Video Transcript: The Pastor's Time and Home

This is lecture 12, the pastor's time and home in the practical ministry skills  course. This covers part of chapter eight in the book pastoring the nuts and  bolts. Our key verse is whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for  the glory of God. I Corinthians 10:31, not just what you do in your ministry life,  what you do in all your life should be done for the glory of God. And I mentioned  your ministry life and all of your life, because your ministry is not all of your life.  You may be bi-vocational working other jobs. You may be just volunteering at  the ministry, but even if you are in a position of having the ministry as your full  time job. Still, there are other parts to your life. There are times when you're not  on the job. A lot of people, church folks and others are are quite shocked and  surprised to find that ministers are people too. And so you need to have some  time to be a person. I remember my wife and I, many times, would have an  opportunity to get away from whatever was going on at the church and just do  some normal kind of relaxing thing that everybody else just took for granted and  and we said, hey, we're acting like real people. Let's start with your time. The  common joke in America, typical church service lasts an hour, and so it's a very  common joke for some church person to say to the Minister, you ministers are  lucky, you only work one hour a week. Now there is a whole lot more than that,  as you know. I'm sure they even know it too, but they think they're being funny. If you read the reading for this section, it goes over what you might consider the  ideal schedule. I'm not going to recreate that now, but basically, it adds up  everything that a lot of people think that a pastor ought to be doing, that a  minister ought to be doing, and it adds up exactly to the number of hours in a  week with no time for sleep, no time for any kind of personal life. And of course,  that is not the ideal schedule. That is an absolutely impossible schedule. But a  lot of people would say, and here's the issue, your folks are going to say, you'll  have different ones coming in and saying, Well, of course, that's silly. You can't  spend 168 hours a week on ministry. You cut out all of these other things and  focus on this one, which is their pet thing. And somebody else comes in and  says, Oh, yeah, cut off all of those other things and focus on this, which is their  pet thing. And by the time you get all your advisors and all your leaders coming  to you and advising you on what to cut out, they're all saying cut out everything  except theirs, and you still wind up with 168 hours. And if there was more hours  in a week, they'd fill those up too. Your time belongs to God, absolutely. That  does not necessarily mean that your time belongs to your ministry and to your  church. It is impossible for any human being to do all the things many people  believe a good pastor should do, and God doesn't expect you to. It is impossible for any human being to do all the things many people believe a good minister  should do, and God does not expect you to do those things, you are not a  failure. If you don't get those things done, if something doesn't get done, then  that doesn't mean unless it's something that God specifically told you to do.  Now, if you don't do it. It doesn't mean that you're a failure. It means you're 

human, and being human is not a bad thing. Somebody said, God must love  humans. He made so many of them. Jesus himself became human. So what do  you do? How do you deal with all of these demands? Martin Luther, the Great  Leader of the Protestant Reformation, said, I have so much to do today that I  shall spend the first three hours in prayer. Our common response would be, I  have so much to do today that I don't have any time to pray. But that was not the way that Martin Luther looked at it. Somebody much more recently wrote a book called too busy not to pray. Often we say I'm too busy to pray. Or as church  leaders, as ministry leaders, we may feel like, well, our work is our prayer, or I  pray as part of the work, but that's an excuse. You need to be praying. So how  do you pray? Well, again, not all kinds of things to pray, but an important part for this respect, in this respect, is to pray through the day. Pray through the day.  What does that mean? It means prayerfully sit either early in the morning before  you start other things, or at night, just before you go to bed, after you've finished  everything. Whichever works better for you, pray through and say, Okay, God on this day, this day is a gift from you, and I give it back to you. I give my time back  to you. You know, I have all of these obligations and all of these other things that I would like to do. Please show me. And so then you start going through the day, and you you say, All right, I have this that has to be done at this time. I have this  appointment here. I have this other thing. Go through it and listen for God's  priorities. God may say, okay, yeah, this the these people want you to do that,  but that's not what I want you to spend your time on today. I want you to do this  other thing. I want you to go over here. I want you to do that so hear God's  priorities and try to get it lined up so that you have the things God wants you  doing scheduled, and then pray through each one of them, okay? At 10 o'clock, I have a wedding counseling session with this couple, so Lord, help me pray  through it. And you imagine in your mind what's going to happen. You see the  couple, if you've met them, if you know who they are and they come in, or if they haven't, if you haven't, you'll imagine them coming in. Okay, what's going to  happen? Lord, is there anything you want me to know about this? Is there  anything you want to remind me or want me to be aware of, anything in  particular you want me to say or do or not say or not do, and and, and you pray  God's blessings on that, then you move to the next thing. Okay, I have a lunch  meeting with this person, and they have these concerns, so Lord, please guide  me. How can I help them with that? And pray through it. Pray through every  aspect of your day. I have to admit, this is hard. I don't always do a great job of  it, but when I do, it makes a difference, and I encourage you to learn and do  that. Pray through the day. And again, as you're doing that, listen for God's  priorities. Leave time in your scheduling for interruptions, because they could be God's appointments. And here is a verse that I am going to put up, that the Lord  led me to one time, maybe 25 years ago, that really helped me. And I am not. I  want to make this clear. I am not saying this is an example of good biblical 

