Tim Challies — Foundational Time Management Principles | Family as the Priority | Empty Nest Season
Shepherding TimeShow Notes
What happens when the life hacks stop working? On this episode of The Shepherding Time podcast, Rush Witt and Joe Keller talk with Tim Challies — pastor, author, and one of the most prolific voices in Christian blogging — about the season roughly a decade ago when his time management fully broke down, and what it took to rebuild it from the ground up.
Tim describes hitting a wall while juggling full-time church staff work, full-time blogging, and family life — and how quick fixes never held. The real change came from going back to foundational questions: why productivity matters biblically, and what's morally at stake when we fail to steward our time well. He and Rush dig into the principle that has shaped his ministry ever since — that we're qualified for ministry only if we're properly caring for our family — and the concrete rhythms that lived it out, like rotating Saturday breakfasts with each of his kids and hard stop times between work and home. Tim also opens up about the new season he and his wife are navigating as recent empty nesters, including a surprising discovery: now that they're free to travel more, they mostly just want to stay home.
About Tim Challies: Tim Challies is a pastor, author, and blogger at Challies.com, widely regarded as one of the most influential voices in Christian publishing. He wrote the foreword to Shepherding Time: A Pastor's Guide to Time Management.
This episode is a companion to the book Shepherding Time: A Pastor's Guide to Time Management by Rush Witt and Joe Keller (New Growth Press). Get your copy:
New Growth Press [https://newgrowthpress.com/upcoming-books/shepherding-time-a-pastor-s-guide-to-time-management/] Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/Shepherding-Time-Pastors-Guide-Management/dp/1645076555/]
Subscribe to The Shepherding Time wherever you listen, and share this episode with a pastor who needs it.
RESOURCES MENTIONED Challies.com Matt Perman's writing on productivity CJ Mahaney's focus on biblical productivity Shepherding Time: A Pastor's Guide to Time Management — NGP and Amazon links above
More from Shepherding Time
How do you lead a team of twelve through deep work in thirty minutes? On this episode of The Shepherding Time podcast, Rush Witt and Joe Keller talk with Jonathan Holmes, executive director of CCEF, about how he shepherds his time while stepping into a new ministry leadership role.
Why do church planters tend to overwork themselves more than almost anyone else in ministry? On this episode of The Shepherding Time podcast, Rush Witt and Joe Keller talk with Nate Akin, executive director of the Pillar Network and founder of Baptist 21, about the unique time pressures of pioneering ministry — and what he's learned, often the hard way, about managing them.
What does discipleship look like when most of your work happens alone at a desk? On this episode of The Shepherding Time podcast, Rush Witt and Joe Keller talk with Dr. Ben Gladd, executive director of the Carson Center for Theological Renewal, about how he stays relationally connected while working remotely on some of evangelicalism's biggest publishing projects.
How should a pastor think about time when just being "more efficient" isn't enough? On this episode of The Shepherding Time podcast, hosts Rush Witt and Joe Keller sit down with Reagan Rose — the Bible teacher behind Redeeming Productivity — to talk pastoral time management from a biblical, stewardship-first perspective.