Week 6-Thursday Blog

Week 6
February 19th, 2009
Kelly Jones
Office Work:

What would I like to see in regards to “office work” and “calling” on people?


The church and the ministry of a pastor is ever evolving to help better minister to the world. Not that the Church is compromising, rather it is being IN the world, not of it. In order to minister effectively for Christ, the work of a pastor will change accordingly to the means needed to meet the worlds' needs. I find no problem with this, rather I am in awe of how God is ever-constant but always finding ways to reach out to our human needs. As a minister, I find that shift from visiting people to office work work has been a launch board to encompassing a fruitful ministry.

What I would like to see in regards to the two, is two a church that has the ability to staff more than on pastor to do such jobs. Administrative work takes a lot of a pastors time as does spending time with people. Now, I believe the role of pastor should include both, but should it be to the point where the minister is run down to total exhaustion? We must not forget that on top of running board meetings, attending pray meetings, writing sermons, and spending time with their own families, pastors are basically on-call 24/7. Unlike other vocations where a person punches in and punches out, leaving work behind, a minister never truly has that.

The Church recognizes this. Congregations experience this with run-down, burned-out ministers. Pastors ache so much that many times, they throw their hands in the and and throw in the towel.

But the Church is not staying silent. They are responding and finding ways to “fix” this problem. I must say, from my little experience in the ministry and education of it, I think this fix will do wonders for the Kingdom.

The fix comes in different forms depending on the desire of the church and pastoral staff...
Dividing Up Roles
Some churches are beginning to hire pastors and assigning them to specific roles. We have seen this shift in delegating roles when the division of senior pastor, assistant pastor, youth pastor, and children's pastor came about. Now we see the division of Administrative Pastor, Pastoral Care Pastor, Communications Pastor and more. This helps divide up the thousands of dependencies on person must carry.

Delegating Tasks
A person cannot be all things to all people at all times. Some churches have taken the action to delegate the tasks of a pastor, specifically the “on-call” tasks. Staff and sometimes highly regarded lay people are given the role of pastoral care in which they are assigned a certain day to be available to any on-call duty. This frees up the pastor to focus on administrative tasks and preparation for Sunday services on certain days with no interruptions. It also allows the pastor to have at least one “off day.”


How would I want to spend an ideal week in doing church work? How many hours a week and doing what?
An ideal week for me doing church work would be these things:
1.Counseling
2.Preparing and Organizing Events
3.Preparing /Training Volunteers and Teachers
4.Preparing Sunday Service

Most of my time would be spent on planning and being with people. I have that being in the ministry that my true passions are to be with people one-on-one as well as planning events such missions trips, fund raisers, lock-ins, and hospitality. I like preparing sermons, but that is not my number one passion. Thankfully that is my husband, my ministy partner, number one thing, preparing sermons!
In regards to hours, I think doing all of those things (not to mention visiting people and being “on-call”) would take about anywhere from forty to fifty hours a week. Being in a part time position doing those things, I probably spend half that amount of time (even though if I had no school, I would be putting that many hours into it!).