One of the best gifts I ever received was from pastor and author Eugene Peterson. In the book The Contemplative Pastor, he taught me how to manage my time and schedule. As simple and painfully obvious as it seems, Peterson points out that the best way to manage your time is using your appointment calendar. Too many of us, clergy and lay people alike, allow others and the “busyness” of our schedules to dictate what it is that we do and when we do it. And we justify staying busy, he says, because we want to appear important. We live in a world in which crowded schedules and harassed conditions are evidence of importance, so we develop a crowded schedule and harassed conditions. I get this all the time as a pastor: “We don’t want to bother you, you are so busy.” So people won’t call or make appointments or leave messages, all because I am “so busy.”
I recall vividly a moment in my first call from the seminary. I was serving a very large congregation and attending a pastors’ conference. Standing in line for lunch, I heard one of my colleagues say laughingly, “Look at his calendar, nothing in it.” It was clearly meant as a put-down for the other guy and as a reminder that, by keeping busy, we were the important ones. We fall into that trap all the time. It is so easy to let people who understand the work of a pastor write the agenda for our days because we’re too slipshod to write it ourselves. And, because the people who set our agenda do so sincerely, it’s easy for me to go along with them. It’s hard work to say no. It’s hard work to remember that “No” is a complete sentence. It takes intestinal fortitude to guard and keep one’s own schedule so that we are in charge of being faithful to our calls as pastors, teachers, or lay people who believe the Lord of the church has called us to serve Him faithfully.
A Faithful Ally
Back to Petersons’ suggestion of the planning calendar: Use it as your faithful ally, because no one ever questions if you say you have an appointment. I will be challenged if I say to an inquiry, “No, I can’t make it because I have down time with my kids.” I will be challenged if I say I have a date night with my wife. But if I say, “My calendar will not permit it,” thus ends the discussion. It’s truly amazing. However, Peterson points out that the real trick is getting to the calendar before anyone does. So he suggests that you use it for everything. What I do each week is to mark out the important things that need to be done for me to be successful, not just at work, but at home and personally.
To be honest, I do a very poor job guarding my schedule. So my 2016 resolve is to use it, not selfishly, but in a very healthy, godly fashion. So, for example, this week I have an appointment each morning at 6 a.m. with B. I work out at that time, so if someone were to ask me, “Can you make a breakfast meeting at this time?” I say, “No, I’m sorry, I already have an appointment.” Do the same with devotion times, prayer times, and sermon preparation. Schedule in times to read great books and write down the author’s first name in your calendar. Write in appointments with your spouse and your children. You need not explain who you are with; simply say, “Oh, that time won’t work, I have an appointment” (You may add, “Is there another time we could meet?”).
If you do not find a way to schedule time with God, time with self, spouse, and others, then others will schedule your time for you.
When we look at the life of our Lord, we notice something amazing: He never seems pushed, hurried, or harassed. When people clamor to make Him bread king, He says to his boys, “Come apart.” When the disciples are bent out of shape during a big storm, Jesus is sound asleep on the boat. When He is ready to be killed on Calvary, Jesus says, “No one takes my life from me.” He was always in charge and operated from a position of strength.
So can we. We are called by the Gospel, enlightened by His gifts. We are blood-bought people redeemed in Jesus. I think many times we allow others to dictate our schedules for fear of saying no. God has given us a better spirit: His own. Paul says, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).
Photo (c) Andrey Popov/iStock
