Are Bad Habits Killing Your Ministry?

Hosts: TJ Freeman, Joe Wagner, and Josh MacClaren

Summary: In this episode, rural pastors TJ Freeman, Joshua McLaren, Joe Wagner, and guest Casey Nowlin discuss the challenge of managing pastoral responsibilities, focusing on creating effective goals and habits. Casey shares insights from his 16 years in ministry, emphasizing the importance of discipline and habitual practices grounded in Scripture for personal growth and effectiveness. They talk about practical ways to integrate habits like prayer, exercise, and time management into daily routines by using techniques like habit stacking. Casey and the hosts also explore particular challenges faced by rural pastors, such as balancing personal goals with community expectations and how to gently guide congregational changes without causing disruption.

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Transcript

TJ: One of the greatest challenges in being a pastor is figuring out how to get done everything that needs getting done in a week and Sundays always coming. Are there some things you could be doing differently that would help you be more faithful with all the responsibilities God has entrusted to you, or are you just sunk? Stay tuned to this episode and we'll talk it through together. 

Well, greetings from rural Pennsylvania. My name is TJ Freeman, and like you, I am trying to glorify God in the middle of nowhere. And if you're listening to this, there's a good chance you are a pastor or ministry leader just like me. Glad to have you along, and you're joined by some other rural folks.

Joshua: What's going on guys? This is Joshua McLaren. Rural pastor. 

Joe: Hey guys, I'm Joe Wagner. I'm a rural pastor as well, out here in the middle of nowhere. 

TJ: And guys, we have a special guest with us today. A special guest who has been with us before on this very podcast, back when it was called 

Casey: Rural Pastors Talk. 

TJ: Yep.

And he shared a really hard story of ministering in a place that was especially difficult because of some of the circumstances. That they were facing. This dear brother has a lot of experience in thinking through how to fit more responsibilities than you have time for into your schedule. And he's here today to help us think through two things that I think will really be a blessing to you, your goals and your habits.

So, Casey Allen, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Casey: Yeah, it's great to be here. My name's Casey Nowlin. I've been a pastor at a church for 16 years down in Florida. And happy to be back on the podcast.

TJ: Well, it is wonderful to have you, Josh and Joe Casey's here to talk to us about goals and habits. Have you guys ever felt some of that pressure I was talking about in the introduction about having more to do than you have time to do, or feeling like there's a weight on you all the time because of all the stuff that needs getting done? 

Joe: I literally two minutes ago, I had somebody text me that said that they were not able to make lunch, and I realized, oh, I forgot that we were having lunch.

I'm glad you texted me that we weren't able to have lunch because I had lunch scheduled for somebody else on the same day. Mm-hmm. So, yep, that's me. 

Joshua: Yes. Assuming newer responsibilities with this church plant has increased that feeling. Yeah. 

TJ: So what are some of the problems that we face when we get these feelings?

So Joe, you mentioned like meetings that accidentally overlap. 

Joe: Well, and this was a meeting that was canceled from a previous day. We said, Hey, okay, we can't make it this day. So we switched up my schedule and his schedule and we'll meet on another day. So it wasn't just like the, Hey, it's tough enough to keep everything organized the first time around, but then when things get changed. Yeah.

Complications on your complications of your schedule, that complicates things as well. 

Joshua: Yeah. My, my personal temptation is just to shut down. Like procrastinate, go in a bubble. Like, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm just not gonna do anything. And then when things need to be done last minute, then it's like a flurry of getting stuff done because because I'm also a people pleaser.

Joe: I'm just gonna play it by ear. We're just gonna figure it out as we go. 

TJ: Wing it. Wing. We'll do it live. One of the really negative traits I've noticed about myself is that when I start feeling that pressure, I become less kind and benevolent toward people who love me. So namely my family. So I feel that stress and that burden, and it's like my brain is somewhere else a lot, and I can be a little snappy, a little short, and then they kinda get the short end of the stick, which is not what we want, and it's really not faithful.

So. Casey, as you've thought through your life and how to squeeze in all the responsibilities that you have as a dad and a husband and a pastor, and whatever other million things you have going on. What prompted you to start digging into the idea of goals? 

Casey: Well, I think in our culture we're surrounded by habits, goals, how to be a better you. All the self-help books. You'll find it. And we know. We want to be better than who we are. 

