time

Matthew 6:19-21

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

It takes a lot of time to lead a church; there is preaching and teaching, discipleship, counseling, worship, evangelism, and care ministry, plus there is setting the vision, strategic planning, managing money, budgeting, maintaining facilities, and overseeing staff and volunteers. One of the most consistent frustrations I hear from church leaders is about time. “I have too much to do.” “I do not have enough time.” “I need to prioritize my time.” “I need more time.” “I am too busy.” Church leaders, pastors in particular, are expected to be and do everything. In Not Your Parents Offering Plate: A New Vision for Financial Stewardship, J. Clif Christopher says, “no single person is more responsible for what goes in in his or her church than the lead pastor” (39). Even Eugene Peterson writes, "virtually nobody knows what we do - not out congregation, not the community, very often not the professors who taught us, not even the bishops and executives and superintendents who provide overall direction and counsel to our work" (XX) in A Pastor: A Memoir.

Here’s the thing: Time is not the problem. Time is only a constraint.

Yes, with a limited amount of time in the day and a lot of work to do there is a definite need to prioritize and manage time wisely. Yet the problem is not the amount of time in the day or even how we manage our time. The problem is that as church leaders we have not invited God into every minute of our day.

Many church leaders falsely think the solution to feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from God is simply better time management. As a result, they fall into one of two pitfalls.

• I need more time. In particular, I need more time so I can do more ‘spiritual’ activity. I need to spend more time in prayer. I need more time for quiet devotional time. I need to do more ‘hand-on’ ministry with people (i.e., counseling, hospital visits, etc.). This may be true, maybe you need to carve-out more quiet time, but more time will not solve the problem. It does not matter if we have more time if we are not able to see God with the time we have.

• I need to do less. I need to take time off. I need to delegate some tasks (generally administrative tasks) to someone else. I need to stop attending certain meetings. Again, this may be true, maybe you need to establish rhythms of rest (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually), or delegate work to others, or stop doing some tasks entirely, but doing less will not solve the problem either. All of the work is important; it may not be practical to stop.

There are three problems with these two approaches.

First, they divide time into ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’. Though they would never say or admit this, many church leaders operate as if God is only present in ‘spiritual’ activity, not in the boring and tedious administrative work that comes with leading a church. Adding more ‘spiritual’ activity to your life or taking time off will not help you see God administrative work. Administrative work will still feel boring and tedious.

Second, they set unrealistic expectations. Leading a church is hard. It may not be practical to have more quiet time or to take time off. In my experience, when church leaders focus too much on time management, they tend to change set unrealistic expectations for themselves and then feel guilty and disconnected with those expectations are not met.

Most importantly, they make time an idol. The thought is, “if only I can manage my time, it will all be better.” This makes time the most important thing in our lives, rather than staying connected to God. Returning to the passage in Matthew above, I would like to offer a new perspective. Generally, this passage is used to say something like, “material goods are not as important as spiritual goods so stop wasting money on material possessions and invest more money serving those around you,” or even, “spend less time worrying about money and material activities and spend more time on spiritual activities like fellowship, discipleship, and prayer.” However, what would happen to the meaning of this passage if we replaced the word ‘treasures’ with ‘time’ (after all, time is the most valuable thing we have)?

“Do not store up for yourselves time on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves time in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your time is, there your heart will be also.

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and time.”

When we look at the passage from the perspective of time, it takes on a new meaning. How we spend our time is important, but time can easily become an idol when we over-emphasize time management rather than focusing on staying connected to God throughout the time we have. You cannot serve both God and time. As church leaders, there is so much work to do and we’re often moving quickly from one activity to the next, it can be easy to feel disconnected from God. So there is a tendency to try to create more time for ‘spiritual’ activity. The goal is not to create more time. No one can. The goal is to find God in the time we have, to be so connected with God that we feel His presence in every minute of every hour of every day. It is not about doing more ‘spiritual’ activity. It is about making the activities we do more spiritual. It is about finding a way to connect with God in the activities God has called us to do, which for church leaders, includes administrative work.

Time is not the problem. The problem is that as church leaders we have not invited God into every minute of our day.

I am reminded of the story of Brother Lawrence from The Practice in the Presence of God. Brother Lawrence was a seventeenth century Carmelite monk who spent most of his life working in the kitchen, during which he “developed the practicing of living always in conscious awareness of God” (8). For Brother Lawrence, “set times of prayer were no different for him than other times”, in fact Lawrence appeared to his Abbot “to be more united to God in his outward work, than when he left it for devotion in seclusion” (20). According to Lawrence, “many people do not advance in the Christian life because they get stuck in penances and particular spiritual exercises [and] they neglect the love of God, which is the [ultimate] goal” (22). For Lawrence, “the goal of the spiritual life is to become the most perfect worshippers of God that we can possibly be, in this life, and throughout all eternity” (25) therefore, “we should commit ourselves unceasingly to this one goal: that everything we do be little acts of communion with God. This must be natural and not artificial, coming from the purity and simplicity of the heart” (63).

The goal is not better time management (though time management is a good thing). The goal is communion with God (which is a better thing). As church leaders, we need to invite God into every minute of the day.

Here is an exercise to try rather than changing your schedule. At the start of the week, print out your calendar for the week ahead. Write down everything you have to do, every meeting, task, activity, appointment, etc. Next to every item, write where you expect to see God working and moving. Then at the end of each day, write where you saw God working and moving each in each item on your list.

Until we are able to see God in the time we have, having more time or changing how we manage time is not going to work. Or to quote Brother Lawrence, “our sanctification does not depend upon changing what we do, but in doing for God’s wake what we normally do for our own sake.” (23)