must be assured that my own house is in order first – my devotions, my marriage, the way I disciplining my own children – and drop the stones from my clutched fists. I must first clean the recesses of my own heart by scrubbing the maligning, neglected motives of my own soul first. I have to give an account, not of Peter, Joe or Steve, but of Wayne and Wayne alone. So with that in mind I need to stop writing because I’ve got a lot to do.
Prayer: Dear Father please cleanse my heart so that I can serve, pray for and counsel those around me, but never judge them. Judging is the poor mans way out, isn’t it Lord? It’s quicker and it requires nothing of me – just judgment. But what I am realizing is when I do this it will cost me everything. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen.
You could do a whole sermon on that. Add a few illustrations and you’ve got your Sunday message. If you’ll be faithful to do your devotions you will have everything you need in a bi-vocational setting. You’ll have resources, and when you preach you’ll preach with conviction because you’ve got fresh bread – gems that you mined yourself.
When you write out your devotions do it in manuscript form. Write it out and wordsmith it the best you can. As you are learning to write it out it will make you more of an accurate person in your thinking. As you are wordsmithing along the way you’ll learn to write it out in manuscript form. The more you do it – I’ve been doing this twenty years now – you’ll find that when you stand up to speak you’ll start to wordsmith as you go. You’ll be doing it on the fly because you’ve been practicing it here with your journaling.
This is the best thing for you. I wish I could emphasize it more strongly. This is being seated at the Lord’s feet listening to His Word.
Matthew 10:27 says, “What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.”
If I’m not hearing anything in the darkness what am I going to speak in the light? If I’m not hearing Him whisper anything into my ear what in the world am I proclaiming from the housetops? You’ll just take whatever you’ve got and give it.
If you are seated at the Lords feet, listening to His words, that’s something that can never be taken away from you. In other words, that is something that will last throughout your entire life.
So, write in manuscript form because if you just write in note form it will be of no use to you later on. You might find a great thing on prayer and you’ll scribble, “Oh prayer, wow. Prayer, that’s good. Gotta pray. Wow. Cool. Excellent. Outstanding word from God for me today. Amen.” Then you file it away and five months later you think, “What was that great word on prayer God gave me? I want to speak on prayer.” So you look it up and all you’ve got is “Oh prayer, wow, prayer, that’s good. Gotta pray. Wow. Cool. Excellent. Outstanding word from God for me today. Amen.” That doesn’t help you at all. But if you manuscript it out, even the prayer, and then you record it in the table of contents, you can find anything the Lord has spoken to you through your devotions, in just a matter of seconds.
I use about a journal every three months, which is about four journals a year. At any time, I can go back to my journals, turn to the table of contents and quickly I’ve got what I’m looking for. I can then read it and everything the Lord spoke to me comes flooding back.
Sometimes, when I go back and read the prayer that the Lord spoke to me, I’ll be convicted through that prayer. I’ll say Lord, “I don’t pray like that any more. My hearts hardened. Restore my heart to that supple position and posture.
For good bi-vocational time management, first and foremost, we must make sure that we are putting in our big rocks first – especially devotions. Make sure you start devotions with yourself, and then teach it to your leaders. After teaching it to my leaders I actually taught it to our entire church body. I feel it is important to get everybody doing devotions. Now it’s like there is a free flow of the Word in the Church. When I share something it just flows because it’s no longer hitting hard ground. Instead of being like little eaglets waiting for me to feed them they are now feeding themselves. One day, when I die, they’ll keep right on going. I’ve taught them not to follow me but to follow Christ. I’ve taught them not just to do what I do, but to tap into the same source that I tap into.
So, number one is to PUT IN THE BIG ROCKS FIRST.
2. UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLE OF THE FULCRUM
Some people say, “Wayne, how do you balance ministry and family, because here’s ministry and here’s family (Diagram A.).
DIAGRAM A
How do you balance the two? It’s so hard. Well, if you think of it in that way you are wrong in the first place. There’s a scientific theorem that says if your basic premise is off every subsequent conclusion that you come to thereafter will also be off. So you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the right premise. It’s not ministry and family. Ministry includes family. It’s all ministry. (See diagram B)
DIAGRAM B
My wife is a part of my congregation so that when I spend time with my wife I’m spending time with someone from our church. I take my son with me on mission trips and people say, “Well, you are taking your son.” Yes, but he goes to our church. He’s one of my congregants. If I loose my family it doesn’t matter what I do in the church. Many of us think it’s okay to sacrifice our family on the altar of religion. That’s called offering your family to Molech and having your sons and daughters pass through the fire so that you will have favor with the gods.
