Sermon, "The Holy Club: A Matter of Time," 2 Peter 3:8-15

Sermon 6/30/19

2 Peter 3:8-15

The Holy Club: A Matter of Time

Today, we’re finishing up our series on The Holy Club as we look at the last in a set of questions that John and Charles Wesley and other members of their accountability group used to focus themselves and each other in their continuing spiritual growth. We’ve looked at some questions about trusting God and our own trustworthiness, and we’ve thought about what it means to have faith, and what faithfulness looks like. Today, we’re thinking about how we use the resources that God gives us to grow as disciples, and in particular, we’re thinking about how we use the gift of time. The Holy Club questions this week are, like every week, challenging and timeless: “Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits? Do I get to bed on time and get up on time? How do I spend my spare time? Do I pray about the money I spend? Did the Bible live in me today? Do I give it time to speak to me everyday? Am I enjoying prayer?”

I think questions about how we’re spending our time and what that has to do with our faith are some of the hardest for us to answer because we pretty quickly go on the defensive. Many of us - most of us - don’t feel like we have enough time, and we always feel like time is going by too quickly when it comes to the things we really enjoy and treasure. When we watch children growing around us, or when we’re saying goodbye to a person or a season in our life, time is rushing by. When we’re up against a deadline, there’s not enough time. And yet, despite how little time we feel we have, we also do a lot of things that on reflection seem like “wastes” of our time. When we’re asked to give an accounting of our time, we can be defensive, because we never seem to be perfectly at peace with how much time we have and how we’re using it. Remember when I told you about those journal prompts I use when I need a little help to start writing? That list of words like reading, needing, wanting, watching, where I can just fill in the blank and give a short response? One of the words on the list is thinking. What am I thinking about, what’s weighing on my mind on a given day. And almost every day that I use this prompt, the first thing that pops into my head is “my to do list.” My “to do list” is running through my mind constantly, and I bet yours is too. Sometimes I feel like I wake up immediately thinking about the tasks I must complete that day. Is that how it is supposed to be? How we’re meant to use our time? An endless running from one task to another in the futile hope that we will one magical day actually cross everything off the list?  

Last fall, when we were talking about time and stewardship, about how we use our time - a gift from God - as a gift we can offer back to God by how we use it, I shared with you some of the questions from John Wesley that are still asked to United Methodist clergy in preparation for their ordination. In his “Twelve Rules for Helpers,” Wesley writes, “Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never trifle away time; neither spend any more time at any one place than is strictly necessary. Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time.” (1) Sounds a bit exhausting, doesn’t it? And indeed, part of how we ended up being called Methodists was because of Wesley’s very methodical approach to everything faith-related. He seemed to thrive on carefully organizing his time in order to devote himself to God. He had high standards for himself and for others and expectations about the best way to spend nearly every minute so that we could do the most for God we possibly could. Still, even Wesley in his rigidness seems to be able to see that there is a big picture at stake. His 12 Rules also says, “You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work.” Perhaps it seems like our time has to be spent accomplishing a million things. But for Wesley, all of those little things were just part of one big thing - helping others get close to God.  

Maybe, in our continuing struggles with time and how we spend it, we run into trouble when we don’t know what our “big thing” is. We don’t know what the focus is of our life’s work. Wesley knew what he wanted to do: get more people to experience God’s saving grace. And so he tried, diligently, to order his time around that task. What’s your “big thing?” If I had to spell mine out, I would say my big life task is to be a better follower of Jesus. I think that can include a lot of things, a lot of aspects of how I spend my time, including trying to grow as a pastor, and help others connect to God. But at the heart of it, that’s all part of following Jesus. If I make “being a better follower of Jesus” the guiding principle of how I spend my time, how might that impact how I spend my days? I’m not saying that we should never have a day off - God knows I couldn’t be a great follower of Jesus if I didn’t have time to rest mind and body and spirit. But when I look at that endless to do list - I want to find signs that the way I’m spending these precious seconds and minutes and hours of life actually have something to do with what I claim as my main thing.

