To function with optimum effectiveness, pastors must set up strategies to safeguard themselves against such personal pitfalls as wasting time, abusing authority, satisfying a hungry ego, giving in morally, or even becoming a workaholic. Each pastor needs to develop a personal code of behavior or ministry ethics.
An Essential Ethic
Paul says it well in Ephesians 5:15: "So be careful how you act; these ...
ARTICLE Capture The essential survival skill for leaders buckling under information overload. Kevin A. Miller
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Pity your poor mail carriers. Their shoulders must burn under the mailbag strap as they haul each day's load. On a recent day, chosen at random, my mail drop included:
a brochure promising (for only $1,495) an "intensive, hands-on workshop" from which you "go back to your office with a complete solution-oriented plan."
a four-page flyer (see the metallic inks shine!) about a Web site that will give me "innovation, perspective, and impact."
Let me begin with a simple, wonderfully freeing premise: You do not need to know everything.
A few short generations ago, it could rightly be said, Information Is Power. That was true when there wasn't enough of it. Today, the motto should read: Information Is Fatigue. We get too much information, and a high percentage of that information is inane, meaningless, enervating. Do I really need to know ...
Many discussions of a pastor's tasks start with the advice to plan one's work. This sounds eminently plausible. The only thing wrong with it is that it rarely works. The plans remain on paper as good intentions. They seldom turn into achievements.
The first step toward effective pastoral time-management is to record actual time-use. The specific method in which the record is put together need not concern ...
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