Blocked Calendar for Pastors | Clearway
Free worksheet for pastors

What is the most fruitful work you should give your precious time and energy to over the next six days?

The Blocked Calendar for Pastors helps you name the big rocks, put them into the calendar first, and fit the rest of the week around them.

Eleven pages. Print it, sit down somewhere quiet with a pen and your current calendar, and work through it in about ninety minutes.

Download the Free Worksheet

Free PDF. No email required.

The weekly rhythm grid, seven days across morning, afternoon, and evening. A completed example week for a lead pastor. The first page of the Blocked Calendar worksheet, with the central question.
The big rocks

Rocks in the jar first, then gravel, then sand, and it all fits.

Start with the sand and the rocks sit on the table.

There's no such thing as time management, only time prioritization. It's still so easy for pastors to lose weeks to sand, even when you know the big rocks are most important.

The sand is not bad work. Much of it is reasonable, which is exactly why it fills a week so easily.

Two jars. In the first the rocks are placed before the sand and everything fits. In the second the sand went in first and the rocks sit outside on the table.
Big rocks
  • Prayer
  • Sermon study and preparation
  • Raising leaders
  • Thinking about the future
  • Time with family
  • Sabbath and rest
Gravel and sand
  • Meetings
  • Email
  • Administration
  • Small decisions
  • Service details
  • Requests that arrive during the week
What's inside

Seven steps, in three plain moves.

Work through them in order and write directly in the worksheet. A calendar built on the hours you wish you had will not survive a real week.

Move one

Name the rocks

1
Responsibility Inventory

Everything that regularly receives your time and energy, including the work that never appears on a calendar.

2
Identify What Only I Can Do

Start with what is most connected to God's purposes and your calling, then decide who else could do the rest.

3
Estimate Time Required

An honest number on what that work costs, against the hours you actually have.

Move two

Put them in first

4
Build an Ideal Monthly Rhythm

Give the monthly rocks a named week so they do not quietly disappear.

5
Build an Ideal Weekly Rhythm

The rocks go in first, including sabbath and rest. Then the gravel and sand fill what is left. A completed example for a lead pastor is included.

Move three

Protect them through the week

6
Identify What Gets Protected First

Name the blocks that will not move, and write what you will say when another request competes for that time.

7
Reflection, Adjustment, and Sustainability

Which rock would make the greatest difference if it stayed protected, and where the rocks go in the next six days.

In light of eternity, God's purposes for my life, and the calling He's given me to lead this church, what is the most fruitful work I should give my precious time and energy to over the next six days?

Download the Free Worksheet

No email required.

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