Were any of you fans of the TV show Scrubs? There were a few standout episodes for me, and one that stands out is where JD, the main doctor on the show, was discussing what dying or heaven might be like with a patient. She, the patient, said that she envisioned a big Broadway production number, with her taking center stage. She dies in the episode, and JD envisions a complete show-stopping ballad, with this woman singing a Colin Hay song. These are some of the lyrics:

And you say, be still my love

Open up your heart

Let the light shine in

But don't you understand

I already have a plan

I'm waiting for my real life to begin

And you say, just be here now

Forget about the past, your mask is wearing thin

Let me throw one more dice

I know that I can win

I'm waiting for my real life to begin

The song and scene are beautiful. But the lyrics, though poetic, I find troubling. “Waiting for my real life to begin.” Sometimes, that is exactly what gets me into trouble, or at least, what keeps me from the real life I want: being convinced that I am just waiting for the right moment to start living as I really want to live, spending my life how I feel I’m meant to be spending it. Is there something you are putting off doing? A dream you have for your life? Something you’ve wanted to accomplish, but haven’t even started at? Some deeper purpose for your life that you want to reach for and explore, but for some reason, keeping telling yourself, not just yet? As you look over your days, is your “big thing” getting any attention, or do you keep telling yourself you’ll have more time for that later? 

      Our scripture reading today is from 2 Peter helps us think about time and waiting on God. The author - although the letter is attributed to Peter, it probably was not written by the disciple Simon Peter - the author, a leader of a faith community, knows that he is near death. And so he wants to leave behind a testimony, some words of guidance about how to be followers of The Way, one of the first names used for Jesus-followers. Particularly, in our reading for today, the author wants to address some issues of time. As you read some of the writings of the New Testament, like Paul’s writings, you start to realize that most followers of Jesus believed that Jesus would return within their lifetimes, that the world would end within their lifetimes. Jesus had talked to them about a time when he would come back to earth, about a final reckoning of all things on earth - and many - perhaps most - of them believed that they would live to see that happen. But as time marched on, some of the first followers of Jesus were dying, and still, Jesus hadn’t returned. Jesus-followers were starting to worry that maybe Jesus wasn’t going to come back at all.  

The author, then, writes to address this seeming conflict. He says, “With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” God’s time isn’t the same as ours, he says. It’s not that God is slow in delivering on God’s promise, but rather, the author argues, God is patient. It is God’s great desire that all of us should experience repentance, turning our minds and hearts and lives away from whatever else we’ve been chasing, and instead follow God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And so God is not slow. God is patient, giving us ample time to experience the salvation God offers. Christ will come again - but not yet. 

In the meantime, as we wait, we don’t wait passively. We wait and prepare. The author asks rhetorically: “What sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?” While we’re waiting on God, how should we wait? he answers in the closing verses of our reading: While we wait, we should endeavor that Jesus will find us to be at peace in our hearts, as free from error as we can be, waiting on God’s gift of salvation. Those earliest followers of Jesus were learning that things were not unfolding as they’d expected. Apparently they couldn’t just wait for Jesus to show up again. He was taking a bit longer than they’d expected. Some of the faithful were even dying before getting to see Jesus on earth again. They couldn’t just bide their time, it seemed, waiting for Jesus, waiting for real life to begin, because while they were waiting, life was passing by, and still Jesus wasn’t back. The author’s words work to give them focus, hope, and purpose while they wait. 

What are you waiting for? Are you waiting on God? Do you know what your “big thing” is, and are you doing something about it? Real life is now. What are you doing with it? As I was writing this week, the late Mary Oliver’s famous poem The Summer Day sprang to my mind. She writes, 

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

What will we do, friends, with this one life God gives us? God is not slow, as we might think of slowness. No, God is patient. God is so, so patient with us, with this world, with all of creation. God is willing to wait, because God really, really wants a relationship with us, and not just a relationship, God wants our whole hearts, our whole lives. And God wants all of us, not just some, not just the creme of the crop, not just the best of us. God thinks that a deep relationship with each one of us is worth a lot of effort. God is patient with us, and God is waiting for us. But God doesn’t wait passively. God is busy in waiting, reaching out to us, sending Jesus to us, offering us the Holy Spirit, heaping blessings on us, challenging us, staying right beside us in every challenge we encounter. 

