First Week/Month
So tomorrow I begin and lead my first staff meeting and begin my first week of being a pastor. What are the things you all think I should make sure I do. Give me your top five.
Peace,
Tom
Peace,
Tom
posted by Tom Arthur at 5:16 PM
10 Comments:
1. pray.
2. meet and visit with as many people as possible.
3. learn about the church. see above.
4. write best sermon of all-time.
5. pray more.
Pray.
"Pastors overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in five years." Sandy Millar, former Vicar at Holy Trinity Brompton, London, England.
1. Get to bed the same time every night and get up the same time. Get 8 hours of sleep. You will thus have more resources of patience to keep your cool as you encounter all kinds of craziness, disfunction, and beauty. The sleep will help you from getting too discouraged. Expect the organization to be terrible! Expect the people to be great . . . once you get to know them.
2. Study the Scripture text you are going to preach on. Read 2 commentaries on the passage. If you and the commentators agree, you are on the right track. Preach it!
3. Learn everyone's name including kids and janitor. Make your own directory if need be.
4. Schedule as many meals and coffees with people as possible (45 minutes to 1 hour 1/2 - no longer). Go to their workplaces and pick them up and take them to a place nearby that they often go when they go out to lunch. Pay and turn in the receipts to the church. But only order very basic things at the restaurants - equivalent to the price of a burger and soda. No dessert or alcohol on the church's bill. I'm tempted to say on this one, "It is better to ask forgiveness than permission." Just do it. You will not get fired for meeting with lots of people. It is difficult to do it if you don't meet at restaurants and coffee shops in this day and age. People don't have time to go to your house and people often don't host people in their homes often. Every day meet with someone. Please! This is crucial. There is a book called:
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time (Hardcover)
by Keith Ferrazzi (Author), Tahl Raz (Author)
It is a good motto.
Questions to ask when you meet with people:
a. Where did you grow up? Where are all the places you've lived?
b. What is your job? Can you tell me enough about it so I really get what you do? Is it terrible or great or just so-so? Why? How is your relationship with your boss?
c. What is your church background? Why did you come to our church?
d. Should I just lift these things we have already prayed about to the Lord or is there something else I can pray about as well? (In other words, you will know enough already to be able to pray for them). Do a quick prayer for them.
People will be surprised at how pleasant and interesting and good it is to meet the pastor and you will be relieved not to get into all the church politics until you get to know people. This person is more important than their complaint about the church. When you get to know people, you understand where they are coming from. The person who is passion about missions grew up in Africa. The person who is passionate about pastoral care, works in a nursing home.
As you can see from my questions, I would urge you to have low expectations for those first 1on1 meetings. The point is to get to know them. You will get close to some of them eventually. You will need to have difficult conversations with some of them eventually. But at this point, just enjoy people and get to know the basics. This is infinitely important to eventually ministering deeply to them.
Pastoring is 1/3 preaching (study, prep, reading), 1/3 administration (meetings, email, phone calls, mail, chaos), and 1/3 pastoral care (meeting with people). But you will have to initiate and be intentional to meet with anyone. Very few will reach out to you.
5. Read Eugene Peterson's books Under the Unpredictable Plant and his other pastor books. Just read the stories if you get bogged down. Ditto - David Hansen's The Art of Pastoring. I would also recommend the Mitford books (fiction) by Jan Karon to get a sense of warm personal pastoral ministry practiced by Pastor Tim.
6. Next year, when you get madly frustrated by the disfunction of the organization of the church, you can read leadership books like Five Disfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and his book and Death by Meeting; Good to Great by Jim Collins; Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman; First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham; Seven Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley; Simple Church by Thom Rainer and The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker. At a minimum, these books will help you realize that disfunction in churches and other organizations is the norm but that there are some things you can do to start positive movement in the right direction.
7. Take walks just for the purpose of praying.
Andy Rowell
Th.D. Student
Duke Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina
Blog: Church Leadership Conversations
I have put my comment above in a newly revised version on my blog.
8 pieces of advice for a new pastor
Andy, I truly wish I had had the opportunity to learn from you personally when I was at Duke.
This is timely for me, as I am just now beginning at St. Anne's Episcopal in Warsaw, IN. I plan to use your tips as an outline. Thank you so much for this post.
Craig Uffman
Andy,
Thanks again for the response. This is a church that I worked at for 8 years before I went to Duke. I'm there for three months right now covering a sabbatical that the lead pastor is on. I've done several of the things you mention. Here's what I've been up to in the first three weeks:
1. Sarah and I continued morning and evening prayer from the BCP and we have invited the church to join us at our home. We've had one person take us up on this offer for morning prayer. Lots of conversation about it. Also, I began doing noon prayer at the church every day. I go in to the sanctuary and ring the bell 12 times at noon and then pray noon prayer from the BCP. I usually have two staff members who join me. It is a very short prayer service (about five minutes). I'm finding this pattern of prayer at 7:30 AM, Noon, and 9PM very meaningful whether anyone joins me/us or not.
