Time is far more valuable than money. It is far more limited and far more difficult to recover when lost. We are going to look first of all today at a theology of time. Then we will look at the dangers of time. Thirdly we will look at the management of time. And then we look at two kinds of life: the well-planned life and the summoned life.

A Theology of Time⤒🔗

God Gives Time←↰⤒🔗

Firstly, God gives time (James 1:17). We do not deserve a second of time in this world. Through sin we have forfeited our right to exist. Therefore, every moment of life is a gift of God. If a man were standing beside me giving me a dollar bill every second or every minute, I would love him! But God is standing beside us and giving us something far more valuable than dollars: he is giving us the seconds, the minutes and the hours themselves. So God gives time.

God Gives Enough Time←↰⤒🔗

Secondly, God gives enough time (John 11:9). We sometimes say, “I just don’t have enough time!” I know we are rarely saying it a complaint against God, but it does reflect upon God. If someone gave you a 100 tasks to do in one minute, you would view that person as unjust and unfair. There is simply not enough time. But God has given us enough time to do all that he requires of us in this world. He is not unfair or unjust. Perhaps (as we shall see) your perceived lack of time is due to doing more than God requires of you.

God Gives Limited Time←↰⤒🔗

Thirdly, God gives limited time (Psalm 90:10). We have a limited time on this earth. Our arrival and departure times are on God’s timetable. However long it may be, it does have a limit that we shall not pass.

God Judges Our Use of Time←↰⤒🔗

Fourthly, God judges our use of time (Romans 14:12). We are used to the idea of God judging our words or our use of money, but the idea of God watching over our use of time is not often at the forefront of our thoughts. Words are audible, money is visible, but time seems so much more nebulous and so much more difficult to get ahold of. Yet, as it is his gift, we will be called to give an account for our use of it.

God Commands Us to Redeem Time←↰⤒🔗

Fifthly, God commands us to redeem time (Ephesians 5:16). To redeem a person means to act to secure a captured person’s rescue by paying a price. To redeem time, therefore, means to act to secure the recovery of wasted time by paying a price. And that price (as we shall see) is self-discipline and self-denial.

So there is a very brief theology of time. God gives time; God gives enough time; God gives limited time; God judges our use of time; God commands us to redeem time.

The Dangers of Time←⤒🔗

Let’s look secondly at the dangers of time. There are three sins we can fall into in our use of time.

Time Wasting←↰⤒🔗

First, time wasting. This hardly needs amplification. It is simply letting time slip through our hands without using it productively. It is especially easy for a pastor to fall into this, as he has no time clock or boss to check how he is using his time.

Time can be wasted in various ways. Laziness, for example: we simply go about our business too slowly, too half-heartedly.

Disorganization: we may be running around, but we are running around as headless chickens, because our studies, our finances, our administration, our libraries etc. are just a mess.

There is inefficiency: we may not be using the technological tools to simplify tasks. We phone when we should email; we use Strong’s Concordance rather than Bible Software. We write out things by hand again and again and again rather than using a word processor. We try to study for sermons in the afternoon when we are sleepy rather than first thing in the morning. We read where there are lots of distractions rather than where we can really concentrate, and so on. There is so much inefficiency sometimes in our use of time.

Then there is indiscipline: we too easily choose to surf the internet rather than study a text. We spent too long on the phone to friends when there are people to visit in hospital. We fail to plan the week or our day and end up aimless or simply reacting to the demands of others. So in all these ways we can waste time: laziness, disorganization, inefficiency and indiscipline.

Time Stretching←↰⤒🔗

Secondly, another danger is time stretching. This involves lengthening our days and our working hours so that we can do more and more work. Psalm 127:2 addresses this and calls it “vain,” partly because when we stretch our hours, we often simply stretch our work to fill the hours rather than pack more into these hours. Again, this is so easy for pastors to do, as we have no fixed hours. We can start stretching our hours, and yet we are not getting more done, we are just taking longer to do it. Isn’t it amazing how quickly you can prepare a sermon when you have a deadline? So set yourself office and working hours, let your wife and family know them, and try to stick with that. Avoid time stretching.

