Comments on Elizaphanian
A parish newsletter I was reading this weekend contained a spoof chain letter roughly in this form:
The perfect vicar has been identified. He is young and good looking with the worn face of long experience of life. He has a deep knowledge of scripture gained by years of careful study but wide ranging practical experience of his parishers' lives. He earns £100 pcm and gives £50 to the poor. He is committed to youth and spends all his time with the elderly. He speaks out against sin and crime but offers forgiveness for all his parishoners' failings (and so on).
If your vicar does not meet these criteria send him to the address at the bottom of this letter. Keep the faith and pass this letter on to 10 other parishes. 1,457 vicars are already on the move. If you do not send this letter to 10 other parishes you may get your own vicar back.
Sam, when you read my post I hope you noticed that I said I was describing my ministry, not trying to prescribe to others what sort of ministry they ought to have.
I spent two stints in multi-point parishes - one of them in northern Alberta with fifty miles between the central point and the souternmost point, and thirty-two miles between the central point and the western point - so i know what that juggling act feels like. In a sense, you have to start by deciding which one you're going to neglect.
I also know all about the church size paradigm you're talking about, although Alban Institute uses those figures for weekly average attendance, not total membership.
There are three comments I'd like to make.
First, sermon preparation. My ministry was revolutionised by an evangelical pastor who spoke at a seminar on preaching I attended. He said, 'Build your week around your sermon preparation; fit the other stuff in around it. If you do, sermon preparation will get done and you'll have plenty of time for the other stuff too, because sermon preparation is a finite task, whereas other pastoral tasks are infinite.
I took that seriously and went home to work it out. I analysed my sermon preparation and divided it into four parts: (1) studying the text, (2) constructing an outline for my sermon, (3) writing it out in full (which I do for exactness and care), and (4) practice-preaching it and then reducing it to notes, from which I actually preach on Sundays. I estimated how much time I needed for each step (I called them 'the four days of sermon preparation') - the total came up to about six hours - and now the first thing I write into my diary each week is those 'four days'. And my evangelical friend was right - the other stuff gets done, and I feel miles better about my preaching, too.
Second, I think the English notion of being the pastor of every individual in your parish boundaries, whether they are Christian or Anglican or churchgoer or not, is a holdover from Christendom and needs to be abandoned. Pastors in the New Testament are pastors of the gathered congregation. Responsibility for those who are not part of the congregation belongs to the whole church, not just the pastor, and it is primarily a missional responsibility - i.e. neighbour-love and evangelism. To get the whole church to accept ts responsibility to be the Royal Priesthood for the surrounding population - that's a hugely important task, in my view.
Third, I think Jonathan's ideal of 40 hours is absolutely correct (like him, I'm a lazy bum!). Here's the reason. Reality is, we don't work a job, we work a calling, like being a parent. And, like being a parent, the work is never done!. So at the end of the day, whether we're working a 40 hour, or 50 hour, or 60 hour week, we have to go home with some work still unfinished. You are never going to finish your work in any given week, no matter how many hours you work. That being, the case, it's better to go home while you're still feeling fresh and have something to give to that lovely little girl of yours, than to work until you're exhausted and all you want to do is sleep in the armchair.
Take it from a guy who was commissioned as a Church Army captain in 1978 and ordained in 1990, and has come close to burnout several times. God has called you to be a priest, yes, but he has also called you to be a husband, a father, and to be 'just Sam' - the Christian man who likes walking his dog and taking great photographs and - well, I don't know what else you like to do! But when you take time off and go home, you're not neglecting your calling, you're responding to God's other callings on your life.
Okay, I'm now going to stop giving this unwanted advice and go and drink my morning cup of tea!
Tim - thanks for all that, which I am completely in agreement with. I noted that you said it was just for you, not advice for anyone else, it's just such an attractive portrait of ministry that it gives me a pang when I realise I can't sustain it. The positive side, though, is that making some of these changes feels very inspiring. So - watch this space!
Thanks for all this discussion, chaps. Nine days away from Licensing for a new dual-role ministry, I am starting to wonder how to best set my priorities and send out those most-helpful and most-honest 'first signals' to others, as I come face-to-face with so very many expectations, all of which I feel sure I will not be able to meet!
Thanks again for the wisdom. Go well.
Christ gave up his life for us. Most of his ministry was about being with and bringing love and comfort to those in need, especially those on the edge of society. In order to get closer to God through his son Jesus Christ then we need to understand that love comes through sacrificing the 'self' for the need of our neighbour. Simple isn't it? Yet like most others I can easily justify hours and hours of reading, watching the latest movie, doing things on the computer instead of, maybe, having a cup of tea and a chat with someone who might benefit from and enjoy a simple act of human kindness - other people can do that as what is important to me is that I fulfill my own needs. A cultivation of the self, after all 'what's love got to do with it?'. Mmmm... perhaps I'd better work on that.
Hi Teresa - sounds a bit as if you're recommending 'masochistic minister syndrome' for yourself(!) It's not an accurate picture of what Jesus did. Jesus a) regularly took plenty of time out from his ministry in order to ensure that his own needs were met, and that his ministry was therefore properly grounded; b) concentrated his ministry on a small group of disciples, not the wider population; c) was very robust in dealing with people who came to him in what they perceived to be 'need', often not doing what they wanted, and challenging them with his teaching.
None of which is to say that losing our souls to the material world is what is required; it is to say, however, that the choice isn't binary. It's precisely because the choice was presented as binary that I've had such a struggle with it.