exegesis, and this is exactly what the author of this is from Ezekiel. This is not,  I'm not saying this is what Ezekiel had in mind, what he wrote, when he wrote it.  I'm saying this is an example of how God can take a Bible verse and apply it to  your life, or show you a truth through it that is not directly what it was intended  for. In the same way that God can show you some revelation of His love and  beauty and creativity when you look at a flower, that's not what flowers were  invented for, what God created flowers for, but God can use it for that. God can  use Bible verses in the same way, sometimes, to bring truths to us that are not  exactly what the original intent was, without in any way denying or changing the  original intent. So having said all that, I came across this passage in Ezekiel  describing what the priests were supposed to be wearing in the new temple. And it says, linen turbans shall be on their heads, and linen undergarments shall be  on their loins, they shall not gird themselves with anything which makes them  sweat. What in the world does that have to do with time management and  ministry leadership? Well, for me, at that time, I was binding myself, I was  girding myself with all kinds of obligations, and then I was worrying about, how  was I going to make the time? I said I would do this, and I said I would be there,  and I said I would do this other thing, and how am I going to make the time? And it would cause me to be nervous. It would cause me, at least allegorically, to  sweat. You know the phrase, don't sweat it. Don't worry about it. I was doing the  opposite. It was. It was causing me stress. That's maybe a more modern term. I  was getting stressed out about it. And it was at that time when in my regular  Bible reading, I came across this verse, And God said, You know what? There's  an allegorical application of this to your life. Don't bind yourself. Don't gird  yourself with anything that's going to make you sweat, don't, don't obligate  yourself to things that are going to make you stress out, because God doesn't  want us coming to him all sweaty and smelly because we've been working so  hard and we don't have any time to sit down with him. So if you learn to hear  God's priorities and to set your time according to that, then don't worry about  this other stuff. God does not want you making yourself so busy that it stresses  you out and you can't relax and you can't recover. Part of that is take personal  time without apology, yes, if you are a ministry leader, especially if you're a  pastor, especially if you're the only pastor of a church, the only ministry leader,  you may be on call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year,  for emergencies. And that's true, that's that's part of the job. That's just like being a doctor or firefighter. You're on call 24/7 for emergencies. But that doesn't mean you're on the job 24/7 you need time when you're not on the job. You need time  to to be you, to recharge, to rebuild, to refresh. And we'll be talking a little. More  specifically about that, I think it's next one or the one after, but you need some  time when you know that the phone's not going to ring or somebody's not going  to knock on the door. Two women, presumably one of the pastor's wife, standing in a cemetery in there, looking at the gravestone of Pastor Sam White and 

engraved on the gravestone, it says, Do Not Disturb and the pastor's wife is  saying to her friend, it was his last request. Give me a little peace. If you have  not experienced that yet, I guarantee if you become a pastor, a ministry leader,  you will experience that feeling. Don't allow yourself to feel guilty about not doing everything that other people think you ought to do. I love the story in John 11 of  Jesus and Lazarus. Most people love the part about that. When or the part of  that story that describes how Jesus came and found Lazarus dead in the grave,  and he said to Martha and Mary, if you just believe I'm the resurrection and the  life, and he he told them to roll the stone away, and he spoke to Lazarus, and  Lazarus came out praise the Lord. I like that part too, but the part that I as a  pastor really like is much earlier in the story Jesus is two or three days journey is today. I think it's two days journey someplace else. Lazarus was one of Jesus  good friends. He was one of his ministry supporters. Apparently, Lazarus was a  rich person. Some think that he was an importer of perfumes and so on. I won't  go into all of that, but anyway, Lazarus was one of Jesus's best friends. He was  one of his ministry supporters. He was not one whom Jesus called to travel with  him to follow him as an apostle. He was one of those, and God has so many of  these, many more than the apostles or those that travel, those that were called  to serve the ministry by doing their job, by staying in their profession, their  career, whatever it might be, in his case, his business. And he was very  successful at it, and so therefore he was able to be one of those who provided  for the financial needs of this traveling band who followed Jesus around and  didn't have any jobs of their own, but still, God's preferred way of feeding them  was not multiplying loaves and fishes. That happened just the twice with big  crowds, not with, not with, that wasn't the normal way that Jesus and his  followers ate. So here's Lazarus, and he gets sick, and he gets really sick, and  everybody's saying, oh my goodness, he looks like he's going to die. And his  sisters Martha and Mary, Martha sends off and says, sends a runner to get  Jesus, send a message, get there as fast as you can tell him, he Lazarus is  dying. We know how much you love him. He's dying, and we know that you can  heal him. And if you come back, if you get here in time, you can heal him. You  can save him. And Jesus got this message, and being a good minister, we  would expect that he would immediately drop everything he was doing and  borrow the fastest horse he could. And I don't know if he rode a horse, even  there's nothing in the Bible about that, but he would get back there as fast as he  could and pray, and Lazarus would be healed, and all of that is that's what we  expected, that's what Martha expected, is that what Jesus did, no Jesus hung  around where he was two more days. By the time he got back, Lazarus was in  the tomb. He'd been there. So long Martha was afraid he was going to start  smelling his body would smell because it was starting to rot. Jesus. Did Jesus  make a mistake? Was Jesus cold and hard hearted? Of course not. Jesus took  this concern to God. Presumably, the Bible doesn't tell us, but we know that he 

