People ask me some version of the same question all the time: How do you actually do it? Run companies by day, pastor a church, direct a car ministry, and still be married?
The honest answer is that I don’t do all of it well every week. But I can show you what a bi-vocational pastor schedule actually looks like after twenty-five years, and I mean the real one, not the ideal version.
A weekday
4 to 7 AM. My day starts at 4. I’m not a morning person by nature. I get up because the early morning is the only time that truly belongs to God and the church before the day job claims the day. I pray, journal, prepare sermons, and handle whatever church administration can be done while the house is still asleep. This is sacred time and I protect it.
7 to 8 AM. Coffee and breakfast with my wife. It isn’t always a deep conversation. Sometimes it’s just being near each other at the start of a day. But it’s intentional, and there’s no screen in my hand.
8 AM to noon. The day job.
Noon to 1 PM. Lunch, usually at my desk. I use it to catch up on church messages that piled up since early morning.
1 to 5 PM. The day job again. I try to be home by five.
Dinner. With my wife. Quick, often simple, but together.
Evenings. Most evenings are ministry. The Garage at Living Faith runs several sessions a week. A motorcycle club chaplaincy takes one evening, and a church small group takes another. My wife leads Bible studies. We try to build in one or two date nights a week. On a great week we get two, and most weeks one. Some weeks we get none, and we feel it.
The weekend
Sunday is worship and whatever pastoral needs come up.
But I protect some part of every weekend for genuine Sabbath: sleep, reading, time in the woodshop, a long motorcycle ride. I mean rest that doesn’t produce anything, on purpose.
That distinction matters to me. As I put it in the book, “Sabbath is not a productivity strategy. It is a theological act of trust that the world does not depend on me to keep turning.” If I only rest so I can work harder on Monday, I’ve missed the point. The Sabbath is a weekly reminder that God runs the world and I don’t.
Something is always in deficit
That rhythm gives me a pace I can keep for decades.
What it won’t do is let me give the ministry everything it needs and the day job everything it needs and my marriage and family everything they need, all at once. It can’t be done. Something is always in deficit.
So the skill is managing which deficit you’re running and for how long. A week when the church gets less because a work project demanded more is fine. A season when the marriage gets the leftovers month after month is not. Short deficits are part of life. Long ones in the wrong places will cost you things you can’t get back.
It helps to check this on purpose. Once a month, ask yourself which part of your life has been shortchanged lately, and how long it’s been going on. If the answer is your spouse, or your time with God, or your sleep, and it’s been more than a few weeks, something on the calendar needs to move.
Three non-negotiables
Your schedule will look different from mine, and it should. Your job, your church, your family, and your season of life will shape it. A pastor with young kids at home or a job with rotating shifts can’t copy my week, and shouldn’t try.
The specific schedule matters a lot less than the intentionality behind it. Know your non-negotiables. For me there are three:
- Protect the early morning. Or whatever hour is truly yours with God. If it isn’t guarded, it will be the first thing to go.
- Protect the marriage. Daily time together and a regular date night, even when the rest of the week is full.
- Protect the Sabbath. Real, unproductive rest, trusting God to hold things together while you stop.
Then fill the rest as faithfully as you can with the work God has given you.
Sketch your own
Here’s a practical exercise, adapted from the couples’ discussion guide at the back of Second Fiddle. Sit down with your spouse and a blank sheet of paper and draw out a realistic week.
- Block your fixed commitments first: work hours, Sunday worship, standing ministry nights.
- Mark your non-negotiables next, before anything else fills the space.
- Look at what’s left. Where is the margin? Is there any?
- Ask your spouse where they feel the deficit most. Then believe them.
Be honest, not aspirational. A schedule that only works on a perfect week will fail you by Wednesday. Build the one you can actually live, and revisit it every few months as your season changes.
If you and your spouse are reading the book together, the free couples’ discussion guide walks through this and the other rhythms that sustain a long ministry.
It won’t be tidy. Mine isn’t. But a week built on purpose around the right things can carry you a very long way.
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