Time and Calendar Management For Youth Ministers
Jun 22
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If you read “How to Putt by Arnold Palmer” grab your putter and hit the golf course, could you putt like Arnold Palmer? Of course not! You would need to practice and reread the book again and again. As you practice, each reading will reveal “Oh, so that’s how that works” experiences. Time and calendar management is just like that. Don’t take short cuts. Do the exercises exactly as laid out, then reread this entire manual again and again.
A blank calendar is God’s gift to you. Your filling it in is an act of worship. Ask God what He would have you do.
The key to time and calendar management is to be deliberate with your goals and objectives as much as any professional. You are going to put blocks of time for the following tasks: (these are not in any particular priority). Here are a few examples from the spinning plates.
1. Work on your name and memorization process
2. Plan a prayer time with 5 of my key parents to talk and pray for kids.
3. Meet with one staff member weekly.
4. Take Martha to lunch and discuss helping with leadership.
5. Call the local college Christian groups and ask for you to come speak about helping with ministry.
6. Plan two months of Sunday School
7. Develop a three month calendar of events and meetings
8. Go to Slapknot High School and talk to Jim at wrestling practice.
9. Go to the third lunch period at Slapknot Middle School.
10. Take my wife to a movie. (with 10 middle schoolers)
11. Take my wife to a movie alone.
12. Reserve a four-hour time slot to analyze who is not coming and form a strategy.
13. Four hour song leading practice with Bill and Suzy
14. Plan next month’s white water rafting trip. See if Joe’s Dad will organize this.
Then you fill in staff meetings and other such details and your calendar fills right up. Read the “Tyranny of the Urgent”. Unless you make time for your less urgent items, such as number 8, which is spending time with one wrestler, you’ll fill up your day and never take the time for one kid, and a kid might slip through the cracks.
So we have a system to do this. Go to the Calendar Assignment and use the forms in this workbook or the kit. You will get better and better at this the more you use it.