Word Count: 1067 – Est Reading Time: <6 Minutes
What Pastors Should Stop Doing to Grow Their Church
Every week I talk to a pastor holding a to-do list nobody could finish in three lifetimes. Bulletins. Office hours. Hospital calls. Committee meetings. A sermon that has to be perfect by Sunday. And somewhere underneath all of it, a growing suspicion that none of it is actually growing the church.
Here’s the number that should stop you cold. Pastors in growing churches average five hours a week in personal evangelism. Pastors in non-growing churches average zero hours. Not low. Zero.
That’s not a coincidence. That’s a calendar problem.
Why Your Calendar Matters More Than Your Sermon
Pastors love to obsess over the sermon. It’s the most visible thing you do all week, so it feels like the most important. But a great sermon delivered to a shrinking, disconnected congregation doesn’t grow a church. Relationships with the unchurched grow a church. And relationships take hours you don’t currently have.
So the real question isn’t “how do I find more time.” You don’t find time. You take it back. Here’s where to start.
1. Stop Going to Every Meeting
Pick one church meeting a month. One. It doesn’t matter which one. Everything else is optional, and if a meeting can’t survive without you sitting in it, that’s a leadership problem the church needs to solve without you as the crutch.
Most pastors treat meeting attendance as loyalty. It’s not. It’s just a habit nobody’s questioned in years. Ask yourself which meetings actually require your presence and which ones just expect it. Those are two very different things.
2. Get Out of Bulletin Prep
If your church still hands worshipers a paper bulletin, someone needs to build it, copy it, and fold it. That someone doesn’t need a seminary degree. Hand it off.
And if you’re running screens, ask yourself honestly why you’re still printing anything at all. A paper bulletin in a screen-equipped sanctuary is a poor use of budget and a worse use of your Friday afternoon.
3. Cancel Your Office Hours
You don’t sit behind a desk waiting for a cardiologist to have a slow afternoon. You make an appointment. Your congregation can do the same with you.
Office hours exist to make the pastor available “just in case.” But availability without a purpose is just an interruption waiting to happen. Nobody grows a church, meets a neighbor, or reaches someone far from God while parked behind a desk hoping the phone rings.
4. Let the Church Take Care of the Church
Member care and shut-in visits feel like the job. They’re not, at least not all of it. Scripture is clear that the body cares for the body. Read Ephesians 4:11-12. Read Acts 6:1-4. The apostles hit this exact wall and handed the work to people who could actually do it well, so they could keep doing what only they could do.
Train a care team. Give them the visits. Give yourself back the hours.
5. Train Somebody Else for Hospital Visits
I did two hospital visits at one church, and I never went back after that. Here’s how simple the handoff is. First, recruit two shepherds (at our church there were “built-in” shepherds called “Elders”). Then …Â
Visit one: They watch you. You talk about it afterward.
Visit two: You watch them. You talk about it afterward.
Visit three: They bring someone else to watch, and the chain keeps going.
Three visits and you’ve built a team that can outlast your tenure. Every hour you spend sitting in a hospital room instead of training someone to sit in that room is an hour you’re choosing not to get back.
6. Cut Your Sermon Prep Time Down
The smaller your church, the less time your sermon needs. Cap it at five hours total, and if you’re under 150 in worship, cap it at two. I know how that sounds to a pastor who was trained to treat sermon prep as sacred. It’s not a lack of reverence. It’s math. The hours you’re not spending polishing an outline are hours you can spend with someone who’s never walked through your doors.
If you don’t know how to prepare to preach well in two hours, that’s a skill gap, not a character flaw, and it’s a fixable one. Get the training and reclaim the time. (I teach Proclamation of the Word for the Center for Leadership Ministry at Phillips Seminary if you’re interested.)
What Do You Do With the Time You Get Back?
This is where most pastors stall out. They hand off a task, feel the relief, and then quietly fill the open hour with something else that isn’t networking with the unchurched either. Freed time without a plan just becomes more meetings.
That’s exactly the gap the Get More Time Planner was built to close. It’s a simple four-step process. List everything you actually do. Circle the handful of tasks only you can do. Cross out the ones that don’t serve the church’s mission. Hand off everything else, with names and dates attached, not vague good intentions.
Pastors who run through that exercise honestly are usually stunned by how short their “only I can do this” list actually is. Most of what’s eating your week was never yours to carry.
Download the Get More Time Planner here: https://go.effectivechurch.com/get-more-time
Where This Goes From Here
Do this work and you’ll have real hours to spend building relationships in your community. Whether those relationships turn into Sunday visitors, and whether those visitors stick, is a conversation for another post.
But the hours have to exist first. You can’t reach anyone you don’t have time to meet.
If you’re staring at your calendar and you’re still not sure what to cut or where to start, that’s exactly what a Get Growing Conversation is for. It’s thirty minutes, just you and me, one on one. We’ll look at where your church actually stands right now, get clear on the vision you’re chasing, and name the one obstacle that’s standing between you and it. Then we’ll build a path forward, an actual plan, not a pep talk.
Schedule your Get Growing Conversation here: https://go.effectivechurch.com/get-growing
You’ll fill out a short intake form first. It’s a few quick questions about your church so we skip the basics and spend the full thirty minutes on what actually matters.