10 Powerful Time Management Tools For Individuals And Teams In 2022

 

Effective time management is as important for an ambitious individual as it’s for a mission-driven team.

Fortunately, modern software can enable you to leverage powerful time management skills.

In this article, we’ll highlight ten powerful time management tools that can boost your focus and productivity. We’ll go over their key features, pricing, and ratings to help you make an informed decision.

This Article Covers:

(click on specific links to jump to a particular section of the page)

• 10 Best Time Management Tools 
  • Time Doctor
  • RescueTime
  • Toggl Track
  • Harvest
  • Everhour
  • Asana
  • Trello
  • Todoist
  • Tomato Timer
  • Focus Keeper

Let’s get started.

10 Best Time Management Tools To Stay Highly Productive

A time management tool is any software that lets you plan, organize and track your time — so you get the most out of your day.

However, every individual has different needs when planning and managing time.

That’s why we’ve divided our list based on four types of time management software:

• Productivity Management Tools
• Time Tracking Tools
• Project Management Tools
• Focus Boosting Timers

Now let’s take a look at the ten best time management tools:

A. Productivity Management Tools

Productivity tools help you utilize proven time management principles to maximize personal and team efficiency.

You can think of them as your trustful ally in checking and controlling poor time management decisions!

Here are our top picks for productivity management tools in 2022:

1. Time Doctor

Employees, managers, leaders, and even freelancers are always looking for ways to improve their efficiency at work, which ultimately increases overall productivity and profitability. 

You must be aware of how you spend your time to manage it more effectively.

Time Doctor tracks all activities of the workday, giving you real-time, actionable insights to improve time management at your workplace.

With its wide range of features, Time Doctor can help if you or your team struggle with:

• Inability to focus during the workday.
• Tracking work hours accurately.
• Regularly missing project deadlines.
• Identifying the reasons why your team isn’t productive.

Key Features

Let’s take an in-depth look at Time Doctor’s key features:

a. Interactive & silent time tracking

The key to ensuring workplace efficiency is to keep track of your time. 

Time Doctor can do that for you with great accuracy and ease. 

In the manual mode, all it takes is a single click. 

Here’s how you can get started:

• Create a new task and hit the start button.
• Continue your work as the timer runs in the background.
• Hit stop if you’ve completed your task or you want to take a break.
• Repeat steps 2-4 for each task in your daily task list.

Time tracking can’t get any simpler than this!

But what if you forget to turn on the timer?

Time Doctor allows you to manually edit your work time.

However, you can also choose to automate the process with Time Doctor’s silent monitoring option. It’ll automatically start tracking time whenever the user turns on their PC.

b. Tasks and projects

For a more efficient workflow, Time Doctor allows you to create projects. You can then add relevant tasks under each project.

Creating projects can help you:

• Keep your entire workflow organized.
• Assign work to the relevant team.
• Monitor progress for each project.
• Analyze individual or team productivity during/after project completion.
• Track time spent on a project to bill clients or pay employees accurately.

c. Comprehensive reports

Time Doctor auto-generates real-time productivity reports that are accurate to the second. 

These reports help you identify unproductive patterns during work hours and empower you to make better business decisions.

Here are a few reports you get with Time Doctor:

• Hours Tracked: See how many hours you’ve tracked in a day, week, month, etc.
• Projects and Tasks Report: View the amount of time spent on projects and tasks.
• Timeline Report: Know the time spent on tasks and breaks for each user.
• Web and App Usage: Determine the amount of time you spend on various apps and websites. 
• Activity Summary: See the active, idle, productive, and unproductive time for a specific time frame.

d. Productivity ratings

Time Doctor allows you to analyze productivity based on the websites and apps you use during work hours. 

Admins can assign any one of the four productivity ratings to a specific website or app:

• Productive
• Unproductive
• Neutral
• Unrated

For larger teams, you can set different productivity ratings for various user groups. 

For example, social media websites can be rated as ‘productive’ for the digital marketing team while remaining ‘unproductive’ for the rest of the organization. 

Once you set these ratings, the ‘Activity Summary’ report will paint a more accurate picture of your team’s productivity. 

e. Extension and integrations

Integrations enable you to use Time Doctor with other tools.

Through Time Doctor’s powerful Chrome extension, you can track time directly from project management software like Trello, Asana, Todoist, and more.

This saves you the hassle of using separate apps for managing your projects and team productivity. 

Additionally, Time Doctor integrates with a host of other workplace software like Jira, LiquidPlanner, etc. This way, you can manage your time and productivity across platforms. 

Pros

• Easy to use and intuitive interface.
• Idle-time pop-ups can help you stay focused.
• Detailed reports that help gain insights into time management.
• Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome operating systems.
• Powerful invoicing management system to accurately bill your clients.
• State-of-the-art data encryption to ensure privacy and security.
• Can track time without an internet connection.
• Responsive customer support team.
• Feature-rich mobile app for Android devices.
• Offers inexpensive pricing plans that suit various needs. 

Pricing

Time Doctor offers a 14-day free trial (no credit card details required.) 

Paid plans start as low as $8/user per month. 

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5 (170+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (300+ reviews)

2. RescueTime

RescueTime is a productivity management tool that aims to minimize the time you waste on distracting websites and apps.

Read our in-depth review of RescueTime.

Key Features

• Time tracking automation capability.
• Detailed reports to understand work habits and identify time sinks.
• Manually fill offline work hours using RescueTime dashboard.
• Block distracting websites while working.
• Integrates with tools like Google Calendar and Slack.
• Compatible with Windows, Android, and Apple (macOS and iOS) devices. 

Pricing

RescueTime offers a limited free version. Its premium plan starts at $12/user per month.