It’s immoral. Now we were taught that way, so don’t feel guilty about it if you’ve done that. We’ve all done that. We were taught that way. The reason I have any basic premise by which I can stand in the pulpit, with any credence or veracity, is because my family is doing okay. If not, I need to get my house in order.
Just imagine in front of me a very long yardstick with a fulcrum right in the middle. You just balance the stick with the fulcrum. We think that if we have a balanced life we’ve got to have everything still. “You better not get in trouble at school son. Nobody move. I’ve got balance.”
Anybody knows that a balanced life is not a static life. That’s a myth. Life is moving all the time. Sometimes the Holy Spirit knows that there’s a battlefront forming in your family with your wife. So if we say, “Don’t move. Don’t talk. I’ve got balance.” The myth gets more and more infected and it will eat your time. We are not talking about how to add time. We are talking about how to kill the stuff that eats our time.
When the Holy Spirit starts to put a finger on your life you can feel the weight. He’ll say, “There’s a battlefront forming in your marriage. You need to spend time there.”
“No, I can’t. Everything’s balanced. Honey, don’t talk to me about that.”
If your son has trouble at school you might snap, “Don’t talk to me about that. Don’t get into trouble at school. I’m balanced.” You can see what’s going to happen. You’re going to explode and all of your bricks are going to come crashing down.
To know what balance truly is you’ve got to know the principle of the fulcrum. The fulcrum is like your heart. When the Holy Spirit says, “Wayne, there’s problems happening in your marriage. I see a battlefront forming.” What do you do to keep balance? You move your fulcrum and you deal with it. Just tell your people you’re going to spend time with your wife and move your fulcrum, your heart, that direction. (Diagram C)
DIAGRAM C
And then the Holy Spirit says, “Your finances are going bad.” Move your fulcrum that way. Get the help that you need.
Your son needs you to spend time with him. Move your fulcrum that way. Your church needs ministry help in working with that supervisor and that team leader. Move your fulcrum that way. Do you see what’s happening? This is called the principle of the moving fulcrum. It’s really simple.
When you understand the principle of the fulcrum, probably for the first time, you are understanding what it means to be directed by the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit delights in men and women who follow His lead. He’ll lead you, teach you and instruct you in the way that you should go. Psalm. 32:9 “Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, Otherwise they will not come near to you.”
The Holy Spirit is saying, “I will teach you, I will instruct you in the way that you should go.”
“Will you really?”
“Absolutely. Just make sure that you follow my lead.”
“How?”
“Move your fulcrum to what I’m telling you to do.”
Do you know what we often do? We go the very opposite direction without even realizing it. The Holy Spirit says, “Wayne there’s something happening in your home.” What do I do? I bury myself in my work. See what you are doing. You are moving your fulcrum the other way. You are setting yourself up for a major disaster.
We must understand the principle of the fulcrum if we are to become skilled in time management – especially in a bi-vocational world.
3. DAILY OBEDIENCE
One of the things that causes us to be destroyed in time management is that we don’t listen to the Holy Spirit’s leading. When your family starts to crash it takes you three months to repair the infection, whereas if you’d obeyed it would have saved you many months. I cannot tell you how important it is to daily obey Jesus.
Proverbs 3:1 & 2 My son, do not forget my teaching, But let your heart keep my commandments; For length of days and years of life, And peace they will add to you.
In this verse it is clearly stated, that if you will obey His commands years of life will be added to you. He’ll actually give you time.
Proverbs 4: 10 Hear, my son, and accept my sayings, And the years of your life will be many.
The Lord is saying, that if you’ll hear what He’s saying to you about the principle of the fulcrum, and you follow Him in obedience, He’ll add years to your life. Wow! Does that mean that you’ll live to be 120? No! What He is saying is that He’s going to give you more time in the same years that He has given you. He’s saying, “I‘m going to add years to your life. I won’t expand your life; I’m just going to add years to it.” Isn’t that cool. He’ll add years to your life. He’ll help you to understand the importance of obedience.
