Time Bandits

Others may assign us tasks and make demands on us, but we control our own time.
— Steven McKinley

Everybody wastes some time. And everybody thinks wasting time is a bad thing. But what is wasted time?

In their book Manage Your Time, Manage Your Work, Manage Yourself, Merrill E. Douglass and Donna N. Douglass say, “You waste your time whenever you spend it on something less important when you could be spending it on something more important. Importance is determined by measuring your activities against your objectives.”

When we measure the way we actually spend our time with our objectives, it usually becomes clear that we are wasting time. We just don’t get done everything we expect, reasonably so, to get done in a week. When that happens week after week, that’s frustrating.

So how does one go about trimming wasted time?

I start with this assumption: we are in control of our own time. No one else controls it for us. Others may assign us tasks and make demands on us, but we control our own time. I’m not aware of any pastors who punch time clocks or who work under supervisors who rigidly order their days. Instead, we pastors have a great deal of freedom to structure our own time.

That means other people cannot waste our time for us. We waste our own time, sometimes by handing it over to others to spend (or waste) however they please! Getting control of our waste time means getting control of ourselves.

In this chapter, we will look at some of the time-wasters that torment pastors, and some ways I deal with those time-wasters.

Disorganization

My friend Jim is one of the most harried people I know. He often complains about his heavy work load and his inability to keep up with others’ demands.

Recently I visited with Jim in his office and learned why he’s so harried. His office was a large junk closet. His desk was stacked with papers, files, old bulletins, empty coffee cups, non-functioning pens, and little scraps of yellow paper with notes written on them. His attaché case overflowed with paper. Years of magazines were piled on the credenza.

At Jim’s invitation, I cleared a few hymnals off a chair and sat down. As we talked, we got around to the annual statistical report then due at denominational headquarters. Jim started hunting for his copy. “I know it’s on this desk somewhere,” he said.

As he sorted through the papers, he found a letter concerning a community meeting he had planned to attend the previous week but had forgotten about. He uncovered an envelope containing a $100 check for the building fund. He located several bills now overdue and collecting interest. Finally he found the statistical report.

“I don’t know how they expect a person to do all this,” Jim said with disgust. “I don’t even have enough time to get organized.”

Even Jim knows what his problem is. He’s so disorganized everything takes him longer than it should. But he doesn’t know how to get organized, and he claims he doesn’t have the time to get organized.

The title of a book by the noted time-management expert Jeffrey J. Mayer puts the question pointedly: If You Haven’t Got the Time to Do It Right, When Will You Find the Time to Do It Over? That title suggests that when we take time now to get organized, we save time ahead! Time-honored principles, like handling each piece of paper only once and making good use of files, are time-honored because they work. If Jim would take time to clear his desk and keep it clear, use an appointment book, develop a filing system, and keep records of pastoral work, he would see a many-fold return on time invested.

Chasing Rabbits

I remember the first time I tried to walk to the neighborhood store with our dog, Peewee. We called him Peewee as a joke, for he was a big, lumbering brute of no certain breed. I was just a tadpole. When I took the leash, I thought I would be in charge of this walk.

I wasn’t. As we walked the few blocks to the market, Peewee kept seeing rabbits and chasing them, dragging me down alleys and across yards. Finally I gave up and encouraged Peewee to drag me home. We never did make it to the market.

Some days I catch myself working the way Peewee walked to the market. I head in one direction, then I get distracted. I chase one rabbit after another and never get around to what I intended in the first place.

I pull out the denominational directory to look up an address and notice my old buddy Ken has moved to a new congregation. Then I wonder who is pastor now at Ken’s old congregation, so I look it up. And since Ken and I were neighbors in another state, I take time to see who is pastoring in that area now, and how they’re doing, as far as statistics are concerned.

But just thinking about Ken and his new call can set me to fantasizing. Ken took a call to a congregation in the Sun Belt. What would that be like? I look up a few congregations in the Sun Belt, just to get some idea of their size, finances.

By the time I get around to looking up the address I started out after, I’ve wasted a lot of time chasing rabbits.

I chase other kinds of rabbits now and then. I go to the bookcase for a commentary and wind up rearranging the biblical studies section. I go to the files for a copy of the church blueprints for the property committee and stand at the filing cabinet reading the minutes of the last building committee. I call the church treasurer about a bill and get so involved talking about our golf games that I never get around to that bill.

To avoid wasting time, I seek to focus on the job at hand and ignore the rabbits, no matter how tempting.

Perfectionism

It was 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, often a low time of the week for me. I was going to read through my sermon one more time, review the bulletin for Sunday morning, and then go home.