TJ: You're saying people in general? 

Casey: People in general, yeah, people in general. 

TJ: Because those books make most of us vomit. 

Casey: Right. So that surrounded us to, everybody sees this and everybody wants this. And there's an aspect of things like with, for example decorating Our House.

I see the kind of home I want to be in, but I have no idea how to get that sometimes. Until somebody comes in and does it for me and I'm like, oh, I love this, but I would've never done it that way myself. So there's an aspect, I think we all see where we are and where we wanna be. The problem with all of that is that it's coming from a secular perspective.

It has nothing to do with the glory of God. It doesn't acknowledge our brokenness. It's not with the right motives behind that. So as we look at scripture of what God's word calls us to do one, one scripture that comes to mind, one Corinthians 9: 25. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.

They do it to receive a perishable wealth, but we in imperishable. The NASB says, I strictly discipline my body and make it my slave so that I may not be disqualified. So there's this aspect regarding goals and habits that we're coming from a godly perspective of how to be more disciplined for the glory of God.

TJ: So lemme just make sure I understand what you're saying.

You're recognizing that the need to improve and to get a lot of stuff done isn't just a problem that pastors face. There's a universal problem that's deeper. All humans seem to be trying to scratch that itch of, how can I get better at doing the things I need to do? But you're trying to say, all right, well actually the Bible does speak to the fact that we do need to get better and grow in areas. It's not just a secular idea.

Casey: Right. And ours has eternal consequences or rewards attached to them. So how much more so should we be disciplined Men, especially those who are pastors.

Joshua: Yeah, I was thinking of first Timothy four.

Paul tells Timothy , in the ESV, it says, train yourself for godliness. In the NIV it says, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, for while bodily training is of some value. Godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. So Don Whitney's written an entire book on the need to be disciplined spiritually.

But it goes farther than that is what you're getting at Casey. It's not just our spiritual life, which really we shouldn't separate our spiritual from our physical or even our secular vocation. 

TJ: I was gonna say, if you guys tell me I have to exercise, I'm gonna just throw my headphones down and walk outta this room right now.

Casey: That's, that's one of your spiritual disciplines. 

TJ: Oh man. 

Casey: I have it written down here. Make sure we talk about spiritual discipline of exercise. Your body is a temple,.

TJ: So help us frame this out then. What I'm hearing is, we have a lot of responsibilities. Our time is limited, and now you're adding to it the fact that God actually cares how we spend our time. So Casey kind of frame that up with the idea of some of the habits that we have and help us understand what we need to think through in order to develop better habits.

Casey: I think habits are essential. We're gonna get to that. I think if we take a step back first from habits to, before you begin a habit, you need to have a goal. And what that goal is, and this is where most people start, and they never make it to habits, but we should be thinking about what our goal is.

And most people have goals. They have New Year's resolutions. We're in March now it's about the time where people's New Year's resolutions are ending. 

TJ: Guilty. 

Casey: Guilty. You know, they, they've started the Bible Reading Plan and they're ending right now probably in about Exodus or numbers, and they're falling off.

And that's all of our church people, if they've ever began those or that's us. So that was a good goal. Is reading through the Bible in a year. But why these goals often don't stick is because of the habits side of it. So there's really two sides of this coin. There's goals and then the breaking down of goals into habits.

TJ: Joe and Josh, in your experience, have you noticed in the rural space, guys tend to be goal-driven or less goal-driven?

Joe: I think that they're less goal-driven. I think. Generally it's a slower pace. Some guys may be more goal-driven. They may have a desire to move on, move up, grow things, but I think that we have a concept of, I just want everything to be okay.

If it's everything's copacetic, then we've achieved the goal and we're not as driven as what we possibly could be. 

TJ: Get into the rural frame of mind for a second. What is it about now? You used a non-rural word, copacetic. Yes. What does that mean? 

Joe: Everything's okay. Yeah. Everything's matching up.

TJ: What is the advantage in a rural place of not making too many ripples, but also making sure that everything's okay?

Joe: The advantage of not making too many ripples or waves, not rocking the boat and not trying to change things and move forward. 

TJ: Yeah. Why is that often a trait that we might see in a rural community, especially from a rural pastor?

