The lesson I am going to teach you today is one that took me a long time to grasp was important and a while to get good at now, but I am getting much better at it nowadays, and I absolutely see how important it is now. I call this margin, other people may have the same principle but give it a different name.
In the early days, I lived my life and did my ministry without margin. What do I mean? I would fly to America, land on Monday, drive to Andrew Wommack’s pastor’s conference, get there Monday evening, which in my bodyclock was 4am, and force myself to listen to Andrew that night, and then spend Tuesday to Friday in meeting after meeting, taking notes, thinking about how to apply what I am learning to the church, getting up early to pastor people by text and phone, then I would fly back late Saturday night, land in Heathrow 6am-ish Sunday morning, drive back to Dagenham, and preach that Sunday morning.
I used to have something going on every moment of every day, I would literally go to a restaurant near my house, sit there all day and meet someone at 9am, 10am, 11am, have lunch with someone at 12noon, meet someone 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, go from pastoral encounter to pastoral encounter. And to be honest, I was proud – in the right and wrong senses of the word – in my ability to manage my time. And I believe in being productive and I believe in good time management. I would go weeks and weeks without a day off, and often collapse in exhaustion. I was convinced if I could keep up an intense schedule, plan properly, work hard enough and long enough and intensely enough, I could actually get all the kingdom work done. Then I could have a day off because everything would be done, all our pastors would be perfectly discipled and all our systems would be in place, and all our people would be on fire and healed and emotionally healed and helped.
I am embarrassed by how long it took me to realize that I was literally doing MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and failing every time. And above all I was failing my wife and family, because I didn’t really schedule time for them.
There is a law of business called Parkinson’s law. It says “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. I won’t say more about it, you can google it and find some interesting information about it – but what it means for you as a leader, especially as a ministry leader such as a pastor – YOU HAVE TO MAKE MARGINS IN YOUR LIFE – they will not happen by accident.
So I presume you have a written or online TO DO list and calendar. If you don’t, your church will never grow above around fifty. That’s a simple truth. I presume you use it. Now, what you need to do to create margin is deliberately block out areas. You cannot keep burning the candle at both ends, and if you do – then you aren’t burning as bright as you think you are.
Listen – activity is not fruitfulness. Activity can be a heavy yoke, and it is a very poor substitute for intimacy. So when I wake up in the morning now, I don’t even have the church phone in my room. I put on the Bible app on my personal phone, or listen to a podcast, or do something to build my soul while I wash and get ready for the day. Then, before I action anything, I spend normally about two hours praying in tongues, studying the Word, reading good Christian literature (right now, I read a chapter of Christ the Healer, a chapter of an Andrew Wommack book and a chapter of a Jerry Savelle book, I may read more, but I do not read less). If you call me in that two hour period, I am not answering. That is creating margin.
Margin is not just for your private devotional life as well, it is also for resting. It is also for taking Amanda out on a date, it is also about spending time with my children (and now grandchildren). It is also about putting my feet up and watching an episode of Star Trek, or going to the gym, or whatever.
Even though I know everything I say about activity and rest, and the need for a Sabbath, my personality is such that I need to constantly watch myself for this. It’s interesting that Ashley and Carlie did not feel led by the Lord to create a go on mission fund for me or a go to a conference fund for me, but a holiday fund! Creating margin is not easy when I love working so much, love what I do, thrive on getting things done, thrive on putting systems in place, but I have realized the more responsibility God gives me to leader more and more people, and lead more and more leaders, the more vital it is that I have margin in my life.
Let me tell you two things I have learned about margins that help me so much – firstly, margin gives me creativity. There is always more than one way to skin a cat, and sometimes I get caught up in – let’s get it done this way – and having a rest, just reading a police procedural, just going to the gym and lifting some heavy weights, just a walk – that opens my mind to better ideas, to know how to handle some people better, to develop my ability to work outside of the box. Some of the best ideas I have had have come from doing nothing – I had to get quiet.
This week, I arrived at a lunch with someone at the wrong time, I arrived 90 minutes early, it was entirely my mistake, and it was a thirty minute drive so going home was a bit foolish. So I found a place to just sit and relax, I didn’t open my phone and start going through my emails, I just played a computer game and started relaxing. During that moment, I felt it was really important that I write a book on every Scripture in the New Testament that refers to the gospel so that the church knows exactly what the gospel is. The idea came so strong because I had (accidentally in this case) created a little margin in my life. I wrote down the idea and in the next couple of weeks will revisit it and start writing. That’s one of the powers of margin, it gets you out of a rut, and let’s your subconscious think about things without you constantly running your conscious mind on full power.
Secondly, margin makes you reflective. I am not good at reflecting, I like doing. But if all we do is do and we never think about what we do, what we do will never get better, and our leadership ability will get stuck. That’s why I write these blogs, to make you reflect on yourself as a leader.
Every pastor that has quit Tree of Life Church it has been the same reason – they just kept giving out and giving out – and I tried to help them, but they stopped coming to our conferences, stopped listening to me on Wednesdays, stopped coming to our pastors meeting. All of those are actually margin for your life! As a leader you need that margin!
Remember as a man thinks in his heart – that’s who he is. If you are so busy, you are all do do do, and never think think think, then you will never be more than who you are. Unless you can think bigger and think more and spend time thinking – thinking is like all your muscles in your body – use it or lose it – I am not talking about a minute here and a few seconds in the shower (whenever someone tells me – God spoke to me in the shower, I know God is short of places where that person is not on their phone, not doing, not exhausting themselves with activity). I am talking about making space in your life.
If you are always running from one thing to another, you will never be a better thinker and you will stay the same. Reading is a very important part of this, I read at least a book a week – I read fiction to relax, but I read a lot of non-fiction, mainly Christian, but also books on leadership and so on. All of that happens in the margin, I have to stop doing to think. And when I think, who I am in my heart grows, and I grow.
Please, hear my heart in this, take time this week to have margins. PUT IT IN YOUR DIARY. I know when I am praying tomorrow, that time is already booked in my diary, I know when I am going to the gym, that time is already booked out. I will listen to a podcast walking to the gym and to George Pearsons at the gym. It’s all margin. If I worked from dusk to dawn, I would not be growing, the Tree would not be growing, our debts would never be paid off, our lives would not be where they are, our freedom would not be manifest.
Selah.
Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers 