The NOW Podcast: A Week in the Life of a Pastor

Welcome back to Not Only Water.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am your host.

You probably noticed that a few things look a little bit different this week.

One, me.

I got a haircut and I trimmed my beard so I don't look as much like Spurgeon anymore.

But anyway, this is also not in my studio.

I'm actually outside.

I have had a super busy week this week and I wasn't able to get up to the studio to record this but I still wanted to record this week's podcast.

And I felt like this is a great week to talk about scheduling because sometimes our schedule does not go as planned and sometimes we end up having to do things a little bit differently than we might normally do it.

So that's what I thought I would talk about today.

So that's going to be the program on Not Only Water.

Practical advice for new pastors.

Stay tuned.

We're going to go to it right now.

Welcome to Not Only Water.

This podcast is dedicated to providing practical advice for new pastors.

In 1 Timothy 5 verse 23, Paul tells Timothy to drink not only water but to use a little wine for his stomach's sake.

This short piece of practical advice is the inspiration for this series.

Get ready to dive into today's topic.

Here's your host, Keith Foskey.

So if you've been watching the program you know that I normally deal with how to prepare sermons and a lot of my previous episodes I've talked about sermon outlines, how to put meat on the bones and how to find sermon illustrations and that really is a big part of what I wanted this show to be but that's not the only thing I wanted to talk about in this show.

Part of the other reason for this is I wanted to provide practical advice for the life of a pastor because our life is focused on preaching the Word but certainly we do other things and so how do we manage our most important duty which is the preaching of the Word of God with all of the other things that we have to do.

And so I thought really the best way that I know how to do this would be to simply take you through what it looks like in a week in my life.

Now I want to say from the outset number one, I am not an example in the sense of I'm not putting myself on a pedestal and saying everybody should do it like me.

However, I have had a lot of trial and error over the years and I have come up with a system that works for me and that's all I'm showing you is I'm showing you one pastor's method for keeping up with our regular routine of preparing messages, preaching messages, doing the work of ministry and shepherding the flock and doing those things that are important.

Now, what I've done is I've actually outlined my week and I've put it on the screen.

I'm going to bring it up in just a moment and I'm going to walk you through what a normal week looks like and then I'm going to talk about how not every week is normal.

In fact, finding a normal week is almost impossible because there's really no such thing as a normal week in ministry.

There's always things that change.

There's always things that come up.

But these are the things that I try to keep on my weekly to-do list and I still, after all these years, I do keep a to-do list on my computer that I pull up every Monday morning.

Here's the things that I have to do every week and here's the thing about being a minister that you may not realize, well, you probably do but just in case you haven't realized it yet there's nobody that's going to make you get up in the morning and do the things that you need to do but it's going to be very obvious if you're not doing the things that you are supposed to do.

So, even though there's no one out there who's going to be calling you at 7 a.m.

every morning and saying, it's time to get up, time to get to work or whatever time you get up, it doesn't matter but no one's going to be there to call you and ensure that you do that.

You don't have a manager or a time clock that you have to punch.

You are responsible.

You are the one who has to keep up with your schedule.

You're the one who has to ensure that you are being faithful especially if you are in vocational ministry that you are being faithful to the people of God who are supporting you through their offerings to the church.

The money that's coming into the church a good bit of that is going to support you and your family and if you understand that that is going to mean that you have a responsibility to them and to God to ensure that you are not shirking your responsibilities that's part of this, is being disciplined enough to ensure that you are keeping up with your own schedule.

Years ago there was a man who told me he wanted to be in ministry and so I had him speak to the elders of our church and because he was asking for help, wanted to go to school and things and so I said, well come and talk to the elders of our church and in the midst of that conversation he was asked, what's the number one reason you want to be in ministry? And he said, well I like the idea of setting my own schedule.

First of all, that's a terrible answer.

That's the worst answer anybody's ever given that I know of.

But at the same time everybody laughed because the thing was, even though a minister in one sense does have to coordinate his own schedule often events set your schedule.