I’ve always been curious of how other pastors and church leaders work. So I shamelessly ripped of Lifehacker.com’s How I Work series and began to ask other church leaders questions about their work.
Andy Mattick
I am a bit of a mutt – my father is a retired UMC pastor/DS and I lived in 13 houses in my first 18 years. My parents divorced when I was 12 and my blended family has brought richness to me. While I was at SMU (studying Computer Science) I received my call in to ministry. I had been reluctant to embrace a call to ministry – that had always been my Dad’s business. God had other plans. I met my wife on the first day of seminary. We explored and embraced ministry opportunities in SoCal while in school. We have now been married and in ministry in this conference for 17.5 years. I have served in Desert Hot Springs, Long Beach, Malibu, and Simi Valley. For the last 5.5, Camille and I have been on the same staff. We have two children – 15 and 12. My passions outside of worship are running, cycling, storytelling, movies, muscial theater and music – each as both a fan and participant.
Location (city/state): Simi Valley, CA
Your Ministry (position/title): Lead Pastor, Simi Valley UMC
One word that describes how you work: Flexibility
Current mobile device: iPhone 7
Current computer/laptop: Lenovo Yoga Pro3 tablet/laptop
Connect with Andy:
Andy is not much of a blogger, but his written journal thinks he’s a wonderful writer.
Describe a recent work day:
As a father, my day started with getting my kids up for school and out the door to start their day. I had the opportunity to run with my training partner, getting in 30 minutes before showering and heading into the office by 8:45. I am immediate email message checker. While I have email pushed to my phone, I use Gmail’s labs to organize and pre-sort my inbox. Most bulk emails and many work related emails are redirected out of the main inbox so that my phone is not perpetually buzzing. After checking emails, I developed my bulletin and worship notes for the coming Sunday. This process relies on long term planning and short term effort. We tend to work from a 4-6 month preaching calendar for teaching pastor and basic themes and texts. At Simi we use the lectionary and can avail ourselves of the wide variety of lectionary based resources. My worship work takes about an hour. It includes reflection on the music and liturgy for the day as well as specific needs for campus and church life programming. When my front office assistant arrives, I usually will return phone message and do followup.
On the specific day I am reporting, one such message was the hospitalization of a church member. I finished up my digital workload and drove the 5 minutes to our local hospital and visiting approximately 30 minutes with our member. The time was positive and I had a natural time boundary of a lunch time appointment to keep. I had lunch with the outgoing chair of our SPRC and we reflected on her work and our future needs as a church. The afternoon was spent addressing To-Do list items – following up on a calendaring issue for Trustees, speaking with the technician who is doing the HVAC unit install for our church and preschool offices.
Gadgets/apps/tools that you cannot live without:
What’s your workspace set up like? (Do you do majority of work from office or do you work remotely):
Best short-cut; life hack you use:
I organize my emails around prioritizing important needs.
What’s one of the least favorite aspects of what you have to do:
Passion/Side project of yours?
What gives you joy about your work:
Currently reading/ or anything you’d recommend one to read:
Joseph Yoo 