Video Transcript: Proactive Scheduling

Welcome back. We continue in developing great commission skills. We're  working on the skill managing ministry time. Now. The skill topic that we're going to look at in this session is called proactive, scheduling, proactive scheduling.  So I'd like for you to look at a couple of distinctions here that we want to make.  The question is this, what is distinction between proactive scheduling,  responsive scheduling, and reactive scheduling? Well, proactive scheduling is  when you, as the pastor or the leader, are in control of your schedule. You are  looking ahead. You are thinking through demands that are being placed on your  time. In this case, particularly your demands in working with other people,  whether it be, you know, some project you're working on with other staff or other  leaders, or something, something else, like teaching a class, preparing a  sermon, visiting with someone from the congregation, at home or at the office,  those kinds of things. There's just no end to the things that need to be done. And the idea here is to proactively schedule those things, get them on the calendar  in advance, so that everyone knows what's coming, and you can really save a  lot of stress, a lot of grief, if you do that now the proactive scheduling is that act  of planning ahead, organizing your own calendar, spreading things out in a way  that are going to be comfortable for you, making sure that you cover all the  bases that you need to cover in a way that works for you, and ultimately in a  way that works for others as well. Now responsive scheduling steps back from  proactive scheduling and responsive scheduling tends to be something that is  initiated by someone else, but as the request or demand on Your Time comes in, your response is to accommodate. Accommodate that demand or that request,  and you know, serve in whatever way is called for is required. The difference  between proactive and responsive is that in responsive scheduling. You're not  taking the lead, you're not controlling the calendar. You're responding to  demands being placed on you. Now, reactive scheduling might be thought of as  a severe form of responsive scheduling. These are situations where something  from outside, or someone from outside is invading into your time with very high  demands that you respond immediately to take care of this, this, whatever it is  that this person seems to deem as extremely urgent, drop everything and take  care of my need. So it's best for a pastor to schedule ministry proactively taking  charge of time and not being in a reactive mode, or even a responsive mode,  allowing others to shape how you use time for you. Now planning in advance,  you can take control now you can leave some space for the unexpected,  because things are going to pop up that are demanding, that are urgent and  need to be taken care of. So you always want to have some breathing room  inside of your proactive schedule. But again, when you do that, you are taking  charge. You are taking control of your situation. Now, word of warning, if you as  a pastor or leader, if you don't take control of your time, others will take control  of your time for you, and you will be victimized, and you will lose time. Now we  have to understand that the use of a pastor's time is. Not a it's not a zero sum 

game where somebody wins and somebody loses, like if the pastor wins in  terms of controlling time others lose, or if others win, the pastor loses. It doesn't  have to be that way handling time properly should provide a win win situation  where this wins for the pastor or the leader, this wins for the other party who is  involved. Everyone's needs are being met in a timely fashion. Why? Because  we've been proactive in our scheduling. We haven't been responsive or reactive  in terms of our scheduling, judicious use of time is extremely, extremely  important, so the goal is keeping control of time while meeting The needs that  are being placed on that time. So let me, let me say this. I want to correct a myth that's out there, and the myth is this, my door is always open. Well, I want to  suggest to you that that is not a good policy. Sounds good. Seems like you're  being very magnanimous, very open. I'm always here. My door is always open.  But the problem is, what you're communicating in a case like that, is that you're  just not doing anything that's so important that you can't be interrupted. My door  is always open. And so as people respond to that, that culture of open door that  you are establishing, they will drop in. They will feel free to interrupt you've  extended the invitation, they're responding to the invitation. And so this habitual  pattern of folks that you're working with, folks that you're working for, feeling like  it's okay for them to interrupt you at any time, regardless of what you might be  doing, you're going to end up finding that your time is being taken from you and  that you are trapped in reactive scheduling. Now remember, if you don't take  control of your time, others will take control of it for you. Now