God is patient with us, actively waiting on us. Can we do the same for God? With this one, precious life that we have, can we be patient with God, ourselves, and those around us, as we work out our salvation, as we struggle to be ready for life-changing repentance, as we try to find peace in our lives and in the world? Can we be patient? And can we, like God waits us on, be active in our waiting on God? Let us ask ourselves, along with the author of 2 Peter, what kind of living we’re meant to be doing while we’re waiting. Whether you’re waiting for God’s direction or answer, or waiting for some next stage, some next milestone in your life, whether you’re waiting for things to get better - for you, for your family, for the world, or waiting on the answer to a prayer, waiting on someone else to get what it’s all about, or waiting on Jesus to come in the flesh one more time: God has blessed you with these days, with this time, with this one, wild and precious life. What do you plan to do with it? Sometimes, I’m a little lazy, and I forget to be about the work of repentance while I’m waiting. And sometimes, I’m not so patient, and I’m trying to rush God ahead. But I’m seeking after the peace that comes with waiting with hope, waiting actively, waiting with God, instead of for God. God’s patience is our salvation. And that’s a gift worth spending all of my time on. Amen. 

(1) Wesley, John as quoted in “The Life of John wesley by John Telford, Chapter 14,” Wesley Center Online, http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-life-of-john-wesley-by-john-telford/the-life-of-john-wesley-by-john-telford-chapter-14. 

Sermon, "Whole-Life Stewardship: Time," Luke 12:22-40

Sermon 11/4/18

Luke 12:22-40

Whole-Life Stewardship: Time

Today we’re starting our November sermon series called Whole-Life Stewardship. Stewardship means the task and role of taking care of things on behalf of someone else. As Christians, we believe that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. In other words, everything belongs to God, our Creator. We do, the universe does, our time does, our things do, the animals and the trees and the mountains and the air we breathe; it all belongs to God, really. We’re just the caretakers, the stewards of all that God has given us to watch over. We don’t act like this is true sometimes. We forget that we are stewards. We think that we are in charge. We think that we are the true owners of all that is. And so we need to remember. We’re doing that in a small group, as we read through Adam Hamilton’s book Enough. We do that when we gather for worship, when we sing praises to God and remember that God is God and we are not. We do that when we pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” And we’re doing that in this sermon series. Every fall, we spend some time reflecting together and searching our hearts as we think about how we will support the ministries of this church through our financial gifts. But this year, we’re broadening our scope. We’re stewards of every aspect of our lives. It all belongs to God. How do we remind ourselves of that when we lose sight of the truth? Are we good stewards? How are we doing at managing the resources God has given to us? Each week for the next three weeks, we’ll look at an aspect of our lives as we assess our stewardship and our faith: our time, our talents, and our treasure. At the end of the month, we’ll celebrate the commitments we make with a time of thanksgiving, consecration, and fellowship around the table.

Today, we begin with time. God gives us time. How are we doing at being stewards of the time that we have? Honestly, I think being good stewards of our time is the most challenging thing. How are you using your time from God for God? I don’t know about you, but managing my time is a struggle. On the one hand, I feel like I can be obsessed with getting stuff done. I try to cram so much into my time. I want to feel productive, accomplished, and there never seems to be enough time to do all that I want to do, need to do, should do. And I know I waste too much time, filling hours with things I don’t really care about, or even with things I know I should actively avoid. Whenever United Methodist pastors are ordained, we’re asked what are called the “historic questions,” questions based on those John Wesley, founders of Methodism, asked of pastors, questions that we’ve been asking of our clergy for hundreds of years. One part of these “historic questions” reads like this: “Will you observe the following directions? a) Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never trifle away time; neither spend any more time at any one place than is strictly necessary. b) Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time.” Pastors have gamely answered “yes” to these questions for hundreds of years too, while secretly saying to ourselves: Never be triflingly employed? Never trifle away time? Do everything at exactly the right time? Seriously? Wesley’s directions sound like a formula for burnout. But he himself observed a rigid schedule of prayer, fasting, personal study, group study, serving the poor, and preaching the faith. How are you spending your time?

