Using Deep Work to Maximize Your Ministry Time | World Christian Leadership
Utilizing deep work can enhance ministry productivity by allowing focused time on important tasks, minimizing distractions, fostering creativity, and achieving a sense of balance.
Ministry productivity often feels like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill in the underworld. Just as we seem to be productive and have everything settled, something comes crashing down. Maybe it's a family trip that keeps you on the road for twelve hours, a paper you need to write, an emergency you were completely expecting, or some conflict that arises unexpectedly.
From the normal rhythms - writing sermons, preparing Sunday school lessons, planning events - to the bigger initiatives like refining capital campaigns, searching for employees, or moving new initiatives forward, we need to be productive. We need to bear fruit with all the work we're doing. Ideas must move to implementation.
Ecclesiastes 2:24-3:9 says this.
How do we ensure that in our lives there is a time for everything? How do we "redeem the time because the days are evil"? (Eph. 5:16).
We can use deep work as one of the ways to maximize our productivity in ministry.
Deep work is the type of work that optimizes your performance (44). Cal Newport, an MIT-trained computer science professor at Georgetown University who writes about the intersections of technology, work, and the quest to find depth in an increasingly distracted world, argues that Deep Work is an increasingly valuable yet rare skill.
Newport attests that we have somewhere between 1-4 hours of Deep Work in us per day. Don't expect to execute Deep Work all day, every day. Deep Work requires a strategy that gives you a place, time, and target for what you're trying to accomplish.
High Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) × (Intensity of Focus) (40). You must find ways to spend time intensely on the most important things you need to do - not emails or social media, not even hallway meetings with coworkers. This isn't to say we can completely eliminate these components, nor should we. Unlike some of the subjects in Newport's book, we are ministers of the Gospel. There's going to be some worldly inefficiency because we're dealing with people, and sometimes we have to respond to the urgent rather than the important.
However, this isn't an excuse to avoid intense focus. You can't say you're going to spend 15 minutes on your sermon per week when really you might be copying and pasting from Desiring God or Truth for Life. There must be time when we're in deep thought, undistracted, focused on a singular project, idea, or person.
The youngest professor at the Wharton School of Business produced 5-7 journal articles per year, at the top of his field, while also writing a book. He didn't spend 80-100 hours per week on this one thing but utilized deeply focused work.
Why shouldn't the church utilize this mindset as well? The church should be the most effective organization in the world. The key is to determine what effectiveness is and how we can attain it.
How can Deep Work maximize our ministry effectiveness?
Deep Work Enables You to Devote Yourself in the Midst of Distractions
Distractions are the productivity killer. They pull us away from what we need to devote ourselves to. This is actually Paul's argument in his opinion that it's better to be single than married. He isn't demonizing marriage. He's cautioning against becoming lackadaisical in your devotion to the Lord. When you're married, you have to devote time to your marriage. When you're a parent, you have to devote time to your children. These are great things from the Lord, but Paul warns that we can be distracted from our devotion to God.
Deep Work enables us to devote ourselves to one project for a specific amount of time. We give ourselves to it, knowing that this task will get this amount of uninterrupted time. This allows us to give more of ourselves to it. Sermons need to be internalized. We must devote ourselves to the ministry of the Word and prayer. People need to be counseled. We should devote our time and not think about emails or the next thing on the to-do list.
Deep Work Enables You to Dig Deeply Into Your Projects
Deep Work enables you to dig deeply. Some projects require digging and refining. They can't be solved in one hour or even four hours. They need creativity for a unique solution. We've all encountered projects that need creativity. There are also things that have lots of moving parts and require complicated logistics. If it were easy, it could be done quicker. But Deep Work gives you time to dig deeply. If you're writing a year's worth of children's curriculum, then you need time to plan it out, outline the parts, and begin writing. If you're trying to solve a parking solution, then you need time to understand the layout of your property and potential options. My former church had this issue, so we eventually rented the parking lot of the school and used shuttles to go back and forth. This wasn't an obvious solution at first, but after some time, it became the best way forward.
Deep Work Enables You to Unlock Momentum
Deep Work gives you time to unlock momentum on projects you've wanted to work on. There are always those things we'd like to do, but the tyranny of the urgent gets in the way. If you spend Deep Work on a project, you can begin to unlock momentum. Whenever I write a paper, the start is always the hardest. Once you break through the dam, the water of ideas can begin to flow.
Deep Work Enables You to Have the Christian Sense of Balance
Deep Work allows you to avoid spending extra time with attention residue as your mind shifts from one thing to the next. Deep Work can give you the ability to make progress where you can go home and be with your family. Ministry is difficult. I've heard many people say, "there's no such thing as balance in the ministry." Maybe not in the sense that we get to go to the lake on our boat and sip sweet tea every week, but we can have a Christian sense of balance where we can take care of our households and rest.
Deep Work Enables You to Take a Breath
When Jesus would go into the desolate places to pray, He would often come back seemingly energized and begin to conduct much ministry. Deep Work allows us to not have to worry about everything around us. We can simplify our minds on one thing and go deep with it. This refreshes me. I know it may for you as well to step back from everything and just breathe.
Deep Work by Cal Newport played a major role in my life. He helped me develop a deep work mindset rather than implementing hours and hours of deep work. One of his subjects has kids, and he's learned to toggle deep work on and off. He can be with his kids at lunch, and then when they take a nap, he goes into deep work. It isn't one four-hour stretch but multiple 1-1.5 hour stretches when he can get it. It has allowed me to understand that I can't be productive all day, but I can determine to be productive in bursts.
Deep Work can help you build your productivity muscles.
Implementation
Pick a Project That You Want to Focus Your Deep Work On (Sermon, Planning an Event)
Find the Best Time for You (When Do You Function the Best? Do it then.)
Be Realistic (Start with 1-2 hours)
Put It On Your Calendar (Commit to It)
Let Your Team Know (Tell Your Boss, Employees, Family, Friends so they know where you are)
Caution
David Mathis argues the Bible commends and cautions time management. He uses James 4:13-16 to echo that we cannot plan everything meticulously out: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. Instead, you should say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.' But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil."
This is not to make a new productivity god. We want our work to be unto the Lord. We want to glorify Him in whatever we do. Deep Work can help us maximize our ministry productivity.