A Job that is bigger than me
16/05/12 03:08
The third Tuesday of the month is my most intense day of meetings. I have standing meetings at 8:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m.; 4:15 p.m.; 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Most of those meetings require quite a bit of preparation on my part and some of them require flexibility as agendas can change at the last minute. The result is a long day. It is not unusual for me to me to have been in the building for 12 hours by the time the 6 p.m. meeting comes. In between the meetings I have to cram in other duties, such as hospital calls, preparing worship notes, responding to telephone calls and planning.
I am not saying this to complain, nor to brag. It is simply a reality of the administration of a congregation the size of ours. It would be possible to spread out some of the meetings and have fewer meetings per day, but more days of meetings. There are, however, advantages to keeping them tight, as information travels smoothly from one meeting to another. Furthermore, because my vocation is not attending meetings, but rather ministering to God’s people, it is important for me to manage my schedule in such a way that there are days with no formal meetings so I can do other important work.
Yesterday was typical in that some phone calls took more time than I anticipated. What I thought was a routine request turned into a series of phone calls to accomplish a simple task. A hospital visit needed to take longer than usual because of the presence of the physical therapist and the need to spend extra time with a family member visiting the patient.
In the midst of all of this, I was visiting with a few members of our congregation as we waited for others to arrive for a meeting. I commented that the nature of the pastoral ministry is one of continually shifting priorities. Because it is impossible to ever finish the needed work, one always goes to bed with unfinished tasks. This demands that the order in which tasks are done is constantly shifting. I commented that one of the hard lessons for me to learn as a minister is that there are times when putting in more hours results in accomplishing less than taking a break. Sabbath is, after all, one of the commandments.
One of the people in the conversation flatly stated that she never left a day’s work with any of her tasks undone. She said she was a hard worker, a very efficient person, and that there was never a day in her career when she did not accomplish every item on her list. After a pause, during which I must have shown some of the amazement I felt, I replied that I was certainly different. It seems to me that I leave the office with undone work every day.
We have different jobs. We have different personalities. I suppose that my world is as unimaginable to her as hers is to me.
There was something troubling about the conversation. I think that there is, within me, a bit of guilt about my inability to do all of the work that I imagine I might. I know there is a bit of guilt over times when someone’s feeling were hurt because I missed a visit or failed to send acknowledgment. It is not so much that I fall short of others’ expectations. I know that I sometimes do. Far more often, I fall short of my own expectations.
As I reflect on the conversation, another comes to mind. This conversation took place a couple of decades ago, with a person with hiring responsibilities as Hewlett Packard Company moved its printer division from California to Idaho. I asked the individual about the process of hiring. I imagined that it involved visits to the nation’s top engineering colleges and interviewing the best and brightest students. The answer surprised me. Essentially the person reported that the bulk of the engineers that HP hired came from less well-known schools and from near the middle of their class. It wasn’t because HP couldn’t afford the best and the brightest. It was because the competitive nature of graduate education tended to produce people who were brilliant by themselves and whose academic careers had focused on distinguishing them as individuals. “At HP we don’t have any jobs that are so small that they could be accomplished by an individual,” he said. “We need people who can work collaboratively.”
That is the kind of job I have. It cannot be accomplished by any individual.
As a minister, I have invested my life in the task of making disciples. My call is to teach and preach and administer the sacraments. 2,000 years after the great commission the church has still not accomplished the tasks Jesus outlined. Being a minister is belonging to a long line of people engaged in a task that will never be finished. While it is an honor to be called to such a large job, it is also humbling. The job is bigger than I. It is bigger than the combined efforts of any single generation.
I know that I am personally ill suited for a job that can be accomplished by one person. My imagination constantly produces new possibilities and new options. I know that I will continue to spend my live recruiting more people to become engaged in the ministries of Jesus Christ. I know that I will die with much more work to be accomplished. I like it that way.
Yet, I know that for the person with whom I had the conversation yesterday, the thought of not getting all of one’s work done would be intolerable. She learned to tackle measured amounts of work, to work efficiently and to work hard. She found ways to evaluate her success and hold herself to a standard of excellence in her work. She never bit off more than she could chew and she was responsible to the tasks to which she committed herself.
