Mike Edmisten Follower of Jesus. Husband of Nicki. Father of Ryan & Brock. Communicator of the Word.

I Thought You Only Worked on Sundays

"Just what do you do all week? Do you just sit around the church building reading your Bible and singing Kumbaya?"

I've been asked these kind of questions a lot over the last 11 years of vocational ministry. So I thought I'd take a stab at answering the questions about how I spend my time all week. (Those of you who don't attend ACC will probably be bored to tears by these posts. Some of you who do attend ACC might be bored, too!)

Each day this week, I'll blog about what I've done that day. It should give you a glimpse of what goes into an average week of ministry. (Keep in mind, there really is no such thing as an "average week" in this job. Every week looks different from the previous week.) It'll also give you a little behind-the-scenes view of ACC.

As I get started, you need to know that this isn't because our leadership has been grilling me over my schedule. In fact, it's just the opposite. This is completely voluntary.

Ok, here we go with Monday's schedule:

I read my Bible and spent some time in prayer to open my day. I like doing this before anything else because I'm easily distracted. I need to give God the best part of me, and that happens before I get immersed in other things.

Then I was off to a 9:00 am staff meeting. Brian and I meet every Monday morning for a couple of hours. This face-to-face time allows for very honest dialogue about issues in our church. Some of the things we cover each Monday:

1. The worship services yesterday. What worked? What didn't? How could we have improved? What victories can we celebrate from yesterday? Everything we do in our worship services is intentional, and therefore we intentionally review all aspects of our worship experiences.

2. We also plan for the coming weekend. Yep, it's Monday and we're already talking about the weekend. What will services next weekend look like? What theme are we developing? This is all stuff that we consider in our weekly meetings.

3. What else is happening in our church? What needs addressed? Who do we need to pray for?

4. What is going on in our personal lives that we need to discuss? Doing ministry together doesn't mean we only talk about church stuff. If we don't have a relationship beyond the church walls, we don't have much of anything. I don't just care about Brian as a minister in our church. I care about his family and whatever they may be facing. And he cares about my family. I've seen some church staffs that were strictly business. That's not the way we do things around here.

Our meeting ended at 11:00 am, and then it was time to answer emails, return phone calls, etc.

Then for lunch, Brian and I had another meeting. This time at Golden Corral. This is out of the ordinary, but we went to a lunch meeting with a specific agenda: planning our Christmas worship experiences. We've got some great stuff coming in December as we launch our Tangled in the Tinsel series.

Back to the office after 2 hours at Golden Corral. More emails. More phone calls. Also, every time somebody visits ACC for the first time, I write them a letter on Monday. Got several to write this week, which is awesome! All of this correspondence will take up the rest of my day.

After a 12 1/2 hour day yesterday, I'm going to try to cut out a little early today to spend some time with my family. Feels like I haven't seen them in a long time and that's gotta change.