you might recall  that we talked about giant worldwide, their book five gears with that subtitle, how to be present and productive when there is never enough time. Well, I said this,  then I'm going to say it again. In truth, there is enough time. The problem is  you're not using time well. If you're feeling crushed with time, it's because you  have not proactively scheduled. It's because you have not taken care of time  allotment. You have not chosen to live in quadrant two of Stephen Covey's time  management matrix, where you're working on important matters but without  urgency. Okay, these are choices that we're making, and sometimes we make  that choice by default, when we don't take proactive action to get control of our  time, to harness our time for the best use possible, by default, we are making  the choice to let our time slip away and to give others The Freedom, even the  power, to control our time. Now, when we talked about the five gears, we  identified all five of them in this way, gear one, recharge mode. This is that  personal recharging. We're unplugged. We're at peace where we're doing this  individually. Not that we're lonely, but we are alone. We are sort of at rest, if you  will. Gear two the Connect mode, being present with family of friends. It's not a  work event. We're not under pressure. We're just engaged with folks. Gear  three, the social mode. We're present with people, but we're attuned to how  things are unfolding. This is, this is a mode that we can be in even at work,  where we're surrounded by work folk, and we're open at that point, we're 

engaging with people, and we could go back to Gear two. We could ramp up to  gear four very easily. From that, that pivotal posture of gear three, gear four is  task mode where we spend most of our work hours multitasking, taking care of a variety of things at once. And then there's gear five, that focus mode, where we  are zeroed in on a single, high priority matter, giving it our absolute undivided  100% attention without interruption. And that's where we make tremendous  progress in moving very important things forward. Now, here's the deal. Gear  five is the gear that is most at risk. Question, why is gear five? Why is focus  mode, the gear that is most at risk? Well, it's very difficult to achieve gear five  when we are trying to do too many things at once, when we are allowing folks to interrupt our process, when the phone is ringing when voicemails are dinging  with notifications and emails are dinging with notifications. There is this  intersection that's got 5, 6, 7, roads of interruption coming in, and we're trying to  tend to all of this at once. So we slip into an attempt at gear five to shut  everything down, to get focused. But those things continue to come, and so it's  that gear that's the most at risk if we allow it to be at risk. So what do we do  about this? Well, proactive scheduling. Proactive scheduling will allow you to  protect gear five. Now it doesn't matter if you call it gear five, if you call it focus  mode. The idea is that in any role that you might be playing in a church, Pastor,  department head, some staff position, there are going to be those times when  you need focused, uninterrupted, undivided attention to take care of an  important element that needs the highest quality of effort that you can do it, that  you can give it, and you you cannot do that While you're languishing at that busy intersection of gear four so how do you make this happen? Well, number one,  you proactively schedule your gear five times. You block it onto your calendar,  and you first of all, inform yourself that you are going to be disciplined and live  up to that particular time. I remember years and years ago when I was working  on my Doctor of Ministry degree and I was trying to get all of the research done  for my dissertation. It was not just research. Once that was done, there had to  be rough drafts, there had to be edits, there had to be notes that were given to  me by my professor who was reading along the way and making suggestions.  And it was just so difficult to find the time to get that dissertation done. And so  one of the things that I did is I took, I think it was two or three days out of my  week, and I just made a determination that on days that I was at home. Now my  particular ministry is such that I travel a great deal, and when I am home, I work  out of my home office. So home doubles for me as the place I live and the place  I work when I'm in town. So I made a decision that when I am in town, and that  typically would be, say, at least two to three days a week, I would be at home,  working in my office. I would designate 6 am til 10. Am to work on my  dissertation. That's a pretty big chunk of time, but it was a gigantic project, and I  needed to get it done. And so every morning I would walk into my office at six  o'clock and I would start working. I would pick up where I left off from last time, 

