Personal Retreats

Navigating Big Change

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Today we did something that always marks a change of season for us here in the beginning of October. Today we put the canoe away. Typically when canoeing season starts in the spring, we bring the canoe out from wherever it’s stored, usually in the backyard somewhere, and we put it on the vehicle where it stays on the vehicle all summer.

If we go on some highway trip or whatever that we’re not using the canoe, we’ll take it off and put it in the front yard and lock it down. It’s a beautiful 17.5 foot, Kevlar Clipper Tripper, which people in the know realize they can steal it and sell it really quickly, so we lock her up and the canoe stays there to make it really easy to go canoeing. We love it on the vehicle, so if we have the thought after dinner, we might only have an hour, we can drive down to the lake or the river and jump in and go for a paddle.

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So My Holidays Are Toast

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I have reluctantly concluded that my summer holidays are toast. They have officially vaporized. They are not going to happen. And I’m okay with that. We’re actually in a pretty nice place but here, here’s why they vaporized.

I’m currently serving as a transitional pastor and my basic contract there is up to 120 hours a month, which is a little less than three-quarter time. It’s actually functionally been less than that because I’ve got a very good associate who can preach and do music and pretty much everything else. He was fully producing the services and managing the online portal for our services, so that’s been great, but he recently went on an open-ended medical leave.

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PASTORS Working from Home

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Pastors Working from Home

This isn’t a post about productivity or generic work-from-home tips. It’s specifically for pastors who suddenly find themselves working 100% from home.

Here are some pastor-specific ideas about working from home in these days.

First, it’s important to use our time well, wisely, but I would suggest using it in a different manner than we have. If you’ve been a driven, running on the redline, high producer, workaholic type, slow down. If you’ve in the past been a slacker, wasting a lot of your ministry work week doing administrivia or low value time wasting tasks, become more rigorous about tracking how much you are working and what you are doing. Times of transition are excellent opportunities to implement lasting change, and these days in the spring and early summer of 2020 are in that sense a gift.

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Starting Your Year

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This Daren Wride and welcome to Priority Pastor

Well how do you plan a year? 

There are so many variables looking ahead; three hundred and sixty-five or sixty-six days, 52 weeks, twelve months. Planning can be a little bit presumptuous and we often try to plan in a way that makes us think we’re in control of what’s going to happen when that’s not the case. 

Planning really needs to be done with open palms; really our planning is an offering. It’s a presentation to the Lord say here’s my plans but not what I want what you want ultimately. However, it is helpful to get clear in our head what we actually are hoping to accomplish and put that underneath the umbrella of “your will be done.” 

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Cross Over Day

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On November 24, 2019 I was 54 years 288 days old. That was the age my father was when he passed away.

So I decided to take a little retreat, heading out to a cutline where I knew there was a nice place to sit and maybe start a fire.

Here’s a video of a few of those moments down the line.

In addition to the thoughts I shared on the video, I grappled with the placed of online marketing in my life and how it interfaces with ministry…or not. I also thought about a time when I was in my teens and came to the brink of starting a bicycle repair shop but was talked out of it by my dad.

I wondered if that had been an early squelching of my entrepreneurial bent.

But he’s been gone 24 years now, and I have now lived longer than he did, so I have no excuses for not doing something I could or should.

Bottom line, I’m continuing to move ahead with these parallel tracks of online marketing and pastoral ministry, with my ministry focus being the transitional consultant role.

The two actually work together well, with the transitional role, which I usually fulfill part time, allowing for the online work. Likewise, the online work generates extra income and makes the transitional role sustainable.

Looking forward to the adventure ahead, continuing to be shaped by my father, but recognizing the path I walk is my own.

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