I’m not sure I even want to see an honest, factual breakdown of how I spend my time. For example, the latest software update to my cell phone came with a way to set time limits on any apps on my phone I want. If I want to, I could set it so that I can only be on my web browser for an hour a day, or only on facebook for thirty minutes. I could do that. But I haven’t yet. I want to, I think it would be wise. I think I use my phone too much. And yet, I’m not sure I’m really ready to confront my dependence on my phone, on the internet, on facebook, on distractions. Am I a good steward of my time?  

And yet, I also feel like we get so obsessed with productivity, with doing, with achieving, with checking things off our endless to-do lists that we don’t enjoy the time that we have. Our time is a gift from God, isn’t it? And yet, we don’t savor it very well. The scriptures speak of resting in God. Jesus took time away to be alone with God. “Be still and know that I am God,” the Psalms command. But it’s so hard to do! We’re so wired to be productive that when we finally get the rest that we crave we’re too stressed to enjoy it. I think of my most recent vacation, when I visited Lake Placid for a few days. My intent was to just relax. I wanted very much to have a vacation where I just didn’t do anything. I booked a room with a beautiful balcony view of the Lake and a fireplace and a tub with jacuzzi jets. And then, I started to think that I wasn’t really making the most of my vacation unless I was taking in all the sights of Lake Placid. Shouldn’t I hit all the shops? See the Olympic landmarks? Go hiking? Visit the wildlife refuge? Hit all the vegan restaurants? I had planned on driving up Whiteface, but it was so foggy during the timeblock I scheduled it, I thought it would be kind of a silly trip. But I was stressing about not checking it off my list. Tina had to remind me that it’s just a couple hours away, and I could go back whenever I wanted. The most relaxing day of vacation was the day that I felt sick. I was dizzy all day and I had to just lay around if I didn’t want to feel like the room was spinning. It was the most relaxing day of vacation I had, but a part of my brain felt guilty for wasting my time.

In the midst of this muddle, this tug of war about how I spend my time, a refrain from the country band Alabama runs through my head (yes, I had a country music phase in high school): “I’m in a hurry to get things done. Oh I rush and rush until life’s no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die but I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.” Our time is a gift. God asks us to be good stewards of our time. And somehow I feel unproductive, exhausted, and like I spend too much time doing nothing worthwhile all at once. I’m guessing that relationship with time feels familiar to many of you, too.

I think our scripture passage today reflects some of this same tension. Usually, when we hear this passage of Jesus’s teaching that we usually classify as “about worry,” we read it from the Gospel of Matthew, where it is part of what we call The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ long chunk of teaching to the crowds gathered on the mountainside. But it also appears here in Luke, a little later in the gospel, not part of Luke’s Sermon the Plain to the crowds, but instead a teaching given just to the disciples. Luke’s version is just enough different than the one that I know so well from Matthew that I was able to listen to it a little more carefully. My attention caught on this: “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” Both gospels include this verse. And Luke adds, “If you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?” If anything, all we manage is worrying so much that stress steals hours of our time.  

We talked about striving last week, our endless quest for success. Here, Jesus says that it’s the nations, or in other words, people other than God’s people who spend their time striving for more food and more drink and more clothes and more stuff and even more time. If we’re going to strive, Luke says, strive for God’s kingdom, God’s reign on earth. Luke says that it is God’s “good pleasure,” a phrase with extra emphasis - it is God’s deep joy to draw us into God’s reign. So, Jesus says, let go of your stuff. Give with a generous heart. Try to accumulate eternal treasure instead of earthly treasure, because wherever we accumulate treasure is where our heart will finally dwell, and we want our hearts in God’s eternal home.  

