A FAMOUS coast-to-coast chain of burger drive-ins sends new managers to a special training school to learn the art of preparing burgers. Classes include: Hamburgerology 202, Pickles and Onions 302-3, Don't Spare the Mustard 101A, and Catsup 102.
University-style laboratory demonstrations teach the new franchise managers the most efficient, time-saving methods and techniques. To them efficiency means the difference between success and failure.
Industry time-and-motion experts estimate that the average laborer wastes from 20 to 50 percent of his time and energy through inefficiency. Could this also be true of the ministry? The fourth suggestion in this series on saving time is
4. Analyze Your Methods
The condition of a minister's desk often reflects his personality. An overloaded, scrambled, and cluttered desk may indicate an overloaded, scrambled, and cluttered pastor. On the other hand, a clean, well-organized desk may indicate a well-organized minister.
Early in my ministry, when visitors were expected in our home for the Sabbath, it was my common practice to scoop every thing off the desk into one or two grocery bags and haul them off to the garage. This seemed to work quite well until it came time to move. In the garage I dis covered a corner stacked with weeks of paper-bag desk cleanings. At last the message got through. I wasn't solving the problem I was bagging it up and storing it.
Certainly a minister's desk need not be as impeccable as that of a big corporation executive with a hidden telephone, hidden wastebasket, and a built-in miniature bar. But something between that and total chaos would be desirable.
One good arrangement is to use the desk's double-drawer file for folders frequently used. Examples would be financial reports, attendance records, board and committee-meeting notes, bulletin announcements, correspondence with the various local conference departments, member addresses, pastoral newsletter material, and other folders requiring frequent handling.
On the other side might be a drawer for pens, pencils, glue, and other office supplies, another for stationery and stamps, and a third for miscellaneous supplies plus one or two books presently being read.
On top of the desk could be the telephone, lamp, scratch pad, and a two- or three-level wire basket incoming mail at the top, outgoing next, and material to-be-filed at the bottom. Beside the desk should be the typewriter, ready for instant use.
Unnecessary Motions
The name of the game is efficiency. That means keeping all the most-used and most-needed items at your finger tips for instant use. The fewer steps taken inside the office, the more time available for work outside the office.
One recent addition to my desk that would have saved untold hours had I only known of it years earlier is an Instant Spelling Dictionary such as typists use at college. It contains from 25,000 to 30,000 words spelled, divided, and accented just the words and nothing else. The point is that I don't keep this little volume in my bookcase or in a desk drawer, but to the side of my desk readily available.
Streamline Our Work
General Motors and the other giant manufacturers are constantly re-evaluating their assembly-line procedures. Should we not do the same? Where can we trim, streamline, and eliminate? Take sermon preparation. Do we still copy a special quote from a book onto paper in longhand, and then type it weeks later onto a card? Why not type it directly from the book and cut the work in half? Or better yet, mark the quotations and have a secretary or your wife type them later.
Incoming mail is another area for time saving. Try never to handle a letter twice. Open all the envelopes with a letter opener first. Then begin at the top and deal with each letter as you pick it up. Some will go into the "circular file" with just a glance. Others needing a reply should be answered immediately--some with a post card. Don't put off a decision until later; decide while it's in your hands and move on immediately to another subject.
Select or order all office sup plies at one time. Keep on hand a small extra supply of all frequently used items: Scotch tape, glue, marking pen, staples, paper clips, rubber bands, et cetera. You will thus avoid unnecessary trips to the store when you run out of just one item.
Plan committee meetings to follow prayer meetings, thereby saving an entire evening for other activities.
Visitation can absorb many unnecessary hours unless it is organized in advance. Visit people in the same area on the same afternoon or evening geographically, not alphabetically. Read books on the work of a minister and glean useful helps from others who labor in the same harness. Used books in this area are often just as useful as new ones.
5. Use Spare Minutes
The book Cheaper by the Dozen depicted the efforts of the late Frank Cilbreth to save time within his own family of two adults and twelve children. He spared no effort to trim minutes from almost every family activity: baths, dressing, housework, et cetera. One section describes how the members learned foreign languages from cards taped to the bathroom mirror while brushing their teeth.
Spare moments can be salvaged almost anywhere. While waiting for his meal in a Vienna restaurant, Strauss used the back of a menu to pen one of his famous waltzes. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote portions of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the kitchen as thoughts came to her while kneading bread. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt used the spare minutes before appointments, meetings, and conventions to compose many of her newspaper columns. And Abraham Lincoln wrote his famous Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope while traveling on the train.
Many ministers broaden their horizons by listening to tape cassettes while driving between appointments and members' homes. Others always carry a book with them in their car and read while waiting at a train crossing, before prayer meeting, in the dentist's waiting room, before funeral processions begin, at the drive-in bank window, and at the barber shop.
Socrates once said, "Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings; so you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for."
Self-education
A practical way of continuing one's professional education is to study systematically such one-volume Bible dictionaries as Unger's, Smith's, Westminster's, Zondervan's Compact, and the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary. Just ten pages a day will enable one to cover the thick Unger's Bible Dictionary (1,192 pages) in about four months, gleaning thousands of helpful details to enhance one's understanding of the Bible.
How would you like three additional weeks for work every year? The time is there for the asking. Just ten minutes of wasted time every morning and every afternoon salvaged and put to good use equals twenty extra minutes every day, ten extra hours a month, and 120 hours a year equal to three forty-hour work weeks.
6. Do It Now
Perhaps one of the greatest sins of the average clergyman is procrastination. We go through our mail, read it, and set aside several letters to be answered later. Then in a couple of days we read the letters again, answer one or two and push the others aside for when we have more time. Later we read the letters again and go through the same routine. Thus untold hours are wasted every year. Don't be afraid to make hasty decisions. Decide now and speed back a reply. Keeping abreast of one's mail daily does much to set the mood for the entire day. Stay on top of your work, and the work won't get on top of you.
One executive posted a card above the desk in his office bearing the letters "PITTOT." When asked its meaning, he replied, "Procrastination is the thief of time."
Dr. Harold Lindsell, editor of Christianity Today and a former vice-president of Fuller Theological Seminary, says, "One can never get up enough steam for all the jobs that need doing. So I remember that all I need to do is tackle one item at a time. And how quickly all of them are finished."
Back Issues of Magazines
Many ministers keep all copies of magazines they receive. Let's be honest with ourselves. How often do we take time to look up the important material thus stored away? In the meantime, think of all the precious library space wasted by that material, 95 percent of which will never be needed. Instead, read the magazine as soon as it arrives, scanning some articles and devouring others. If one or two have pertinent data for future reference, tear them out and file them in the appropriate folders.
One minister used to keep all magazines until summer, then try to read them all during his vacation. After a couple of summers lugging boxes of magazines around, trying to get all clippings back to the office in some re semblance of order, and wasting most of his vacations in work rather than relaxation, he decided to read each magazine within a day or so of its arrival. All important items were filed, and the remainder were dropped into the circular file.
Above all, take the time to file materials properly. It saves considerable time in the long run. John Wesley, the famous English preacher, was an expert at con serving time. During his lifetime he mastered six foreign languages, preached 40,000 sermons, traveled 250,000 miles on horseback (often reading books while riding), and wrote 440 books and pamphlets.
To each of us God gives exactly twenty-four hours---more than 86,000 seconds every day. How we use them is up to us, but the way we use them will make the difference between a fruitful and a barren ministry.