Joe: I think when we have goals that requires change, and I think rural folks are a little less inclined than other folks to make changes and disruption. 

Joshua: We've done it this way for this many years. A long, it's worked. At least their understanding of it working. So why? Why change it? 

Joe: How many have we seen in rural churches the driving goal of, I wish it was like it was before? Mm. Mm-hmm. Right. We had one just amazing pastoral experience right. From a pastor who had been here for forever, and then you had another pastor or two or three come in and everybody's kind of chasing the dragon. They all want to have an experience like they had in the past and how good it was. Yeah. And that kind of just really golden age of goodness. We watch that again. 

TJ: Did you use a drug reference? 

Joe: I did use a drug reference. Wow. I went from copacetic to chase my dragons.

TJ: I know, right. But it makes sense because there is an effect that you have as a result of what things used to be. You know, you want that feeling that you had when things used to be in your mind better. 

Joshua: So you're saying that that would cause a pastor to not necessarily set newer and better goals or even more faithful goals.

It's just a matter of going with the flow and is that what you're getting at? 

Joe: Not really, no. Not going with the flow. It's getting to where the, there is a little bit of going with the flow with it. But it's more of, it's not what it could be in the future that's different and new and exciting and godly.

It's what it was in the past, which was comfortable and gauzy memories. 

Joshua: So even our goals are even misplaced. Our goals aren't wanting to be faithful to what scriptures revealed. 

Joe: That's a broad generalization. 

Joshua: Yeah, sure, sure. 

Joe: But I would say that there, there's a temptation to go that direction.

TJ: Yeah. It's a characterization of rural that exists for a reason. Because a lot of times in rural communities to their great defense, they've seen a lot of decline. They've had to sacrifice a lot of things. Exactly. Mom and pops have gotten bumped out by the Dollar General, and to think about the way that things used to be at a better time is a normal thing.

So somebody who comes in and seems to be goal driven is like, oh, that guy's here to upset the apple cart. I've also noticed that just personally being a little bit on the driven side of things, I have found that people sometimes raise an eyebrow at it and they're like, why are you so driven? Why aren't you just content with things like the way they are?

And there can be a temptation in rural communities to kinda ostracize the guy who's a little goal-driven and you don't want to be that guy.

Casey: I think with the goal-driven aspect of things that typically if we just end at the goal, it will scare people away or we will fall off the wagon at some point.

So that's the importance of how we break this down into bite-sized chunks that, number one, don't scare your church people away. Hmm. Especially if they've been there decades and you are not there, you haven't been there decades. Instead of saying something like, here's this goal that they just think is unreachable.

And they're gonna be antagonistic against it. It's not even something you have to share. You're just going to be doing one, 100th of that goal beginning this week 10 minutes a week. And over time, that's gonna build a foundation that they're gonna begin to see that a little bit differently.

TJ: Yeah. So we've broadened to say, you may have some goals for your church, but the way that you go about leading your church toward those goals really matters. And you're identifying a real slow pace, kind of keeping it close to the vest and just investing in something instead of saying. Here's the big flash, big change that we're gonna all pursue.

Casey: Right. And I've seen that happen with a lot of, a lot of pastors. I've done it myself where, hey, it's a great goal. It's actually a godly goal. It's actually something I believe God wants for the church, but how I'm going about it is too fast, too furious. It's gonna upset everything. And people are not gonna understand.

TJ: Yeah, that's really wise. So you're talking about goals in a little bit broader terms than I had even thought of. So you have personal goals, which is kind of what I was thinking about, which is why I need to exercise, you're gonna tell me. And then goals for your church and where you want to go as a leader in your church. 

Casey: So we, we could ask in regards to, since you brought it up a couple times, I think you want me to talk about exercise? So TJ what would be an aspect? What would be a goal perhaps you have regarding physical exercise or something to do with your body?

TJ: Avoid it at all costs. 

Casey: Avoid it at all costs. But do you really have like a goal in mind or something that you've thought about? Hey, I should. Get to this or I should do that thing. 

TJ: Casey, I am in a weight loss competition right now, and Josh is my partner. And Josh, what place are we currently in in that weight loss competition?

Joshua: Fourth out a fifth. But what have we done, TJ? We have made progress. Oh yes. 

Joe: It's just a declaration of who is in first place. 