2. I've been meeting one on one with each staff member. I just finished this week. I've met with several of the key leaders in the church. I've done hospital visits. I've done home visits. I've made phone call visits. I've stopped into Weight Watchers that meets in our building to introduce myself. I don't know that I've hit one person a day but I'm fairly close to that. Most of these people I know quite well so the conversation has been quick to the point and gone very deep rather quickly (like old friends catching up).
3. I've set aside the afternoons for sermon prep. The biggest learning curve for me has been the jitters of preaching every week. I give myself 3-4 hours a day to read and prepare. My sermon prep goes like this: translation, wondering with Bible Works but without commentaries, wondering with dictionaries/encyclopedias, reading book overviews (i.e. intro texts) and opening chapters of commentaries, reading old stuff (Wesley, Augustine, etc.), reading commentaries, writing an outline, preaching out the outline, writing a manuscript from the outline, and then finally preaching on Sunday usually from the outline. So far I'm putting about 12-15 hours a week into sermon prep. I also have put together a sermon feedback team that includes both retired pastors and lay persons of all ages.
4. I've continued to provide myself space each day (about 30 minutes) to free read around areas not related to sermon prep. I'm currently reading Ellen Davis' Getting Involved with God (EXCELLENT BOOK!).
5. Administration comes pretty easy for me. Best tool: Plaxo. Syncs Outlook with the same basic functions online and then syncs with just about everything else out there (Google, Yahoo, Thunderbird, and even my cell phone).
6. I took Dr. Phillip's suggestion to heart and spend probably about 3-5 hours a week working on worship prep. Prayers, liturgy, music, etc.
7. I do get about 8 hours of sleep every night. I think you're right on on this. Those who know me well know I go to bed predictably and get up predictably. But I'd wholeheartedly agree with you on sleep.
8. I've been biking to the church and to the hospital (Northern Michigan summers are in the 70s and 80s). My cell phone has a pedometer and the difference between the distance I walk as a student at Duke and as a pastor is astounding. About 3.5 miles at Duke a day. About .5-1 miles as a pastor a day. So I'd add to your suggestion about sleep, exercise. So far biking is working well and keeping me active.
9. I'd be curious about this one from others but I have not given my cell phone number out except to my staff. And they have been instructed not to call me except in emergencies. This is a bit strange to them. But I'm not into omniavailability. I think that job description is already taken. Others?
Those are some of the things I've intentionally done. There are other attitudes, etc. that I've tried to carry with me. I'm open to feedback on any of this stuff listed above.
Peace,
Tom
I forgot one other thing I'm doing. I meet with a group of pastors and pray with them once a week (Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Community Church, etc.). Its sort of like a pastoral support group. Great men (no women yet). These are all people I knew before. Its great to become reacquainted with them. And because we're all pastors, there's quite a high level of honest conversation. Great support if I need it.
Thanks, Tom. Great stuff. Keep it coming. I will likely try a lot of your ideas....
Tom,
Sounds like you are doing well and are very organized. Good for you.
A few little comments and things to think about since you are obviously a voracious learner and conscientious pastor.
I think it is fine to preach from a manuscript. I think if you practice delivering a manuscript three times (and print it in 16 point font double spaced and you mark it up by hand with a pen) then you will be able to deliver it with people hardly able to tell you are reading it. The manuscript helps me to be very organized and concise in what I say (i.e. not ramble and say stupid things off the top of my head). It also cured my very bad case of the um's.
I am not surprised that many people do not take you up on morning and noon and evening prayers but I do think it is a good thing to do. Have you seen the fictional novel about the pastor - Glittering Images by Susan Howatch? The pastor in the story is a mess of addictions but eventually comes to some sanity through the regular prayers. That would be an interesting way of motivating people to do the prayers with you by inviting them to read through Howatch's novel with you one chapter per week! :-) It only has one sex scene!
Something to think about: the focus on the morning, noon and evening prayers may make you come across as a bit "spiritual" or "religious" to people which may actually cause a bit of unconscious distance. In other words, I might encourage you along the lines I describe about getting together with people in casual ways. What are their daily lives like? What are their frustrations with their bosses? How messy are their houses? What are their hobbies and interests? How bad are their financial habits? Do they spend too much or too little time preparing food / exercising? What are their problems with their kids? Picnics, pool parties, visits to the park, lunches at workplaces (insist on seeing their cubicle at work!), coffee in their home . . . all of these things start to break down the "religious" aura of the pastor and help you to get an idea of what people's lives are really like. Are they watching "The Office" - (you can watch it online), the NBA finals? All of these kind of activities began to build unconscious rapport and warmth with people.
I think you are right that you don't need to be accessible by cell phone if you are checking your voice mail at the church daily and checking your email a few times per day. I told people email was the best way of getting a hold of me. I put my my email address on my voice mail message at church but also said on the message that I would check my voicemail daily.
andy
To echoing Andy, I want to commend an essay by Sarah Coakley that digs deeply into the importance of the priest praying the office even when alone, a practice that seems absurd to secular eyes.
Sarah and Sam Wells have just published Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture. I enthusiastically recommend to all Sarah's "Introduction: Prayer, Place, and the Poor" which presses Andy's point real well.
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