Randi Meyer
Thursday 2/19/09
6. Office Work
This past summer I did an internship at my home church. I soon discovered that many of the tasks that were assigned to me were office work, research, meetings, and study. I learned a lot about the church and pastoral duties through each of these elements, but I also soon discovered what my passion truly is. My passion is spending time with people, especially when close relationships develop between other individuals and me. My passion for ministry is fed by personal discipleship and guidance that I can give to others.
Another quality that I know about myself is that I love alone time and education. My study time and preparation for lessons and sermons are enjoyable to me. There are times when people wear me out, and I feel replenished by having silence for devotions and study time. I am also a very task orientated and organized person, so office work does not bother me very much.
My ideal world in the ministry would then be a perfect balance. I would prefer to work between 40-50 hours a week. Hopefully not more, because I see the importance of still having a personal and social life outside of ministry work. I also would want to spend half of that time on “real interactions” with people, and the other half in the office studying, preparing, and performing other tasks. In today’s culture, I believe “office work” should not be rare anymore. Our world is very structured, and it takes office work to institute organization and a system that makes things function. But I also believe that too much focus in this area and not enough on people can completely destroy a ministry. This brings me to my conclusion that there needs to be balance.