On the other hand, it's always helpful to review what you think you do and what you think you ought to be doing. Most of the ministers I know work really hard but think they are lazy at some point in their lives. And it doesn't help when you have to listen over and over again to the comment that you only work one day a week! I think it has a lot to do with the mix of personal expectations and the expectation of the church you're serving. That and the feeling that you're never quite "there" when it comes to doing the job.
Years ago I did a survey for the national statistics people. In the process, and it was early on in my ministry, I discovered that I was working incredibly long hours. More than even I thought was healthy. So I sat down and wrote out what my ideal week might look like. Somethings have changed along the way, but it still looks pretty similar even today.
The problem is trying to put hours against things like Sunday, or pastoral care. But in order to keep myself sane and not present myself as just another overworked workaholic who can't stop themselves and whose time disappears from view almost as quickly as it comes into view, I've written out my list again.
For what is worth, here's my outline of what might happen in a typical or ideal week. The kind of week that rarely ever happens in my universe.
For want of a better term, I'm going to list "tasks" and the hours a week I'd like to devote to them. Some are not really tasks, but you'll get the idea.
- Prayer & reflection: 2 hours a day
- Reading: 1 hour a day
- Study time: An afternoon a week = 4 hours (I remember John Stott talking about an afternoon a week, a day a month a week a year or something like that)
- Preparation time (for Sundays): 12 hours a week ( this is really hard to quantify because I don't sit down at 9:00am and work until it's finished, but it's not a bad guess)
- Administration (we all have to do it no matter how much we hate it!): 3 hours a week (I can always dream!)
- Sundays: 8 hours (we only have a morning celebration, so it's not as long a day as it has been in the past)
- Pastoral Care: 8 hours a week (how do you measure this? I still don't know, but it seems reasonable to give it a day so-to-speak.)
- Leadership & meetings: 4 hours a week (if only!)
So that all comes to 60 hours and then there's community stuff and spending time with people who are far from God. And I guess there are degrees of overlap. I think that if you totalled it all up in detail it could come to as much as 70 hours, but then again it might come to a lot less depending on how you count it. As I said it's not easy to quantify.
Some of you might be thinking only 8 hours for pastoral care. Just remember it's a guide, a guess if you like. You might also want to know how much of the two hours prayer is personal and does that count.
The thing is, ministry is not a job you do, it's a life you live and you just can't stuff things in a box and say that's my private world, that's my ministry world. I have quiet weeks when I rejoice in being able to kick back and relax, knowing full well that the 'phone can ring at any time and will be thrown headfirst into a crisis or something that could demand five minutes of my time or five hours.
And of course this is not like an office job, it's not as if you're doing 60 or 70 hours without a break and chained to a desk. It's very different.
Having written the list out quite quickly, I'm wondering now if I've missed something. for example where does writing my blog fit?? Better stop now and get back to some real work.
Mind you the weather is looking good and I have got a couple of books I'd like to get stuck into!
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