Week Six Essay: Office Work

Week Six Essay

Office Work

    I think that office hours are necessary for a Pastor in the Church today. I think that many people now expect pastors to hold office hours and be available at the Church on a regular basis. I think that depending upon the size of the Church would depend how long, and how many hours you have to spend in the office at the Church. The more people that attend the Church the more you would have to be in the office, the smaller the Church I think that there would be less need to be in the Church office. I also think that the number of hours a pastor spends in the office at the Church would also depend on how many pastors are at the Church. If it is a multiple staff Church then I think a pastor might be able to spend less time in the office if they all have a rotating schedule of who is going to be available at the office. If there is a solo pastor at the Church they might have to be at the office more because no one else would be there.

    Personally I would not like to spend a whole lot of time in the office of the Church. Once I get interrupted on something it is hard for me get back on track and get work done. I hate interruptions and once I start something I want to finish it before I take a break or get interrupted. Ideally, in the Church I would want to be in the Church office for 3-5 hours three days a week and then spend a full day at the Church the other two days of the week and then not be in the Church office at all one day a week (preferably Saturday). I would like to have an office in my home or a work area so that I could go and get my work done without having to worry about the various interruptions throughout the day. All the Pastors that I have got to know really well also do a lot of visitations in hospitals and homes. This is something that I would also like to do in ministry and think it is important to get out there and be with our people. I would like to spend 7-10 hours a week visiting people in the Church either in their homes or people who are in the hospital.

    I would also like to spend some time of the week writing. I love to write and in the future see myself writing books, articles and other various writings. I think that writing will be a large part of my ministry and it is something that I think I will spend at least 5-7 hours a week in writing and it could be even more than that if I needed to do some research for the writing.

    I would only like to spend 25-28 hours in the Church office a week preparing sermons, lessons and other various Church responsibilities. I assume that is probably not realistic, but in an ideal world that is the amount of time I would like to be in the office of the Church.

    At the least this would be 37 hours of work in the Church and at the most it would be 45 hours of work in the Church. I think that it would be a great temptation to spend as little time as possible in the Church office and doing Church work, instead of investing a full time schedule into the Church work. However, I think that it is necessary to spend full time schedule in the Church office and doing Church. I hope I don't fall into the temptation of doing ministry half-hearted or cutting corners just to save a little time in my own personal schedule.