4. FINANCIAL CONTENTMENT
You might ask if financial contentment has anything to do with time management. You better believe it does. If you get over extended on your consumer credit cards, watch how much time it will steal from you. If you don’t understand simplicity of life and how to just be content driving a used car, and having a simpler house in order for you to put your major eggs in the basket of ministry, it can destroy you. If you are okay with living a more modest lifestyle, you will add years to your life. If you don’t have financial contentment you’re going to say, “Man I’ve got to work more hours because I’ve got to pay off these bills.” You’ve got to get your house in order.
In Hilo we were running around 1,500 people but because it was a small town we weren’t paid that much. Anna and I were okay with having a little house and we drove used cars. With my pick-up truck, just to save money, I took my own rubbish to the dump. Although we had 1,500 people, it was a small community and our offerings were low because people in that area were somewhat poor. The little truck that I’d bought for $500 had holes in the floorboard. It was kind of cool ‘cause I could see the road passing by through the floorboard. The door fell off because the hinge rusted out when you opened it, but I tied it with a rope and it was fine. My wife hated to drive it but we were content. That’s a rather extreme example but it’s a true one and we were okay with it.
Paul says, “I know how to be content with abundance or scarcity.” So if they give me a really nice suite in a hotel I’m really happy. I love it. But if we get a little teeny one, were still happy and we still love it. Contentment is the key.
Does that mean you’ll always be impoverished? No! But if you have to live in a cardboard box for a season be content.
There’s a very successful, multi-millionaire, grand restaurateur who was asked in an interview, “When did you become successful?” I will never forget his answer. He said, “I was successful when I didn’t have a penny in my pocket. I just need time to get it all together, but I was successful when I didn’t have a dime.” Isn’t that good. It’s within us. I don’t have a dime, but I’m fine: I’m very fruitful, I’m successful, I can still do a bunch of things. The potential is within us. Do you understand? It gives us a bright future.
5. SEXUAL PURITY
You might say, “What does this have to do with time management?” Sexual purity is so important. When you have emotional problems going on inside, like an emotional affair, it will steal your time.
Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
Matthew 26:41 “Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Proverbs 22:11 He who loves purity of heart And whose speech is gracious, the king is his friend.
Proverbs 5:7 – 14 “Her feet go down to death, Her steps lay hold of Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life; Her ways are unstable, she does not know it. Now then, my sons, listen to me, And do not depart from the words of my mouth. Keep your way far from her, And do not go near the door of her house, Lest you give your vigor to others, And your years to the cruel one; Lest strangers be filled with your strength, And your hard-earned goods go to the house of an alien; And you groan at your latter end, When your flesh and your body are consumed; And you say, “How I have hated instruction! And my heart spurned reproof! “And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, Nor inclined my ear to my instructors! “I was almost in utter ruin In the midst of the assembly and congregation.”
This passage talks about how the adulteress woman will steal your life from you. Your years will be eaten like the cankerworm.
In Matthew 26:41 it says, “Pray that you may not enter in to temptation.”
James says it this way, “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” James 1:13 – 15
So we have temptation and then sin – temptation gives way to sin and sin gives way to death. Did you know that if you are not praying, keeping your heart clean and checked at all times, you can move into an emotional affair with a man or a woman? When you are a bi-vocational pastor you are going to be under stress. Some of the ways people release stress can be through drugs, alcohol and sex. Those are all releases. You know you can’t go into drugs – it’s not good to be an addict and preaching. So we think, “okay I won’t do that.” You can’t be an alcoholic and be in the pulpit. So you think, “I can’t have an affair. It wouldn’t be good if people saw me.” So what do you do? You have the affair in your mind. It’s a release. That’s why pornography is such a huge issue – even among Christian men. We’re looking for a release because of the stress. So, after a stressful time, the devil finds an opportune moment and sets you up to have an affair in your mind with another woman from your work place. You just end up thinking about her a lot because it gives you a sense of release from the reality of what you’re struggling with.
Some people will go into this emotional affair where their heart is with another woman, yet they’re still going home to their wife – but their heart is not at home. Their heart is off somewhere else with the other woman.
You can still go to church and do ministry but your heart is somewhere else. After you’ve struggled with it for six or eight months you finally pull yourself out and you ask yourself, “Hey, what am I doing.” By this time you’ve already lost six or eight months because your heart wasn’t involved in the ministry. The Lord doesn’t look on the outer appearance. He looks at the heart. There was no heart in what you were doing because your heart was with the other woman. You might have maintained, but you didn’t grow in any way. You flat-lined it. If you flat-line it for too long your church will eventually shut down and you’ll have to go and find something else to do. Why? Because you lost your heart.
