So tell me again - what does a cleric do?

As promised, I've been looking at my first quarter's work a little more closely than usual to see what happens in an average week, and here are the result for the first quarter of this year:

In order of time spent, we have:

1. Funerals (18.1%) - Visits, research and conducting services at church, Crematorium', graveside,
entering ashes and dedicating and memorials and the like.
15 hrs per week

2. Administration (15.5%) - Just what it says on the label: paperwork.
13 hrs per week

3. Misc' Parish work (14.6%) - Working in and around the patch, looking after a couple of churches and doing stuff further afield.  
12 hrs per week

4. Services (10.2%) - Time spent doing the Sunday and midweek services and the like.
8 hrs per week

=5. Pastoral (9.5%) - Supporting people in times of need.
8 hrs per week

=5. Prayer (9.5%) - Time spent on the knees praying, doing my daily office, etc.  
8 hrs per week

6. Home Communion and visits (8.7%) - What it says on the label. Care homes, private homes, etc.
7 hrs per week

7. Missional (7.3%) - Missioner stuff: Mission shaped Introduction and Ministry, Fresh Expressions, Bishops Certificate and other stuff wherever the opportunity arises.
6 hrs per week

8. Study (4%) - Yep, this is stuff I don't really do much of because I'm doing other stuff instead!

I guess this will have to change as:

i. I miss doing it,

ii. I'm supposed to do it as part of my discipline of being a cleric,

iii. It's essential to keep the theology ticking.  
3 hrs per week

9. Vocations (2.5%) -Working with people to test their vocations and get them to a place where, being confident that there is a calling, they can move on to whatever lay or drained path they feel called to explore. It's a 'feast or famine' area so no surprise it's light at the moment.
2 hrs per week

What is  interesting is the time the average week takes! What is sad is the fact that I've effectively doing less prayer, study and stuff that I love and yet, because I'm clocking up the funeral hours and the home visits and pastoral stuff, I'm having a whale of a time and loving every minute.

BUT the down side is that I've managed only three weeks where I have taken a day off* and this will have to change because, as our organist keeps telling me, "It's not hard work but long hours that gets you in the end!"

So watch this space and see how the bloke who taught time management does when it comes to taking his own medicine :-)

* Apparently the day off needs to be a full 24 hrs away from the workplace and the role. When doing my area dean course we were told that we needed to stop at 18:00 the night before the day off, have the full day off and return the next day at 09:00. Better still they said that once every month or so, this need to be increased by an additional 24 hrs. Think I'm going to be hard pressed to square that away.

What's the 'best' bit of the job?

It's amazing how many people ask me that question during the week, and when they do there are normally a few assumptions made along with the asking - so how's about we have a quick consideration of what they think might be true concerning me and my ministry:

The most common assumption this time of the year is, with Christmas just around the corner, that I'm coming up to my 'busy' time. In fact this is a smoke and mirrors moment because I always feel that the run up to Christmas is perhaps one of my quietest. Since people assume I'm busy, they leave me alone and so I'm left with the highly visible carol concerts, Christingles, school plays and the like  which in turn confirm my busyness. I'm never any more busy during the Christmas run in and what is before me is always, generally speaking, fun.

The most common assumption all year round is that weddings must be the 'best' bit and funerals (which is where the topic is often raised) must be the worst, or at least saddest, and therefore probably the 'worst' bit! Here, perhaps surprisingly for the many who present me with the, "I bet weddings are the best bit of the job, aren't they?" I have to say that that title would go to the funerals I conduct. This generally results in a bit of a shock and the question, "Really?"

One of the most amazing opportunities I have is that of making the experience of someone about to be in the same physical space with a loved one for the last time as positive and enjoyable (a word people often look shocked at) as it can be. If I can bring the person to life in anecdote and confirm the positives and demonstrate how the negatives we're part of the journey and therefore part of the person (without diminishing the person  making things a curse) and do all this with the opportunity for them to laugh, smile and remember the deceased - and in so doing create a service the deceased would enjoy being at (because they are, aren't they?)- then I've done it right.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy weddings, but they are a different animal and the connections made (regardless of how hard you work at them) are not the same as those made at a funeral.

