You Can Fulfill Your Dreams in a Half Hour, Pastor Tommy Barnett Says (INTERVIEW)
Pastor Tommy Barnett is the author of "The Power of a Half Hour," a book that teaches readers how to break down their lives into powerful half-hour segments in order to be stronger in faith, work, and thought. Barnett took the time to speak with The Christian Post about his experiences working in half-hour time-frames and how it has changed his life.
CP: What made you come up with the idea of living in a half-hour time-frame?
TB: I'm one of the pastors of one of the five largest churches in the USA and the opportunity presented itself for me to go to Los Angeles and open the Dream Center. I learned that you had to grow by addition, not subtraction. You can only be stronger by adding on more than refusing to take on anything else. I realized I had a lot of wasted time: waiting for appointments, planes, etc. If I could use that wasted time, I would be able to accomplish more things than I wanted. I've written all 11 of my books during wasted time. I've found that it's an awesome point of time that you can change people's lives relationships, do the business the way you need it to be done. The biggest thing it helps me do is accomplish my dreams. Too many people have dreams that they will never accomplish but could if they just broke it down to a half hour.
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I've learned to live my life by 30-minute increments. I try to block my life out that way. If I run into a problem that stymies me, I have a worry box and put a list of those things there and at a certain time, pull them out and think on them. I've found that generally they have worked themselves out by the end of the day.
CP: How can a half hour change your life?
TB: The masters of knowing how to use the 30-minute increments are television producers; they know how to use the 30 minutes to the fullest. I've decided that the biggest threat to accomplishing things is the TV, which is why I use it only to relax and zone out. Susan Wesley gave each of her 18 children a half hour every week in order to teach them that which was valuable to her. If you use your half hours correctly, you'll have a lot of leisure time. When it comes to vision, every morning I spend 15 minutes talking to God; the second 15 minutes I read the Bible. If you spend a half hour in the Bible, you can read it in its entirety in 90 days.
CP: Is the beginning of a new year a good time to try living in 30-minute increments?
TB: It's the perfect time for this book. I know that so many people are frustrated because they just don't have time to do what they want, but they do have time if they become the master of their time rather than letting their time master them. That's what this kind of thinking will do for you.
The Dream Center is a dream that I personally had for 40 years. I realized that I was turning 60 years of age and had previously had a dream of running across America. I decided to run across the Mojave Desert to raise the funds need to open the Dream Center. It took me 19 days … the equivalent of running a marathon per day. We were able to raise the amount we needed to make the down payment on the building that is now the Dream Center. It all started with a half hour of visioning.
"The Power of a Half Hour" is available online from WaterBrook Press.