Joshua: Is it Joe and Ashley? 

TJ: I left you outta the competition. 

Joshua: Or is it Ben and Leslie? 

TJ: I wasn't gonna mention that, so you didn't get to say you were right up there.

But anyway. Yeah, so Casey, my goal in getting into the contest was to lose some weight. My effectiveness in that has been almost none. So can you please teach me? 

Casey: Yeah, so there's a couple of principles regarding it. Number one, I don't know are you guys just doing how you get in first place is what, just a number of pounds or is it based on percent?

We're doing percentage weight. Percentage. Percentage, yeah. Okay, so, so the bigger guys will have a leg up on this because percentage wise they could probably lose more. Right. I'm trying to help you out. It's, you're a smaller guy. 

TJ: Yes. You're making me feel better. But yeah, so I could have done a lot, lot better.

So what could I have done goal wise? 

Casey: So I think what if the goal, did you have a certain goal that was actually, instead of just, for example, one of the principles here is you need to be as specific as possible. Mm. So it's not just lose weight. Mm-hmm. Because if you're 300 pounds overweight. And you lose five pounds, you've succeeded your goal.

Mm. That's good. So it should be something more like, I want to lose, you know, 25 pounds you know. By the end of, of March. By the, by the end of some, yeah. So very specific. 

TJ: Well, my competition ends next week. Can you get me to lose 25 pounds? 

Casey: Yeah, we could. We could. Yeah. So it should be something very specific.

And then the goal is just the beginning of this. You need to learn how to break it down into habits and some of the best principles that they encourage you to do is making these habits as simple and as easy to implement as possible. So you need to be thinking through how to do that. So what have you done so far to try to lose this weight?

TJ: I ate less food. I tried to make healthier food choices, and I have walked. 

Casey: Okay, so you're walking, has that been as consistent as you would like for it to be? 

TJ: No, because I can't figure out how to fit it into my schedule. 

Casey: Right. So one aspect of this would be breaking this goal down into the habit of walking and deciding when it's most convenient and how to make it a habit. So, for example I normally have a, a cup of coffee and if you want to go on a, a prayer walk in the morning that you stack the habit with your coffee. If you normally like to sit and have your coffee instead, it'll be a mental reminder as you're brewing your cup.

You're gonna go on a walk or tagging this in with something else. Maybe it's when you get to church. You mentioned this this morning, Joe. You get to church and before you get into the building, you are going to walk around the church four times and it's just a mental cue. Every time I arrive at church, I'm gonna go on a walk.

And, and the big thing is not trying to do a 40 minute walk, but instead five minutes. Mm-hmm. Because five minutes daily is gonna be better than, oh, I haven't done this in a couple of weeks. Then you have 40 minutes and then you're like, I don't wanna do that again for another four weeks. Sure. So breaking things down into bite-sized habits is helpful.

TJ: Yeah. That's good. Well, I feel sufficiently picked on. What are some other kind of areas that you, Joe and Josh can think about that rural pastors might be helped if they would start thinking about some goals. So health does matter. The Bible's clear about that. What are some other things? 

Joshua: I got one time management.

In the evenings I'm looking at younger pastors, maybe we grew up playing video games. Maybe we've enjoyed media consumption. And I put my daughter to bed at seven 30 and my wife puts our son to bed and I have half an hour to myself. Right? I'd rather not spend it on YouTube, but I've been spending it on YouTube, right?

I use excuses like I'm tired and I don't wanna read especially theology because my brain's fried after a day of pastoring. How could I use my 30 minutes to an hour more faithfully in the evenings? 

Casey: So there's a lot in there. So, specifically for your phone one thing that my wife and I have realized is often we're picking up our phone to escape.

Mm-hmm. And so I'm picking it up to go into social media. I'm scrolling Facebook. I'm not even consciously doing it to find anything of importance. Yeah. It's just wasting time. So one thing, and I read this in, one book on the common rule and he talks about the importance of scripture before phone. 

Or scripture before video games. And just that this should be a rule of your life. And when I begin to see this, and kind of make a rule in my life that I will not use my phone before I spend time in the word of God. Mm. And that forces me to God's word. Even if it's five minutes that I won't do that.