Time Squeezing←↰⤒🔗

The third danger is time squeezing. This happens when we have so much to do that we do nothing well. We try to squeeze so much into the day that we squeeze the quality out of our work, and also the joy and satisfaction out of our work. We aim too high, spend our day stressed, and end up looking back dissatisfied at all we were not able to do. We can sin by doing too little, but we can also sin by attempting to do too much. It always strikes me when reading the Gospels that there did not seem to be any sense of rush about the Lord’s life. He seemed to be largely unhurried, calm, peaceful, yet he never sinned sins of omission.

The Management of Time←⤒🔗

That brings us to the management of time. In view of our theology of time and the dangers it faces in our use of time, we have to have a plan for managing our time. I am going to give you ten points here, and they all start with “P.”

Peace←↰⤒🔗

First of all, peace. The most important time of the day is first thing in the morning. Get up early enough to have a quiet time for reading the Bible and prayer. Those first moments of peaceful orientation of the mind and soul are the foundation of a successful day of ministry. The key to getting up early enough is getting to bed early enough the night before. If you are finding it impossible to get up early enough for an undistracted time of worship and reading your Bible, then you are going to bed too late. The success of the day really depends largely on the amount of sleep you get. I prefer personally to have a shower before I read and pray because it helps to wake me up. A cup of coffee is also an essential and pleasant companion. Just find what works best for you and stick with it, but get that peace first thing in the morning.

Plan←↰⤒🔗

Secondly, plan. I am going to deal with administration and organization in more detail in the next lecture; however, some overlap here can do no harm. After your quiet time, use paper, a whiteboard or electronic means to list all the things you have to do in the day. Or ideally, pick up the list you prepared the day before. Someone once said that for every minute spent in organizing an hour is earned. Well, that is a slight exaggeration, but a lot of time is saved if we pause to get organized rather than just plunge into the first thing that comes to mind. And make sure you have only one To Do list! I keep that list with me all the time and keep adding to it. Some items are for that day and other items will be for the future, but everything that needs to be done goes on that list. I try not to carry anything about with me in my head.

Prioritize←↰⤒🔗

Thirdly, prioritize. You are not going to get everything done, so you have to let the less important things wait. Organize the list of To Dos into the following categories:

First of all: Urgent. There may be phone calls, visits or emails that simply have to be done that day.

Secondly: Big. Make sure you do something substantial in the study each day. It may be a few hours on a sermon or a few hours writing an article or a few hours of focused study on some subject. It is very easy in the ministry to let the little things squeeze out the big. The little things are less demanding on the mind and soul and give a sense of “I am getting things done.” But time must be set apart for the longer-term substantial things. It is usually best to do this first thing in the morning after devotions.

Thirdly: Daily things. There are some routine things that happen every day (or should do). They are not urgent and the world won’t fall apart if you do not do them, but if you let them build up, then you will eventually become overwhelmed. Some examples may be email inbox to zero, non-urgent phone calls, organizing your diary, coordinating your diary with your wife, balancing bank accounts, backing up data or Dropbox. The daily, routine things.

Fourthly: Visits and meetings. Are there any pastoral visits or meetings planned for that day? If so, work out the most efficient way of combining these to minimize travel time. What other errands can I do on these trips?

Fifthly: Long-term. Eventually you will be asked to write articles, review books, contribute to reports, deliver lectures, etc. Try to find one slot in the week that you dedicate to these more long-term projects. It is usually best to schedule these projects for completion every two to three weeks rather than let them build up on you so that you have five to do in two days time. If you do not schedule it, it won’t get done. Andrew Carnegie once asked a consultant, “What can you do for me about time control?” The consultant said, “I will make one suggestion, and you send me a cheque for what you think it is worth: Write down what you have to do on a piece of paper in order of priority and complete the first item before you go onto the second.” Well, it is reported that Carnegie tried this for a few weeks and sent him a cheque for ten thousand dollars! So we must prioritize.