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.1/5 (60+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (110+ reviews)

B. Time Tracking Tools

This set of time management tools primarily focus on tracking your work hours — some of them may offer basic productivity monitoring features. 

However, before you commit to a tool, it’s essential to evaluate your time tracking needs based on factors such as:

• The size of your team.
• Whether you have an on-field or remote team.
• Integrations with your current productivity app.
• Manual vs. automatic tracking functionality. 
• Your invoicing needs.

Note: While Time Doctor and RescueTime also track time, they primarily focus on boosting your productivity and time management skills. 

Here’s a quick look at some time tracking software:

3. Toggl Track

Toggl Track is an easy-to-use time tracker that can run on multiple devices. It can accurately calculate your team’s work hours without interrupting their workflow.

Check out our comprehensive Toggl Track review.

Key Features

• Supports manual or automatic tracking feature to record your work hours accurately.
• Calendar app integration to turn events into time entries.
• Track and sync data on multiple devices in one-click.
• Generate reports in CSV or PDF formats. 
• Email reminders to achieve time tracking targets.

Pricing

Toggl Track has a limited free version. It offers paid plans starting at $10/user per month.

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.5/5 (1300+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (1400+ reviews)

4. Harvest

Harvest is a cloud-based time tracking tool suitable for service businesses, such as healthcare and legal consulting.

Here’s our Harvest vs. RescueTime comparison to help you analyze both tools. 

Key Features

• Track time while working or edit the timesheet later.
• Track expenses for project, task, client, team members, etc.
• Visualize timesheet data using charts and graphs. 
• Integrates with other workplace software like Asana, Trello, and Basecamp.
• Keep track of billable hours and expenses for easy invoicing.

Pricing

Harvest offers a free limited version. Its paid plan starts at $12/user per month.

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.3/5 (700+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (400+ reviews)

5. Everhour

Everhour is a time tracking tool that’s ideally suited for small teams. It helps you gauge your team’s performance through detailed timesheets.

Key Features

• Track work hours by using clock-in, clock-out, and break buttons. 
• Track vacations, sick days, and paid time off for your team.
• Central dashboard to access all time and expense data.
• Easy integration with tools like Asana, Trello, ClickUp, etc.
• Check your team’s schedule to see who’s available and assign tasks accordingly.

Pricing

Everhour offers a 14-day free trial. Plans start at $10/user per month.

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.7/5 (90+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (200+ reviews)

C. Project Management Tools

Managing multiple projects simultaneously can be stressful and overwhelming, especially when you’re using a notepad to create your daily task list.

But don’t worry! 

Project management software can equally benefit a freelancer and a business owner in several ways. 

It can help you:

• Streamline your workflow.
• Monitor different tasks and projects from one place.
• Get clarity on project targets to precisely set a daily and weekly schedule.
• Prioritize your time and resources well.
• Keep your project expenses in check.
• Collaborate with your team in a shared virtual workspace.

Let’s take a look at a few powerful project management tools:

6. Asana

Asana is a collaborative project management tool that lets you manage all your work from a centralized dashboard. It helps your team stay updated on work targets, responsibilities, and priorities.

Key Features

• Use ‘Goals’ on the Asana dashboard to set strategic goals and monitor their progress.
• Supports visual tools like Gantt charts to create project plans. (Pro tip: Using a timeline maker or a Gantt chart is a great way to visualize your project plans so that it’s easier for everyone on the team to stay on track.)
• Track your project progress using Portfolios.
• Import and export spreadsheet data (CSV) to Asana’s workspace.
• Integrate with tools like Time Doctor, Slack, Evernote, Gmail, Dropbox, etc.

Pricing

Asana offers a free limited version. Paid plans start at $13.49/month per user.

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.3/5 (6500+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.4/5 (9300+ reviews)

7. Trello

Trello helps your team stay organized and productive by using the power of Kanban boards. These visual boards give you a bird’s eye view of all your projects and tasks.

Key Features

• Board and card system for streamlining your work.
• Drag and drop to edit your task lists and boards.
• Automate your workflow with Power-ups.
• Prioritize your tasks using a calendar Power-up.
• Sync your data across platforms like Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android platforms.

Pricing

Trello offers a free limited version. Its paid plans start at $12.50/user per month.

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5 (11,100+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (18,300+ reviews)

8. Todoist

Todoist is a task manager that adds useful functionalities to your regular to-do list.

It helps you leverage Getting Things Done( GTD) — a work management strategy to declutter your mind and get more work done in less time.

Key Features

• Create recurring tasks, like “set up a meeting every Monday.”
• Set task priorities to differentiate between an important and urgent task.
• Track your daily/monthly progress using the productivity visualization feature.
• Compatible with PC, Android, and Apple(Mac / iOS) devices.

Pricing

Todoist offers a free limited version. Its paid plans start at $4/user per month.

Customer Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5 (600+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (1200+ reviews)

D. Focus Boosting Timers

This list would be incomplete without mentioning the reliable old ‘timers.’ 

Timers are basic time management apps that you can use with a productivity approach like the Pomodoro Technique. 

They encourage you to focus on a  specific task for a certain period, helping you beat procrastination and avoid multitasking — the two major productivity killers.

Reclaim your time with these focus boosting timers:

9. Tomato Timer

Tomato Timer is a web-based tool that uses the Pomodoro Technique to help you stay focused on work. 

Here’s how you can use it:

• Use a prioritization technique to sort your task list.
• Choose an important task from the list and start the timer. 
• Focus intensely on your work for just 25 minutes.
• Take a 5-minute breather and start again. 

