Friday, March 2, 2012

So, what do you do, anyway?


You might be Presbyterian if:
You complain because your pastor works only one day a week
AND THEN she works too long…

All jokes aside, pastors do, in fact, work more than one day a week; but just what a pastor does in between sermons can seem a bit mysterious. The fact is, ministry is not like other jobs; in many ways, it’s not a job at all, in the conventional sense.

Once upon a time, the Bishop of North Africa, St. Augustine was asked to describe the job of a pastor. His response, some sixteen hundred years old, still rings true: Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low-spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved.

As you might gather from this rather pithy quote, a lot of what a pastor does is what we might call relational; in seminary we called it ‘meeting people where they are,’ which basically means hanging out with people, getting to know them, sharing experiences with them so that, when the time is right, we can…well, we can do whatever God calls us to do. The problem with this is,
A) it’s really hard to quantify, and
2) it often doesn’t look like work.
Because it is so different, we will look at all this relational stuff in its own blog post. For now, let’s consider some of the things a pastor does each week to keep the church functioning. We begin with worship.

Worship happens every week, at least once; scriptures, hymns, prayers, sermons, week in, week out; this means that worship planning is going on more or less continually, and takes up a significant portion of any pastor’s working week. According to recent polls, the average pastor spends between a quarter and a third of their week planning worship – and an about an hour leading it. I organize the task by blocking out several days each quarter for the intensive process of selecting scriptures, titling sermons and picking  hymns; the other details, such as the Call to Worship and Prayer of Confession are composed and organized during weekly worship planning, which usually happens on Monday. I use what is called the Revised Common Lectionary, which is a three-year cycle of scripture selections that covers the significant portions of the Psalms, Gospels, Epistles and key themes from the Old Testament. The lectionary helps keep me from preaching the same passages over and over again, and allows me to use a variety of liturgical resources in the planning of worship. That being said, putting worship together is never simply a matter of cutting and pasting – each prayer, each reading, each hymn is composed or selected to fit the message God has placed on my heart for that week.

Once the planning is done, it is time for the execution. Worship actually begins early in the week, when I begin to consider the scripture passage upon which the sermon will be based. There is research involved. And study. And contemplation. This takes time. For me, contemplation is best achieved in the midst of activity requiring low-level intellectual engagement – things such as mowing the lawn, changing the oil in the car, building a wall, etc. In the end, sermon preparation requires some serious, uninterrupted computer time, which is why I tend to shy away from Saturday evening engagements.  Worship planning and execution takes up a full third of my time – between fifteen and twenty hours on average.

The next task is often described as administration,  which, on average, takes up about 15-20% of a pastor’s time. This includes such things as attending church meetings, preparing for meetings, collecting and disseminating congregational information, digesting and interpreting community and denominational information, responding to e-mails, answering phone calls, reading mail, writing letters, filing, organizing, researching, keeping track of office supplies, getting the copier fixed, acting as point person for repair and maintenance people, and on and on. Ideally, I like to do these things on Mondays (in combination with worship planning) and Wednesdays (in combination with bible study planning, see below). Some things, though, like e-mail and phone calls, are addressed around the clock, and administrative tasks are often completed both before and after evening meetings.

The 219th General Assembly restored the traditional language of Ruling and Teaching Elders to describe the ordered ministries of the church. For me, this was long overdue; not only does this language emphasize the parity between clergy and laity, but it also holds up a pastor’s most significant responsibility: to instruct the faithful. Accordingly, the average pastor spends at least 13% of their week on teaching and training. At Mossy Creek, this includes Bible and book studies; topical series; theological and denominational discussions; new member and officer training; confirmation class, and individual sessions addressing specific topics. Bear in mind: for each scheduled event, there are several hours of preparation.

Presbytery committees, local cooperative ministries and interest groups are also important elements of my ministry. Community and denominational responsibilities account for approximately 6% of the average pastoral work week; for me, that includes meetings of the Presbytery, Central Valley Mission Community Coordinating Team, the North River Ministerial Association, and Presbytery Council.

Finally, there is what is technically called Reading, Other than for Sermons. While not directly on topic, such reading is essential for a pastor. Non-sermon reading can be broken down into several types: 

News. Many years ago, the Theologian Karl Barth advised his students totake your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.’ The contemporary pastor might replace their newspaper with the Huffington Post or Google News, but it remains essential that a pastor be aware of what is going on in the world in which their congregation lives, so that they can better interpret today’s events in light of the witness of God’s Word. I figure on about forty minutes a day.

Continuing Ed. Every day, hundreds of articles are published, while dozens of new titles hit the shelves of the Cokesbury bookstore – each claiming new wisdom or insight into some facet of ministry, or some new theological insight. While it would be impossible to read every new book that comes out (and most of them really aren’t very good…), it is important for a pastor to keep refining pastoral skills and considering the latest biblical and theological scholarship. I try to have at least one book going each week; say about three hours a week.

Directed Reading. Over the years, I have found it very important to read what my parishioners are reading. Novels, devotionals, self-help books  - all can become cultural phenomenona, and its important for me to be able to speak knowledgably about them. Often, someone will ask me if I have read a book; even better, they will give me a book and ask me to read it.

Of course, I also read for pleasure, which, although a leisure activity, serves to enhance my ministry as well.

If you were tallying things up in your head, you found that just keeping things going at the church takes a lot of time.

Next Time: The Relational part of my pastoral week.