The way the devil steals your heart is by moving you into temptation. You’ve not entered all the way into sin. It’s like there’s an invisible membrane that you continually bump up against. You’ll say, “Whoa, I got really close. I really wanted to with her and I was available but no, I’ve got to go this way. This is okay. I can just think about her. I can think about the possibilities. I like that. It gives me a good feeling.” It’s euphoria. Eight months later you pop out of it and you think, “Wow, where did the last eight months go?” You see how it stole years from you.
If you don’t pray and watch your heart, saying, “Stop. I reject that thought. I can’t do that. I’ve got to move away from that lady. I’ve got to do that physically, just like Joseph did, for a season, until I get my bearings back again. I can’t afford to even entertain these thoughts.” If you don’t, you’ll get sucked right in. “Ooh I like this.”
Then all of a sudden you wake up, and you pull back in to reality, and you think, “What in the world was I doing – eight months have gone by – where did the time go.” You return again to your family.
God convicts you; it might be during a service; it might be a in the midst of worship, but somehow, you’ve got to pop back. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’ve lost eight months.
Sexual purity is extremely important. It’s called home work. If you are going to be someone who is wise in time management you’ve got to do home work.
B. HARD WORK
In this second section, let me give you three points all of which come under hard work.
6. ADJUST YOUR SIGHTS
Like with a riffle, you’ve got to adjust your sights. If your sights are off, it doesn’t matter how much skill you have, you’re going to be off target. What do I mean by that? If you want to increase the accuracy of the trajectory of your bullet you’ve got to make sure that you have a rear sight that’s in line with the front sight. Your front sight simply means your vision of what God has for you in the future. You’ve got to know where you are right now: your current position. You’ve got to have a very good understanding of where you’re at right now – I’ve got a job, I’ve got a family, I’ve got this and I’ve got that. You’ve got to lay it all out. You can’t be in denial. You can’t have a stack of bills on your desk that you don’t want to look at. You’ve got to have a good lay of the land.
Then you’ve got to say, “Where does Jesus want me to go. What’s my vision?” My vision is to pastor fulltime, to do this and to do that. Make sure, and then you work the vision backwards. This is what I need to be. What must I do in order to get there? I need to get out of debt. In order to do that I might need to move down to a simpler apartment. I’ve got to stop spending money so that I don’t have to feel forced to work fourteen hours a day until I have no heart left. Then, because I’m working so much I don’t have time for devotions, so therefore I don’t know what to say come Saturday night. Now I’m under stress and I’m thinking about other women.
What do you need to do in order to arrive at your vision? You’ve got to be really brutal. This takes hard work because you’ve got to be courageous and honest. You’ve got decide, “If this is what Jesus is telling me to do, I better do it.”
Let me tell you a story about someone who didn’t do this. A friend of mine turned in a Bible College term paper, and when he got it back the professor had written on it in bright red ink. “Great paper! Excellent illustrations! Super good footnotes! Outstanding bibliography. ‘F’ wrong assignment.” I laughed and laughed. He was crying.
I wonder, if we’re not careful, if we’re going to end up one day with the Lord saying, “Tons of money. Big house. Nice car. Good neighborhood. Whoa, good intentions. ‘F’ wrong assignment. I never asked you to do that.”
You’ve got to decide and adjust your sights accordingly. It’s a principle of bi-vocational time management. If you don’t do this one you’re going to end up in the wrong place.
7. TAKE TIME TO PLAN
Take time to plan out your messages. Take time to plan out what’s happening in the church. Just take time to plan.
I would suggest that you take a whole day sometime, maybe a Saturday or a Sunday after church, and just say I going to go and sit under a tree for a while and think. Do you know that we have a lost art called thinking? We don’t think very much. We’d rather go to the Internet, pull stuff down, and get everybody else’s ideas. You can’t do that. You’ve got to think. The only way the Spirit of God can talk to you is if you confer with the Holy Ghost and then you come out and say, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to me to do this thing.”