Pick←↰⤒🔗

Fourthly, pick. Pick the right time for the right tasks. 80 percent of your results are achieved by 20 percent of the things that you do—that is a famous business equation. If you do not set aside time for tasks, they are unlikely to be done. Make sure you choose the right timeslot for each task and allocate enough time for it. Devote large blocks of time to important tasks. Squeeze less important tasks into smaller blocks, and consolidate smaller tasks into one block to release larger blocks of time. In other words, grab a number of small things and do them in this one block rather than spread these little things throughout the day. That leaves you with the big blocks for the big things.

Do not multitask. Glenn Stansbury, quoting Jonathan Fields, says,

Every time you switch your attention, there’s a cognitive ramp up time. It can range from a few seconds to a few minutes. So, if you constantly cycle between checking email, IM, twitter, texts, voicemail, calendars, blackberries, apps, scores, stock quotes, news, current projects and more, then respond to each, the time you lose to incessant ramp-up becomes substantial. Instead, minimize time lost to nonstop cognitive ramping by batching your time and focusing on individual categories of tasks with intense, yet discrete bursts of attention.Jonathan Fields, Open Forum, 2010

You should try to see or to visualize time by maybe blocking out a wall plan or diary with different colours. Julie Morgenstern talks about this in her book on time management. She compares what a cluttered schedule looks like as opposed to an organized schedule. The cluttered schedule makes it difficult to see what you have to do and when you have to do it. The latter, an organized schedule, removes guesswork. It is orderly and helps you to see what is to be done at a glance. And it is also easier to see when you have reached capacity. So pick the right time for the right tasks.

Perform←↰⤒🔗

Fifthly, perform. You will see what we have been doing here. We started with peace. And then we need a plan (listing all the things we have to do). Then we prioritize these things (what must be done, what is urgent, what is big, etc.). Then when we have settled the things we have to do in the order in which we have to do them, we pick the right times for the right tasks. But all this really is in the planning stage, and we must come to this fifth “P”; that is, perform. 

I want to speak here a little bit about the common problem of procrastination. Andrew Carnegie said, “No unwelcome task becomes any the less unwelcome by putting it off until tomorrow.” So you see, it is not just Christians who see the devastating effects of procrastination (that is derived from a Latin word meaning “to put off for tomorrow”).

Characteristics of procrastination. In fact, numerous scholars have contributed to a recent book about it called The Thief of Time. At $55 it probably won’t be near the top of our book buying priorities, but The New Yorker Magazine has done us a favour with an extensive review. They summarized it as following (The New Yorker, James Surowiecki, 2010).

First of all, procrastination is painful. Undone items on our To Do list gnaw at our consciousness for weeks and even months. Why do we avoid unpleasant tasks when the act of avoidance only increases our discomfort?

Secondly, it is costly. Procrastination makes business lose money. Alex Taylor’s recent history of G.M., Sixty to Zero, highlights how key executives delayed and delayed inevitable decisions. So procrastination makes businesses lose money, but it also makes pastors lose credibility.

Thirdly, it is irrational. Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off. Samuel Johnson said, “I could not forebear to reproach myself for having so long neglected what was unavoidably to be done, and of which every moment’s idleness increase the difficulty.” It is irrational.

Fourthly, it thrives in vagueness. David Allen, of Getting Things Done fame, insists on clear and concrete task lists. He says that the vaguer the task or the more abstract the thinking it requires, the less likely you are to finish it.

Fifthly, it feeds on perfectionism. Procrastinators are always waiting for the perfect time. General McClellen’s excessive planning and preparation infuriated President Lincoln during the civil war. He was always asking for more troops, more weapons, and more time to plan the ideal battle. It feeds on perfectionism.

Sixthly, it picks the easy route.

[In an experiment], people were asked to pick one movie to watch that night and one to watch at a later date. Not surprisingly, for the movie they wanted to watch immediately people tended to pick lowbrow comedies and blockbusters, but when asked what movie they wanted to watch later they were more likely to pick serious, important films. The problem, of course, is that when the time comes to watch the serious movie, another frothy one will seem more appealing.The New Yorker, 2010

Seventhly, procrastination often arises when we have too much to do. When we are overwhelmed with To Dos, we often feel there is no single To Do worth doing.

Eighthly, it is increasing.

According to Piers Steel, a business professor at the University of Calgary, the percentage of people who admitted to difficulties with procrastination quadrupled between 1978 and 2002. In that light, it’s possible to see procrastination as the quintessential modern problem.The New Yorker, 2010

Dealing with Procrastination. Gretchen Rubin, of The Happiness Project, gives six tips for forcing yourself to tackle a dreaded task:

Firstly, do it first thing in the morning. One of her twelve commandments is: “Do it now. No delay is the best way.”

Secondly, if you find yourself putting off a task that you try to do several times a week, do it every day. For example, if you are finding it hard to go for a walk four times a week, try going every day.

Thirdly, have someone keep you company. Studies show that we enjoy practically every activity more when we are with other people.

Fourthly, make preparations. Assemble the proper tools. Clean off your desk. Get the phone number. Find the file. She says that she often finds that when she is dreading a task, it helps her to feel prepared for it.

Fifthly, commit. We have all heard the advice to write down our goals, and so she says: on the top of a piece of paper write, “By the end of today, [insert date], I will have done…” In another words, give yourself a deadline.

Sixthly, remind yourself that finishing a dreaded task is tremendously energizing. Studies show that hitting a goal releases chemicals in the brain that give you pleasure. If you are feeling blue, although the last thing you feel like doing is something you do not feel like doing, push yourself and do it, and you will get a big lift from it!

Some other helps are: reward yourself (“If I do this today, I will buy a book on Amazon this evening”) or break down huge tasks into smaller steps (instead of saying, “I have a book to write today,” say, “I will write two paragraphs today”). So perform is my fifth “P.”

Pace←↰⤒🔗

Sixthly, pace. Some pastors live life at Wall Street trader pace. Others go for the “let it all hang out” pace. Neither helps the pastor or his people. Somewhere between these two poles is where we should find ourselves. And it will vary from person to person. Find a pace that allows you to get a good amount of substantial work done and yet that will allow you to have time for people. And they are not afraid to ask you for time. Set yourself time limits on work like sermons. You can spend an endless amount of time perfecting a sermon. You have to draw a line somewhere so that you have time to do other duties. You also have to be able to distinguish between tasks that require a much higher quality of work than others. For example, a sermon for a nursing home on a Sunday afternoon does not require as much preparation as the main preaching sermon of the week.

Pace your To Do list as well. If you have ten extra things to do this week, then do two a day rather than trying to do ten on day one. That breaks up the mountain into smaller, manageable steps. One way to speed up the pace at which you do mundane tasks (not all tasks, but certainly mundane tasks like email) is to use a stop watch or a timer.

Pace is the best place I can find also to mention exercise. Glen Stansberry [quoting Jonathan Fields] said,

Exercise—it sounds counter-intuitive. You have to spend time exercising. But, research has shown that exercise boosts cognitive function, creativity, problem solving and productivity. In fact a NASA study showed employees who exercised daily worked at 100 percent efficiency after seven hours, while those who didn’t saw a 50 percent drop, meaning it took them twice as long to accomplish the same thing. So, exercise, in effect, creates time.Jonathan Fields, Open Forum, 2010

And build in buffer time so that you have space to accommodate if something interrupts or goes wrong. If you don’t and something sets you off schedule, then it will be impossible to get back on track and you will lose momentum. And get enough sleep. It really helps boost your memory.

Purge←↰⤒🔗

(Transcription of audio file from 25:08 to 25:16 and from 25:21 to 25:27 omitted.)