But then, in the last several verses of our reading for today, Jesus shifts gears. God’s people should be people of action, dressed and ready, lamps lit, alert and waiting for God’s arrival. Jesus uses imagery of slaves in a household who are blessed if they are always ready for a Master’s return home, even an unexpected return. “You must be ready,” Jesus concludes, “for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” It sounds a little contradictory. How can we be both free from worry about how much time we have, and ready all the time, without even a chance to sleep lest God catch us unawares?

I’ve talked to you before about the theological concepts of time we find throughout the scriptures - chronos time and kairos time. Remember, chronos is the Greek word for our regular, ordinary, everyday time. Our human time. The seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days moving just as they do. But kairos – kairos is time in a different way. Kairos is God’s time – specifically, “God’s right time for action.” Usually the word “chronos” is used in Greek texts to talk about time. But in the gospels, for example, this “kairos” – God’s right time for action – is used more often than chronos – regular time. And that makes sense, because the scriptures are full of stories about God’s right time for things to happen. “In the fullness of time.” Kairos. God’s right time for action. It’s not that God isn’t in chronos time. All time is God’s time. But our lives are this strange mix of ordinary days and spectacular moments, days that blur together, and seconds that stretch out and feel like each moment contains an eternity. And all of these days, these years, these seconds - they’re all God’s time, and all of it is a gift for us.

We live in the tension. God is both in the ordinary of our daily routines, and breaking in in unexpected ways. God transcends time. And I believe that God wants us to be mindful of God at work both in our daily routines and in the grand moments. God wants us to both use our time well to serve God and neighbor, to put to use our gifts and talents to share the love of God, and to rest easy in God’s arms, not trying to earn God’s love with our relentless busyness, not trying to drown out our spiritual emptiness by filling our hours with meaningless distractions. God wants all of our time - our purpose-filled hours of work, our quiet hours of rest and renewal, our hours of devotion and prayer, our hours spent together with God’s other precious creations, enjoying God in the everyday moments, and ready for a God who also acts at just the right times too.  

How are you using your time? How will you spend your days? Today is All Saints Sunday, a day when we are remembering those we have loved so dearly. I’m guessing that as we remember, most of us are not thinking that we wished they were more successful or productive. We’re just wishing we had more time. And that’s why I treasure this day so very much, when we remind ourselves that we are a part of the communion of saints. The “communion of saints” means the whole of God’s people, past, present, and future. And in the way that God works in chronos time and kairos time, the communion of saints means that time is flattened. We are all living in God right now, which is also always. The saints are alive to God always, and so they are alive to us and we are alive to them. We celebrate that in particular when we share in Holy Communion - we’re together with all who have gone before and all who will come after us at the table of grace, which is always kairos time, always God’s right time to act. We miss them so, but we are also together with them. We live in the tension.    

How are you using your time? How will you spend your days? God has made a gift of time to you. What gift will you make of your time to God? Whether you are working or sleeping, busy or resting, praising or mourning, rushing ahead or falling behind, longing or remembering, your every moment is a gift that God is ready to receive. Amen.

Beyond Day to Day: Visioning

Lately I've been struggling with what I expect is a typical pastoral dilemma. There are so many things I think about us doing together as a congregation long term, so many visions I have, so many things that float through my mind as possibilities for our direction together. We struggle with lots of typical issues, but we also have lots of potential for growth, discipleship, social change, etc...

But, when it comes down to it, I spend so much of my week just taking care of the 'regular business' of being a pastor. Writing a sermon. Preparing for the worship service. Leading the worship service. Meetings. Sunday School. Seasonal plans. Meetings. Statistical tables. Visitation. Meetings. District/Conference obligations. Planning baptisms, weddings, funerals. Even occasionally reading a great book about things I'd like to be doing in my congregation.

