Here's a joke . . . well, sort of a joke.  A certain potato farmer had been working his hired hand hard to get his harvest in.  But on one particular day, the weather was brutally hot and humid.  So, our of concern for his hired man, he decided to lighten the load that day.  He dumped an big pile of potatoes under a spreading shade tree, put three large bins near the pile of spuds, and called his hired hand over to him.

"Now, it's way too hot to be out there under the sun in the field.  So, I want you to take it easy today.  Stay under the shade of this tree, and drink plenty of water.  And all I want you to do is sort these potatoes into these three bins according to size.  Big ones in this bin, medium ones in this bin, and small ones in this bin.  Got it?"

"I thinks so, boss," was the reply.

"Good.  I'll be back in a couple of hours to see how things are going."

The farmer returned as planned and found his hired man leaning exhausted against the trunk of the tree, his clothes soaked through with sweat.

"What happened?" the farmer exclaimed.  "I told you to take it easy and just sort out this pile of potatoes.  What happened to you?"

"Oh, boss!  This is the hardest job you've ever given me to do."

"What do you mean?  This is the lightest work I've got on this farm."

"Boss, it's not the physical stuff.  It's the mental work.  It's all the decisions.  One decision after another.  Decisions, decisions, decisions.  I'm all played out with the decisions."

Well, I don't know if you're laughing.  My reaction is a sort of chagrined and embarrassed smile.  One of the hardest things about the pastoral work for me is all the decisions that I have to make.  A pastor is, among other things, the manager of a religious organization.  And one of the key roles of a manager of organizations and institutions is decision-making.

Delegating is an important skill and discipline.  (And it is both a skill to be learned and a discipline to be enforced on oneself.)  In a healthy church that emphasizes the ministry of all people, not just the "minister," delegation can be easier and more natural and even automatic.  In churches that see church members as "religious consumers" and the work of ministry as the responsibility of the staff, delegation can be an up-hill battle.

At North Church, where I am now, a lot of decisions automatically by-pass my desk.   For example, we are in the midst of a large project to replace the windows in one of the wings of our building and install air conditioning there.  I was involved in the decision as to whether we should do the project or not and how much we could afford to spend on it.  But after that the myriad decisions that have had to be made about that work have been made by others.  

Wise churches will spare their pastors from being overly involved in those decisions that do not really require his/her input.  This can be a lot trickier than it sounds.  To avoid unnecessarily drawing the pastor into decisions, a committee or working group has to be willing to take responsibility for its own decisions.  They also need to be willing to do the work of resolving their own internal disagreement in order to come to a decision.

Likewise, a pastor has to be willing to stay out of decisions that do not require his/her input.  That requires us to relinquish control over some of the details of church life.  That can run counter to our inclinations.  Being treated as indispensable can be a real ego stroking.  Sometimes we pastors have a hard time foregoing that.  Delegating also requires us pastors to be willing to live with decisions that may not be exactly the way we would have liked.  We need to do this for the welfare of our people and for the benefit of our own proper work.  Is it really better for me to give up a couple of hours of rest with my family or study for my sermon or visiting with a new family just so that I can make sure that the committee for the church kitchen buys the brand of refrigerator that I prefer?

Well, learning the skill and developing the discipline to delegate properly is always an ongoing challenge for pastors.  I think I know how to do it, but I know that I don't always do it well.

But even the pastor who delegates perfectly, if such a paragon actually existed, would still be faced daily with an enormous pile of decisions that simply can't be delegated.  For example, I have nothing scheduled for my afternoon today after a 1:00 P.M. appointment that should last about an hour.  So, what will I do with the three or four hours after that?

There are people in the hospital that I need to visit.  There are the two weekly bulletins that need to be finished.  I've done very little study on the passage that I'm going to preach on this Sunday.  I still haven't settled on my preaching plan for Advent Sundays, or Wednesday evenings for that matter.  The ushers guidelines and instructions need to be revised as of two weeks ago.  I haven't had a work out in over five months.  I've only visited with two of the five families in our current new members class.  I urgently need to be preparing resources for our elders and members to help them sort out the very serious denominational conflict that will be coming upon us in the next year.  For over two years I've been meaning to schedule an evangelism training program for our members.  The Nominating Committee needs my input.  The Budget Committee is hard at work without much help from me.  We have quite a few homebound members who haven't seen my face in a very long time.  I have a funeral scheduled for this coming Saturday, but I have nothing planned yet.

Should I slide some of this over into the evening?  That's when my kids will need some help with their homework.  My wife would like to have some conversation with her husband.  The downstairs shower is leaking.  Our bedroom door doesn't latch anymore.  And about 9:00 P.M. my brain will finally go on strike and make me fall asleep, because I've been forcing it to make some many decisions.

Ahh.  Poor, poor Gary!

Well, this is the stuff of life.  Mine probably isn't all that terribly different from yours.  Decisions are how we live our lives.  We can make them consciously and with a sense of purpose.  Or we can make them by default, by just responding to the matter that screams at us the loudest, whether it's the most important matter for us to address or not.

The one key truth, that I've been learning now for the past thirty-five years or so, is that the less I pray, the more overwhelming the decisions become.  And the more I pray, the more manageable and purposeful my decisions become.  I'm thinking there may be something in that.  What do you think?