Getting your pastoral life organisedPosts in this series
As well as 'general tasks' lists that you refer to regularly, you should also have lists for items that you refer to occasionally.
These are called 'reference' lists. Lists that store information for you to 'refer' to when needed.
What sort of lists will you have?
I have many reference lists, including:
- books I've lent;
- items to go on the church rosters when we organise them next;
- Bible passages for particular contexts (e.g. hospital visits);
- gift ideas for particular people;
- tax time tasks;
- items to pack when you go away;
- politicians (which way they voted on important legislation);
- how many weeks I've had of holiday each year;
- church members;
- church attendance;
- pastoral visitations;
- tasks to do before baptisms;
- books to read or check out;
- passages I've preached on.
How do you maintain your lists?
You do not need to do a weekly review of these lists.
Most of them you only add to and edit when required. So for example I won't look at my 'Tax time' reminder list except when I come to do my tax each year. Looking at this list the rest of the year round is a waste of time.
Nevertheless, I still do a quick monthly review of these lists to make sure they're in good order.
How do you keep your lists?
I use a mixture of Evernote and Microsoft Excel.
In Evernote I keep a separate 'Notebook' for 'reference' lists so they don't get confused in with my 'general tasks' lists.
In Excel I keep lists that need to be manipulated in some way, usually because they involve calculations. For example my pastoral visitations reference list consists of an Excel sheet with a column for church members and a column for dates when I last visited them. And because this list is in Excel I can sort it by date making it easy to see who I need to visit next.
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