How do you move beyond the things that just have to get done every week to carve out time for thinking on a grander scheme? I relate to my brother's recent post about the plans we make with our time and what we actually end up doing, except without the cute kid to make my lack of action seem quite so valuable.

How do you make time for going beyond the day to day life of the church? Do you think it is necessary to have a 'bigger picture' plan in ministry? Maybe if what I was involved in doing day to day seemed more like really being in ministry, really responding to God's call on my life, and less, sometimes, like checking boxes of things to do that aren't essentially of critical importance, maybe then I would think living day to day was all we needed to do. After all, I'm pretty sure Jesus said something about not worrying about tomorrow so much.

On the other hand (and there is always the other hand, isn't there?) - this Lent we've been using songs from the musical The Lion King each week to talk about Jesus' journey to the cross. Up this week? "Hakuna Matata." "No worries." I find myself writing a sermon that contrasts the motto "hakuna matata" with a woman ready to receive living water. The characters in The Lion King use their claim of "no worries" to run away from responsibility. Jesus tells us in this passage, though, that true life-sustaining food is found in "do[ing] the will of [God] who sent me and [completing God's] work." Not worrying doesn't mean not doing either.

How do we find balance? How do you handle the day to day necessities of ministry (which, to clarify, can be extremely rewarding in themselves) with your hopes for the future?



*Image source: http://leejagers.wordpress.com/2006/06/04/what-me-worry/

Too hard or too easy?

It's January 1st of a new year. Some people think a new year is no big deal. Some people don't make resolutions because they've failed at resolutions before and they think they're setting themselves up for failure. Some people are ready to have a chance, artificially marked or otherwise, to start fresh.

I think I am caught (we are caught) always between being too hard on ourselves and too easy on ourselves. So often I wake up in the morning to have my mind instantly start racing through the things I need to do that day. It's not a particularly relaxing way to wake up! I get a frantic start to my day, and then I get overwhelmed and end up hardly accomplishing anything I set out to do. it's a frustrating cycle, and I see it impacting different areas of my life where I hope to make changes - my personal life, in my social justice activism, in my ministry, etc.

Sometimes, I think we're way too hard on ourselves. We set up unreasonable demands of ourselves, and then we're crushed when we fail again and again. We make standards that are impossible, and then feel inadequate when we can't reach our own standards. And so many of the things we set out to do just aren't necessary. We spend so much time, money, and energy on things that just really don't matter. We're too hard on ourselves.

But sometimes, still, I think we're way too easy on ourselves. Even where we see in ourselves the need for significant change, we're unwilling to do what it takes to make those changes. We can't seem to see beyond the immediate situation to the long term change we hope to create. We're not willing to take risks, especially risks that would make us vulnerable, open, putting ourselves out there for failure. We never even really try at what we know we should be doing. We make excuses and put things off and procrastinate and talk ourselves out of exploring things. We're so easy on ourselves.

How can we be both too hard and too easy on ourselves? I guess that's the conundrum of the human condition. We put a great deal of worry and anxiety, time and money, into things that aren't of ultimate importance. And we don't have time, money, energy, or inclination left to look at the things in life that are truly essential.

I've mentioned in the past that I have basically two sermons that I preach (I think), when I boil them down to their simplest forms:

1) God loves you unconditionally! There's nothing you can do to separate you from God's love. God is forgiving, endlessly. So don't be so hard on yourself. You can't ever earn God's love - it's a gift. So just accept the gift, and stop trying to be 'good enough' to deserve it. And

2) God wants everything from you! Giving God a little isn't enough. God wants it all. Discipleship isn't easy, doesn't fit easily into your life. Discipleship demands a complete change in direction. God calls us to action, and we're doing nothing. We need to get to work!

Those are of course simplified, but I could go farther and say: 1) We're too hard on ourselves. And 2) We're too easy on ourselves. I hope my sermons sound like they have more variety! But at the core, that's what I'm saying. Put another way: 1) God loves us, actively, without condition. 2) God wants us to love others, actively, in the same way.

