So, the new year has begun – that is, the year that starts on Labor Day. In this school year, will you finally take control of your time management, to include your program and worship committee management and your visitation and counseling management and your stewardship and budget management, not to mention your family meals, sports, and day-off management?

You have heard the axioms that pave the way: “Clear the calendar;” “Keep it simple, stupid;” “You can’t be all things to all people;” “Get the right people on the bus.” Will you interruption-proof your office time and sabbath-protect your days off, and shush all congregational opinionating and political polarizing, so that everyone marches to the same drum (yours, I mean, God’s)?

As a young pastor four decades ago, I dug into such management efforts, especially around the notion then dubbed as “ministry-by-objectives.” I read volumes of Lyle Schaller, the Peter Drukker of Christian leadership studies. I also read lots of Tom Peters and attended secular management seminars (analyzing their shameless profit-driven strategies) to learn and then Christianize them for the benefit of my growing church. Yes, I learned to set long-term objectives and short-term goals (aka long-term goals and short-term objectives). Even the engineering project managers on the Session were impressed.

But something kept holding me back. My Christianizing of such strategizing couldn’t get off the ground. I couldn’t choose just one long-term objective. Oh, I could write pithy mission statements of 13 words or less. I could coach my leadership team (elders and staff) to formulate 17-word vision statements. But the resulting words discounted the efforts of salt-of-the-earth members whose work drew no spotlight. Our statements had sizzle, but they overlooked our most essential tasks. Truth be told, we couldn’t just “find a niche, make a widget to fill it, and market it to a singular demographic group,” as Harvard Business School was teaching its aspiring business builders.

In fact, we had truths to be told. They were found in our Bible, all 1000 pages of it – and summarized in our Book of Confessions, all 300 pages – and formulated in the Book of Order, 200 pages more. Fifteen hundred pages did not fit on a business card.

In that final book we do hear about the Great Ends of the Church, six of them, which I could compress down to four:  Caring for one another, Outreach to neighbors near and far, Devotion to God in worship and prayer, and Empowering one another to do all of the above. The “Secret C.O.D.E.” became a memory device to help keep us on track.  But it didn’t trim our work. It reinforced the timeless traditions and proliferated into innumerable possibilities that launched out in directions we’d never before contemplated.

What resulted were church calendars as packed as those of congregations five times our size. And yet we accomplished the work with less paid staff members than churches half our size.  And my own time management usually kept in check.

How? By realizing even before entering my first installed pastorate that I had two essential tasks to accomplish:  1) to weekly preach passionately and relevantly the Gospel in any one of the gazillion ways it is presented in Scripture, and 2) particular to this issue, to authorize and empower every one of my members of every age to discern and exercise their spiritual gifts and talents and skills and hopes and dreams and visions and callings without asking my permission.

Prior to his ascension, Jesus gave his permission. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Power. Dunamis (the etymological root of dynamite). He was empowering them, and ten days later, 108 more and within hours, 3000 more of them to do the work of ministry. And ever since then Jesus has been empowering his followers to do the same. Those disciples who returned to fishing after his crucifixion, and went into hiding after his resurrection, now, by the dunamis of the Holy Spirit, went out and turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6).

Why?  Because they were empowered and authorized (exousia) to carry out every aspect (1000 pages’ worth) of God’s mission in the world. Did the 12 apostolic leaders manage their members’ every effort, thereby corralling the movement and exhausting themselves with a collective performance anxiety?  Heck no.  They sent the people out to expand the work, as the Spirit led them.

In my years of ministry in expanding congregations, I managed five years of my son’s Little League baseball, attended both of our kids’ every gym meet, enjoyed days off with my wife and used vacation times to the full extent that my terms of call allowed. And my family life and congregational life usually flourished (obviously not always). And each church was known widely for the way we loved each other, led outreach efforts, worshiped inspiringly, and engaged so many in meaningful ministry.

What about those axioms?  None of them has any basis in our holy books, except the one about not being “all things to all people” – which is the dead opposite of Scripture says. In the God-inspired words of Paul, “I have become all things to all people that I might win all” (2 Corin. 9:2).

So how can you manage your ministry and time better? By empowering, authorizing and trusting all those in your fellowship, whether it numbers 999 or 99 or just 9, to do the work of ministry (See Eph. 4-11-13). And, while offering some expertise, nevertheless, by giving up the stifling and debilitating need to control them. Start right now by recruiting and empowering a corps of empaths to help you watch out for any who may stray, so they can share your calling to be a good shepherd over every sheep in the fold, especially those inclined to wander.

So here’s an axiom to try out.  To borrow the rhetorical device Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard it said, ‘Focus, focus, focus.’  But I say to you, ‘Peripherate, peripherate, peripherate, peripherate.’” – the fourth one added for emphasis.