Can you learn what “having a good day” actually means?

Can you learn what “having a good day” actually means?

I walked into my home office this morning and realized that a problem was afoot.

Literally.

I had around 4 pairs of shoes strewn about.

That is an issue because a.) shoes don’t go there and b.) it is indicative of a larger problem. You see, my home office is decently sacred. It is full of the things that bring me joy. I’ve got my great-grandfathers 110+ year old desk in there (with the matching chair), a decent amount of books, a place to play music, my reading chair and a few other things. It is the space in my home that physically builds my life and passion.

And besides shoes on the floor, I’ve got stuff piled up in my reading chair and the desk is an absolute wreck.

The bigger issue is my physical clutter represents my mental clutter. And it is stopping me from doing the things that keep me in equilibrium.

Last week I released a podcast episode where I talked about another one of these points of conflict, namely that I had not been reading this past month. In the episode I also shared about how I have been using a bullet journal to track my habits and how they relate to my own internalized well being. (check out the episode here.)

It’s hard to spend any time reading when the place where you read is covered in camera gear, loose papers, and other assorted things.

A few years ago I read a fantastic compilation book on teams from Harvard Business Review. But the best article in the book, or the best learning for me didn’t really have anything to do with teams, but was a report on research done helping people define what made a day good. Their findings were that people who had the ability to complete their tasks often had the highest self-reporting of “a good day” and that good days/bad days really didn’t have anything to do with the things we think they might. Ever since then I have thought heavy about how intentionality in time management has the greatest ability to affect us in both positive and negative ways.

So I track several different things in my life now. You can listen back to the episode to get an idea of what those are, but I will put two things out there as the most important. My Peace/Chaos scale and measuring gratitude.

I learned peace/chaos from my good friend JD Walt. It simply means rating our peace on a scale of 1-10 and our chaos on a scale of 1-10. These numbers interrelate with each other. The scale also helps us realize that it is possible to be in high levels of chaos (or stress) while also maintaining a high level of peace. It is only when those numbers get off-kilter and for a period of time that we need to be worried.

I also track my gratitude. This is possibly the biggest thing for me. I do it each day because I need to be thinking about, processing, and self-identifying thanksgiving and faithfulness in my own words. I pick one thing each day to name.

These things, combined with my habit tracking, help me understand my own contribution to my emotional health. They keep me on track because I am learning what it consciously means to avoid disaster in my own life. It makes me accountable to the way I am able to work with others, lead my churches and staff, and be the best disciple of Jesus I can be.

How have you learned you own contributions to good days and bad days?

The Greatest Notebook for Productivity Ever | Video

The Greatest Notebook for Productivity Ever | Video

I notebook. A bunch. If you have been listening to the podcast or following me on Instagram (or the Productive Pastor Insta), the Muji A5 notebook will be a familiar sight. I pretty much have a stash of them on me at all times. I keep 4 in a travelers notebook, and I usually have a couple floating loose in my backpack. I love them because of their size, their price, and how they fit into my ecosystem of notebooks, devotion, and productivity.

The Greatest Notebook for Productivity Ever is the Muji A5

Check out the video right here.

 

If you want to pick up your own stash of muji notebooks, just head right here. If you want a travelers notebook, here is a great first one.

Random Resources

Random Resources

I make a bunch of random documents. For myself, sometimes the best thing to do is make a worksheet or larger document (especially for sermon research). Many times, I end up posting a picture on instagram or talk about them on some other platform. I’ll upload certain ones here, so feel free to download and use.

While I am totally cool sharing these things, my hope is that they are accomplishing two goals. The first, that it might save you a little bit of time in your own research, many of these things are just about getting it on paper so I can see the broader picture. No real original thought or work here. The second is so that you can see how I have found ways to hack sermon preparation, make ministry easier, or streamline a workflow for myself. Then you can start creating your own documents along these lines for your ministry and sculpt them to meet your immediate needs.