Seventhly, purge. [Identify] a number of time wasters in your life. There is no question that the biggest drain on the pastor’s time now is the internet, and you will have to find a way of controlling this, either through self-discipline or (more likely) with the help of time clocks and filters and blockers. So purge out timewasters.

Protect←↰⤒🔗

Eighth, protect. According to Julie Morgenstern, the average information worker is interrupted by another person or by technology every eleven minutes, and it takes twenty-five minutes to refocus to the same extent. So if you ever going to get quality study time and sermon preparation time, you will have to protect the time you set aside to do this. Mark out study appointments in your schedule as if you are visiting with someone and make it non-negotiable.

I found the mornings were the best for this. I usually protected 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. I protected the time by informing my elders of my study time, which also percolated into the congregation. I put the phone on the answering machine and I shut down email. I made a point of returning all phone calls at lunch time. You have to balance accessibility with productivity. My wife liked to bring me coffee at mid-morning and sit a bit and chat, but when I started making coffee in my own study and having some snacks in my drawer, I found myself able to accomplish much more. You will want to have a notebook nearby you as you study to jot down To Do and other thoughts that occur while you are preparing sermons so that you don’t think, “Oh, I better do that before I forget it.” No, just write it down.

Pause←↰⤒🔗

Ninthly, pause. Pastors need a Sabbath just like everyone else. A time to take a break from work. To take time out for yourself and for your family. When we home-schooled I took off every Monday. My wife was very strict about this. Only twice did I persuade her that I really needed the extra day to work. In both cases that I worked Mondays, I accomplished no more by the end of the week than if I had taken time off and rested. So take a Sabbath.

Price←↰⤒🔗

Tenthly, price. I really hope that this has convinced you of the need to value time far more highly than you have in the past, and to realize that as you get older the value of time only increases.

So we have looked at ten Ps in the “Murray Minute Management Plan”: Peace, Plan, Prioritize, Pick, Perform, Pace, Purge, Protect, Pause, Price.

Two Kinds of Life←⤒🔗

I want to finish by looking at two kinds of life. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote about two ways of thinking about life: the well-planned life and the summoned life.

The Well-Planned Life←↰⤒🔗

Let’s look at the well-planned life first of all. Brooks’ presentation of the well-planned life leaned heavily on a 2010 Harvard commencement address given by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and a serious Christian. Brooks underlines Christensen’s Christian commitment by narrating how he refused to play college sports on a Sunday. But Brooks says:

[Christensen] combines a Christian spirit with business methodology. In plotting out a personal and spiritual life, he applies the models and theories he developed as a strategist. He emphasizes finding the right metrics, efficiently allocating resources and thinking about marginal costs. When he is done, life comes to appear as a well-designed project, carefully conceived in the beginning, reviewed and adjusted along the way and brought toward a well-rounded fruition.The Summoned Self, David Brooks, 2010

Christensen observed how high achievers usually misallocate their resources. If they have a spare half hour, they use it to produce some tangible result at work (like closing a sale, writing a blog, etc.) rather than invest time and energy in far more important things like family relationships which may not yield results until twenty years later. Christensen’s advice: invest a lot of time when you are young in finding a clear purpose for your life.

When I was a Rhodes scholar,” he recalls, “I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.The Summoned Self, David Brooks, 2010

Having done that, he says, you are then able to make the right decisions about time management and talent multiplication. The well-planned life.

The Summoned Life←↰⤒🔗

Then Brooks goes on to describe the summoned life—a life lived from an entirely different perspective.

Life isn’t a project to be completed; it is an unknowable landscape to be explored. A twenty-four-year-old can’t sit down and define the purpose of life in the manner of a school exercise because she is not yet deep enough into the landscape to know herself or her purpose.The Summoned Self, David Brooks, 2010

So instead of plotting a course like a strategic planner, we should wait for the course to unfold and respond accordingly.

