When I first started in youth ministry my work week was a mess. I had little professional experience, I wasn’t married and really had no firm office hours. As a result I worked an insane amount of hours, made basic mistakes and had my hands in too many projects.
Courtesy of KellyB/Creative Commons License
Working with teenagers gets messy; however, that doesn’t mean your work week needs to be as well. In fact the perfect work week is organized, fluid and productive. A perfect work week means plenty of time to just sit with teens, their parents and your volunteers.
But, again youth ministry is messy. There are always those days that throw us off because of:
Life happens and your productivity goes out the window. While you can’t control everything you can create measures to avoid a nightmare week. To build a stronger work week:
Guard What’s Personal And Professional: One of the reasons your work week goes awry is because you do not have firm boundaries between home and work life. To avoid the conflict that work and a personal life might bring be sure to make firm start and end points to your day. Do not make a habit of bringing work home and try not to use office time to catch up on personal errands (i.e. Ordering your mother’s birthday gift online.) By keeping it separated you aren’t cheating coworkers, family, friends or yourself.
Organize The Urgent, Immediate And Expendable: If you don’t have a system of prioritization then you will never be able to build momentum or flow in your work week. This means knowing what to delegate and what is your number one role as a youth pastor. To create this work week efficiency take the time (Trust me it’s worth it) to write out your roles, delegate the ones you don’t have to do, erase the ones you must do and schedule the musts. Having a system will help you recover from distractions.
Schedule Preparation And Decompressing: On top of prioritizing you need to spend time preparing and reflecting on programs, meetings, and messages. This time can be seen as margin; however, it’s also giving you time to think. Too many times you get stuck doing, which unfortunately wears you out. To have a productive work week you need to have the right pacing.
Does the perfect work week exist? That’s up for debate; however to be more consistent and productive means developing a plan. Life will happen, people will need you to go outside of your role and Satan is always trying to trip you up (How to eliminate distractions). But, if you have a system, it will help you get back on track to achieve your goals and mobilize this next generation.
How do you build a stronger work week?