All this is to say that at the start of this New Year, I'm not quite ready to give up on resolutions. Sometimes the potential I feel for myself and my ministry that I can't seem to figure out how to use overwhelms me. So I have to keep working to make room for change in my life, in my ministry, in my world. But this year, I want to make sure that my 'to do' list has on it things that are actually important. I know I can't get away from all of the minute details. The bulletins still have to get done. The forms still have to be filled out. But I want to make sure that at the heart of my life and my ministry, what's getting my time, my attention, and my heart is what really matters most.

Happy New Year!

My Work Week

I've written a bit about pastors and work-week schedules before, though not in much detail. But I just finished reading Coffeepastor's post about his schedule, and like Cheesehead, who responded with her own post, I thought I'd do the same. (By the way, Cheesehead mentions 'sleeping in' until 7:30 in her post, and I feel I need to have a serious talk with her about the meaning of sleeping in.)

My schedule has changed a bit since moving to a new appointment in New Jersey, although not drastically. And my schedule has never been very particularly structured. But here it is:

1) Days off: This is something I struggle with a lot. I try very hard to take Fridays off, and if Friday doesn't work, I take Wednesday off. The truth is, I almost never take an entire day off. Inevitably, I find myself doing some ministry-related work, reading, emailing, sermon preparation, etc. I think this is in part because as a single pastor, I have a great deal of control over my time. When I decide to work (or not) usually doesn't impact anyone but me. And I don't feel like I'm overworking (at least not most of the time) because I feel like it all balances out in the end. So there that is. I'm trying to be better about keeping a day completely off. But it's a struggle.

2) I don't have set office hours. I tried to keep hours in Oneida, and no one would ever stop in during those hours intentionally, or I would end up missing my scheduled hours all the time anyway, so it seemed pointless. My predecessor here didn't keep office hours, so I was happy to continue in his footsteps on that. I'm a night owl, and I sleep in until about 9am unless something else comes up. I usually do a bit of work at home - responding to emails, etc., and then head into the office around 11am.

3) At the office, I start working on my weekly responsibilities. At the beginning of the week, I work mostly on my sermon, my sermon blog/Sunday School lesson, long term worship planning, etc. Towards the end of the week I'm thinking about bulletins, powerpoint presentations, and children's sermons. I've actually been trying really hard this Advent to get my sermons at least started well in advance. So far, I've got at least part of all my Advent sermons completed.

4) Visiting isn't something I do on a specific day. I try to do this when I have a good window of uninterrupted time, or as needed. Some weeks I don't make any visits at all, and some weeks I make several.

5) Evenings - Like visiting, some weeks I have no meetings at all, and some weeks I have them Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. Thursday nights are for bell choir and choir, both of which I am in.

6) Weekends - I'm the conference youth coordinator for NCNY, and also a General Conference delegate, and these commitments, as well as some special church events, keep my weekends pretty full. Often this is why my Friday day-off plan doesn't work. But these weekend events are also some of things I love doing the most.

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I got to the end of writing all that and almost didn't post it after all. I was thinking, who wants to read a detailed description of my work week? But then I started thinking about what my work week means for my ministry and what conclusions I can draw.

- I notice how rarely my schedule brings me into contact with people outside the church world, or outside United Methodism even. John at Locusts and Honey recently posted something along this line.

- My church schedule also rarely brings me into contact with people who are not white, not middle/upper class, and not fairly well-educated. This is especially true in my current location. I preach about the gospel message of God's love of the poor and oppressed, but I don't actually spend very much time with the very ones I have said the gospel is good news for.

- My weeks are pretty full and busy, but most of the things I work on are week-to-week needs. Writing a sermon, responding to pastoral care needs, taking part in committee meetings. Just doing the regular 'work' of the church takes up so much of my time. I feel strongly that we need to be thinking more long-term, need to be talking about vision, need to be looking past just maintaining things, but I find it hard to find the space to do that without leaving other responsibilities undone. How do you make space to think big? Is there room in the way we do church for discipleship? Real ministry?