She is just the kind of person we need to recruit into the ministry of the church. I don’t want to frustrate her with a job that is too big, but I do want her energy and efficiency brought to the work of the church. It just may be that now she has retired she will face the biggest job of her life – the first one that she will not be able to finish.
Discipleship has deep costs. It is not all fun and games. There are real sacrifices. But the joy! Oh the joy! It is the joy of discipleship that I wish for her.
I am not saying this to complain, nor to brag. It is simply a reality of the administration of a congregation the size of ours. It would be possible to spread out some of the meetings and have fewer meetings per day, but more days of meetings. There are, however, advantages to keeping them tight, as information travels smoothly from one meeting to another. Furthermore, because my vocation is not attending meetings, but rather ministering to God’s people, it is important for me to manage my schedule in such a way that there are days with no formal meetings so I can do other important work.
In the midst of all of this, I was visiting with a few members of our congregation as we waited for others to arrive for a meeting. I commented that the nature of the pastoral ministry is one of continually shifting priorities. Because it is impossible to ever finish the needed work, one always goes to bed with unfinished tasks. This demands that the order in which tasks are done is constantly shifting. I commented that one of the hard lessons for me to learn as a minister is that there are times when putting in more hours results in accomplishing less than taking a break. Sabbath is, after all, one of the commandments.
One of the people in the conversation flatly stated that she never left a day’s work with any of her tasks undone. She said she was a hard worker, a very efficient person, and that there was never a day in her career when she did not accomplish every item on her list. After a pause, during which I must have shown some of the amazement I felt, I replied that I was certainly different. It seems to me that I leave the office with undone work every day.
We have different jobs. We have different personalities. I suppose that my world is as unimaginable to her as hers is to me.
There was something troubling about the conversation. I think that there is, within me, a bit of guilt about my inability to do all of the work that I imagine I might. I know there is a bit of guilt over times when someone’s feeling were hurt because I missed a visit or failed to send acknowledgment. It is not so much that I fall short of others’ expectations. I know that I sometimes do. Far more often, I fall short of my own expectations.
As I reflect on the conversation, another comes to mind. This conversation took place a couple of decades ago, with a person with hiring responsibilities as Hewlett Packard Company moved its printer division from California to Idaho. I asked the individual about the process of hiring. I imagined that it involved visits to the nation’s top engineering colleges and interviewing the best and brightest students. The answer surprised me. Essentially the person reported that the bulk of the engineers that HP hired came from less well-known schools and from near the middle of their class. It wasn’t because HP couldn’t afford the best and the brightest. It was because the competitive nature of graduate education tended to produce people who were brilliant by themselves and whose academic careers had focused on distinguishing them as individuals. “At HP we don’t have any jobs that are so small that they could be accomplished by an individual,” he said. “We need people who can work collaboratively.”
That is the kind of job I have. It cannot be accomplished by any individual.
As a minister, I have invested my life in the task of making disciples. My call is to teach and preach and administer the sacraments. 2,000 years after the great commission the church has still not accomplished the tasks Jesus outlined. Being a minister is belonging to a long line of people engaged in a task that will never be finished. While it is an honor to be called to such a large job, it is also humbling. The job is bigger than I. It is bigger than the combined efforts of any single generation.
I know that I am personally ill suited for a job that can be accomplished by one person. My imagination constantly produces new possibilities and new options. I know that I will continue to spend my live recruiting more people to become engaged in the ministries of Jesus Christ. I know that I will die with much more work to be accomplished. I like it that way.
She is just the kind of person we need to recruit into the ministry of the church. I don’t want to frustrate her with a job that is too big, but I do want her energy and efficiency brought to the work of the church. It just may be that now she has retired she will face the biggest job of her life – the first one that she will not be able to finish.
Discipleship has deep costs. It is not all fun and games. There are real sacrifices. But the joy! Oh the joy! It is the joy of discipleship that I wish for her.