The person leading the Summoned Life starts with a very concrete situation: I’m living in a specific year in a specific place facing specific problems and needs. At this moment in my life, I am confronted with specific job opportunities and specific options. The important questions are, What are these circumstances summoning me to do? What is needed in this place? What is the most useful social role before me? These are questions answered primarily by sensitive observation and situational awareness, not calculation and long-range planning.

In America, we have been taught to admire the lone free agent who creates new worlds. But for the person leading the Summoned Life, the individual is small and the context is large. Life comes to a point not when the individual project is complete but when the self dissolves into a larger purpose and cause.

The first vision is more American. The second vision is more common elsewhere.The Summoned Self, David Brooks, 2010

So which is best? In Brooks’ predictable moderate style, he comes down firmly on defence by concluding that: “But they are both probably useful for a person trying to live a well-considered life.”

However American or un-American these two ways of living are is not the most important question for us; rather, we should be asking which is the most biblical. The person who lives a well-planned life takes time to find a clear life purpose, then make appropriate decisions about how to spend their time and use their talents. The person who lives the summoned life rejects the possibility of long-term planning, but as situations and circumstances arise, they ask, “What are these circumstances summoning me to do?” In fact, I think it would be more accurate to call this the reactive life.

So what is best? The well-planned life or the reactive life? I believe that every Christian should live a well-planned life. No Christian should be just a victim of events, a helpless cork tossed to and fro in the ever changing ocean of circumstances and other people’s expectations. We must take the time to prayerfully seek a life purpose. God put each of us here for a specific reason and we should not just drift from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, frittering away precious time without any sense of direction. We must take our time and our talents to God and ask him what he will have us to do, and wait for his guidance. That simple act would save so many Christians from many years of pointless ping ponging around from job to job, from passion to passion, from person to person, from place to place.

However, there are dangers in the well-planned life, especially in the selfish neglect of important relationships, as Brooks also hinted at. The person living a well-planned life can become insensitive to circumstances, events and people around him. “I do not care if my neighbour is sick; I have a plan and I am sticking to it.” He can become frustrated with anyone and anything that interrupts his plan or renders his day inefficient. He can become deaf to God’s voice speaking to him through his Word and through providence as his life unfolds. While he may have gotten his life plan from God, he may neglect to get his everyday plan from God. Everyone needs to allow an element of reactive life in their life.

So I suppose I am joining David Brooks on the fence. However, I am definitely falling over on the well-planned life side, as I believe it is more biblical than the reactive life. Consider Christ’s life. He did not get up every day and wonder, “What am I doing here and where am I going?” No, he had a very definite life plan (maybe we should say “death plan”), which he received from his Father. However, he also had the right balance between the well-planned life and the reactive life. While there were times when he would not be deflected by people’s demands and the pressure of unpredicted events, there were other times when he did respond to pressing need and urgent circumstances.

If I can apply this especially to pastors, I would say that too many pastors live a reactive life. We often go from day to day just responding to events, phone calls, emails and others’ agendas. We may have a weekly plan that involves preparing two or three sermons; however, we don’t usually think much further ahead than that. I want to really encourage pastors to think more long-term. Not just about their congregation, but about their own lives. Take your time, your talents, your interests and your schedule to the Lord and ask him to help you plan a long-term project. It might be to master Greek or Hebrew, to research a favourite subject, or to do a ThM (Master of Theology) or DMin (Doctor of Ministry), or write a book, or evangelize a particular place or group of people, or mentor a young man, etc. But prayerfully pick a project and allocate fixed and non-negotiable time to it every week. Let your family and elders know your plan and seek their co-operation. The person who lives the well-planned life is better equipped to react to the unplanned events of life.

In conclusion, whatever way we live, it has to be a prayerful life. I believe we do need time. We do need to take time out to ask what God would have us to do—not just for today, but also for the longer term. So maybe the equation should be something like: 70 percent well-planned life, plus 30 percent reactive life, plus 100 percent prayerful life. That does not make logical sense, it does not make mathematical sense; but I think it does make spiritual sense.