Rookie Pastor Work Flow: Ryne Isaac

Sometimes as a Rookie Pastor it can be hard to figure out some of the practical aspects of “doing ministry”. To speak to this I have asked several other Rookie Pastors what their work flow looks like and will be sharing them with you on Fridays. First up:

Ryne Isaac a great Student Pastor in Central Illinois.

I really struggle with keeping consistency in the office from week to week. I’ve established some recently with my life outside of the office, but still trying to figure out what’s best Mon-Thur.

General Workflow

Monday – email leaders with any information they need for the week (like small group material). final prep for Wednesday night teaching and group material. create games, graphics, videos, etc. for our service. leave a little early to meet with a few students for discipleship/Bible study.

Tuesday – (some mornings) meet with other ministers. afternoon all staff meeting. the rest of the day I usually use for pressing needs.

Wednesday – is all about our service that night. i create our MediaShout presentation in the morning and practice my teaching. in the afternoon i set up, clean whatever necessary and the band usually shows up for a run through after school.

Thursday – update spending with budget. begin preparation for teaching (can never seem to get over a week out) and group material. after school meet with student to create next week’s service and brainstorm for upcoming series.

Friday - day off, keep it pure.

As you can see from my typical workflow, I don’t have built in margin for planning trips or events. I usually take those as they come, trying to make the most of weeks when I’m not teaching.

What do you, or do you wish you delegated?

I help a student pick out worship music, but they lead practice and worship on Wednesday nights. We create our service together.

I have an adult leader that keeps us stocked on snacks at the Building. Recently I have asked her to take over tracking our attendance and follow up ministry.

This year I have only taught 60-70% of the time. I delegate teaching to both leaders in our ministry and from outside, it’s been a huge improvement for us.

What Tools do you use?

All budget, students, attendance, trip information is tracked with Excel (I know sexy).

I use Google Docs a LOT. It makes so much more sense to have it on the cloud to access anywhere and be able to easily link people to content they need.

I’ve finally caught on with Evernote. I take notes from meetings, shopping lists, even create my teachings in Evernote so that I can deliver them from my iPad.

We use Planning Center to create our services and schedule band members, etc. Still growing in this area.

TXT Signal is how we mass TXT to communicate with our students.

Creative

Don’t get out of the office as much as I’d like. I do shut the door, put coffee on and some chill tunes for planning. Each break (summer and winter) I plan out the entire semester and I try to head of site to Starbucks or Panera to accomplish that.