And the reason why is when I pick up my phone, it's the world dictating to me who it's expecting me to be. Mm-hmm. Or who I should be. Mm-hmm. Or it's advertising things to me and all these other things. And so it's influencing and forming me. Scripture does the opposite where I conform to it. That's good.

Who am I gonna form to at the beginning of my day? Am I gonna be conformed to God and his word, or am I gonna be conformed to the world and its image? And the phone is the world in its image. As soon as I pick it up, I'm being advertised to. I'm being told the kind of person I should be, what I should look at, what I should enjoy.

So that's a principle there that we just have to understand video games and those things. God is not against us having entertainment or sitting down for a movie or anything else, but what is the first of priority? Mm-hmm. My wife, my kids, my time with the Lord. And then once I've done a good job in those areas, then I can have guilt-free entertainment time.

Mm. Guilt-free. 

Joshua: And inevitably you're gonna have less time to be entertained because you've used your time better. 

Casey: Right, right. So, one example of this, of having a goal is I want to have more spiritual conversations with my children. I have an 11-year-old, 9-year-old, 7-year-old, all boys, and then a 3-year-old little girl.

Mm. So I want to grow them spiritually. So that's a goal. Well, how do I do that? There's a lot of ways to do that, but one habit I have formed is typically in the evening, if you're a parent and you know the fight, trying to put your kids to bed. Sure. We chatted about this a little bit, TJ, of like, kids go to bed.

It's 30 minutes past your bedtime. Why are you still up? And all these other things. Casey was at my house last night. Yeah. And I said I was encouraged that, you have the same struggle with your kids that I have with my kids. 

TJ: I didn't know you could say the phrase, brush your teeth that many times in an hour.

Yep. It comes out a lot. 

Casey: Yep. So one of the habits I have written down as a way to accomplish this goal is when I'm tucking my kids in bed, that I will spend as long as they want to talk in the evenings. I'm getting in there. We're praying together and then just talk with them. And the longer I sit, the more they talk and the more they have conversations and the more spiritual things they begin talking about.

When before, it would be kind of a rush of how fast can I get the kids to bed because my wife and I really haven't seen each other. 

Joshua: Yeah.

Casey: So that's just a small little habit of trying to be intentional and God's really blessed our time of conversations. And they know that they can talk with Dad about anything going on because I'm giving 'em time. 

TJ: Yeah. So just walk us through that again. The goal was what? 

Casey: The goal was to influence and encourage my kids in their walk with the Lord. To have more spiritual conversations. 

TJ: And it's reasonable for us, especially as pastors to think I'm so busy. I don't know when I could fit that in.

So how did you go about converting the goal to a habit?

Casey: I thought about one principle, and I'll try to break this down. It's called habit stacking. And let's say there's something you want to implement in your life. Stack it with something that is always going to happen. So for example, if you do coffee every day, that's a opportunity to stack a habit with it. If you drive to work every day, there's an opportunity to stack a habit with the drive. If you brush your teeth every day, there's an opportunity to stack a habit with that. For example, brushing your teeth, you could have a scripture written on the mirror.

Yeah, there's a habit. 'cause you always brush your teeth. So you want to stack habits with things you always do and never have to think about. 'cause if you stack the habit with something you're always doing and never have to think about, it's a habit you begin doing subconsciously. So I always tuck my kids in.

So my habit is as I'm tucking them in, I'm doing that. It's not anything I have to think about. Which also means, like, to your point, Joe, I'm not gonna forget it. It's not like a meeting that I forgot the same thing. We always have dinner together as a family. I know not everybody can do that, but we always plan to have dinner together as a family.

I have stacked the habit of Bible time right after dinner. How I did this was I told my kids we're always gonna have dessert at bible time. I want them to associate the word of God with the sweetness of treats. Sweet and the honey, right? So this does a couple of things for me. Number one, my kids are excited about Bible time.

Number two, because we always have desserts, they will never forget bible time. Mm-hmm. So even on the days I'm rushed, they're like, Bible time, don't forget Bible time. We have those cookies. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, we have those things. Yep. And it's at least a five minute Bible time because they wouldn't let me forget instead of us just rushing to bed.

So that's the stacking of those habits, of trying to find something you already do and just implement something. And we start small with this just one habit at a time. But that has been, and I used to not think this way. I used to only think in terms of goals, right. But when I began thinking in terms of habits, it allowed me to accomplish all of my goals without really having to do a lot of work.

