Thinking Through the New Year

If you haven’t noticed, my blog has been pretty quiet for the past few weeks. It’s been a busy time with all the excitement of the Christmas season, and I have definitely been doing a lot of planning and thinking. For the first time in my life, I’m thinking through some long term goals. In order for me to be the best husband, father, and pastor that I can be, I am making some changes.

One of the biggest changes is the amount of time I use the computer in the evenings.  While it may seem minor, I am making sure I am fully present for my family. That means I am disconnecting from much of the tech world after I get home until the kids go to bed. Although, I’ve had much less time to work on the blog, there is no doubt that I am making the right decision. I will continue posting to the blog, but it will not be as frequent as in the past. My goal is 3 high quality posts per week. I simply don’t have the time to do more than that right now with the demands of a growing church and a busy family.  I will still be on twitter for other day-to-day thoughts, so you can follow me there.

I am also making changes in the way I take care of myself. I want to finish strong and I want to finish healthy.  That means I will be working out and eating healthier and taking more time off. I’ll share some more of my goals for the next few years in a future post. I am excited about the changes and I want you, my blog readers, to know that this site will continue to have great information about church technology, about ministry in a small town, and about the lessons I learn along the way.

Mike

I am a former design engineer who now pastors Cornerstone Community Church in Galax, Virginia. I'm passionate about following Jesus and I love technology. I've been married to Jennifer for 28 years, and we have three adult children.

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3 Responses

  1. Mike, my hat is off to you. I like your new resolutions and I plan to also start taking more time off. This year I have spent plent of time with my family but I have had little down time. It has been just constantly on the go. I am going to continue to spend lots of time with family and take more down time. My biggest need is to have alone, quiet time for sermon preparation. Anyway, I like your blog posts a lot, they are very helpful to me. Hope that we can do some things together in 2010. I would love to talk to you about going to Catalyst with you guys when you go.
    Ronnie
    My recent post This Day In The Life Of Your Pastor – December 29, 2009

    • Mike says:

      Thanks Ronnie, I would love to get together more often as well. I've been thinking of creating a youth ministry get-together for area youth workers. Maybe that can happen this year as well. I'm not completely sure I'll go to Catalyst this year, but I'll let you know if we do. Another conference that you may want to checkout is Unleash at Newspring. It's a one-day conference in March and we are taking a few people down. info at http://www.unleashconference.com

      Sermon prep definitely takes the majority of my time during the week. Most people don't realize how much time it takes to develop and research sermons each week. We have to take control of our calendars, and we have to take care of ourselves in ministry. Thanks for all you do for the Kingdom

  2. Mike says:

    Mark Batterson has a great post today on creating margin in your life. You can check it out at http://evotional.com/2009/12/seven-margin-maxims….
    Here is part of his message

    if you don't control your calendar, your calendar will control you. Here are seven margin maxims:

    1) Put Your Family First
    2) Guard Your Day Off
    3) Don't Check Email During Peak Productivity Hours
    4) Get Out of the Office Whenever Possible
    5) Start Your Day With Devotions
    6) Put Together a Stop Doing List
    7) Use All Your Vacation Days

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