Random Resources

Fruits of the Spirit root usage list

I created this while preparing for a sermon series on the fruits of the spirit. It has the BDAG definition, the Strongs definition, and every occurrence of the lexeme (grammatical family) in the New Testament. I used Accordance Bible to make this list for myself.

How I make Templates in Trello

Here’s a video about how I use Trello to make templates for different types of ministry. They are great for better repeatable processes. You can find all my Trello related content at revchadbrooks.com/trello.

3 Lessons I Learned in a Busy (but effective) Season of Ministry

3 Lessons I Learned in a Busy (but effective) Season of Ministry

I’m writing this post while sipping coffee, sitting at the camp and waiting for my breakfast to come out of the over. I spent the night here after an evening meeting out of town and this was closer than the house. I had the ability to spend time with good friends I rarely see after the meeting and I’m waiting for more good friends to show up at the camp so we can have an evening together and stay the night.

I couldn’t do any of this 6 months ago and I’m doing most of this because of the last 6 months.

I want to share you with what I learned from a fast and furious ministry pace that was absolutely worth it, but something I want to avoid at all costs in the future. For a little background information, in six months, our 3-year-old church bought property, went into a capital campaign, built a parking lot, and transitioned into new (to us) temporary space while we are waiting to build our first worship center…all this while keeping up with the regular parts of ministry! There are times when ministry gets busy and it is needless, and their are time where busy has to happen. Here is how I handled (the good and the bad).

3 Lessons I Learned in a Busy Season of Ministry

Know what your willing to lose.
Things are going to get a little crazy. Trust me. I remember when we realized this was just going to be a break-neck pace and we ended up making a rule about new projects. To think you are going to keep everything up at 100% while moving towards some specific goals isn’t realistic.

If you know you are going to drop a few balls, name them before they slip out of your hands. This is a good time to define what is actually mission-critical and realize what can wait for a few months before it gets careful attention. I remember getting a few incredible ideas during this season and having to shelf them. There will be things personally and work-related that simply can’t get the attention it needs during this time.

At the same time, you need to define what balls you need to absolutely hold on to during this season. For us, it meant Sunday morning worship, strategic planning/meeting and communication. In fact, we doubled down on these things. It was worth it. In the middle of a season where we weren’t pursuing many ancillary things, we managed to grow as a church, have a very successful capital campaign and manage our transition to a new space without any major hiccups.

Define your onramps and offramps.
The funny thing is nearly all of these things went straight into each other, if not happening simultaneously. What I could have done better was try to schedule bits of time in-between them to relax and reset. I developed a nasty sinus infection (literally during) the final sermon of our capital campaign. I had planned to spend a few days relaxing here at the camp but spent it in bed at the house.

I also went straight from moving the church to spending a week as part of the design team of our Annual Conference. I serve as the technical director, so I immediately went from physically demanding situations and problem-solving into a week of physically demanding situations and problem-solving!

I could have planned this better, but we realized our move date was also dependent on how many Sundays we had in the new space before we started losing tons of folks serving due to vacations. We needed to get it up and running quickly.

One of the things I did a decent job at keeping up with was going to the gym (typically hitting twice a week), and did a good job at staying focused on my devotional life. I also did a good amount of reading during the time. I managed to carve out time for these activities because I knew these tiny sabbaths would make or break everything.

I did pretty bad at defining any onramps and offramp, so let’s chalk this up to a learning situation.

Intentionally plan your days and weeks.
Whenever you are working on time-sensitive projects, it helps to have a great calendar. Imagine you are cooking Thanksgiving dinner. You have to plan for oven space, prep time, pot usage and many other variables. This is bigger than something one person can do, but you need to have one person keeping a master calendar.

You can do big things like this if you have a great punch list written out and you can tackle one or two things a day. It makes it less stressful and keeps the ball moving forward. When you come into a sticking point (and you will), you will have a few different options you can run in until the issue sorts itself out.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was to never let the bus stop. You might have to make a turn, change lanes or shift into neutral, but don’t let it stop. These types of seasons are busy enough without having to start everything again. Also, have ways you can pivot and keep momentum.