But when I read through the bulletin, I discovered a terrible mistake. We were honoring our Sunday school teachers that Sunday. Their names were printed in the bulletin, but somehow our secretary had missed the name of Muriel Erickson, the long-time teacher of the third-grade class.

This was a mistake I couldn’t tolerate. But my secretary was gone for the day, and I knew she had plans to be out of town on Saturday. There was only one thing left to do: redo the bulletin myself.

I called my wife to tell her I would be late for dinner that night. “The bulletin is all wrong,” I said. “I have to stay and do it over again.”

I was wrong on two counts. First, the bulletin was not “all wrong.” There was one mistake. Second, I didn’t have to redo it. I chose to, and that was a waste of time. I could have called Muriel. She would have understood. But that went against my grain.

I fight continually against the disease of perfectionism. Unless absolutely everything is exactly right, it isn’t good enough, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s my responsibility to make everything right, no matter how long it takes.

But I end up feeling burdened and depressed about how much time I’m putting into trying to achieve perfection.

A doctor told a friend of mine that for $100 of tests, he could give my friend Howard a 75 percent assurance he was in good health. For another $200, he could give an 85 percent assurance. For $200 beyond that, he could give a 95 percent assurance. For another $200 beyond that (now we’re up to $700), he could give Howard a 98 percent assurance of his good health.

Howard decided on $100 in tests, to get the 75 percent assurance and stop at that. For him, the cost of greater assurance outweighed the benefits.

I try to apply that to pastoral work, asking myself, When is it no longer worth my time to struggle toward perfection?

Take preaching, for example. While I envision sermons and select themes weeks and months in advance, I can usually write my sermon in about four hours. This usually produces a sermon that faithfully proclaims God’s Word and touches people who hear it.

If I were to study six, eight, or ten hours, I could make it a better sermon. I might be very proud of it. My old preaching professors might think well of me. Perhaps I could get it published in a magazine. But would it have a measurably greater impact on hearers? Probably not.

While there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of excellence, while I do struggle mightily to produce the best sermon I can every week, it is not necessarily a good use of my time to spend ten hours every week trying to produce a perfect sermon. It is a waste of time, first, because there are more important ways I could use the extra six hours. Second, it is a waste of time because (here’s the hard one) perfection is beyond my grasp. No matter how much time I put into my sermon, there are still some who “don’t get it,” some who don’t like it, and some who don’t care enough to pay much attention to it.

We proclaim the good news of a God who loves us as we are, who embraces imperfect people. It is inconsistent at best and theologically flawed at worst for us to live as though those standards do not apply to us, as though our work must be perfect or it is unacceptable. The gospel tells me to labor mightily to do my best without ever deluding myself about achieving perfection.

Poor Use of Secretary

Proverbs 31 extols the virtues of the “capable wife … worth far more than jewels” (tev). As far as I’m concerned, the author could have been describing church secretaries.

Not every pastor is fortunate enough to have a secretary. I not only have a secretary, I have an excellent secretary who saves me hours daily. She is a great “people person,” who deals with callers and visitors tactfully, cheerfully, and firmly. She knows me well enough to know what calls I want to take and what people I want to see, and she has a sharp enough ministry sense to know what calls I should take and what people I should see.

My secretary saves time by protecting me from salespeople eager to sell us a new telephone system, from requests to inventory the coffee or the coffee cups, from people who just want to chat, from traveling evangelists looking for a place to plant themselves for a night or two. On particularly busy days, she encourages me to close my door so I can concentrate. She takes initiative to order needed supplies, keeps meticulous files, oversees the congregation’s master calendar, and placates some of the disgruntled.

Those who can’t afford a secretary should make every effort to recruit volunteers. Any time they can give is better than nothing. And pastors who have secretaries should spare no expense in providing them training through seminars, books, and newsletters. When you invest in a secretary’s skills, you’re buying time!

Not Calling Ahead

Sometimes I’m ready to curse Alexander Graham Bell. His telephone on the corner of my desk is said to be a great invention, but some days it interrupts so incessantly I want to toss it out the window. While some of my colleagues now have cellular car phones, a telephone in my office is more than enough for me!

At the same time, I remind myself, The telephone is your friend. I can think of an afternoon recently when I should have made better use of my friend than I did.

I had left the office after lunch to make a hospital call thirty minutes away. At the hospital, I discovered my parishioner had been discharged the day before.

On my way back to church, I reached into my pocket for the visitor cards from the previous Sunday. I picked out the card of one family, located their address in a new development, and marched up to the door. No one home.

Frustrated but determined to make a call that afternoon, I headed for a senior citizens’ apartment complex, home to one of our shut-ins. I discovered she was visiting with friends from her old neighborhood. She insisted on serving me cake and coffee, but my visit with her was not what I had hoped. By the time I headed back to the office, I had wasted most of the afternoon.

