pat loughery

In case you’re wondering what the calendar of a church planter – or, at least this one – looks like, I figured this might be helpful:

I’ll start with the evening stuff. Then the regular weekday stuff.

Every other Monday we do premarital counseling with a couple that we know from our sending church. The bride-to-be is the daugher of a couple who sort of adopted us as their kids when we first came, so she’s like our sister. We have one more counseling session with them before they “graduate”.

Tuesdays we are taking a group of 20-somethings to a college ministry in Seattle. It’s an outreach for us, gettting to know friends of our neices and other 20-somethings in our group. Our hope is that much of this group turns into the first class for Alpha.

Wednesdays we lead a marriage workshop. Three couples, including ourselves. It’s fantastic material (C-PREP link), but really hard. It does a good job of getting to the core of marriage issues. It’s been very good for our marriage, even though I wish we had more time to do the homework without rushing.

Thursdays we lead and host a home group going through Dallas Willard’s book Hearing God. For a couple of months I was leading worship there too – which I love doing, but it takes me a lot of prep time to not embarass myself and the One I worship ;-). Our new worship leaders are rockin’ the house now.

Twice a month on Friday we open the doors at the place we meet and show family movies on the bigscreen TV.

Saturdays we are usually running errands, or I’m finishing up the sermon and printing up whatever needs to be done, including the weekly bulletin.

Sundays we arrive at 8:45 with a couple of others to set up for the service, which starts at 10. We are on the teardown team as well, and are usually done by 12:30 or so. After that, we usually have lunch with somebody – a guest, or oen of the folks in the church.

That’s the evening stuff. I try to get together with a couple of people a week for coffee or lunch. As my church planting coach says, “food is the language of relationship”. We follow up aggressively with guests, sending them a handwritten card thanking them for coming and phoning them to ask them out to food. First-time givers get a thank-you card as well.

Our regular daily schedule is: My wife (who makes our income) runs a business out of our home as an investment advisor. She works from about 7am-noon, roughly following the market hours. During that time I’m Mr. Mom, taking care of my daughter, doing the dishes and the laundry, etc. I take Kaileigh in to issaquah, the next t own over and bigger than us, to visit Costco or Target or Fred Meyer or Evangel (if I have to buy Jesus Junk 😉 KIDDING! If I need a book or CD immediately…). Sometimes we stop at McDonald’s playland.

At noon the three of us go to our local gym, which has childcare until 1pm. We get a workout in, then we come home, Shannon takes Kaileigh duty and I have a quick shower and take from 2-5:30 or so to work. Usually I’m in a coffeeshop or the library. Sermon prep happens there. Strategic planning and brainstorming happens there. I pray a lot there. I usually have 5 or 6 books with me as well. I’m a book nut.

In my sending chruch, Mondays are the staff’s day off. They don’t come in to the office, schedule meetings, etc. If they get together with people from church it’s only as friends. (At least that’s the theory). I’d love to get back to that again. As it is now, Mondays are usually study day for me (I try not to start studying for the sermon then, just reading some N. T. Wright or whatever).

I used to have a rule of thumb before I planted a church – no more than 3 meetings a week on evenings. 2 was more comfortable as a max. I’d LOVE to get back to that again. But I always want to have a home group, and I think it’s important to be involved in Alpha, and there’ll often be an evening meeting here or there. Mondays end soon. Fridays don’t take any work, and they’re about what we’d do at home anyway, but they’re still an appointment. Wednesdays will end in another month and we won’t do the next marriage group until the fall. But the fact is that as a church we have to have as many open door opportunities as possible, and we can’t give away a lot of ministry ownership yet. Soon, hopefully.

It’s a wonder that we’re still alive :-). My wife, especially – who does all this stuff and has a day job on top of it. The nice part is that we’re always with Kaileigh – she’s a part of everything we do except fo the marriage workshop nights, when she has a babysitter along with the two kids that one of the other couples has. She’s always with us, and she loves it. I’m so thankful for that.