Working for a short duration minimizes the chances of procrastinating. You’ll be amazed to see the amount of work you could finish without tiring yourself out!

Key Features

• Minimalistic and easy-to-use interface.
• Pause or reset the timer at your convenience.
• Set custom timer intervals.
• Audio notification when the timer ends.
• Keyboard shortcuts for start, stop, reset, long and short break, etc.

Pricing

TomatoTimer is a free-to-use web-based tool.

Customer Ratings

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

10. Focus Keeper

Focus Keeper allows you to use the Pomodoro technique through a mobile device.

It works on the same principle we discussed above — short bouts of focused work to increase productivity and avoid burnout.

Key Features

• Simple and intuitive interface.
• Track your progress with visual charts.
• Notification alerts even when the app runs in the background.
• Reminders to use Focus Keeper more frequently.
• Available on both Android and iOS devices.

Pricing

Focus Keeper is free to download on the App Store and Google Play store.

Customer Ratings

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

Wrapping Up 

If there is one factor that can solely determine the success or failure of your efforts, it’s time management.

Fortunately, with the right suite of time management tools, you can gain insights into how to manage time better.

Check out the tools we shared in this guide to see what fits your needs best. 

You can even complement a productivity tracker like Time Doctor with a project management app like Asana and a timer like Focus Keeper for maximum functionality.

Originally Posted: https://biz30.timedoctor.com/time-management-tools

Four Simple Ideas That Can Make You Earn Money Online

 Making money sitting in the comfort of your home without any initial investment is such a great idea of course. It is one of the best ways to earn extra money while enjoying your daily life. In today's economy, we all want to make money fast, safe, and easy. In this era of technology, we can easily make money online. The following are some most common and authentic ways to earn money online.

Start blogging

Blogging is a very good opportunity for you to earn cash and do as you wish. There are many people that use blogging as their main source of income, some of them are quite good at it, some not so good. You do not have to have any experience in blogging before you can become a blogger. After creating a blog, sign up with affiliate programs that allow you to place ads on your site. Google AdSense is the most popular among all affiliate programs. When you sign up with Google AdSense, you will get Google AdSense ads on your site that can help you earn more money. Sign up with different affiliate programs and make money.

Start affiliate marketing

It is very important for you to find an online earning idea that you can really sink your teeth into. To start online earning, it would be best to look for a reliable way and affiliate marketing is a very authentic and cost-effective way to earn money online. If you are interested in creating a passive income then affiliate marketing is what you need to do. To start affiliate marketing you can go shopping, do some research, go online and look up affiliate programs. Once you find an affiliate program that suits you, then you can earn money online very easily. Different sites like Amazon offers affiliate programs, you can join these programs and can start earning money online.

Start digital marketing

You can also make money through digital marketing. Digital marketing allows you to promote your own products or services through the use of the Internet. With digital marketing, you do not have to worry about starting up an advertising campaign or spending money on newspapers and television advertisements. All you need to do is to post content on your blog or website and let the digital marketing company take care of everything else. There are more people who make money with digital marketing than there are those who engage in traditional advertising. Read this review to learn more about digital marketing and its benefits. You can learn complete details about online earning and digital marketing from this website.

Start SEO

You can earn money online through SEO. SEO, or search engine optimization, will allow you to rank high in the search engines. This will allow you to have more visitors to your site and therefore make more money. There are many SEO companies today that you can choose to work with and you can be sure that they will be able to help you achieve success online. Furthermore, you can sell your services as an SEO expert on different freelancer platforms including Fiverr and Upwork, etc. In this way, you can earn money through search engine optimization.

Source: https://mytrendingstories.com/johnkim-kim-y3srg9/four-simple-ideas-that-can-make-you-earn-money-online-dfirfu

5 Tips for a Healthier 2022

 

Health is always a priority heading into a new year, but amid the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is more important than ever. In a survey asking Americans about their 2022 New Year’s resolutions, one-quarter of the respondents who were making resolutions reported that they set a goal to live healthier. With wellness so front of mind, doctors, nurses, and dietitians from NewYork-Presbyterian shared with Health Matters their tips to help create healthy habits.

1. Exercise Regularly

Staying physically fit improves cardiovascular and muscular health and helps fight disease. Exercising also has been shown to reduce stress and improve your overall mood, so try to squeeze in at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each week, the minimum recommended by the American Heart Association, plus at least two days of muscle-strengthening activities. “Making a daily commitment to exercise, stretch, meditate, or practice any other form of self-care may help you feel calmer and allow you to reset,” says Maria Biondi, RDN, CDN, a NYPBeHealthy well-being coach at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens.

Here are some simple ways to break the exercises down into 30-minute increments, courtesy of the NYPBeHealthy wellness team:

• Take at least two 30-minute walks a week at lunchtime or plan some walking meetings.
• Do 30 minutes of strength training with a kettlebell or hand weights while watching TV.
• Jump rope for 15 minutes when you get up in the morning and again when you get home at night.
• Do squats at your desk for 10-minute increments three times per day.

In the winter months, don’t be afraid to brave the cold for your workouts. “Exercising outdoors provides all of the physical benefits that we get from indoor exercise — cardiovascular health, strength, flexibility, and endurance — but we also get many other important benefits,” says Dr. Morgan Busko, attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital.

Just being in the sun increases your body’s creation of vitamin D, which protects you from a host of medical problems, says Dr. Busko, who is also an assistant professor of primary care sports at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. And exercising outdoors may provide a special psychological boost.