prayed about everything, and he always did what God wanted. And presumably  God said, yeah, that's all right, I got it under control. You stay here and you finish what you're doing here, and then in a couple days, then you can go on back  there and we'll take care of it then. And of course, God knew that he had the  much greater miracle. Healing would have been a great miracle, but raising  Lazarus from the dead was a much greater miracle, and that's what God had in  mind. But my point is, Jesus did not let the expectations of others decide what  he was going to do. Jesus did not let the the potential guilt of, Oh, my goodness, what if I don't get there in time? I could have saved him if I'd gotten there. Why  was I doing all this stuff? Jesus didn't feel guilty about not living up to their  expectations. Jesus did what he felt God, what he knew God wanted him to do.  Now, if you have a day job, if you work a job outside of your ministry, then you  certainly owe that your allegiance and appropriate responsibility. And God knows that, and God called you knowing that situation, and God will work all of those  things together too. All of this speaks to a time management. God won't give you more than you can handle, but God does want you to handle things effectively.  So develop a systematic way of keeping track of what you need to do. And  here's one where I need to preach to myself be realistic about how long things  will take you to do. I always tend to think I can do things faster than they actually take. So be realistic about how long things will take for you to do. And I  mentioned before allow time for interruptions. They might be arranged by God  very quickly. I want to mention a few words about your home, the place where  you live. You need, a place where you are not on the job. You see pastor or  minister is what you do. It's not who you are. You need a place where you can  be who you are. Just like I said, You need time when you can be who you are.  You need a place where you can be who you are. Church folks, ministry folks,  don't always recognize that. I remember one church I served. It was actually the  same place may have been around the same time that the Lord showed me  about the Do Not gird yourself with anything that causes you to sweat. I was  serving the church full time, and part of the compensation was that they had a  house there. We called it a parsonage on their church property that I could live  on. And that had advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is  everybody knew where I lived, and they knew they could see it, you know, that  they knew I was in charge of the church, and if they needed anything, they knew what door to knock on. And one night, we had all gone to bed, there was some  kind of a late meeting going on in the church building that I was not needed for.  And I think it was 10 o'clock or something. We'd all gone to bed. May have been  later this, this meeting, whatever this event was, maybe it was some kind of a  thing that somebody stayed later to clean up after. But anyway, they came, they  got done really late, and as always, they locked up the door after them. And we  had it set so that people who did not have a key to get in could lock it up when  they were going out. And she did, and then she came and knocked on the door, 

and knocked on the door and knocked and pounded, rang the doorbell. Finally, I  got up, came over, put on, you know, Robe or whatever, came to the door and  said, What is it? And she said, Pastor, Pastor, wake up. I know you would want  to know this. I know you would want to care and care about this and save the  church money. I locked up the church and I can't get back in to fix it. I realized I  left the light on, woke me up. Expected me to get up and go in to the church and turn the light off to save the church, what would that light bulb have cost  overnight until somebody came in the morning and saw it? 10 cents of electricity. You need to have policies and boundaries that your church people understand  and that you understand they may not understand them. But again, if you go  back to the authority we were talking about before, at least if they respect you,  they'll know maybe you wouldn't be asking for this if it wasn't important policies  and boundaries about it. And last thing I want to mention, quickly I go into it  more in the writing, is what we called spiritual cleansing, where, basically I just  realized that there are atmospheres. You can call them evil spirits or demons, or  you could call them just evil influences, or whatever. You could even call them  attitudes that you know one person can catch an attitude from another. One  person's in a grumpy mood. The next person can get it, however you want to  look at it. I don't want to get into all of that debate, all of that. I discovered that  being out in the world, I would pick up some of those things, attitudes, whatever it might be, and discovered that we really needed our house, whether it was a  parsonage owned by the church or whatever, wherever we happen to be living,  needed to be a sanctuary for us, a place that was free of all of that. So first,  when we moved in, and now we do this, hotel rooms, any place, go in and in the name of Jesus, command everything that's not of God to be gone, and then  invite the Holy Spirit to come and fill it with love and peace and rest and all of  that. But then, every time coming into the house, every time coming home after  being out, especially if there was a contentious meeting or some kind of a bad  attitude or something, but anytime, just in case, I would stop on the doorstep  and say, in the name of Jesus, everything that is not of God must leave me  alone. Holy Spirit, please come and fill me with your grace and peace and let me bring comfort and joy into the house and share it with others. It is incredible what a difference that has made to the point where even today, my wife can say, if I  forget to do that, which I would sometimes do, I would come in, and even  sometimes before I would say anything, she would look at me and say, Did you  remember to cleanse? Oh, my goodness, no, I would do it right there. Just take  a think about it, pray about it. It's made a difference for me, your home is your  home. It's not the church's home, even if they own it. It's a place where you  need to be who you are without being on the job, about out of time, we'll see you next time