One of our planters just sent me this quote by John W. Gardiner: "We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems." I love that!
One of the challenges that I'm facing right now is helping one of my client churches find 3-6 prospective church planters for Austin, TX. Can you help me? This is for a non-denominational church who wants to resource good candidates! Please reply to me at glenn@nciglobal.org if you have any interest, if you know anyone who might have interest, or if you know someone I should talk to who might know someone who might have interest!
Hope to see you next week at the National New Church Conference!
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Got Time to Plant?
Almost every church planter I work with struggles with time management. That's understandable! We have a dream of something new and hundreds of ideas to implement. Then, of course, there's people! Relationships are the core of what we're about, and relationships take time! How do we find the time?
Scripture tells us to be "making the best use of the time, because the days are evil" (Ep 5:16). Stress is a sign that we may not be making the best use of our time. What do we do?
The bottomline is this. We only have 168 hours in a week. You can't get more. You can't save it up. You can't postpone it. Time happens. God expects us to be faithful stewards of those 168 hours. In other words, God never expects (nor desires) for us to try to do more than we can do in 168 hours a week. And, He doesn't want us to destroy our health by not getting adequate rest, exercise, and proper diet. He doesn't want us to neglect or damage our families. What He desires is simply that I be a good steward of the time I do have, and trust Him for the rest.
So the pressure I sometimes feel is a sign of either poor stewardship or a lack of faith, or both. My daily task is to make sure I am being a faithful steward - of my time, my family, my health, my calling. Jesus did it and I never see Him in the Scriptures running around frantic like I sometimes do. He's not wringing his hands, uptight about me handling all the demands; because those demands that are stressing me aren't coming from Him.
Slow down. Take a breath. Learn to live a quiet and peaceable life in the midst of church planting. It can be done! Need help? Get a coach!
Scripture tells us to be "making the best use of the time, because the days are evil" (Ep 5:16). Stress is a sign that we may not be making the best use of our time. What do we do?
The bottomline is this. We only have 168 hours in a week. You can't get more. You can't save it up. You can't postpone it. Time happens. God expects us to be faithful stewards of those 168 hours. In other words, God never expects (nor desires) for us to try to do more than we can do in 168 hours a week. And, He doesn't want us to destroy our health by not getting adequate rest, exercise, and proper diet. He doesn't want us to neglect or damage our families. What He desires is simply that I be a good steward of the time I do have, and trust Him for the rest.
So the pressure I sometimes feel is a sign of either poor stewardship or a lack of faith, or both. My daily task is to make sure I am being a faithful steward - of my time, my family, my health, my calling. Jesus did it and I never see Him in the Scriptures running around frantic like I sometimes do. He's not wringing his hands, uptight about me handling all the demands; because those demands that are stressing me aren't coming from Him.
Slow down. Take a breath. Learn to live a quiet and peaceable life in the midst of church planting. It can be done! Need help? Get a coach!
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