and I would work, and I would steadily work until 10am but the moment 10am  hit, I would stop, and then I'd put those things away, and I'd dive into the rest of  my day. And bit by bit by bit, I got my dissertation written. I got my dissertation  approved. Ultimately, I, I did the oral defense of my dissertation and was  ultimately rewarded my Doctor of Ministry degree. That's just an example of  buckling down. Now, don't get me wrong here, I couldn't do that that much time,  that was 12 hours of highly concentrated time a week, roughly, that I was giving  to that project. But it was a project that had an end to it. I would not be able to  maintain that on one project indefinitely, but I could see the finish line. It was so  many months away, and I knew that I could, I could hit that deadline if I gave it  that six to 10 slot every day. And the truth is, my ministry day of responding to  phone calls, consulting with people on video, conferencing, that kind of thing,  working on developing curriculum, the various things that I do, I could get away  with not using that six to 10 slot. So that slot became what I would now call my  gear five slot for working on my dissertation. But these are the kinds of things  we have to do if we're going to take care of our calendar, communicate to  people that you're not to be interrupted. You know, close the door, put a sign on  the door, inform people around you. I'm going to be working on a special project  from this time to that time. Please don't interrupt unless there's an absolute  emergency. I mean, let's face it, as pastors, emergencies are going to happen,  but they don't happen every day. They don't even happen every week,  sometimes every month. So when we communicate to people, Hey, I'm not  going to be available for the next two hours, because I'm going to be involved in  a project. So, you know, unless there's an emergency, I'll be doing this. And then don't sabotage yourself by allowing any of those focus breaking interruptions to  come. You know, people will say things like this. Someone will stick their head in the office and they'll say, Hey, have you got a minute? Okay, let's think about  that literally for a moment. Yeah, I probably do have a minute. But the problem  is, whatever you're going to be bringing up with me, it's probably going to be  longer than a minute, not only that, but you're breaking the flow of concentration. So you know, if I'm in a groove and I'm getting something done, and I've got  things on my mind and a certain train of thought is happening, and I'm in the  moment, and then that minor little interruption, Hey, have you got a minute? It's  like, well, yeah, I probably have 60 seconds, but I don't have 15 minutes. And by the way, I can't afford to break my concentration, because I'm going to lose a lot  of time. I'm going to have to try to get back to where I was before you  interrupted. So your Do you have a minute? It's probably going to cost me a half  hour. Okay, so we've got to be wise about how we do these things. Now. We  don't need to be rude, we don't be abusive of people, but we have to make sure  that we let them know what I'm working on now is extremely important. I can't be interrupted. I'm protecting my time. I'm protecting my ability to do high quality  work on highly important things. Now let me, let me give you an example. Let 

me give you an example of this proactive scheduling, and I'm just going to call  this the personal visit. Okay? The personal visit. So just keep that in mind, one  of the things that we need to do as pastors, that we want to do as pastors, to  spend time with the people of our congregation. The people of the congregation  want to spend time with their pastor. And so we have that age old, historic  approach of getting with people, and we call it visitation. Well, what I've learned  is that the best way to handle the time commitment of these personal visits is to  proactively schedule them well in advance. So here's how this works. Let's say  there's a there's a couple in the church. They've been with the church for a  while. They are members of the church, and I'm their pastor, and I want to spend some time with them. I want to get to know them better. They want to spend time with me. They want to know that, you know, as a member of this church, as  someone that participates, probably serves in some way that, you know, we're  on the radar screen of our pastor. Well, what tends to happen is pastors will  know in the back of their minds, you know, I really need to get around and see  my people, but because I'm allowing my time to be stolen from me, because I'm  not being proactive, and I'm allowing things to slide into urgency, pressurized  deadline, types of scenarios. I just keep putting it off, putting it off, putting it off.  And so this particular couple doesn't hear from me, and they're wondering, Well, I would have thought I would hear from my pastor by now. It's been a long, long  time since we had any any one on one time with our pastor. What's going on?  