I could have avoided that by following one simple rule: phone first. In contemporary culture, that’s even more important. Hospital stays are much shorter than they once were. Most adults work outside the home. Even shut-ins can be busy people.

Even if our unannounced visits catch prospects at home, we’re better off calling ahead. In our culture today, old-fashioned drop-in calls simply do not work. People are so busy they don’t welcome drop-in callers any more than pastors enjoy people dropping in at church to chat.

A double-barreled approach to eliminating wasted time: I have my secretary do the calling for me.

Not Setting Limits

In my early months at this congregation, Jean stormed in one day. She looped around my secretary, came to my door, and asked, “Pastor, do you have a few minutes?”

I was preparing for a church council, but eager to be a “good pastor.” I said, “Certainly I do,” came from behind my desk to the coffee table and chairs, poured two cups of coffee, and sat down.

Jean took off on the fly, telling me all her problems: an alcoholic husband, alienated adult children, conflicts with my predecessor, ill health, inability to keep a job.

I practiced my best listening and counseling skills, but my observations and suggestions were rejected. I tried to steer the conversation, to zero in on specific complaints, but Jean defied steering.

The “few minutes” I had promised ballooned into three hours. Then she marched out of the office as suddenly as she had come.

After several more similar visits with Jean, I decided to set some limits. It’s important to meet the needs of individuals as I’m able, but it’s wrong for me to abandon my responsibility to the entire congregation to serve one individual. When we leave our time at the mercy of others, we give people permission to waste our time. I’ve learned always to be available, in a limited way.

Now when Jean comes to my office — and she still does — with her standard question “Do you have a few minutes?” I tell her I have one hour. In that hour I am fully and intently “with” Jean. At the end of the hour, I say, “Jean, I have another commitment.” (True: a commitment to the rest of my ministry!)

Counselors say the last ten minutes of counseling sessions are usually the most productive. That’s when deep hurts come out, when the real issues are dealt with. Whether you give a counselee one hour or three hours, you still get most of “their stuff” the last ten minutes.

I also set limits on telephone time. Every congregation has telephone tyrants who keep us on the phone excessively as they wander from one subject to another. My goal on the telephone is to discuss what’s necessary and then get off. When I call someone else, I try to have my purpose clearly in mind, and when ending the conversation, even telephone tyrants understand when I simply say, “I’ve got to go now.” I’m under no obligation to say why.

Small talk is necessary — it’s the mortar of relationships — but it can be overdone. Protracted conversations about the weather and the fate of local athletic teams eats up too much time if we let it. In Minnesota, it will be cold in January, and we can be relatively sure the Vikings will not win the Super Bowl.

Reading Useless Mail

They say we form lifetime habits when we are children. As a boy, I would watch for the mailman. I could see him zig-zag his way down the street and then walk up the steps to our front porch. As he walked away, I ran out the front door and grabbed the mail. Of course mail rarely came for me, but when it did, I would tear into it.

So conditioned, it’s hard for me to throw away mail unopened. But some mail that crosses my desk deserves discarding. When the return address is a stained-glass company, I toss it. We don’t have any stained glass in our building, and I know that in my lifetime we won’t.

Our building is fairly new, so I don’t need to read the latest mailing from the sandblasting and tuck-pointing company.

I know some publishers don’t produce material we can use in our Sunday school, so I toss their advertisements.

And those little plastic packages of advertising cards we all receive head straight for the wastebasket.

Conquering the mail addiction, which insists we read every piece that crosses our desk, will add minutes to each day, minutes that add up to hours.

When Waste Is Not

While I work hard to manage my time, I do allow myself to waste time here and there.

Our church runs a daycare center. Our building is fairly compact, so I see our “daycare kids” many times daily.

Mark was not one of the easiest students ever to attend our daycare. He was loud and demanding, high-strung and aggressive. Every time I saw him, he wanted to show me the picture he was working on, or tell me about the television program he watched the night before, or report on the latest shenanigans of the other kids.

He had a way about him that demanded attention, so I would usually stop and talk with him, even when I felt pressed by other responsibilities. Sometimes our conversations went on and on, and my frustration would rise. I’ve never been good at disappointing kids, so I played along, allowing myself to “waste” time on Mark.

A few months ago, Mark’s single mother, who had little church background, started attending our church. She has since joined, started working out some significant personal problems, and is getting involved.

I recently asked her why she started attending. “Mark wanted to come,” she said. “He told me, ‘Most people don’t like me, but Pastor McKinley always listens to me.’ ” The painful insight of a 5 year old.

“I’m glad you do,” his mother continued. “Thank you.”