“There are studies that show that exercising in nature actually increases the levels of dopamine, serotonin, and natural endorphins that are released through the body,” says Dr. Busko. “If you do the same exact workout outdoors versus indoors, you’re getting a bigger dose of these neuromuscular transmitters that promote a happy mood.” Outdoor exercise may also provide a better workout. “When you are outdoors, you don’t realize that you’re tackling hills or uneven trails, as opposed to being on a machine in the gym, where you may stay at the same resistance or level of intensity for the entire the workout,” says Dr. Busko.

For people who are working from home, regular movement during the work day can also help reduce aches and pains. “Motion is medicine when it comes to spine health,” says Dr. J. Ricky Singh, director of interventional spine at NewYork-Presbyterian Och Spine and vice chair and associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. For example, you can add 10 squats, 10 tricep dips on a solid chair, and wall pushups to your daily routine. Also, make a point to get up from your desk two or three times an hour to walk around and do light stretching, such as back bends, which will help counter being hunched over a computer.

2. Eat Right

In addition to getting enough fruits, vegetables, and whole grains throughout the day, focus on protein in the morning, says Dr. Rekha B. Kumar, an attending endocrinologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Packing your breakfast with protein will keep blood sugar and some “hunger hormones” more stable throughout the day, helping to control your appetite. Egg-white omelets, Greek yogurt, and protein shakes are examples. Dr. Kumar also advises against too much sugar, especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup. Consuming excess sugar leads to a condition called insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type 2 diabetes, a fatty liver, and cardiovascular disease. It has also been associated with cirrhosis, neuropathy, kidney disease, general inflammation, and cancer.

A diet with less red meat will lead to a host of benefits if you replace the calories with whole plant foods, says Dr. Shilpa Ravella, a gastroenterologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Your blood cholesterol levels will drop, and you’ll decrease your risk of chronic diseases, including top killers like heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and obesity.

One easy-to-follow diet that avoids red meat is the Mediterranean diet, a plant-based, low-carbohydrate diet that is full of “healthy” fats like nuts and seeds and is clinically proven to decrease our risk of developing heart disease, says Dr. Altaf Pirmohamed, site director of cardiology at NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital and assistant professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Focus on eating vegetables cooked in olive oil and natural spices, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats,” he says.

Dr. Alessio Pigazzi, chief of colorectal surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medicine, agrees, noting the diet’s benefit to colon health as well. What you eat can cause inflammation in your bowels and gut, and inflammation is a predisposing factor for colorectal cancer development. Researchers have identified the main food substances that cause inflammation in the body and may contribute to an increased risk of colorectal cancer: Sugar, animal fats, and red and processed meats. There isn’t one specific vegetable that is a magic cure-all for a healthy colon. It’s more about eating a variety of nutritious foods and focusing on a colorful, plant-based diet. “The best diet — and I’m a little bit biased because I’m Italian — is probably a Mediterranean diet on steroids,” says Dr. Pigazzi. “We need to increase the consumption of fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and berries and try to keep the amount of red meat and animal fats to an absolute minimum.”

Need some inspiration? Check out these healthy and delicious vegetarian soups and stews from Emilie Berner, chef and coordinator at NewYork-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital’s Chef Peter X. Kelly Teaching Kitchen.

3. Get Enough Sleep

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many people’s sleep patterns — some have even suffered from what’s known as “coronasomnia” — but it’s critical to keep a regular sleep schedule and get about eight hours of sleep a night, says Dr. Daniel Barone, a neurologist and sleep medicine expert at the Center for Sleep Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and an associate professor of neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Having a strong, healthy immune system gives us a little more of a barrier against developing a COVID infection, so it’s important to prioritize sleep,” says Dr. Barone.

He suggests establishing a regular bedtime and wake-up time, avoiding caffeine later in the day, turning off electronics before bedtime, setting boundaries around your media consumption, exercising regularly, avoiding naps, cutting out alcohol, and paying attention to the possible signs of sleep apnea.

4. Protect Yourself From COVID-19 and the Flu

“Last year’s flu season was mild since many people stayed isolated due to COVID,” says pediatrician and immunization expert Dr. Melissa Stockwell, chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Health at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “This year we are concerned it will be a more severe season.”

The single best way to protect yourself from the flu and COVID-19? Get the vaccine for both, and the COVID booster if you’re eligible, says Dr. Stockwell. “Studies have shown that people can get both shots at the same time and it won’t affect their antibody response.”

Fortunately, the preventive measures for COVID-19 also apply for the flu: avoiding large crowds and gatherings, wearing a mask, social distancing, frequent handwashing, and staying at home when you feel sick. “A lot of people may be coughing and sneezing, so the likelihood of transmission is much higher when you’re having active symptoms,” says Dr. Ting Ting Wong, an attending physician and infectious disease specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. “These are all preventions for COVID as well as influenza transmission.”

It’s especially important for pregnant women to protect themselves from the flu and COVID-19 with vaccines. Not only is the flu shot effective and safe for the baby, says Dr. Laura Riley, obstetrician and gynecologist-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, but it also protects babies who are born during flu season, which runs from October through April. Flu vaccinations given to pregnant women reduce the risk of hospitalization from influenza by about 70% for infants younger than 6 months old. As for COVID-19: ““We do have lots of epidemiologic data which suggests that pregnancy plus COVID-19 is not a good mix,” says Dr. Riley. “Pregnant women have had more admissions to the ICU, more mechanical ventilation, and more deaths, although the absolute number is low. The flip side is you’ve got a vaccine that works to prevent severe illness.”

5. Stick to Your Plan

Whether you’re looking to lose weight, get in better shape, stay in better touch with family and friends, quit smoking or drinking, or have another goal in mind, there are simple strategies you can adopt to stick with your plan, says Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychoanalyst and assistant attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. She suggests:

• Own up to what needs to be changed.
• Write out your goals and corresponding action plan in weekly parts.
• Start with a journal entry of “Why?”
• Create incentives.
• Tell someone else.

