Pastor Jason has been one of my Twitterati faves ever since I’ve connected with him in the days of Twitter when it really started to take off with the mainstream (this just means 2009ish!). He’s a part of the multi-site BAF ministry in TX, which continues to expand and extend the reach of the Good News. {You can catch the lead pastor’s message on Daystar TV as well.}

Recently, we were going back and forth on which Bible reading plans each of us are tackling with the start of the New Year. Jason told me that he ended up with taking on 2 reading plans simultaneously!!! So I asked him to share with us how he ended up with 2 reading plans. . .what a great little story about the Bible and his church community in Texas!

With the end of the year I did a little evaluation of our campus and found that at Bay Area Fellowship 5 Points, we had seen over 750 first time guests come through our doors on Sunday mornings and over 260 people had prayed to begin a relationship with Christ. For a church 18 months old those numbers told me one thing: We were reaching a lot of people who were unchurched.

With so many people just beginning their relationship with Christ and with a desire to reach even more people in our area in 2010, we set out to create some spiritual momentum to kick off the New Year.

One way I felt would help not only those new to Christ, but everyone at our campus, would be a Bible Reading Plan Challenge. I knew this plan needed to be simple enough to attempt and succeed, as well as kick start new spiritual habits for this New Year. Thus the #NTPin30 plan was developed.

#NTPin30 is actually the Twitter hashtag for our New Testament/ Proverbs in 30 Days Challenge. This plan was simply choose to read the New Testament or the book of Proverbs in 30 days. I opted for a choice, as this would challenge those who may have been stagnant in their reading as well as rewarding for those new to their faith.

The ultimate goal would be to kick start some spiritual momentum in the New Year. Get everyone to open that Bible every day. I actually upped it for myself by telling everyone I would read both if they would choose at least one. The response on the challenge was great as many people are jumping in to kick off an awesome 2010.

As far as specifics to the program, the Proverbs part was simply reading the Proverb chapter that aligns to the date. For the New Testament I broke it down into a 30 day plan…but read out over about 35 days. The plan would be to read Monday through Saturday with Sunday as a catch up day as needed.

You can download and see the 30 day Bible reading plan we’re using for own use.

At the date of this writing we have just kicked off the plan so I hope to come back and share some thoughts when it’s over. WOULD YOU CONSIDER JOINING US FOR JUST 1 MONTH IN OUR READING PLAN TOGETHER? Send a tweet @jasoncurlee with #NTPin30 and let me know how you’re doing with reading the Bible this year.

Jason Curlee blogs at JasonCurlee.com and is all about influencing and developing others to make a difference in their world. He is currently the Campus Pastor for Bay Area Fellowship 5 Points in Corpus Christi, Texas.

His blogs are about creating content that ministry leaders can find practical and inspirational as well as sharing the ministry principles and experiences accumulated since 1995. It’s about being innovative, unique, and creating content that can help you make a difference.

It’s a new year, and you undoubtedly have a shiny new list of objectives to tackle this coming year. You’ve envisioned how you’re going to make it all happen, how you’re going to engage, how you’re supposed to conduct yourself…but is BEING RUTHLESS on your list? It should be. And oh yes, it’s still going to be a great year.

According to Harvard Business School, one of the big ideas is that how you prioritize your time and energy against your projects and tasks is critical to your potential successs. How true it is.

You have to be RUTHLESS in your prioritization – which means including one more dimension of consideration in your planning: One of the key tips from the HSB article is kind of eye opening for me… Instead of writing down all the stuff you have to do and then do the usual sort, kill and delegate, they recommend including another perspective.

Figure out how much total time you have first to work — treat your time available to work as a limited resource and then you can allocate that accordingly against the priorities you’ve set ruthlessly.

When you figure out exactly where you’re spending your time currently, you’ll mostly likely be surprised. This is what I call the Quicken Effect. When people start using Quicken on the computer to track ALL their spending, and see the graphs and charts showing them exactly where their money is going, they go into utter shock. The spending habits are clearly not in line with their conceptual ones. The same thing goes with where you are spending your time. You are most probably NOT spending your time where you THINK you are.

The suggestion is to take the highest priority tasks and knock those out first taking into consideration how much time you actually have available to work today, this week, this month, etc.

If you take the time to be ruthless first, you’ll have the time and energy to be accomodating in the end.

What other time management tactics do you use to help you make the most of your schedule? Please share one with us in the comment section below!