One of my biggest problems in my day is figuring out how to make the most of my time. Between sermon prep, discipleship, prayer, building organizational structure, developing leaders, and counseling, sometimes my time seems to vanish and I wonder where I spent my day. While the day might have been productive, did I spend time doing the right things and with the right people? Did this day move our church forward and help us engage in our mission for the glory of God and the good of the community?
One way to think about time is dividing it into context of prophet, priest, and king. As we look at the life of Jesus he was busy teaching and sharing truth with people (prophet), he was healing and connecting with people personally (priest), and he was building leadership that would ultimately build the kingdom (King).
What if we divided our time into these three parts? What if each day or week we made it a goal to spend equal amounts of time as prophet (preaching, preaching prep, blogs on theological issues, reading and studying), priest (praying for people, counseling, visitation, phone calls to parishioners), and king (organizational structure, discipleship, leadership development).
Could we enter two hour blocks into our calendar each day for prophet, priest, and king time, leaving an extra couple of hours for non-scheduled items that interrupt? The goal here is to not neglect one area realm of responsibility, or to let a favorite area dominate over the others. If not two hour blocks, what about days that are dedicated to each area? My typical week is prophet time on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, king time on Monday afternoons, all day Tuesday, and priest time on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. This idea enables me to figure out how to schedule counseling appointments or visitation without neglecting my sermon preparation and prayer time.
The important part of this thinking is that you consider all three areas of responsibility. Whether you spend two hours a day or specific days is not the crucial part, but rather that you figure out the schedule that works best for you in your context giving time to each area.