Originally published in: https://healthmatters.nyp.org/habits-for-a-healthy-new-year/ 

What American Christians Hear at Church

 “Now that I have preached about a dozen sermons I find I am repeating myself,” a young minister wrote despairingly in his diary in 1915. He was barely out of school and only a few months into his first call, at Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit. “The few ideas that I had worked into sermons at the seminary have all been used, and now what?” It would be fourteen years before anyone else read those words, published under the title “Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic.” It would take even longer for their author, Reinhold Niebuhr, to become one of the best-known theologians in the country, famous for works such as “The Irony of American History” and “The Nature and Destiny of Man.”

Niebuhr was twenty-three when he was assigned to Bethel, and so timid that he often walked past the houses of parishioners a few times before he worked up enough courage to knock. “There is something ludicrous about a callow young fool like myself standing up to preach a sermon to these good folks,” he wrote in his diary. “I talk wisely about life and know little about life’s problems. I tell them of the need of sacrifice, although most of them could tell me something about what that really means.” But Niebuhr knew preaching was the core of worship, and that the task fell entirely to the minister, no matter her age or experience: “Without an adequate sermon no clue is given to the moral purpose at the heart of the mystery,” he wrote, “and reverence remains without ethical content.”

sermon transcription

A century later, sermons remain the core of worship. They also represent a curious literary genre. Like short stories, sermons have certain formal characteristics; unlike sonnets, they have no set form. They can focus on a single verse or several passages, take on a specific theological concept or doctrine, be timely and topical or conspicuously old-fashioned. Christians continue to preach today because Jesus preached during his ministry; the Gospels document the sermons he gave in the years preceding his crucifixion. Following Christ’s example, the disciples also went out to preach; we know this from accounts preserved in the Book of Acts and in the letters of the apostle Paul. Some of the oldest records of the early church attest to the central role of preaching in Christianity. The second-century writings of Justin Martyr, for example, include this description of contemporary worship: “And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.”

Yet not even the earliest apologists agreed about what preaching should be or how anyone should do it, and sermon records from the next few centuries expose how quickly the methods of different preachers began to diverge. In his homiletics anthology “The Company of Preachers,” the Duke professor Richard Lischer wrote that “the universal association of preaching with the Christian faith has not led to a uniform definition of the task.” That was largely because, as he wrote, “preaching presents an eternal triangle of message, speaker, and audience.” In other words, any definition of preaching depends on whether you begin with scripture or doctrine, the character of the preacher, or the nature of the congregation.

Homiletics—the proper name for the art of preaching—is still taught in seminaries and divinity schools, but it is not often studied outside of those institutions. This is regrettable, since many more Americans attend church than subscribe to a newspaper. Yet one needn’t even go to worship to consider sermons; plenty of churches now stream their services, and, for decades, archivists have been uploading sermons from some of the country’s greatest preachers. After a quick YouTube search, you can watch the evangelist Billy Graham answer “Who is Jesus?” in Chicago, in 1971, and “Is There a Hell?” in Sacramento, in 1983—or see him preach to a hundred thousand people, among them Vice-President Richard Nixon, in Yankee Stadium, in the summer of 1957. Even if you’ve never been to New York City, you can settle into one of the Riverside Church’s pews as Barbara Brown Taylor preaches on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Click again, and you can enter the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968, as Martin Luther King, Jr., preaches his last sermon, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.”

These are historic sermons by exceptional orators; on their own they cannot convey what happens during weekly worship. In the past few years, though, the Pew Research Center has found a novel way to survey American preaching similar to how it has long surveyed Americans themselves. Taking advantage of the technologies that have allowed churches to stream services and post them online, Pew has studied the length, language, and content of tens of thousands of sermons, by denomination and tradition, most recently for the nine Sundays before and the Sunday after last fall’s Presidential election. Pew’s latest analysis builds on an earlier survey from 2019, in the eight weeks from April through June that included Easter. This time, the center was aided by churches that moved their work online because of the coronavirus pandemic; this provided Pew with a welcome body of materials that researchers could use to analyze how beliefs, religious and otherwise, spread through our country every Sunday.

Precise Transcription

“Frequent churchgoers may have a good sense of what kind of sermons to expect from their own clergy,” the Pew researchers wrote in their initial report, titled “The Digital Pulpit.” “But what are other Americans hearing from the pulpits in their congregations?” The researchers identified and collected as many sermons as they could from church live streams and Web sites. (For legal reasons, Pew could not include services that were streamed on Facebook or only uploaded to YouTube.) In their first attempt, during the spring of 2019, they transcribed nearly fifty thousand sermons from more than six thousand churches. Last year, from August 31st to November 8th, they transcribed almost thirteen thousand sermons from more than two thousand churches.

Neither was a representative sample by any means—there are some three hundred and eighty thousand churches in this country—but, collectively, they provide a fascinating cross-section of American Christianity. The researchers were able to identify the denomination, membership size, and predominant race or ethnicity of nearly ninety per cent of these congregations, which they organized into four traditions: Catholic, evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, and historically Black Protestant.

