Time Management in a Digital Age

Some quotes from Don Carson about the particular challenges of managing time & being effective in ministry in our noisy digital age. From an address on "Is culture shaping us or are we shaping the culture?"

Time Management

It’s tied up in part with the incessant demand of a digital world… There is always digital input somewhere, unless you actually self-consciously cut yourself off from it. So that time management, to allow yourself time to read and think and meditate and pray is becoming a really crucial issue. It’s not just that we are sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent. Most of this stuff is not urgent. We’re sacrificing the important on the altar of the noisy, or on the altar of the digitally visual, on the altar of that little ‘ping’… Somewhere along the line, if you are going to be committed to ministry that is effused with intercession and meditating on the Word of God you are going to have to turn off a whole lot of off switches… It’s becoming a crucial thing for maintaining integrity in ministry.

[from 35.00]

Learn how to use the little bits of time... 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there.

Work hard and play hard and never confuse the two. There are lots of people who work long hours but it’s diluted by all kinds of interruptions… So they put in the hours but when you actually calculate actual productive time they’ve put in it’s not actually that much… An awful lot of it is learning to be efficient at doing one thing at a time.

[question asked about time management from 50.50, these quotes from 54.00]

Lessons from Nehemiah 1-2

Here are some notes from a great Don Carson message on Nehemiah 1-2 (first of 5 messages, here)

Nehemiah’s concern for God’s promises and God’s people. Nehemiah is not for individualistic Christians.

1. A servant who perceives the need with tears and contrition
Nehemiah lives c. a century after the exile to Babylon. There have already been two movements back to Jerusalem. (Ezra 1-6 and Ezra 7-10)
But the remnant is not doing well. They had already had an aborted attempt to rebuild the walls (see Ezra 4.12 etc.)

Nehemiah’s response: not distant professionalism but deep identity with the people of God. cf. Paul, Moses, Isaiah, Ezra. We must so identify with the people of God that we are driven to tears and fasting and intercessory prayer.

2. A servant who prays with deep knowledge of God
Nehemiah presupposes that
a) God is sovereign; “It is very common in Scripture, when things are going wrong, to acknowledge God’s sovereignty”
b) God keeps covenant.
c) God expects repentance where there is sin.
d) God punishes and restores his people. cf. Deuteronomy; Revelation 2-3.
e) God knows his own people and watches over them.
f) God delights in those who revering His name.
g) God controls everything; including the most practical. Nehemiah has thought through enough to know what must be done: he needs imperial sanction (which would be a reversal of the king’s policy of 20 years ago). But he knows that God is sovereign. cf Isaiah 10. “Nehemiah sees that he is ideally placed, and he wonders.”

3. A servant who plans with patience and understanding of God’s enigmatic providence. 2.1-10
Nehemiah has planned what he is going to say, he trust in God’s sovereignty but he doesn’t know the outcome. He does what is right, but God’s sovereignty is enigmatic. God may have an alternative; cf. Esther – 4.14. ‘If I perish I perish’
You still do what is right, what is courageous, what leans on God’s providence.
Nehemiah has thought it all through, but notice that he does the opposite to Ezra! Nehemiah asks for safe-conducts but Ezra doesn’t. But the circumstances are different.

4. A servant who prosecutes with wisdom and collaboration. 2.11-20
arrives with careful reserve; quiet reconnaisance; inclusive leadership (‘we’); ignores the opposition – he is inclusive within God’s people but draws some clear lines here.

Reflections
Nehemiah: a man with a godly, entrepreneurial vision. Ezra the teacher did not build the walls. A vision of how to get from here to there. Preachers need to think entrepreneurially, or work with those who can. God raises up Nehemiahs too.

Embrace hardship

Two helpful quotes on the place of weakness and hardship in the Christian life:

I’ve learned to embrace the suffering, the criticism, the failure and the pain as probably the most productive work of God in my life… What I can’t do is refine myself, I can’t break myself, I can’t crush my own pride, I can’t bring failure into my life… In a sense, the best things that have ever happened to me are the mutinies that have occurred in my church, the disappointments, the misrepresentations.

(John MacArthur, in an interview with Mark Dever here)

Do not fear weakness, illness, or a sense of being overwhelmed. The truth of the matter is that such experiences are often the occasions when God most greatly displays his power. As long as people are impressed by your powerful personality and impressive gifts, there is very little room for you to impress them with a crucified Saviour. ‘I came to you,’ Paul confesses, ‘in weakness and fear, and with much trembling’ (1 Cor 2:3) – so much so that he needed special encouragement from God Himself (Acts 18:9-10). But Paul knew that God’s strength is mostly greatly displayed in connection with our weakness (2 Cor 12.1-10). Although he suffered fears, illness, weakness and a tremendous sense of being overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, he did not fear the fear; his weakness was not compounded by focusing on his weakness. Far from it! He could write, ‘That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong’ (2 Cor 12.10). That is the testimony of a man who has learned to minister under the cross.

(Carson, D.A. on 1 Corinthians 2:3, in (1993) The Cross and Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids: Baker), p.39)

Pride

I have been reminded recently of the awful extent of pride in my heart; how easily I gravitate towards thinking of myself more highly than I ought (Rom 12.3). And in this regard, I was deeply struck by the following thoughts:

When Solomon utters his prayer of dedication of the temple (2 Chronicles 6.12-42), there is a notable absence of pride. How easy it might have been to take pride in the construction of such a magnificent building; how easy to glory in what he and the people had done for their God, what a wonderful example of devotion to the Lord! But Solomon’s prayer does not glory in their work, but recognises their utter sinfulness before the God of heaven and their need for His forgiveness.

Carson writes:
The principal burden of what Solomon asks may be summarized quite simply. In the future, when either individual Israelites sin or the entire nation sinks into one sin or another, if they then turn away from their sin and pray toward the temple, Solomon asks that God himself will hear from heaven, and forgive their sin (6:21-39). There are [several] remarkable elements to these petitions.

First, there is an astonishingly realistic assessment of the propensity of the people to sin…

Second, however central the temple is to be as a focus for the prayers of the people (not least when they sin), God will hear their prayers not from the temple but from heaven, his dwelling-place…

Third, insofar as the temple is critical, it is seen as the center of religion and worship that deals with the forgiveness of sin and thus restores sinners to God. The heart of the temple is not the choirs and the ceremonies, but the forgiveness of sin. In this day of ill-defined spirituality, it is vital that we remember this point.[1]

How easy it is to take pride in one’s abilities, one’s achievements, one’s knowledge. Yet at the heart of true religion – of Christianity – is the stark reality of our shameful naked sinfulness before a holy God, and our sheer need of his pardon. That third point made by Carson above is thus translated into the centrality of the cross of Jesus Christ in our Christian lives. All my human pride, my pretensions, my thinking highly of myself, is stripped bare and shown to be utter filth by the cross.


[1] Carson, D.A. (1998) For the Love of God (Volume One) (Leicester: IVP), meditation for December 6th