10 Mar 5 Stupid Ways Pastors Waste Their Team’s Time ( PLUS Tips & Tools To Help You )
As pastors, we lead hundreds of people.
If we’re not good at managing our time we end up wasting the time of everyone we lead!
Whoa! That’s a little sobering, right?
Here are 5 really stupid ways that pastors and church leaders waste their team’s time.
Plus, we included a few tips and tools you can use to improve your time management.
1. Unstructured Meetings
“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” ~ Thomas Sowell
Some meetings are necessary, most aren’t. For the ones you MUST have, you need a clear structure, agenda, start time, end time and actionable takeaways.
Tip: For your next weekly staff meeting, try starting with the “low-lights” and not the “high-lights.”
By starting with real issues that need solving, you’ll be more effective and more productive.
2. Not Scheduling Your Time
Dave Ramsey says you make a budget so you can tell your money what to do, instead of your money telling you what to do.
I think the exact same thing can be said about scheduling your time EACH DAY!
Try making a list the night before and prioritize it.
Tool: Check out the “Week Dominator.” It’s designed to help you list your projects & goals for the week, break them into tasks & block time for the important stuff so you can dominate your week!
3. Not Prioritizing Correctly
So let’s say you actually plan out your day the night before but if you’re not focusing on the right things you’re wasting even more time.
Especially if you’re tasking multiple people to work on things that aren’t actually going to move the ball down the field for your church or ministry.
Tip: We recently did a leadership video explaining a simple, proven system that helps leaders identify THE single most important task for your team.
4. Poor Staff Communication
Alright, let’s say you’re prioritizing the right things and scheduling out your day in advance.
But if you aren’t clearly communicating these new priorities to your team, every hour they work on something else is an hour wasted.
Tool: Want to have a build a great team? Check out our video summary of The 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team
5. Delegating Ineffectively
“If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together.” ~ African Proverb
One of the first and biggest barriers to church growth is the lead pastor becoming a bottleneck of ministry.
Giving up control is hard but effectively delegating responsibility AND authority is the key to multiplying your church’s kingdom impact.
Tool: Free Ebook