The median sermon examined in the first survey was thirty-seven minutes long; Catholic homilies were the shortest, with a median of fourteen minutes. Not even that brevity satisfies Pope Francis, who recently advised clergy members to keep their sermons short: “A homily, generally, should not go beyond ten minutes, because after eight minutes you lose people’s attention.” (He joked, after his audience applauded the advice, “The Sisters, who are victims of our homilies, initiated that applause!”) By contrast, Pew found that the sermons at historically Black churches were the longest, at more than three times that length, with a median of fifty-four minutes. These sermons had only a few hundred more words than those from within the evangelical tradition, a detail that suggests oratorical style or musical interludes might be contributing to their length. The religion scholar Albert J. Raboteau wrote about this patient style of preaching, sometimes known as the “black folk sermon” or “old-time country preaching,” tracing its origins back to the eighteenth century in rural, Southern prayer meetings and revivals. In his book “A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History,” he noted that even those who have never worshipped in a Black church may well recognize this style from its appearance in the works of writers such as James Baldwin, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Ralph Ellison.

Vocabulary analysis by Pew revealed how common some language is across these four major Christian traditions—words like “know” and “God” appeared most often, not surprisingly—but also how distinctive certain words are within each of those traditions. Evangelicals referred most often to “eternal Hell,” “salvation,” “sin,” “Heaven,” and “the Bible”; mainline Protestants relied more on the words “poor,” “house,” “Gospel,” and “disciple”; historically Black Protestants were most likely to hear “hallelujah,” “neighbor,” and “praise.” The data suggest that preachers from all traditions were more likely to refer to the New Testament than the Old Testament, although the eight weeks initially surveyed fell during Lent and Easter, so the findings might have reflected the liturgical calendar as much as anything else.

Of the sermons studied during that initial period, the researchers found that just four per cent “discussed abortion even once—and when they did, it was rarely mentioned repeatedly.” In their analysis of sermons last fall, on the other hand, the researchers found that two-thirds of congregations heard at least one sermon addressing the Presidential election. Catholic priests were least likely to mention politics, whereas evangelical preachers were most likely to do so; nearly half of the historically Black churches—almost double the other traditions—explicitly mentioned voting, using words like “register,” “early voting,” or “suppress” in their discussion of the election. Very few sermons named candidates or parties, but researchers found that, of the five hundred and thirty-five that discussed the election, thirty-five explicitly advocated for the G.O.P., and twenty-six advocated for the Democratic Party. Pew found that many American sermons last fall directly addressed political issues more broadly; forty per cent of congregations heard sermons that mentioned race or racism, for instance, and a full eighty per cent heard sermons that mentioned the coronavirus pandemic.

Not every church is technologically equipped to post its worship services online, and some Christian communities would never do so for theological reasons; as a result, the Pew data sets skew more urban than rural and include larger-than-average congregations. And there are other limitations. The appearance of certain words is hardly a sophisticated metric of anything, including sermons: a mention of the coronavirus does not convey the preacher’s theology of suffering or the community’s medical ethics, just as a reference to any given book of the Bible does not itself reveal the church’s relationship to scripture or church history. Sermons are not mere collections of words, and a survey of diction or duration is not sufficient for understanding the argument of the one preaching or the beliefs of those listening.

But they are listening: when surveyed by Gallup, a full seventy-five per cent of respondents indicated that, of all the offerings from their places of worship, they cared most about sermons, preferring those which taught scripture and were relevant to their lives. That’s somewhat surprising, since many devout Christians can summon only a handful of sermons that they have found memorable or meaningful, even though a faithful parishioner might hear a few thousand in a lifetime. An average preacher might deliver some thousand sermons in a career, devoting dozens of hours every month to the task of preparing them, sometimes with the aid of online repositories like SermonCentral or lectionary resources like Working Preacher. Some preachers are more committed to originality than others: earlier this summer, Sermongate, a slow-simmering scandal in the Southern Baptist Convention, revealed how freely clergy members sometimes borrow from one another. A side-by-side video comparison showed that the incoming president of the S.B.C. copied text for a sermon from the outgoing president without any acknowledgment or attribution.

Sermongate was written up in the mainstream press—a rarity for sermons these days. Sometimes a specific sermon causes a scandal, as when two sermons from President Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, were circulated, each collapsing into one incendiary refrain—“God Damn America.” More recently, the Reverend Raphael Warnock’s elaboration on Matthew 6:24—“No man can serve two masters”—became fodder for his political opponents. (Warnock had said, “America, nobody can serve God and the military. You cannot serve God and money.”) Earlier this year, a Baptist pastor in Malden, Missouri, was put on leave after alleging, during a controversial sermon on marriage, that God wanted women to be attractive for their husbands and that adultery arose when women failed to be so. The month before, some parishioners at St. Elizabeth Seton Church in Illinois walked out of Father William Corcoran’s homily denouncing the Capitol riot and atoning for his failure to condemn the cruelty and dishonesty of contemporary politics: “I have never spoken out,” he said, “and fear we are teaching the young that truth and facts do not matter.”

Although sermons used to be reprinted regularly in newspapers, such controversies are uncommon, and homiletics rarely makes headlines anymore. The local news does not hype or recap sermons the way national outlets do sitcoms or “Saturday Night Live,” and preaching clips don’t typically go viral. Still, what the Pew Research Center was able to do quantitatively most of us can now do qualitatively, surveying countless denominations of Christian worship in the American context. In the past year, plenty of Christians have Zoomed with their home parish one Sunday only to Vimeo with a childhood friend’s church the next, or have reconnected with old church homes on Facebook Live and then have logged on to a neighborhood church’s YouTube channel because someone in their pod is a member there. For all the ways that virtual worship felt compromised or isolating, the digitization of preaching made it possible to experience the diversity of worship more easily. You could join parishioners at one of the smallest churches in the country—the Little White Church of Elbe, an eighteen-foot-by-twenty-four-foot building on the road to Paradise by Mt. Rainier National Park—or one of the largest—Joel Osteen’s evangelical Lakewood Church, which meets in the former arena of the Houston Rockets and attracts as many as sixteen thousand in-person attendees to each Sunday service, along with millions more online.

