20 Tips for Reducing Stress

Mark Driscoll (Wikipedia) continues his series Death by Ministry. In part 9 he shares 20 tips for reducing your level of stress.

1. Accept the size of your plate and fill it.
2. Exercise.
3. Do not allow technology to be your Lord.
   1. Have two cell phones.
   2. Have two email accounts.
   3. Have someone schedule appointments and screen all email.
   4. Consider getting rid of your voicemail.
   5. Delete emails quickly.
   6. Have an assistant send you a daily items email.
   7. Use an out-of-office autoreply as needed.
4. Sabbath hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually.
5. Schedule your vacations first and block them out on your calendar.
6. Pick an acceptable release valve.
7. Appoint someone other than your wife as your lightning rod.
8. Spend most of your time training leaders.
9. Pay attention to what God is saying through your body and emotions.
10. Feel your emotions but do not allow them to drive you in a bad direction.
11. Do not worry yourself into a frenzy.
12. Work from conviction, not guilt.
13. Get a coach or a counselor.
14. Have a study and an office.
15. Schedule meetings rarely.
16. Say no, and keep saying no.
17. Get a wedding coordinator.
18. Carry a notebook at all times to jot thoughts and notes.
19. See your days as buckets to fill.
20. Consider regular medical massage.

Many good suggestions and reminders. Do you agree? Disagree? Have any others that you’ve found helpful?

Here are all the contributions to the series so far.

• Death by Ministry (Part 1) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 2) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 3) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 4) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 5) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 6) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 7) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 8) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 9) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 10) | Video
• Death by Ministry (Part 11) | Video

See our previous post: The Burden of Pastoral Ministry.

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Maximize Your Internet Time

The web can be a great tool. Email makes communicating very convenient. Blogs and RSS feeds enable us to keep track of massive amounts of helpful content. All of these things are supposed to make life easier for us and save us time, but often they take more time than we should be devoting to them.

Scott Young shares some tips for how he cut 75% of his time on the Internet and maximized his productivity.

1. Make it Daily
   Find a specific time of day you will leave for internet time. . . . Consistency is crucial when making a pattern of behavior, so constantly changing the time or conditions I run the ritual would make it less effective.
2. Prioritize
   Write down on a piece of paper the numbers one through ten. Use this list to prioritize the importance of various sites, inboxes and forums you visit. . . .
3. Queue It Up
   Once I’ve created a list of internet sites to check, my next goal is to queue up all the places I will visit along my browsers toolbar. This cuts out time typing in address names or searching for a specific part of a larger site. . . .
4. Set a Time Limit
   Your ritual may be a little faster, but it won’t really improve your productivity unless you set a time limit. . . . Normally I keep my time limit between 30-45 minutes. . . .
5. Group all Internet Activity into One Point
   Grouping all your net activity onto your daily ritual keeps it from creeping out and stealing time from your day. . . .
6. Make it a Habit
   Take out a thirty day trial to help reinforce your new internet ritual. If you want tips on how to make it a habit, check out my Habitual Mastery series or stay tuned for my upcoming book, How to Change a Habit. . . .

Read the whole post.

HT: Brian Collins

You may also find these related posts helpful.

• Mark Goodacre: How access to the internet interferes with writing
• Jim West: Again, I’m Forced to Disagree with Mark
• Rick Brannan: To blog or not to blog? The answer is “yes”
• Mark Goodacre: I am not thinking of giving up blogging

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Tips for Preaching Multiple Times a Week

Steve Mathewson shares some tips on how to prepare multiple sermons per week.

1. You must prioritize! Spend most of your time preparing the sermon for your ‘primary’ worship service(s), and spend less time preparing for the ‘secondary’ preaching opportunity. . . .
2. Feel free to recycle! A good sermon is worth preaching twice, especially when you re-work it and tinker with it the second time around. . . .
3. Expand themes or material from your primary sermon for your sermon in the secondary setting. . . . Usually, you’ll have more material than you can use when you’re done studying for your primary sermon. So, use it in your secondary sermon!
4. Use the secondary setting to wrestle with application. In my opinion, North American Christianity does not devote enough time to this! . . .
5. Use secondary settings to let others in the church exercise and develop their gifts! . . . Reserve these opportunities for other pastoral staff members or for preachers-in-training.

Read the two posts at the PreachingToday blog:

• When You Have to Prepare More Than One Sermon Per Week (Part 1)
• When You Have to Prepare More Than One Sermon Per Week (Part 2)

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