Well, Pastor is getting frustrated because he knows that he needs to be doing  those kinds of things, but he can't just seem to get them done. This couple is  starting to get frustrated, a little concerned that, you know, we never hear from  our pastor week after week after week. We just don't hear anything. We don't  know if he's aware of us, if he's thinking about us. Well, proactive scheduling  can take care of that in a very simple way. So So here's a typical illustration. I  get in touch with this couple. I look ahead in my calendar and I realize, you  know, I need to be meeting with my folks. So let's say that I designate every  every Tuesday evening that's going to be my visitation time to get around and  see certain folks in our congregation. And so I'm looking ahead at upcoming  Tuesdays, and I'm getting in touch, and I'm setting up a time to come by, drop by the home or meet folks at a coffee shop, whatever. And so this particular couple, I realized that, you know, I've got a lot of different folks that I want to get to, and  it's going to be about eight weeks maybe, before I have an opportunity to meet  with that particular couple, but I get in touch, and I make that appointment, it's  on the calendar. I know it. They know it. Now, I'm not anxious that I'm ignoring  people as a pastor. They're not anxious that their pastor doesn't know about  them, that their pastors never coming by because what we're on the calendar,  and I have eight weeks of of grace, and then when that time comes and I go and I visit with them, We have a great evening together and and that satisfies that  need that they have. It satisfies that requirement that I have for probably another

number of weeks after that to see the idea is by looking ahead, by scheduling  things out with space in between, by getting things known on the calendar for  both myself and those folks I'm going to be working with, we know that we're in  each other's lives. We know that we're going to be seeing each other. We gain a lot of good favor in that way, a lot of grace is extended. In both directions. And  so this is how this is how this works. We are applying ourselves, applying  ourselves to proactive scheduling. Now let me give you a couple of other  examples. This is not on the in the realm of personal visit. This is just in the  realm of different ministry responsibilities that a pastor might have. So take a  look at these. These are personal to me, because I went through as I thought  about this concept of proactive scheduling, I realized it's something that I've  been practicing for years, I just didn't have a label for it. Up until a few years  back when I started to quantify these concepts, when I was in ministry in  Southern California. My job was music and arts, and one of the things that I was responsible for was planning the worship services, all the elements that would  go into the worship service. So how did I do that? Well, the first thing I would do  is I would get with our senior pastor, and within reason, I would try to get him to  give me a sense of what was Coming in terms of the sermon titles, sermon text,  if possible, maybe even a comment or two about how he was going to approach  that particular text. And truly, pastors should be doing these kinds of things.  They should be projecting outward. Now I realize that in real life, things can  happen in a moment that might cause you to rethink, okay, this, this event, this  happening, is so profound, I need to, I need to reconsider this Sunday. Okay,  fine, but that doesn't happen 52 times a year for 52 Sundays. It happens very  rarely, most of the time we have the freedom to plan ahead. So what I would  encourage, as the person responsible for planning worship, I would I would  encourage, as best I can, that everyone who was involved in worship services  be planned out about two months in advance. And so what I would do is I would, I would plan the worship service two months in advance. You know, I would  know what was coming. I would know what the sermon text was going to be,  and what the title was going to be, I would I would read through that that text,  and I would pray about it, and I would think about it, and I'd come up with  scripture readings that we might use that would complement that text. I'd come  up with song lists that we could use that would complement that text. I would  connect with other folks that might be involved in the worship service. I would  find out, are we going to have a missionary speaking that Sunday? Are we going to have some other kind of special emphasis on that Sunday? Is this a Sunday  where there's going to be perhaps a baptism? Is there going to be that the  celebration of the Lord's Supper. And so I'm mapping all of this out on a kind of a spreadsheet, projecting a couple of months in advance so that I would  proactively schedule all the things that were going to happen, lining up  personnel, rehearsals, all those kinds of things well in advance, simply by 

