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. Not the ideal version. The real one.
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 in quiet. 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 quiet 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. 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, two. Most weeks, one. Some weeks, 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. Not productive rest. Actually unproductive rest.
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
Here’s what that rhythm makes possible: a pace I can keep for decades.
Here’s what it doesn’t make possible: doing everything the ministry needs, everything the day job needs, and everything my marriage and family need, all at once. It can’t be done. Something is always in deficit.
The skill isn’t avoiding deficits. 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: which part of my life has been shortchanged lately, and how long has it 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. 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.
What matters isn’t the specific schedule. It’s 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, then 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.