Michael Yardley

The Youth Pastor’s Calendar

It seems in that in the world of youth ministry I get one of two question:

1. Why does a youth pastor work all week and what do you really have to do?

or

2. How do you fit everything in each week?

Here is a break down of my weekly calendar. You can ask the people I work with, I stick to this thing almost obsessively.

Monday:

7am - Get into the office and organize calendar

7:30 - Email / Task Attack

8:30 - Staff Prayer

8:45 - Check on our CLA students (CLA is our leadership college at our Norge Campus)

9:00 - Post Game Review (Review Sunday Services)

10:00 - Gym (I come into the office 1.5 hours early so that I can go when no one is there)

11:30 - Study (I plan my messages 5 weeks in advance)

2:00 - Mentor one of our college students

3:00 - Blue Sky Meeting (Creative Team for Sunday

Tuesday:

7am - Email / Task Attack

8:30 - Staff Prayer

8:45 - Check on our CLA students

9:00 - Message Run Through

10:00 - Gym

11:30 - Head to the Schools / Lunch

1:00 - Service Prep

2:00 - FLOW meeting (Run through the flow of the service)

3:00 - Message Run Through

4:00 - NeXus (Out Student Ministry)

Wednesday:

7am - Review NeXus and send out notes

7:30 - Check Email

8:00 - Executive Team Meeting

10:00 - Staff Meeting

12:00 - Lunch

1:00 - Meeting Prep

2:00 - Meetings

4:00 - Email / Task Attack

Thursday:

6:30am - Work with a Christian School’s worship team

8:00 - Check Email

8:30 - Staff Prayer

8:45 - Email / Task Attack

10:00 - Gym

11:30 - Lunch

12:00 - CLA Tasks

2:00 - Multi Site Tasks

4:00 - Wrap up any loose ends / planning

Friday:

Off

3 things I learned about time management:

1. Schedule time to schedule time
2. Schedule a time to check email. It is amazing how much time you loose constantly checking email. *I do skim over it every 30 minutes or so in case something time sensitive comes in.
3. Line up meetings back to back so that you can get them done and out of the way. My administrative assistant lines them up all in a row on Wednesday afternoons. Having her do this has freed up over 3 hours each week!!! She volunteers her time as a service to the kingdom, what a HUGE blessing.

IMAGINARY

Last night we kicked off a new series titled, “IMAGINARY”. The concept of this series is very simple. Often times we take the issues that we have and suppress them. After this suppression technique is activated, we can become numb to the conviction and isolate ourselves from the work of the Hply Spirit. The result is that we live in this superficial “IMAGINARY” world where we don’t allow God to truly be God in our life. The scary thing is the most of us don’t even realize that this has happened to us.

Take away points:

1. You’re not of this world.
2. You’re not alone
3. Jesus chose you

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:18, 19 ESV)

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV)

Challange:

Let us step up to the plate and confront our issues head on and stop living in an IMAGINARY world.

Top 7 reasons NOT to invite someone to an Easter service

1. Their life is perfect and they don’t really need Jesus.

2. Someone else will do it so don’t worry about.

3. They probably gave up Church for Lent.

4. No one actually hands how those Easter Invite cards.

5. They told you church isn’t their thing 3 years ago.

6. Your afraid of rejection. They might go crazy and response with the worst answer ever … . no

7. You’re ashamed of the Gospel.