Josh Hunt
| Time Management for TeachersIt is possible to double a class every two years or less. I have heard testimonies of hundreds of teachers who have doubled. (See http://www.joshhuntnm.blogspot.com/ ) It is possible, but it is not easy. It is hard work, and it takes time. In order to double a class every two years or less, we must learn to manage time well. The good news is, this skill of managing time will help us in every area of life. Here is the magic: we work on doubling the class, and God works on us, making us to be the kind of people He wants us to be. One of the qualities of being the people He wants us to be is people who manage their time well. Most of what I have read about time management is wrong. Or, at least, it didn’t work for me. Most time management courses will tell you to do this: 1. Make a list of things that have to be done 2. Sort them in the order of their priority 3. Start working on item #1 4. Don’t stop working on #1 until #1 is completed 5. When you finish with #1, go to #2 and so on through the list. Logical. Well meaning. And it never worked for me. Here is my method: Make a list of things that need to be doneLets apply this to Sunday School Teachers. Let's assume you want to double your class every two years or less, and you want to do it by inviting every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. Here is a partial list of things you would need to do to accomplish this 1. Lesson preparation. You don't have to be Chuck Swindoll, but the teaching does have to be half way decent each and every week, nothing less will do. It takes time to prepare an interesting, life-changing lesson each and every week. 2. Plan monthly party. All good ideas degenerate into work. Someone has to buy the Diet Coke. Someone has to put up the decoration. Someone has to cook the food. It is hard work having fun. If you have not gotten into the business of inviting every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month, let me give you a heads up: it is work. 3. Invite every member. Most class rolls could be divided into three sections: top third that come all the time; middle third that come every now and then; bottom third that never come. Here is my advice with reference to that bottom third: don't invite them to class. Instead, invite them to the party. Have a party once a month and make sure that every member and every prospect gets invited every month. 4. Invite every prospect. I have gotten this feedback from some: We had a party, but we couldn't get any outsiders to come. "Tell me about how you invite them." "We announced it three times in class." That won't do. We have to invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. Calling is better than emailing, although, in an ideal world we do both. This may take the better part of an evening to do. The people who are best at it tend to be a bit chatty. They don' just invite people to the party in a down-to-earth kind of way. They chat. 5. Training. There is a proven relationship between training and church growth. Churches that train tend to grow. Churches that don't train tend not to grow. If you want to double your class in two years or less, you need to make an ongoing commitment to being trained to do so. My best deal on training is the Big Double Bundle. See http://www.joshhunt.com/bundle.htm for details. My newest training piece is the Saturday Morning Training. It covers more or less the same territory but is designed to be used in a one time shot Saturday morning rather than on a weekly class basis. For details, click here: hhttp://www.joshhunt.com/sat.htm If you are interested in a live training event, see www.joshhunt.com/conference2.htm 6. Spend personal time with your students. People don't care what you know till they know that you care. If you would make disciples of them, you must love them. You must spend time with them. Take them to lunch. Play golf with them. Jesus made disciples by spending time with them. You must spend time with your students if you wish to make disciples of them. I think it is unfortunate that you are called a teacher. Since you are called a teacher, you might get the idea that your job is to teach. That is one job, but it is not the only job. Your job is to pastor the microcosm of the Church called your Sunday School class. 7. Devotional time. Disciples start their day with the Bible on their lap. They start the day with God. The quiet time is the core discipline in following Christ. Effective teachers spend time alone with God in the Word and in prayer--not looking at the Word for what we can teach to others, but looking at the Word in allowing God to feed our souls. 8. Crises ministry. In every life some storms will come. If you see yourself as the pastor of your micro-church, it means visiting the hospital when your members are in the hospital. It means preparing meals when there is a death in the family. It means being there. Loving people means being with them in times of crises. The bigger the class, the more crises there are. Delegate what you canThere is no greater waste of time than doing efficiently what you should have never done in the first place. About half the things on the list above can and should be done by someone else. As Bill Hybels says it, "What a wonderful plan God has! Let the teachers teach, let the leaders lead, let the mercy givers give mercy, let the inreach leaders invite every member, let the outreach leaders invite every prospect, let the party people plan parties." (I actually added that last part, but the first part is from Bill Hybels.) In the church, we don't delegate to get out of doing things. We delegate to get lots of people involved in the work. We want every one to discover their gifting and use their gifts to grow their groups. Every groups would do well to have the following people involved: One of the best ways to get these workers is to have a Vision Day once a quarter. Get in the habit. Make it part of the church culture. Put it on auto-pilot. The first Sunday of every quarter is Vision Day. On Vision Day you recast a vision for the class: we want to double every two years or less. A group of ten that doubles every eighteen months will reach 1000 people in ten years. In order to do that, we want to invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. So we want to do three parties in the next three months. Who wants to do what? Who wants to do inreach? Who wants to do outreach? Who is good at planning parties? Do whatever you feel like doingBasic time management theory suggests you do things in the order of their priority. Here is the problem with that. Often, when I look at my to-do list, it all needs to be done. It is all #1 priority in the sense that it all has to be done. And I find I work best when I do what I feel like doing. Of course, you can't always do this. Some tasks are not that pleasant and must be done anyway. In this case, you do well to do them first and get them out of the way. Here is the real key to me. I can divide most tasks on a to-do list into two categories: thinking and doing. Lesson writing is thinking; calling prospects is doing. I tend to find myself in one of two moods: thinking and doing. If I am not in a thinking mood, I am not terribly productive at lesson writing. I try not to do doing tasks when I am in a thinking mood or thinking tasks when I am in a doing mood. As much as possible, I try to do what I feel like doing. I find I am more productive that way, and life is a whole lot more fun. Closing ThoughtShow me, O Lord, my life's end Is it my imagination, or is each year going a little more quickly than the last? We don't have forever. As the old hymn said it, "Work, for the night is coming!"
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