It was really, really sweet time.

Joe: I really appreciate the way that you were doing, devotions with your kids and with your family at dinner times. We also as crazy as what our life is, generally get together as a family and have dinner together. And my goal there in that dinner is to do devotions. But when you stack that on top of dessert, that was gold right there.

And so I just actually was sitting here actually learning from you and that one, and I'm like. We need to do that because that will make it that much easier. So that, that is really, really good stuff. 

TJ: I'd like to encourage you to eat way more desserts, Joe. 

Joe: No, I'm thinking fat free yogurt with some blueberries on it.

Casey: Fruit. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily have to be sweet. It could be fruit, it could be, you know, something fun. 

TJ: God told Ezekiel the scroll itself was sweet enough, so That's right. We don't feel like we need to add anything in our house.

Joe: You are so holy man. Oh, so holy. 

Joshua: You know, as you talked about habit stacking, I can discern in my life certain bad habits that I've stacked.

Like I put my daughter to bed. Mm-hmm. And immediately it's like, ah, social media, veg time. Right? It's like, no. 

Casey: Yep. 

Joshua: That's a really bad habit that should be killed. 

Casey: Yep. So there are putting on and putting off. Yeah, it's great. That's helpful. Some books do a really great job if you really want to geek out about some of this stuff.

Atomic Habits is a great book that talks about, how to start a habit and how also to make a habit that is a bad habit go away. And that's one of the things, 

TJ: how is the word atomic being used there? Because the only atomic I can think of is the Atomic Wedgie. Atomic wedgie? Yeah. Bomb. Yeah, bomb. 

Casey: So, he uses atomic as microscopic changes leading to big results. So atomic being a molecule, being split in half is a very small, but it produces a huge change. And the same is true in our lives. These small little daily habits over time are going to create huge impacts in your life over time. So that's the aspect of Atomic.

But he goes through how to create a good habit and then also how to break a bad habit. And, there's definitely some ways, but again the greatest way to get overwhelmed by this is try to implement too much. So I would encourage you, if you're listening to this, just to pick one or two things to begin implementing and until you have it down for two weeks to not add another.

One example of this is I really wanted to do better member care. Just calling our members from time to time and it's like, I never feel like I have time at the office to do this because there's always other things to do. So what I decided to do is I would put a member care directory, we have a printed member care directory, in my car and when I get in the car to go home, let's say you have 10, 15 minutes, you just grab that piece of paper and it's stacked with the habit of going home, which if you go to the office you do every day, or you go to work, you do every day. So you can do this bi-vocationally.

You're going to your work. It's a 15 minute drive. You make one member phone call every drive, and now you're doing member care every day. On your day to work and now you're checking off getting to work and doing member care when you might've been just listening to the news or turn the radio on or driving in silence.

TJ: That's really good. Yeah, that's really helpful. I feel thoroughly convicted. I was gonna say the conviction is heavy. 

Joe: Just the other day. That works. It so works and I don't want to share too much from personal experience, but yesterday I had an instance where I had to make an emergency room visit, but at the same time I had to make five telephone calls and, okay, well what are you gonna do on your drive?

Mm-hmm. 40 minute drive to where you need to get to. Well, it was from here to Troy and Troy's basically an outer darkness and there's not much cell service out there. Sorry, I'm using a regional example. 

TJ: But people understand those. Yeah. Rural community with no cell phone.

Joe: Yeah. So, but I was able to make as many telephone calls as I could get in that time. I was actually doing what you said, man, I was stacking habits without even knowing it, and so I just need to implement that more. It worked. It worked. I already know what it works. 

TJ: So, Casey, I want you to picture Bubba Hatfield pastor.

Yep. You know, he's hearing this. He's starting to understand, okay, yeah, I probably need to work on my goals and my habits a little bit. Could you just lay out a little bit of a roadmap for, for him if he wanted to take one, one goal and help turn it to a habit? 

Casey: One goal. You guys wanna gimme a sample goal? Or a goal in your own life, and then we can try to work on that. Or for this bubba?

TJ: Casey, I'm gonna give you two, two things that Bubba is thinking he wants to work on. Number one. Is realizing, okay, I really need to be praying for my church more, and I'm having a hard time finding that time. And two, I have so much going on during the week. I'm really not giving as much time to sermon prep as I'd like to.