It’s a lost art in Christian leadership. We are all looking for someone else to do the thinking for us. If you do that you will end up a 21st century Pharisee. That’s exactly what the Pharisees did. They would not go to the Word of God. They would go to the Torah or to the Talmud, the Mishnah or the Midrash, which are all commentaries of Rabbinical teachings. They would say that they were not holy enough to go straight to God. They would accept what others, who they believed were holier than they were, had to say. They would read and go by their delineation of how to obey the commands. So then you had what was basically called the oral law. The oral law was all the laws that the rabbinical teachers put together. So they wouldn’t read the Scriptures. They’d parade the Torah around in their Bar-Mitzvah believing that they didn’t need to read the Torah, which is the first five books of the Bible – Moses’ books.
Many of us today are just like those Pharisees. I don’t read the naked raw scripture and let the Holy Spirit mentor me. I need to go to the Internet. I need to go to other commentaries and let them teach me – those who are rabbinical teachers. No, we’ve got to think. We need to go straight to throne room of God. The Bible says that we have His confidence, that we can draw near to the throne room and find grace to help in times of need.
“Please come and think with me, or reason with me,’ saith the Lord.” (Isaiah1:18, my paraphrase).
”And I will reveal to you things that eye has not seen nor ear heard and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has promised for those who love Him.” (1 Cor. 2:9)
You’ve got to sit before the Lord and take time to plan. When you do God will show you all kinds of things you need to change: which direction to pull your fulcrum, areas where you are lacking, things you need to drop, things you need to adjust, things you might need to pay more attention to, things you need to repent of. If you don’t get His instructions, if you don’t take time to plan with the Holy Spirit, how in the world are you going to navigate? You’ll have no compass.
Take the time to plan. Write it down. I actually take my journal with me and I just write what the Lord’s saying. “Lord, I feel good in these areas.” Just start writing. Get your finger moving and your pen flowing. “I feel good about this area. My family, I think on a scale of one to ten, is about a 7.5 to 8, but these are the areas that I think I can do better in Lord. In the area of the church, Lord I think things are going well, but I do need to talk with so and so more. There are things going wrong in this area that I need to deal with, don’t I Lord? Just start writing. You’ll be surprised. When it’s done you’ll a clear lay of the land; you’ll know exactly what you’ve got to do.
8. LEARN TO BUILD FRACTALS
Fractal is a mathematical term representing a simple pattern that can be reiterated hundreds and hundreds of times. Fractals are a very important part of our ministry and I believe that it is because I have built fractals that I have less stress pastoring a church of 10.000 than I did when I was pastoring 200. It works.
I’ve taken it from where Jethro and Moses counseling together, where it talks about how to put together teams of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens – ten being the smallest team mentioned. So I will take on four people as my span of care and then I put an x by each one representing their spouse. This is not just a task oriented thing this is a relationship model. I’ve got to make sure that my four are doing well with their spouses. If Elwin, who is one of my fractal leaders, is not doing well with his wife, do you think it will affect the ministry? What about if I’m not doing well with my wife, will it affect the ministry? So, if I count the spouses I have a group of ten.
X
X X X X
I break the ministry into four quadrants, representing the four major areas of ministry. The four members of my fractal team then each oversee one of these quadrants. We will all work together because we are interdependent. We are not independent we are interdependent. I will frequently meet with them as a team so they can hear what I’m saying to each person. We all dovetail together and I don’t normally do anything, except through this team. Now, when I have to move out and do something else, the ministry still flows. It still keeps working well because these four are quite capable of carrying on in my absence.
Then when the ministry grows, for example in the area of worship, the worship fractal head will then build a new fractal – again there’s ten. Even when one of my fractal has his own fractal of ten, I am basically still only overseeing four. When the ministry is at 20 people, I have four. When the ministry grows to a hundred, we might have to build another level with each one building their team, but I still basically oversee four. When it grows to 200, or 500 we might have to add more levels but I still oversee four. They just duplicate in their groups what I have modeled with them.
What I do with them they do the same things with their fractals. How I love them, they will love others. If these four are successful, the church is successful. If they’re doing well, I’m doing well. If they’re not doing well, I’m not doing well. So I live to make these four successful. It’s called being a servant leader. Do you understand? I live to make those four people successful. That’s what I do.
Now here’s the cool thing – when the church grows to 1,000, basically how many do I oversee? Four. When it grows to 5,000 how many do I basically oversee? Four. I still do other things, but basically I only oversee four. When we have 10,000 how many do I oversee? Four. I keep good, close contact with my fractal. Because they are doing well I can be released, at times, to do other things. I just make sure that they are successful. “What do you need? How can I help you? How’s the worship? How’s this? How’s that? Do you need some money? Do you need this, do you need that?”