Other kinds of worship moved online, too, such as the recorded services for some of this country’s more than two million incarcerated people, including one led by the Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber for her flock at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. Still in lockdown, the women watched her sermon last June over closed-circuit television. Bolz-Weber preached on the fifth chapter of Romans, in which the apostle Paul argues that Christians are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, and that they rejoice in their suffering, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” The chapter is often read on Trinity Sunday. Bolz-Weber’s sermon was only seven minutes long, and focussed on the connection between hope and disappointment. The theologically curious could compare it to “Our Benefits Package,” a forty-seven-minute sermon by Skip Heitzig, the evangelical pastor of the Calvary Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, or one of hundreds of other sermons on that chapter of Romans or any of the Epistle’s other fifteen chapters.

This country is filled with preaching on all sides of every political or social movement, with sermons on any given Sunday praying for the President or calling him illegitimate, arguing for reproductive freedom or against abortion, praising social welfare or condemning it, decrying socialism or explaining how Jesus practiced it. The fissures of our society are evident in our churches, as they have always been, and although the hope is that the divisions of the secular world can be erased there, all too often they are reinforced instead.

Perhaps that is why Pew’s second and third surveys seem so much more fraught than the first. (At present, there are no plans for a fourth, though Pew is exploring ways that other researchers can use its existing data sets for additional studies.) By focussing on some of the most charged political issues of the day, Pew’s abortion analysis and election report evidenced the church’s ongoing engagement with pressing social concerns and also suggested how readily its ministers can slip into the language of secular politics. Such politicking can seem prophetic if the sermon encourages the welcoming of refugees through the sanctuary movement, but less so if the pastor proclaims QAnon conspiracy theories about sex trafficking and election fraud.

But one person’s prophecy is another person’s apostasy, and most of us don’t object to preachers airing political opinions per se, only those which conflict with our own. Such is the ambiguity of these surveys: counting word choices or cataloguing political themes does not itself illuminate the content of sermons, for both a call to apostolic poverty and a zealous argument for the prosperity gospel would be included in the category of sermons about wealth. And even if Pew were able to parse the language of sermons in ways that shed more light on the views of preachers, it would not be able to illuminate the most fundamental question of preaching—when, whether, and why a sermon moves a congregant to new or deeper beliefs. What the young Reinhold Niebuhr experienced as a sense of fraudulence was really more like an appropriate humility: the words of sermons matter, even if neither Pew nor the very people who deliver them can ever know precisely how.

Originally published on "The New Yorker" What American Christians Hear at Church | The New Yorker

Casey Cep is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.”

Elijah’s Prayer for Rain

 Read: 1 Kings 18:41-46

How do we pray when we already have been told what God will do? That may seem like a bizarre question, yet it is one that Elijah could have answered. It is obvious that his experience as he prays for rain provides an example for us because he had been told by God that he would soon send rain. No doubt, some will dismiss the question by saying that it could only be asked of someone like Elijah who had been given a special promise by God. Yet God has given us many promises in connection to prayer. Are they as real as the one he made to Elijah? We will consider this aspect later. 

This incident is important for us as New Testament believers. When the apostle James wanted to encourage his first-century readers about the topic of prayer he chose this event. They too were living in difficult circumstances. What hope could James offer them? He told them about Elijah and how his prayers influenced the events in the natural world. This story from another time is always an encouragement to God’s people because it reminds them of what was achieved through prayer.

Only a short time before, Elijah had prayed publicly for God to accept the sacrifice offered to him on Mount Carmel. Now he prays again, except this prayer is a private one in the sense that the onlookers have gone. It is obvious that his prayer method in private differed from how he prayed in public. I suspect that both incidents have been recorded in the Bible so that we will think about both our public and our private prayers.

Promises and prayer

In verse 41, Elijah tells Ahab to go and eat and drink because there is a sound of the rushing of rain. This statement raises a question as to the sense in which Elijah could hear it because it does not look as if Ahab could. It is possible that the Lord let Elijah hear something that was yet a long distance away because at that moment there was nothing visible in the sky that would indicate that rain was about to come. Indeed the sky remained unchanged from what it had looked like on previous days. Yet I think it more likely that what Elijah was hearing was the promise of God to send rain.

Here we see a very important aspect of prayer which is that it is based mainly on the promises of God. Of course, we can pray for matters and people about which God has not given particular promises. Yet we cannot express confidence that these prayers will be answered by a yes from God. In distinction from that type of petition there are requests that we can make expecting a yes because the Lord has given specific promises about them. 

No doubt, Elijah was thinking about God’s promise as he urged Ahab to go and eat. And it would be a useful practice for us to think about some of God’s promises before we begin to pray, and then in our prayer we can ask God to do what he has promised. 

But it looks as if Elijah did more than accept that God would send some rain. Instead he expected that the Lord would send a great deal of rain – there would be a rushing of rain, as if it would come down in torrents. Remember that there was no sign of rain in the sky, yet here is the Lord’s servant anticipating something great from God. The prophet knew that the Lord’s answer would be based on his grace, his abounding grace. We have often sung Amazing Grace, but when we do, do we think of it as abounding towards the undeserving.

There is another detail that would have helped Elijah have a sense of confidence in God’s Word, and we may find this detail a bit surprising. Is there a reason why we are told in the previous verses that he slew the prophets of Baal? We know why he did it – it was done out of obedience to God’s Word. Yet Elijah could not have found such an action as easy to perform. And is it not the case that often we fail to have the confidence we should have because we are not willing to do the difficult things that God sometimes puts in our path. Thankfully we don’t have to perform the type of action that Elijah did here. But that does not mean we will not have difficult situations in which to develop our spiritual muscles. Faith is a spiritual muscle that is strengthened in different ways, and obedience is a way of strengthening our confidence in God. 