Casey: So prayer and sermon prep. I think the easiest way to do it is first doing the habit stacking method and to try to find a time that you already have built into your schedule where you could easily incorporate prayer to. It could be the drive it, it could be that there's typically something that they have a wait for, that they have to stop and, and wait on.

Maybe it's while their, their coffee is brewing first thing in the morning, what do they do? Do they normally just stand there and wait for the coffee to brew or they go do something else? it could be something as simple as, let's say you wanna work out a little bit. When you turn the shower on and it takes three minutes to turn the shower on, do 15 pushups.

So it could be that you are converting that over to prayer, you know, so whatever it is, you are stacking that habit, of what that is. So before you have your coffee, 'cause you have coffee every morning if you're a coffee drinker before you have your coffee. You have a member care directory in front of you or just a list of names, and you're gonna pray through three names of members of your church before your first sip of coffee.

And that's a daily thing. And it takes really three minutes. It takes three minutes to do that. So you could do that with the coffee. You could do it at the end of the day. You could do it before dinner. You could do it at a mealtime. At meals I'm gonna pray for one member right before my meal.

This is a way we do it at Christmas. We get tons of Christmas cards, so we grab all those Christmas cards, we put 'em in a basket, and throughout December we have our kids randomly pick a Christmas card out of this basket. 

TJ: You got mine. Did you pray for me? 

Casey: And we prayed for you guys. All right.

So we grab the Christmas cards. The kids are always super excited about it. They grab and that's who we're gonna pray for before dinner that night. So this is a habit that is stacked because we get these Christmas cards, we don't even have to think about it. We just throw 'em all in there. The habit is grab a card.

We have a a one minute prayer for this family. And now we, we've prayed together as a family. Our kids have seen this as kind of missional and we're also praying for people. 

TJ: Awesome. That's really helpful. Casey. I would just throw in here something that I've learned lately about finding more time for sermon prep, and that is.

Reading your text early and then just using your brain, not feeling like you have to sit down and write out everything. Take deep notes, whatever. But in your brain, thinking through that text often is really helpful, and that's something that you can do during times you're thinking about other things or nothing.

And man, that has liberated me a lot from feeling like I have to be sitting at a desk somewhere, right. To be working on my sermon. I can be doing sermon prep in my head a lot. 

Casey: Yeah. So the thing with sermon prep is so there's habit stacking, but there's also the principle of making something attractive and easy.

Mm. These are principles of, so for example, with sermon prep, getting into the office or waking up early, you have that cup of coffee if you already have your Bible set up, opened up to that passage, a pen and a piece of paper that you have set up the night before. So habits and goals. You wanna make this easy, you wanna make it attractive and setting this up the night before it triggers you.

As soon as you wake up, you see it and you're like, that only takes five minutes to read through that and write down some thoughts. Mm. But what happens sometimes is if you don't do that the night before and you haven't made it easy, you wake up in the morning, everybody's still asleep, you're like, where's my notepad?

I can't search for it. I might wake somebody up or where's my Bible? Did I leave it in the car or did I leave it there? And then you can't find a pen and before long you've spent 30 minutes trying to get all the stuff together. And now the day started, the kids are awake and your bible time for sermon prep is shot.

TJ: That's good. That's very helpful. Well, we have a habit of not keeping our guys too long. And, I'm letting us get a little long in the tooth, boys. So I think it's time to start winding down. Casey, any final summary or remarks you could make to help us as we think about goals and habits?

Casey: The Lord is with you. We need to be disciplining our body for the sake of godliness. He is for us, becoming, better husbands, better fathers, better pastors. And just to begin small, that, that this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. Hmm. 

TJ: Awesome. Well, thanks for being here with us. If somebody wanted to reach out to you, how could they do that?

Casey: Yeah, you could email me. It's casey@fbcmarco.com and would love to answer any questions. Again I'm, just along the journey trying to get better at this as well. 

TJ: It's great. Well, thanks for giving us your time and Josh, Joe, it's always good to have you here as well. 

Joshua: Thanks so much, Casey. 

TJ: For now though, we should probably. 

Joe: Raise our Ebenezer.

TJ: Bye-bye.