Welcome to Kicking at the Darkness!

This blog is for those of you who are in the leadership trenches of serving in a local church. You could be a full-time pastor, a part-time children’s director, or volunteer youth minister. It doesn’t matter what your title is or how many hours you work each week. If you love God and have desire or calling to serve Jesus and His people, than I hope you will find community and encouragement here.

Today is Sunday.

You probably taught a class, led worship, preached a message, or served within you ministry area today. I’m in the middle of a sermon series focusing on the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6. My message for us today centered around Jesus’ invitation for us to ask God to give us “our daily bread.” I also taught our Adult Bible class this morning as well. Oh, and I opened up the building before everything got started. I usually lock the building down but, a handful of people were around after service so they locked up for me today (very, very grateful to them) so that I could grab lunch with a family.

We had a great service today… even though it was a holiday weekend and we were missing a few regular faces.

So here is where my message on focusing just on today gets in the way of serving in the local church…

Today is Sunday… and another Sunday is coming.

The relentless onslaught of the coming weekend is always before us. It undercuts our ability to evaluate and improve week to week and it also robs us of finding joy in the moment.

Tomorrow, I want to blog a bit about how we can focus on TODAY each and every day but right now I want to talk about a strategy that you can use each Sunday night to connect with what you did today and plan your coming week.

I call this my Sunday Night Strategy Session. Each Sunday night, i go through this process to help me tie up any loose ends from the week before and prepare for the week ahead.

1) Pause
This is absolutely critical for your soul and your leadership. Before you begin mapping out and planning the week to come, take a few moments to pause and reflect on the week that was.

Ask yourself the following questions about last week:
What went well?
What didn’t go well or go as planned?
How can I improve next week?
What help do I need to get to the next level?

2) Purpose
Reminding yourself the reasons that you do what you do does 2 things. First, connecting my purpose is like a big vitamin B12 shot right to my heart. When I am reminded of why I am in full-time ministry and my calling to go and make disciples I get pretty amped up. Secondly, when my purpose is always in front of me, I can make decisions based on long-term vision and trajectory instead of making decisions in the heat of the moment. Purpose helps me say “Yes” to what I need to and “No” to everything else.

3) Plans
Here is where the To-Do lists, calendars, Moleskines, post-its, and everything else come into play. I use a combination of old school paper and new fangled tech. However, what’s on paper gets put in the tech and what’s digital gets put on paper. I don’t have a paper calendar with somethings and my tech calendar with another set of dates and information. One calendar, many locations.

4) People
Finally I ask, “Who do I need to connect with this week?” As a pastor, the lifeblood of ministry is people. Connecting with people is a priority for me and my ministry and by having a set time each week to think through this area I can be more strategic and intentional with the time I do have to connect with others.

So here’s is tonight’s challenge: Get Strategic. Pause and reflect. Remember your Purpose. Layout your Plans. Make room for People. I’ll talk to you tommorow to see how you did.

Exit Question: How do you plan for the week ahead?