Place of prayer

Elijah ascended Mount Carmel in order to pray, probably near to the altar that he had erected a short time previously. Perhaps he had gone there because he knew it was a place where God had been present. More likely he went there to get away from the crowds and find a place where he could engage in personal prayer. Common sense tells us that if we try and pray in a noisy location we will be distracted.

Finding a secret place to pray is a matter of obedience to the instructions of Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount he told his disciples that ‘when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you’ (Matt. 6:6). The immediate context of that requirement is to avoid showing off in prayer, of imitating the practice of the Pharisees.

A secret place is essential for bringing to God the personal burdens of our hearts. We can easily gauge the sense we have of these matters by assessing our use of a secret place. Public prayer is not the time when an individual should be going into detail about his or her heart sins. Yet private prayer is such a time. Similarly, public prayer is not an occasion for describing personal disappointments with other believers. They should be spoken about to God.

A secret place for prayer is an important contribution to the process of getting to know God, whether it be the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit. We know that it is impossible to build healthy relationships with other people unless we spend time with them. This is also the case with increasing in our knowledge of the Lord. Personal prayer is not the only means of obtaining such knowledge – we also receive it from other means of grace such as listening to preaching, participating in the Lord’s Supper and listening to other Christians. Yet none or all of them can be a substitute for having a secret place.

A secret place and its timing must be organized by us. I don’t mean that we become fixed to praying for a certain period every day. Instead, we should mark out time in which to meet with God and that meeting can include meditation on the Bible, recording reflections in a journal or diary, utilizing a book of devotions, and other helpful tools. But it must involve prayer and we can see its different aspects in the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to say when each of them went into his secret place: adoration (Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name); intercession for his kingdom (your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven); prayer for personal needs (give us this day our daily bread); confession of sin (forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors); and prayer for protection from evil (and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil). Jesus also points out the attitude we must have in the secret place: ‘For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matt. 6:14-15).

Posture in prayer

Elijah ‘bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees’ (v. 42). Does posture in private prayer matter? We are all familiar with the concept of body language and I think it is the case that certain postures help us when praying for particular answers. They also reveal what we think about God, and after all only he sees what we do in private prayer.

Elijah’s posture revealed two aspects of his outlook towards God. First, bowing down indicated that he recognized that God was his sovereign. Out there on the top of Mount Carmel, the prophet was aware that he was in the presence of God, the real King of Israel. The only appropriate response was to bow before him in adoration at his greatness. There are three attitudes that lie behind bowing down to a superior: there is the sense of reluctant compulsion (we dislike him but cannot escape from him), there is the sense of deceptive manipulation (we pretend that we want to serve him), and there is the sense of reverent acknowledgement (we love who he is and want to elevate him higher in our own estimation). 

Should we bow in personal prayer? It depends on where we are. Paul says in Ephesians 3:14: ‘For this reason I bow my knees before the Father...’ He says elsewhere that we should follow his example. So it is appropriate to bow physically in his presence as an expression of what is felt within us as we draw near to him in prayer.

Elijah also put his face between his knees and I would suggest, secondly, that this posture indicates his sense of shame and unworthiness. Remember he is praying near to where he has had a major triumph and the evidence of his success would still have been visible on top of the mountain. I suppose he could have looked at it and said to himself, ‘God used me there and it is good to focus on such memories.’ No doubt there is a place for such reflection, but not when we are engaged in prayer for more divine actions. The fact is, even our best efforts are not really worth focusing on and sometimes they can take our eyes of God and away from the business at hand. 

It is one of the intriguing facts of Christian experience that those who have done most for God think very little about the worth of their contributions. George Muller, as an old man and after being a Christian for over fifty years, observed about himself and his prayer life: ‘He has given me, unworthy as I am, immeasurably above all I had asked or thought! I am only a poor, frail, sinful man, but he has heard my prayers tens of thousands of times...’ Many more such examples could be cited. What they tell us is that the man who stands tall before men bows low before God. Fear of man disappears when there is fear of God.

Petitioning in prayer

One thing that is clear is that Elijah did not presume anything about God’s promise. The prophet did not say to the people, ‘God has promised rain. All we have to do is sit down and wait for it to come.’ That would have been presumption. Instead he went and prayed about the matter.

Two features stand out regarding his prayer. One is the precise request that he made, which was for God to fulfil his promise to send rain. The other is that he persisted in prayer until God answered his petition. Sometimes we imagine that we should only have to persevere in praying about matters concerning which God has not given specific promises. Yet the fact is that often we have to persevere over matters which have great promises connected to them. This is one of the great challenges in our prayer lives. Because he had a promise from God, Elijah kept praying until the answer came.

Possessing God’s power

After telling Ahab to proceed back to Jezreel, Elijah ran ahead of the king’s chariot for a distance of about eighteen miles. No doubt he was physically fit, but he was also given extra strength by the Holy Spirit to run the distance. It was common for kings to have forerunners who ran ahead. When the people would have seen Elijah ahead of the king they would have assumed that the king had turned to God after the events on Mount Carmel.

The decision of Elijah would have told Ahab that the prophet was willing to serve the king. Elijah recognized that it was his duty to help Ahab govern God’s people. All Ahab had to do was ask Elijah to be his advisor. Time will tell what the king will do and who it is that will have most influence in his life. The point for us to notice is that times of prayer should be followed by dedicated service wherever the Lord has placed us.

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