A Day in the Life
How a simple calendar enables a missional life.
Over the last year, I’ve written a lot about disciple-making, church planting, communal living, and other rhythms of life in the Kingdom. But it occurred to me recently that without some concrete examples, all of that can feel a bit abstract.
So, this week, I thought it might be helpful to simply share what a normal week in our household actually looks like.
Nothing particularly special happened, no travel, no big events. Just an ordinary week of following Jesus in community. I share it so that you can get a sense of how and where we spend our time.
Daily Rhythm (Monday–Friday Morning)
6:45–7:45 AM — Wake up and do devotions (synced with our church-wide devo passages).
7:45–8:45 AM — Get the kids up, make breakfast and lunches, reset the kitchen and dining room. Put the kids on the bus for 8:45.
9:00 AM–5:15 PM — Work at our church hub.
10:45 PM — In bed each night.
Monday Evening:
Host Laura’s Simple Church for dinner. My daughter joins her group until it is time for her to go to bed.
One-on-one time with my son. We spend time reading books and talking about what we’re learning. After that, we choose a few fun videos to watch about a subject he would like to learn about. Volcanoes, dinosaurs or so forth. Sometimes we just watch biking fail videos.
Solo rock-climbing session at 8:30 PM after putting the kids to bed (current hobby of choice).
Normally, I join an early Tuesday prayer meeting, but a late-night airport pickup meant I needed sleep instead.
Tuesday Evening
Pick up the kids and take them to see their cousins who were visiting from out of province. Dinner together with the cousins at Grandma’s house. Usually, I’d pick them up from school and take them rock climbing on Tuesdays.
After the kids were in bed, a home workout (I built a small home gym).
Wednesday Evening
Weekly discipleship gathering, affectionately known as “Kids’ Huddle” with all our families and kids, including dinner. This involves all of the families from our church that live in Hamilton. It’s a parent-led evening of organized chaos that is always a wonderful chance for kids to be discipled and parents to connect. I was able to talk to one of our bi-vocational Senior Leadership Team members about some challenges faced at one of our campuses in building healthy teams.
Then, I hosted my Simple Church guys, believers and nonbelievers, for a second dinner and time in Scripture. We focused our conversation on Jesus’ trial in Mark, and it turned into quite a rich time of sharing how the Lord is moving in our lives. One of the leaders of the group preps dinner at my house while we are wrapping up at “Kids’ Huddle.” My wife takes care of bedtime and gets one-on-one time with the kids.
Thursday Evening
Dinner with two of our missionaries (one cooked at her place and brought a meal over; the other came as she was staying with our kids to put them to bed).
Laura and I hosted an information session and Q&A for potential missionaries, with approximately 35 attendees for a hybrid event, mostly graduating students and recent graduates. Lots of good conversation afterward, including a rich conversation about Christian responses to war and violence. Ended the evening by shooting Nerf guns at each other.
Quick 40-minute workout at home to decompress and process the evening.
Friday Evening
Rock-climbing with one of our upcoming missionaries—an easy way to spend intentional time together.
Joining a karaoke night in our building with nonbelievers and friends from our community (just participating, not leading).
Edit: Just kidding, turns out my wife came down with stomach flu, so I missed Friday evening activities to take care of things on the home front.
Normally, one of us joins our church’s running group on Friday mornings, but we both felt like we needed some extra rest.
Saturday
A home day for chores, rest, or spending time with some friends from church. Probably a bike ride or an indoor workout if the weather is bad. The kids have swimming and basketball at our local rec centre in the morning.
We’ll probably end up raking leaves and finishing preparing our home to host people in the new year. We have a couple staying with us for a month in January.
About 50% of our weekends involve some kind of church event that we want to be at. After adding in weddings and holidays, it’s actually pretty rare to have an unscheduled Saturday. We’ll enjoy it!
Sunday
A slow morning, then travelling to speak and encourage leaders at one of our churches, two hours away. We’ll be joining them afterward for baptisms!
A Few Notes That Help Set Us Up for Success
Shared meals anchor our lives. You’ll notice we ate with people almost every evening. This is one of the most important rhythms in our family and an intentional choice.
No screens in the evenings. The average Canadian watches about three hours of TV a day. It’s heartbreaking that as a society we invest so much time consuming content instead of building relationships or strengthening our bodies, minds, and souls. We do our best to stay off our phones - we aren’t perfect, but it’s a good goal to help us double-check if we really need to grab our phone after work.
Intentional balance. I work hard to make space for solo time, social time, time with the kids, exercise, sleep, and the practical work of running a household.
We limit the number of items that are scheduled week-to-week
Living close to where we serve matters. We have no commute. It’s not always possible, but when work, ministry, and home exist in the same community, it creates tremendous margin for relational and kingdom-oriented living.
If you’re wondering what my workdays looked like this week, that’s a post for another day.
This was a really helpful read; thanks, Robin! I've noticed a lot of my evenings feel like they need to be dedicated to logistics/planning if they aren't already blocked in for huddles or the odd worship night, not to mention various other things. In a way, it's encouraging to see that *the things* are just normal, but on the other hand, it's really encouraging to see that the way I *do* those things doesn't have to be so consuming. I noticed a lot of your evenings on this week were church-related, but there was also time for hobbies and decompression, as well as time with family. This week-in-the-life was really great for me personally to see what living on mission can look like.
I think it also helped to see that hobbies sometimes have to be strategic in that we need to exercise and be active, so choosing one hobby that is going to help me live to old age is something I need to work on - or I just bite the bullet and find something that gets me moving, even if it isn't a "hobby" per se.
I'm curious about your screen time rule - an obvious rebuttal might be to question if the rule holds for books which can be similarly consuming/antisocial, but the argument can be made about it changing how you look at the world or helping you grapple with difficult questions (i.e. strengthening souls or minds) - which I would argue some screen media does too. Is it more of a rule or more of a guideline? And what are some of those criteria for whether some media (be it a book, comics, manga, movies) fits your "No screens in the evenings" note?