Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-part essay. Part II will appear tomorrow.
Part I: The Anchor Points
A former warden and I have a running joke about a jab he heard years ago while he was a member of a diocesan finance committee. The committee was reviewing the guidelines for clergy compensation. As is so common on these types of committees, several of the members were in business, banking, or finance. This made them both outsiders of the day-to-day work of the clergy and alert to the pressures that employee salaries can put on a bottom line. As they were looking over the report on salary minimums, one of the finance gurus tossed it on the table and said, “Not bad for three days’ work.”
This comment, I suspect, reflects the view of what many people imagine clergy to do. You preach and celebrate on Sunday, attend a few meetings during the week, and make a few phone calls to parishioners who have not been seen for a while; a hospital visit, as occasion requires. It is true that a lack of oversight and accountability, coupled with the respect usually accorded the ministry, can give opportunity to some for indolence and even neglect. Clergy who start off disciplined and hard-working can fall prey to this temptation, and the latitude and freedom that come with the work can become a perfect way to cloak burnout. Too many have known clergy who are dialing in the work, waiting for that 30-year mark to start collecting the pension.
I can hardly claim that I have escaped the pitfalls of the indolent cleric, but I can at least sincerely say it’s not three days’ work. I’m also doubtful about how representative the shape of my ministry is. I have noticed, however, from the clergy who have mentored me that I cannot copy them exactly. Rather, in each case I find some facet or quality that strikes me, and then I can adapt that feature to my calling and personality. I cannot be Dean Leander Harding or Father Patrick Bright or the late Dr. Martha Giltinan, much as I’ve learned from them. I offer this account with the prayerful hope that there might be some small facet or feature that would be useful to a fellow cleric or fellow Christian.
In this first of a two-part essay, let me begin to walk through the week, and in so doing I hope to “redeem the time,” as St. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:16. If you lead a congregation, perhaps you’ll see your own patterns or maybe you’ll find differences. Perhaps, if you’re a layperson, this two-part reflection will help you see our attempt, by grace, to live with integrity and to minister in the days and hours God has given us and in the communities in which God has planted us. I’m not assuming my daily work should be normative or even noteworthy. Perhaps, though, there will be something in it to prompt the Spirit’s leading.
Having been ordained 16 years, I still feel a bit sophomoric, but I have learned that keeping a regular schedule is an important aid to being more effective and organized. A consistent schedule is like a pegboard or skeletal structure that gives shape to all that I do. The schedule, of course, is not an end in itself — “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
A day in the life of a cleric should begin with prayer. In our Anglican tradition, this is abundantly evident: the 1662 Book of Common Prayer mandated that all clergy say both Morning and Evening Prayer. I have found it difficult to keep this mandate rigorously, but the weekdays I am in the office (Monday is a day of rest for me), I always begin the day with Morning Prayer. Starting the day with the Word of God, a reading in the Old and New Testaments, is a reminder to all clergy that the Word we are to carry in our ministry, in our preaching, in our counseling, and in our administering of the Sacraments is not our own word.
We are not masters of the Word, but rather, have been claimed, captured, and called by it, or rather him. As Christ told Peter, ”Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not” (John 21:18). The nature of an authentic calling is that the Lord has girded us and led us to places we could have never imagined. We are servants of the Word made flesh, the Word spoken through the prophets and apostles. When we pronounce forgiveness, it is the forgiveness of Jesus Christ that we pronounce. When we offer counsel, it is the counsel of the Spirit of Christ. When we nurture with comfort, it is the nurturing and comfort of Jesus Christ. Being grounded in the Word of Scripture reminds us of whose ministry this is.
In Morning Prayer, we embrace also the spirit of prayer and supplication characteristic of true priesthood. There are so many cares and concerns in my congregation and in the world. Many I know. Some I do not. Some I know but are beyond my ability to intervene or counsel. I must fall back on the cross and take it to the Lord in prayer. It is my job to be present amid these cares and trials, but before all, it is my job to pray. As a structure to prayer, I have found the order of the supplications in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer satisfying and meaningful: The Lord’s Prayer, prayers for ourselves for peace and grace, prayers for the President, my bishop and fellow clergy, and those who are “troubled in mind, body, and estate.”
