A surgeon’s time is too valuable to fool with prepping and cleaning the operating room. Nobody argues with that. You protect what matters most by keeping it from being crowded out by what matters less.

In 1 Timothy 4, Apostle Paul tells Timothy, a young pastor in a demanding church, to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching. Not occasionally. Devotedly. That word means to hold fast, to apply yourself without release.

Your pastor could do a thousand things this week. He could fix the sound system, return every phone call, chair every committee, and attend every event. People would appreciate it. But Paul doesn’t say to do everything. He says do this. Your pastor must do what only he can do, which is preach, and that takes time in the study.

Here’s where you come in. Every time a congregation protects its pastor’s time in the Word, they are investing in their own spiritual health. Every expectation you release him from is a sermon he can prepare better.

Yes, he’ll have his time in the pulpit, but that time starts long before then in a study with an open Bible and a heart crying out to God to give Him a word. May your pastor be given plenty of room for that kind of time so that he can do the main thing and do it well.

Change begins in you!