We're not quite a whole week into the "program year" and already I'm overwhelmed.  No day off last week.  No day off this week.  Boo hoo!  Poor me!  You are probably justified to think that no day off is as much a problem of poor planning on my part as it is a matter of an avalanche of activities that I can't control.  This week, though, it is funerals.  You don't plan for those.  You just do them when they need to be done.

 Still, there are a lot of things happening at this time of the year, and sometimes it's hard to arrange them to my own liking.  But that's one of the reasons I stopped counting my hours a long time ago.  When I first started in the pastoral line, I was very concerned that I not shirk my duties and that I put in the requisite hours (I like most pastors work about 50 to 55 hours a week).  So, I would regularly lie in bed and count out the hours that I'd worked in that week.  If it was plenty of hours, then I'd just keep on doing what I was doing.  If it came up short, then I'd scramble to cram in some more hours.

As time went along and as I accrued more experience, I began to question whether this time-clock mentality was especially wise and appropriate to the pastoral work.  One of my concerns was the implication that hours worked = mission/ministry accomplished.  The Great Commission is not: "Go and put in fifty hours a week."  It is:  "Go and make disciples...."  Of course, if I don't put in any hours, I won't make any disciples.  On the other hand, if I put in 60 hours in a week, I am not necessarily entitled to believe that I have made more disciples, so to speak, than if I have only put in 50 hours.  I decided that the mere number of hours worked did not really help me much to evaluate my work week.

A much more subtle problem arising from the very nature of pastoral work ultimately led me to stop counting hours.  The boundary between the personal life of a pastor and the pastoral life of a pastor is blurry and very porous,  and I would argue that it has to be.  The personal life of the pastor and the spiritual life of the pastor are essential elements in the pastoral work of the pastor.  A pastor's primary "tool" is him/herself.  

Prayer is an essential part of my work.  But must I tease out prayer relating to my pastoral work from personal prayer?  Does prayer for my friend who is also a church member count as work time or personal time?  When I read, say, C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce for the third time, though I don't have any specific plans to use my reading in a sermon or class, does that reading count as work time or personal time?  When I attend my son's Boy Scout meeting where three other families from the church are also involved, does that interaction with those families count as work time or personal time?

Well, those questions, silly though they may be, demonstrate (maybe by their silliness) just how hard and really meaningless it is to try to count hours as a pastor.  

So, I find that I can mostly do my work in 50 or so hours a week.  If I work much more than that many hours in a week, I find that my overall effectiveness as a pastor deteriorates and my naturally sweet disposition begins to sour.  So, I try not to do that.  If I have to do it because of circumstances like funerals or special projects or high holy days, then I make every effort to loaf more the following week.  (Loafing is an important spiritual discipline.  I'll write more about that later.)

My no days off last week and this means an extra day off next week.  You got a problem with that?  Ooo, see how grumpy I get when I work too much.