Really interested in the amount of hours question and the comparison with a committed lay person doing a full-time job and 10 hours for the Church each week. I know it is favourite of certain Diocesan bishops and features on clergy websites but it illustrates a real problem. To suggest that it is a norm for laity to be doing 10 hours per week for the church on top on a full-time job is plain irresponsible. Shared ministry is not just about getting laity to do clergy jobs its about sharing the jobs among the laity - no wonder we struggle to get people to volunteer within the Church or end up with enthusiasts whose only life is the Church - who have no idea what is going on outwith the Church. For clergy we ought to be aiming for 14 sessions a week in total (a session being a morning, afternoon or evening) NOW and moving towards a five day week since one day off is the real crusher of family life in the era of working partners which shoudl take us down to 12 sessions a week with two complete days off a week.
Without this agreed structure in place all the other vital discussion about what we do has no reality.
Tom, I'm in enthusiastic agreement with that. I also think that one of the reasons that we are having difficulty getting lay people to volunteer for churchy-type jobs these days is that some of them are actually believing us when we say that their mission field is the world. They are choosing to use their limited free time to actually serve Christ in the world he died for rather than keeping the church going. More power to them, I say! Maybe it's time to trim some of the expectations of church we have.
Oh, by the way, when I came into this parish I discussed days off with vestry. Monday s my inviolable day off - I never work on that day, unless its a dire emergency - and I also get two Saturdays off every month.
It helps a lot that I live in my own private house, not a rectory, and people respect my space there.
Sam,
Thanks for sharing all these incredibly intimate things with all of us. I appreciate your humanity, your honesty and your openness.
Two things. 1. How is the baby? How is she affecting all your relationships, responsibilities, and duties?
2. You are serving a much, much wider parish because of your compulsion to respond as a Christian, and as a priest, to peak oil.
Thanks for all of it. My life is richer for "knowing" you through your web site.
Jeff
Tom Allen is hereby elected (unanimously) as our representative. We will be right behind you Tom when you march on Lambeth Palace.
Two Saturdays a month off, Tim!!!!
Part-timer.
Actually, Sam, I was responding as a Parishioner to the suggestion that pastoral responsibilities are shared amongst the wider community. I just wanted to share the thought that perhaps we too might suffer the same pangs.
A priest has one task: to celebrate the Eucharist, or rather, to preside at the celebration of the Eucharist as representative of the bishop. And hear confessions.
There may be other jobs that an incumbent needs to do, but that is incumbency, not priesthood.
All the rest can be done by someone else, including preaching, visiting etc.
Here's some wise advice on priorities from Reginald Somerset Ward, writing many years ago:
1. Prayer
2. Leisure
3. Work
That prayer, or one's spiritual life, comes first goes without saying. There will always be plenty of work, and you'll end up giving most of your time to it, so before that concentrate your energy on how to use your leisure time (family life, interests). Very interesting conversation. Thanks. A lot surely comes down to different people, different parishes, different priests. It's ridiculous trying to compare the demands of a multi-benefice set up to that of a single church parish. The Church at large has not given much thought to these issues as far as I can see. 'Collaborative ministry' is not properly understood and only leads to longer hours for those trying to run a parish. I was part of one of the support groups you are benifiting from when I was in your diocese and it was a life saver.
Steve, that may be an eastern orthodox view of priesthood but it is not a biblical view of pastoral ministry. The writers of the New Testament never mention presiding at the eucharist when they are talking about the role of pastors in the church.
Thank you for all this, Sam...I've such alot of distentangling and clarifying to do before I find this curacy ends,- really helpful to read your thoughts, and all these comments.
I vote for 40 hours, no question.
Sam I'm off work wiuth depression due to stress caused by too much pressure- don't go there
Peace and blessings
Sally
It has taken me 40 hours just to read through the post! But it is interesting how the Clergy manage their time. I am worried that just 2 hours devoted to the following weeks sermon is not enough as so may of us pew warmers look forward to an interesting and challenging sermon from the Vicar. Sadly the truth is that we get a warm fuzzy history lesson instead. Maybe the quality of the sermon is a reflection of much time is taken to put it together? Life is a busy event. No matter if your clergy or a road sweeper, there never seems to be enough time in the day!
Question: How realistic is it to expect to have the ability to set such boundaries fresh out of seminary?
Extremely interesting discussion Sam.
I'm am in the beginning phase of discerning a call. It's good to see that priesthood does not supersede humanity.
Ann+ preached a sermon about this recently, which she shared with me (it's posted as an audio at the church's website). It's a sermon about call - about God calling us to use the gifts he knows we have, and not expecting us to use gifts we don't have. Our expectations are often more than God even requires of us, I think. And faced with the challenges of a parish which contains rea people with real problems, I can see vividly from the picture you are painting how you can want to push yourself to be called to do things that are not your strength (especially in the face of limited resources).
Thank you for sharing this, Sam. It's good food for thought.
Speaking as a parishioner. When we called a new priest, it was pointed out to us that of the 20 or so gifts that the "perfect" priest would have -- you'd be lucky to find four or five in any one person.
In other words, embrace your gifts, don't worry that you're not doing what George Herbert says (whoever he is), or that it's different to Tim's, or different to MadPriest's ... It's only a wound if you make it so. Do your thing and discover the passions in your congregation -- people who are passionate about visiting and that kind of thing. It sounds like you're already setting it up, so go you!
A very moving discussion. I am in my curacy and my incumbent is on a well earned sabbatical. I have been working 12+ hours a day 5 days a week and enjoying a day off and an easy saturday (often being away) if nothing is on. This reminds me of my days in industry: 60 hours a week seems reasonable.
But maybe 40 should be the target, this blog has certainly given me pause for thought.
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