The day has not started until I have prayed for myself and for the needs of the congregation and indeed the world. We live in a time of cynicism and despondency about the future. Prayer points to hope and patient endurance. Every time my heart is lifted in sincere prayer, in a small way I join the heavenly intercession of our one, true, and only priest, Jesus Christ.
I have found it tempting at various times in my ministry to treat the priesthood as a desk job, and it simply is not. I have consistently found that the most fruitful hours are outside the church office. And, to be clear, there is no substitute for in-person, face-to-face time with people.
To that end, I have a fixed weekly rotation of daily activities that keep me accountable and send me out of the office. On Tuesdays, I meet with our small staff to go over the calendar of the next couple of weeks and to check in with any concerns that may have come up during the weekend. I also have a rotating monthly schedule for visiting the homebound.
I know many clergy delegate this work to trained laity, but a couple of things keep me motivated to retain this ministry. One is that it is achievable. We don’t have so many homebound that it is not humanly possible to see them once a month. Usually two or three visits on a Tuesday will, in a month, suffice to see everyone. Second, most of these folks have been members of my congregation for decades. One or two were raised in the parish. Many were involved in various ministries. Now that they can no longer get out to church, I feel they are entitled to my time and attention as rector of their church.
On Wednesdays, I have a healing Eucharist followed by a Bible study. These attract a decent-sized crowd of retirees. It is a chance for them to grow in faith. The cliché is that now they have the time to think about matters of faith, or they feel more acutely their mortality, and so they want to strengthen their beliefs. It is regrettable that God should be relegated to a bracket of “as time allows” or when I have “discretionary time” or relevant once I feel my demise approaching. Whatever the reason, as a priest I do not feel we ought to be too judgmental about why faith has become a priority. I welcome not only their curiosity and desire to learn, but also the sense of community that comes from having so many people in the building. For those few hours, it feels like the church is a community center or a local tavern.
On Thursdays I have for the past few years held a book club after Morning Prayer. The idea for this book club is to be free of homework. In this book club, we read short Christian classics aloud. We’ve read several by C.S. Lewis, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, and the apostolic father, Ignatius of Antioch. Future readings include Augustine’s Enchiridion or Spirit and the Letter, Luther’s devotional commentary on the Magnificat, and the chapter on prayer in Calvin’s Institutes. The book club started at the request of a working mother who never finished high school. She’s extremely bright, and she wants to dig deeper into the Christian faith. What a privilege for me as a priest to be a tour guide to fellow and eager believers into some of these spiritual classics.
But this group is my ministry for others. I must cultivate my mind in private time as well, and this is no less part of my work. An unvarying fixture of my day, and one I find essential to the ministry, is the study of a book for 45 minutes to an hour. As I wrote in an earlier covenant post, spending some quiet time in concentrated study of a biblical commentary, work of theology, or a book of pastoral praxis or ministry is like filling a reservoir of thought and reflection. I could not preach, teach, or engage in pastoral care with any kind of vitality or energy without an active life of the mind. If my cup is empty, I won’t have anything to pass along to others.
This is a good place to speak about sermon preparation, which for me is often done Friday morning. I find I am most prepared for the sermon when I read the lessons early in the week, and devote good thought, prayer, and reflection to them. A sermon is not a formal commentary on the Bible or a cogent analysis of the pressing political or social issues of the day. Rather, the sermon, as I understand it, is an activity that begins with listening to what God’s Word speaks to me in this moment.
The sermon ought to convey the sense of how I am a fellow listener and disciple. After all, I am just beginning to be a Christian in truth and not just in name. As such, here is what I hear the Scripture speaking to me and to us all. There must be an urgency about it, and if I do not reflect, pray, and think earlier in the week, I find I’m often tempted into either retreating to biblical or social (or, even worse, liturgical) commentary. As Dean Leander Harding taught me years ago, you have to have something to say.
These are some of the spiritual and theological anchor points that keep me from being a manager sitting at a desk. In the second part, I will reflect on some of the other tasks — indeed there is enough desk work that, without these disciplines, I would fall into mere operations.
