Ep. 003 | Steve Horton: How to Do More Ministry With Less Resources
Church Leadership Lab is a podcast that seeks to empower healthy churches. Through conversations, interviews, and stories, we explore what's happening in ministry today and how pastors and leaders can navigate what lies ahead.
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We can’t get more time in a day, but we can learn to do more with our time.
1. Evaluate
Discipline yourself to capture what you’re doing daily/weekly/monthly/annually. You can audit your tasks by writing everything on Post-it notes, then organizing them into “eliminate, automate, delegate” buckets. Everything is important—especially in ministry, so figure out what is essential. What can only you do? What can others do?
2. Eliminate
This one should be simple, but it isn’t always! We are wired to say “yes” to every opportunity that comes our way. You can say “no” to unnecessary tasks and items by reframing your thinking to “If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to?”
3. Automate
The fear of automating is that you want to ensure someone feels like they’re more than a number or email address. Commit to tweaking and personalizing as much as you have time to manage. It’s worse for someone to visit, leave, and never hear from you again than to get a women’s ministry invite instead of a welcome email. If you have software for giving or attendance, learn all its capabilities—there may be functions you aren’t using. You paid for it; use it! Create a team to share the load if you don’t have a single gatekeeper.
4. Delegate
We are to equip saints for the work of the ministry. It’s our job to provide opportunities to hand over responsibilities to people in the church. And, because there are more non-traditional working situations, like people who work from home, you can delegate more than just what happens in the building on Sundays!
Making eliminate, automate, and delegate actionable and accountable requires leadership buy-in. To help make the case:
21 working days/month x 9-hour day = 189 hrs/month per staff member. If each person saves 45 min/per day on tasks, these practices will earn a 13th month in the calendar for strategic and expanded ministry after one year!
It doesn’t happen overnight, but when you start freeing up items that take up your time, you net FREE TIME in the long run. Also crucial in this equation is reinvesting that “found time” once you’ve saved it!
Final Five:
Book: Immeasurably More by Jeff Simons
Last Thing You Listened To: CocoMelon soundtrack driving daughter to daycare
Favorite Technology: Apple Watch and BBQ meat thermometer
Quote/Advice: Eliminate, automate, and delegate.
One Thing for Church Leaders: I applaud the church staff for answering the call and sticking it out. Sometimes full-time ministry can feel lonely and shouldn’t.