How to Balance Multiple Church Roles as a Missions Leader

Church missions leaders generally have more than one role in the church. Often the other roles have more urgent responsibilities that make it hard to prioritize the important, but less urgent global missions roles. This resource will provide practical ways in which you can make sure your global missions role and other roles in the church are well-balanced.

It is estimated that there are less than 200 missions leaders in North America that have global missions as the focus of their full-time staff position. Almost every global missions leader has another role within the church that they need to give time and attention to. Whether it be youth ministry, worship, operations, local missions, young professionals, etc. that other role tends to have more urgent matters to attend to that make prioritizing global missions efforts difficult. 

In a church staff role one is constantly juggling what needs to get done. There is more to do than one can ever do in a 40 (or 50) hour week. Choosing what is most important is sometimes at odds with what is most urgent. Causing, a staff member in charge of missions, to sometimes neglect their global missions role to do the urgent tasks of their other role in the church. It is the goal of this resource to help you balance having multiple roles in the church so that you can do each with the right amount of excellence.  Let’s dive into some ideas. 

Setting Up Priorities

Stephen Covey in his famous self-help book First Things First presents an idea of time management called the Four Quadrants. In the Four Quadrants he helps us understand that our tasks and responsibilities can be prioritized and categorized based on a combination of being important or urgent. Put into the quadrants they are:

The vision of the Four Quadrants is to help one fulfill the priorities they have by categorizing their tasks and opportunities correctly and giving the right amount of attention based on that categorization. The specific goal of the Four Quadrants is to help one live in important, but not urgent (Quadrant II) as much as possible. By finding quick ways to move through the important and urgent (Quadrant I) through systems; delegating urgent, but non-important activities (Quadrant III) activities and eliminating not important or urgent (Quadrant IV) activities; one is able to work out of the creative and unrushed space of the important, but not urgent (Quadrant II). 

Do you feel like you can’t get into Quadrant II? Having multiple roles certainly makes this more challenging. Because the majority of these other roles have a lot of Quadrant I priorities, many missions leaders can struggle to block off time for the important, but not urgent priorities of global missions. Are there ways that you can order your vocational life so that you can balance the different aspects of ministry and give appropriate time to each?

Now, I’m sure that some of you would say, “I do my best work when a matter is urgent and important.” While that may be true for some of you in sermons or shepherding issues, global missions leadership takes time, planning, and intentionality because of its distant proximity, slow pace, and need for preparation. Global impact is not immediate. It takes time to get people, finances, and plans into  place. It takes forward thinking that one will not prioritize if they live completely in the urgent (Quadrant I).

Moving Towards Quadrant II

As mentioned, with multiple roles in a church, it is important to create space for each of these roles through planning so that one does not overrun the others, or vice versa. Covey gives some action steps with the four quadrants. Let’s look at these in a little different order:

Eliminate

Begin by thinking through what in your vocational life that you need to eliminate. Maybe there are some tasks that get assigned to you that you could ask your supervisor if they are necessary. Maybe there’s a conversation you need to have with one of your church members to tell them that you can’t do that ministry endeavor they want anymore. Maybe there’s a missions partnership that is just taking up too much time and energy and you need to eliminate it. 

These can be tough decisions, but to be able to prioritize all that God has for you, these are important considerations that need to be made with time and intentionality.

Delegate

I have struggled to delegate in my life. Not because I do not think people can do the things I want to delegate, but because I do not want to put that burden on them. I have learned that in order for me to grow in my leadership capacity and in order for others to step up to what God has called them to do I MUST delegate.

Jesus, when on earth, was awesome at delegation. While Jesus could have accomplished his mission at any moment, he instead chose to delegate his mission and ministry to the twelve apostles. The Gospels are clear that these were ordinary men. Not the type you would delegate the greatest message and mission in the universe to. But Jesus did. Certainly, if Jesus can delegate all that to twelve people, we can delegate our tasks to others.

What are you holding on to in your ministry that you could give to others? Are there logistics that a volunteer or a ¼ time intern could help you out with? Are there opportunities for leadership, teaching, discipling, leading worship, operations, hospitality, short-term trip logistics, etc. that others could step into from the body? I have been blessed with always having people I could delegate opportunities to. I’ve had to look a little harder at times, but they have always been there if I was willing to delegate. Sometimes I have been able to do that out of necessity and sometimes intentionally to develop them as leaders. Who could you delegate to?

If you struggle to delegate, ask yourself a few questions:

1. Am I giving people a vision for ministry that would make them want to be involved?

2. Is there personal pride or control issues that keeps me from delegating to others?

3. Are there people I am overlooking who may have interest and potential with a little investment? 

Do

There will always be important and urgent things to do. While the non-important things we can figure out how to eliminate or delegate, we will always have important and urgent things to do. The key is to make sure that those important and urgent things do not rule our lives because of procrastination, lack of systems, and poor planning.

For more on how to put a system in place for the urgent check out: “How to Increase Your Productivity as a Missions Leader.”

Making Space for Global Missions

Once we have worked to eliminate, delegate, and do the Quadrant I, III, or IV tasks, we open ourselves up for more planned and proactive endeavors. Often when I look at the landscape of Christian workers I see big hearts for ministry, but I also see: 

• many stressed out by the many things they have on their plates. Regularly missing appointments. 