The most common 'funny' assumption is that old chestnut which states hat we clergy only work one day a week, and that's Sunday. Of course, being a bit of a fundamentalist fanatic (a label I won after telling a churchwarden in a place I was visiting that he needed to be modelling Christ for the congaregatiin and the community of which he was a pillar) I have to tell them lthat, because of the fourth commandment, I never work on Sunday! Now that's an invitation to an interesting conversation for sure!

And I don't work on a Sunday - I worship - just as I have done on a Sunday for as long as I have realised my salvation lies in Jesus, the Christ, and called myself a Christian. Oddly, some of those I meet (including clergy) seem to think that being a cleric is a job and that when they have a Sunday off this means they don't have to go to church* - church on Sunday is not a workplace to be set free from, to see it as that is to forget that underneath it all we are all laos (The people of God) and reduce calling to nothing more than yet another job, albeit a job of a very different kind.

Perhaps that's why some of those I meet tell me of how they operate Office hours, answerphones going on outside of them, and how the Vicarage is their home and not a place that people should be visiting coming to engage with them.  Meanwhile I long for the days when the daily routine was walking (or in some other way covering) the patch and engaging with the people of the parish.

Ministry is about relationship and relationships are about people and underpinning, and overarching, that is the reconciled life in God the Father. enabled by the Holy Spirit, won for us by Jesus, the Christ.

So the real answer is all of it, all of the time - yes even at 2:30 in the morning when one of those in the patch who is mentally ill is having a crisis, because we stand with them as Christ stands with us - and who knows, they might just be an angel ;-)

So Lord, Thank You for today, the opportunities, the blessings and the challenges, keep them coming.

* I love holidays amd the opportunity to go worship somewhere different and, best bit for me, be on the  receiving end of a blessing.

Exploring Vocations: Saturday is just an ordinary day

Today began, as most days do, with the daily office's morning prayer. That done it quickly moved through a variety of encounters and engagements which dealt with funeral arrangements and the church's Autumn Fair before moving onto again to more stuff. The reason for writing this is to help some of those I'm engaged with in exploring vocations to understand that Saturday is never to be regarded as 'a day off' (even when some of my colleagues most foolishly bill it as such).

In the same way that some people tell me that having meetings on an evening means that they have to attend having, 'Already worked during the day,' the same is true of Saturday if you're going to take the King's shilling and head into ministry. My warning is simple (a bit like me) in that unless you're willing to do the job, don't take the bob (a reference to the King's shilling as paid when entering military service)!

This is how it goes (officially):

We work on a Sunday - but it is not the only day, despite the many jokes (which you will have to smile at for the rest of your life).

We have a day off during the week(Although some diocesan guidelines now apparently give you on two day off period a month).

The other days are working days where one-third of the day is yours and the rest is work time.

So there you have it - you can take a morning or afternoon off if you're going to be working in the evening but the bottom line is that it's five days and a Sunday as the normal working week.

I hope this gives those of you contemplating a call to ministry something to think about and explains my raised eyebrows over it, 'Just being Sunday and a 'bit' of time during the week!' comment - you know who you are ;-).

For those of you who are not exploring a vocation, I hope what you've just read above fills in some of the gaps and helps you to value the work hours that so many of the clergy put in to build, maintain and bless the church and those whom they seek to serve in the communities around them.

Perhaps you might like to pray for those who are exploring their own vocations to ministry and pray also for all those faithful men and women who minister in the Church - lay and ordained, paid and unpaid - for we are all co-workers and family.

*An ordinary day filled, as are each and every day in this wonderful life of ministering in the light and life of Christ, with extraordinary people.

Pax