Final Thoughts.

Here is what I feel like I learned the most.
You will absolutely figure out what you are horrible at.
You will find out what others are gifted at.
You will learn the place you fit during these sorts of seasons
You will learn that you, your leadership and church are capable of truly amazing things.

In the end, you can sit back, breathe deeply and realize all of the amazing things God is teaching and showing you. And it’s absolutely worth it.

 

DIY whiteboard shopping list

DIY whiteboard shopping list

I’m a tad bit obsessed with my whiteboard. I probably use it and fill it up around 10x a week. And that’s just my main one. I have 4 at the house. People ask me about my whiteboard problem all the time, mainly because it shows up on my instagram channel a good bit. I get asked about supplies often, so here is a DIY Whiteboard shopping list.

DIY Whiteboard Shopping List

  1. You need a surface. I use this from Home Depot, but any big box store should have something. You want to look for a smooth surface, with absolutely no texture. Some folks choose to use a car wax on the surface, but the last few I have built haven’t really needed it.
  2. I’ve tried TONS of whiteboard markers. The best, absolutely hands down, is the Amazon basics brand. They are thick, leave great lines and keep a good tip.
  3. Since this is a DIY solution, you will need to get some marker fluid. Trust me. The best I have found is the Evererase  Everclean fluid.
  4. I’ve done the dance with shop towels, microfiber cloths and anything else I can find. Now, I just buy a whiteboard eraser. Any will do, these are what I typically go for.

I’m going to do a build video for my next whiteboard, but until then, I hope this shopping list helps. Leave a picture of your complete setup in the comments!

Sermon Audio Embedding-more on sermon engagement

Sermon Audio Embedding-more on sermon engagement

Last week, I published episode 60 of The Productive Pastor. It was all about building a sermon engagement strategy and taking your sermon past Sunday and into the next week (and time beyond). All of the content was directed at leveraging the time and power of your sermon for better engagement across your community.

One of the key pieces was the sermon preview. This is an anchor point blog post, with information about the upcoming sermon and resources to engage (links to scripture, discussion guides, etc). As part of the blog post, I shared two resources about sharing your sermon audio. I have had several questions about these two resources, so I wanted to show them side-by-side.

Series Engine
Series Engine is an embedded audio player designed specifically for sharing sermon audio/video in a wordpress site. It offers organization for each series, the ability to upload image files. It also will help you link your sermon audio to iTunes via RSS. I have never used Series Engine for podcasting, but it is possible.

This means you host your audio through your self-hosted wordpress website, not an outside service.

I currently do not use series engine, but it is a fantastic way to publish sermon audio. If you want to do a podcast, you can. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it is totally possible. This is what the Series Engine player looks like embedded (note. I haven’t used it in several years, so this content is dated).

Chad Brooks - January 5, 2014

The Practice of the Presence of God

The Practice of the Presence of God

Have you ever found yourself stuck in the past? Have you wondered where the presence of God exists in time? The best way for us to practice the presence is to find it in the present.

From Series: "special messages"

Special Messages are not in a series. They exist on their own!

More From "special messages"

Powered by Series Engine

Smart Podcast Player
I currently use the Smart Podcast Player for both Productive Pastor and for our church’s sermon previews. You can check those out here if you want. What I love about it is how it offers a single track option AND archived episodes in a larger player. It doesn’t offer categorization (for sermon series), but it wasn’t designed for that use case. It requires you to offer hosting at a different host (I recommend libsyn.com) and does NOT generate an RSS feed for you.

For the sake of this post, we will pretend the Productive Pastor is a sermon podcast.

The Smart Track Player

Smart Podcast Player

Both Series Engine and the Smart Podcast Player are designed for self-hosted wordpress sites and use shortcode technology. This makes using and integrating them super easy.