having this buffer of two months preparation. Now, when I went to Arizona as the pastor of this small church of 13 people, one of the things I realized right away,  before I ever got there, was that, you know, this church, the future of this church, is really not going to be about these 13 people. It's going to be about all of the  people in the community that we're going to reach now, when you've got a  congregation of 13, six married couples and one single guy. That's only seven  households, that's not a lot, and I knew that it would not take a great deal of my  time to connect with those 13 people, those seven households. And so. I  thought through, you know, what percentage of my ministry time will those folks  need from me in order for me to do a thorough job as their pastor? And because the group was so small, I came to the conclusion that I could effectively be their  pastor with about 25% of my ministry time and the other 75% of my ministry time could be devoted to getting out in the community, connecting with people,  finding out how the community works, finding out what's on people's minds, or  what they think is important, where they might be in their spiritual lives. And so I  spent that first year probably with that 25/75 split, and by the end of that year,  we were a church of probably 70 people, and I had baptized the first five folks  that had responded to the call of the Gospel by way of profession of faith. Now  I'm convinced that, in part, that was because of that 25/75 split, obviously, again, God did the heavy lifting through the power of the Holy Spirit. But I organized my time according to priority 25% to minister to the 13, 75% to begin building a  ministry that would reach ultimately, dozens and dozens and dozens of people.  One more example, and then we'll wrap up with this video. I do a great deal of  online training and consulting out of my home office in Virginia, and what I've  noticed is that when you're doing training sessions. When you're doing online  consulting or phone consulting, it's very, very easy to spend too much time. You  get on a phone call, and it ends up lasting 90 minutes. You get on a training  event, and it just spills over, spills over, spills over. So what I do is, number one,  I block out the time. So okay, this is going to be a training session that goes 60  minutes, and I will communicate in advance, we're going to start precisely on  time, and we're going to end on time, and it's going to be a 60 minute endeavor.  And everyone with whom I'm going to be engaged has been told about this in  advance. Know this, we're starting right on time, we're ending right on time, and  I'm blocking out that time now, when I'm doing consultation, and let's say I've got five consultations that I'm going to do in a day, my typical pattern is to set up 45  minute consultations, whether it be via the phone or a video conference. And so  what I do is I'll schedule those on the hour. I'll have one say at 9am, 10am, 11am and the folks know before they ever get on the phone with me before they ever  get in the video conference with me is that, hey, we're going to be looking at this  as a 45 minute conversation, and that gives me a 15 minute buffer, knowing  that, hey, I'm going to need to make sure we end if we start at, say, nine o'clock,  and I've got another session at 10, then by about five minutes to 10, I absolutely 

have to be shutting that down and booting up the next one. Now, if you don't do  that, time just runs away from you. And the truth is, you can get a lot done in  relatively short periods of time, if you're focused, if you are planned. Now I keep  a file on every individual that I'm consulting with, every group that I'm training,  and every time that I have a consultation schedule, I pull out that folder and I  read through and I remind myself of what we talked about last time, decisions  that were made, things that were going to be carried out. So I'm prepared to  have that conversation. And if it starts at nine, it starts at nine. It doesn't start at  9:03 it doesn't start at 9:07 it starts at nine. And the person involved with me will  know, hey, we're going to be wrapping up at 9:45 we're going to be wrapping up  at whatever time, and I have a little bit of a buffer between sessions. Now, if you  want to really take control of your time, these are the kinds of things that you  need to do. So that is a look at managing ministry time through the lens of  proactive scheduling. And that wraps up our video for this session. Next time we will be getting into what I think you'll find is a very interesting technique of time  management that I refer to as the one touch calendar filing system. You know,  one of the things we do is we end up having desks that get piled up with things,  and we're touching the same things over and over and over again and putting  them in a different pile and that sort of thing. Well, this is the way to get control  of that, the one touch calendar filing system. I know that doesn't sound  particularly exciting, but trust me, you will be very excited about the fact that  your time will be your own. You will not be misplacing things. You will not be  neglecting things or losing things. So next time, we'll be looking at the one touch calendar filing system. Now, until then, I just pray for God's continued blessing  on your ongoing studies, and we'll see you next time Amen.