• Reactive to whatever issue they have. 

• An email inbox that has many unread emails in it. Up at night the night before a sermon. 

• Much of what they do is last minute.

• People around that love them, but are growingly frustrated with the lack of movement on important areas of vision, strategy, and care within the life of the church.

Since global missions is such a Quadrant II topic, how can we make sure to find time for global missions planning, preparation, and execution in the midst of other roles in the church? Here are some practical ways to do that:

1. Get clear with your supervisor of how much of your role is meant to be focused on global missions and your other role? You want to have a good understanding of that percentage so you can fulfill the vision the church has for you and be honest about how long things take.

2. If your supervisor can’t give you a percentage, make sure that you understand your objectives for global missions. There are a lot of ideals in global missions, what are we to focus on with our limited capacity?

3. How could lay members be involved in the execution of global missions? Delegating missionary care to Advocates. Allowing a missions-minded financial church member to help with the missions budget. Having someone else on staff or in leadership at the church lead short-term trips alongside you so you do not have to go on each one. Enlisting the help of a creative person for promotion of missions awareness and opportunities.

4. Identify time wasters. Likely you receive a lot of outside solicitors to your church asking for funds and partnership. Do you have a system for saying yes or no that is efficient? See “How Missions Convictions Decrease Decision Fatigue.”

5. Give blocks of time in your weekly schedule to global missions and do not let your other role interfere with that time. Priorities that come up for your other role should be put into a task management system to be dealt with during the time you have blocked off for that role. If your primary role cuts into your global blocks, then find another time to make up for the global missions blocks during the week.

6. Utilize a task management system for setting aside tasks that are to be done in your time set aside for your primary role and for tasks that should be set aside in your secondary role.

Rightly Prioritizing Global Missions Activities

In our resource “How to Build Your Church’s Sending Pipeline” we identify some important phases of global missions work that move members from being aware of missions to being sent long-term as missionaries. Our goal in that resource is to encourage you to have efforts in each of the five phases to see an involved church and long-term missionaries sent out. These phases are:  

1. Cultivating awareness in members and leaders through church programs and relationships.

2. Helping members and leaders take steps towards a great understanding of missions through a missions class or short-term trip.

3. Helping members and leaders go deeper into missions by engaging in local cross-cultural missions opportunities.

4. Helping members and leaders explore a missionary calling.

5. Developing the called towards launching overseas.

As you look at this list, are you giving the right time and attention to each of the phases? Are you focused on a few to the detriment of the others? If so, how could moving towards Quadrant II help you and your church prioritize all 5? Which of the phases are you uniquely called to? Which of the phases could be delegated to others? 

Our role in the church as church leaders is not to do everything, but to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that paid staff are to do everything in the life of the church. Consider how others can be involved for their joy and for the good of the church as a whole.

Maybe you’re most excited about Phases 1, 2, and 3, but you have former missionaries in your church that can help out with Phase 4 and 5. Maybe you have creative folks with energy that can do 1 and 2, but you’re most interested in 3, 4, and 5. However that works, get others to help you. I have rarely found a missions leader that does all five well, even if they are full-time. Consider how you can prioritize your time and the gifts of others to see global missions move forward in the life of your church.

Champion Global Missions Through the Platform of  Your Other Role

Your multiple roles in the church do not have to be separated. Find ways to integrate global missions into your other roles. Here are some examples:

1. If you lead children’s ministry, consider how global missions could be a part of your children’s curriculum. Inviting in a missionary to speak. Getting a video from a missionary kid. Reading stories about missionaries.

2. If you lead worship, include songs or Bible references that speak of God’s glory among the nations. Do a worship song in another language. Invite someone to pray in a different language.

3. If you are in charge of small groups, match up small groups with a missionary to pray for. Have those small groups help the missionary during furlough.

4. If you lead youth ministry, do a sermon series on God’s heart for the nations. Create experiences for youth to do short-term trips that expose them to the nations.

Be creative in utilizing your other role to champion global missions. Kill two birds with one stone. 

Conclusion

God has given us each gifts and responsibilities to steward. Because we are not “omni” in any capacity we will have limited time, energy, and resources. God is not unaware of our limitations. He made us and molded us that way. He also gave gifts to others around us to complement what we cannot do ourselves. This is how God uses us in spite of our limitations. But we need to do the work of prioritization of what’s important, elimination of what’s not, delegation to involve the body, and systems to knock out the urgent. 

How could you be better available for the opportunities and responsibilities God has put before you? May God in his grace give you the wisdom to discern.

Next Steps

1. Try out block scheduling of your multiple roles for a few weeks. Work to schedule meetings and tasks for each role within the specific blocks you have allocated for them. Goal is to make sure each role is getting the right amount of time and making sure that the urgent is not taking time away from your global missions role.

2. Download, “How to Increase Your Productivity as a Missions Leader” for more practical advice on improving your job role.

3. Ask another missions leader you know and trust how they balance their multiple roles. If they have an idea not listed in this resource, send it on to info@theupstreamcollective.org. We would love to add their ideas to this resource!