Part Time Work, Full Time Care
Some days my closest companion is the dog-eared paper calendar I keep my life organized in. It clearly delineates my days into neat little boxes circumscribed by tight black outlines that keep Wednesday from bleeding into Thursday. At least on paper. The reality is far different.
The nature of my part-time, volunteer role as Small Groups Director at my medium sized church means that there is always more to do, more to develop, more coffee meetings to set up, more people to invest in, and more curriculum to write. It never ends, especially if I allow my boundaries to become a hazy line in the sand rather than a hard barrier.
Being part-time necessitates boundaries, and not just any boundaries but well-thought out, well-articulated, and specific boundaries. It’s something I’ve worked very hard to achieve because I’ve experienced the burnout that comes from being lax for too long. One result of that burnout was that I had to take a break from ministry for a few years, and now I keep my priorities in front of me. Longevity and effectiveness over a headlong sprint
But even with past experience, it isn’t always easy to keep my boundaries a priority. I love my church, and naturally I want to make our small groups a robust, thriving place where people connect in deep and meaningful ways. So sometimes I’m tempted to sacrifice a bit more to make that happen, but consistently blurring my lines ultimately makes me a less effective (and less rested, less patient) leader.
Yet that’s easy to say, but which boundaries? Which meetings are prioritized? What tasks can wait and what’s so important and urgent that it must be done before everything else?
Ultimately that rests with you. You know your role, your people, your dreams, and your prayers for your ministry. Only you can fully answer those questions. And you must keep your part-time hours in mind as you do it. The nature of any ministry job, part-time or full-time is that there will never be enough time for everything that you want to get done. It’s just not possible.
Ministry isn’t a sprint with easy finish lines; it’s an endurance challenge where you have to make up your own markers.
So to make my boundaries and priorities, I sat down with my never-ending tasks, my small group leader’s names, my goals, and decide. How will I structure my “must do’s” versus my “it’d be nice to do’s” each week? What is my overarching structure and my priority list? And what would be the criteria that separated the two?
Our church values one to one monthly meetings with each of our small group leaders, their apprentices, and anyone else who has potential to become one of those two roles. With that as a stated priority, I structure my week around which I need to meet with this week. I have eight small group leaders and my goal is to meet with two a week. Once I factor in preparation for the meeting, meeting time, and some time to jot down notes afterwards, that ends up taking up the bulk of my ten hours/week.
But that’s perfect because I have two goals for each of those meetings. The first is to keep the vision for our small groups alive, and the second is to invest in and encourage my leaders so they can in turn invest in their group members.
The sad reality is that vision leaks. No matter how great the initial presentation or the emotional appeal of it, vision will leak. People can buy heavily into it for a few weeks, or even months, but inevitably it starts to leak as the day-to-day grind of work, family, friends, and life rubs it away. Keeping the vision of life-giving, deeply connected groups in front of leaders is vital to prevent burnout and to remind them of our purpose here – helping more and more people find their way back to God.
Secondly, investing monthly in my leaders and encouraging them is a small investment that pays large dividends. Monthly check-ins can help me catch when someone is discouraged, when they need a break, or when small problems could turn into group-killing vortexes. In addition, it shows leaders that I care about their development and want them to succeed.
Never underestimate the power of a face-to-face meeting in showing your commitment to your leaders.
I work for a multi-site church with ten locations, and other directors in my position manage 30-50 different leaders as a part-time employee. By necessity, they’ve strategized differently and meet their leaders in small groups of two to five leaders for coffee or dinner. Their care structure is different, but their goals are the same, keep the vision alive and make sure their leaders are cared for and encouraged.
Even if your church doesn’t yet emphasize one to one meetings or “huddles” of two to five leaders with a coach, valuing people and vision over the smaller mundane tasks strengthens every ministry. The tasks are necessary but not when they drag us under and cause us to lose sight of our own vision to change people’s lives for Christ.
After my monthly meetings are scheduled with any time that’s leftover I revise my six month goals to see where I am, where I’m going, and what I need to do to get back on track. It helps to remember how many groups I’ll need in the winter versus the summer or fall, and who potentially could lead each one. This is important if I want to also offer limited term groups on a rotating basis, which helps on-ramp people into our groups by tackling a specific topic for a limited amount of time.
In addition to being helpful for my own vision, keeping long-term goals in mind is useful also when I’m doing smaller tasks. I can focus on the important and not get distracted. Then when I sit down to pray for my groups, my leaders, and my goals everything is fresh and it allows the Holy Spirit to direct me.
Some weeks I have five to six hours left to work on side projects or to plan for the future, other weeks something comes up and I have to observe a small group or need to have two or three unplanned meetings and my “extra” time disappears. It can be frustrating, but the system I’ve worked out for myself means that that’s okay, just part of the process.
With any other extra weekly time, I research or help collaborate on small group curriculum to give my group leaders options. As a part-time person, I can’t write my own stuff each month (well, I could but then I wouldn’t have boundaries), but I try to make sure I always have quality recommendations.
Seasons also change my workload. I see an upsurge in work at the start of each session (I organize my year into trimesters roughly going September to December, January to May, and May to August). Typically this lasts for a few weeks then it’ll settle down and become the normal maintenance of meeting with each leader and problem solving. During these lull periods, I focus on my task list and curriculum building, as well as future planning.
Additionally, I try to spend a few days every trimester identifying who future leaders could be. Some of this comes from talking with group leaders, and sometimes it’s just watching people. Who could be ready for a challenge? Who wants to take a new step into leadership? When someone is identified, then I start the process of recruitment and training.
Each year brings new challenges. Some years I have plenty of group leaders, other years because of job moves and life changes, I have barely any leaders. Groups cycle in and out of being stable then having issues. Some groups die or need to be put on sabbatical, while other groups reproduce and multiply.
And it doesn’t hang all on my shoulders. It can’t. I’d crumple under that weight.
I already know that the measure of my worth isn’t in the decimals in my bank account, but it’s a struggle sometimes not to make that worth equal to the work hours to my name. Yet I know that our God can take all our gifts, big and small, forty hours or ten hours, and multiply the harvest. We build the Kingdom by being faithful to God, to ourselves, and to our ministries hour by hour as we invest in the people of God and empower them to go out and change lives too.
This first appeared on SmallGroups.com, an affiliate of Christianity Today on January 4, 2018.