“I just need some help. How can I get some help?”
“Hey, Joe can you help Bill with this thing?
“Yeah.”
“That would really be great. Thanks so much.”
“Happy to.”
“Hey Bill, Joe’s coming over to help you. “
“Really. Thanks so much.”
“No problem, I’m here to equip you in any way I can.”
You are using your authority to help other leaders do the work of the ministry. Now doesn’t that sound like Ephesians 4?
C. HEART WORK
9. DO NOT BREAK THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SABBATH
Sometimes you think, “I’ve got so much to do I just can’t take a Sabbath.” No, that’s very wrong thinking. You’ll kill yourself. Sometimes I can’t take a whole day off all at once, in a nice neat way, so then I’ll take snip-its of Sabbaths. I’ll take an afternoon here and a morning somewhere else, but one out of seven basically I desist one day. It might be an afternoon here and a morning there, but it will total one day a week. Then every seventh week I take off. I’m out of the pulpit. The seventh week I’m gone, I desist. I’ll take my wife and we’ll go to another island. Anna and I like to go to another island to rest for about three days. So if you’re working just see if you can take a day off every seventh week so you can get away for three days. Just plan it. Take vacation time or what ever you have to do but take Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Get someone else to speak.
Usually I have one of my assistance speak because they have the same DNA, the same heart. If I bring in a “big gun” and they push their passion, then the church is going after this missions venture or this orphanage project. So I usually have my assistants speak, unless I know that the outside person has our DNA and our heart. That keeps us on target. We’ve got to really be careful.
So when I get someone else to speak, I make sure that the guys in my fractal are all set up. I take three days off and rest. Boy, I tell you, I come back Tuesday and I’m ready to go again.
If you break the principle of the Sabbath you’ll get tired and you’ll feel like you’ve got so much to do. It’s not that you have too much to do; it’s just that you don’t have the energy to do what you need to do.
Then the last principle under heart work, and the last of the 10 points is:
10. ALWAYS INCREASE THE WHY.
Why am I doing this? Why is the Lord asking me to do this? Why do I exist? What is God asking me to do? Don’t ever forget the WHY.
You know if I’m with Tim somewhere, and he’s a wilderness guide taking me through a forest, and all of a sudden he says to me, “Wayne, you know what, I’ve lost my way. I don’t know how to get out of this forest.”
I’d say, “Wait a minute Tim, I just paid you fifty bucks to guide me through this forest.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’m just lost and I can’t find my way. I know it’s somewhere near here, but I’m lost”
“You better find the way out of here. I’m paying you good money.” We start to argue. “I thought you were a professional.”
“Well all you paid me was a measly fifty bucks. You could have given me more.”
“You agreed to fifty bucks.”
“But that’s still too little.”
Then we keep arguing until all of a sudden I hear this growl behind me. I turn around and there’s a nine-foot grizzly bear with his fangs showing, saliva dripping and he’s lusting after my body. He wants to bite me. He wants to eat me. All of a sudden, the “why” for me to get out of the forest has increased immensely. Do you understand? I don’t need him to show me out of the forest. My creativity level has increased immeasurably. My innovative instincts snap into action. I will find my own way out and I will find my way out quickly. I can guarantee you that. Pain, I have no pain. I’m out of here. I’m getting out of here. Why? Because the ‘why’ has increased.
In forty years this room is going to be empty. We just don’t have that much time. Oftentimes we think our time is to be used just to build a nice house and drive a nice car. Those might be included, that’s fine; have the nicest house you want, the nicest car, but don’t lose your assignment. If some things need to decrease in order to allow your vision to increase, decrease wherever necessary.
How do you make those distinctions and delineations? You do so by keeping your “WHY” fairly high and, when you do, you’ll see how much energy you’ll receive and how much strength you’ll have.
Jesus, thank you so much for helping us to be men and women of God in these last days. You’ve given us our current assignments. Some of us will be bi-vocational for a season but there’s a reason for that. Maybe it’s to get our house in order. Maybe it’s to get things clean and straight and streamlined because he who is faithful in little will be faithful in much. I realize that if I’m unrighteous where I am I’ll be unrighteous if you give me more. There’s a reason – that we be faithful!
