The Rev. Canon Tim Elliott, a ministry consultant with Elliott Clarke and Associates, offers these "Notes from the Narthex." From this vantage point in the church's lobby he can peer into the church or open the door and look outside, all the while staying safe in the narthex.
Recently I noted a few things that, from where I sit, are contributing to an increase in the challenge and ambiguity of ministry work. One of them is how active, or busy, people of all ages are. Every aspect of professional ministry practice is affected by this.
Take pastoral visiting, for example.
It used to be that some people were home during the day and ready to welcome visitors and friends. These days, few people are at home during the day. Healthy, active seniors aren’t home. Working parents aren’t home. And when young families do have “free” time, it is often taken up with competitive sports and other activities.
In terms of pastoral visiting, that leaves inactive seniors. And many clergy spend hours visiting these elders who have great wisdom and experience to share. In my own ministry, I always enjoyed visiting vital folks in their 80s and 90s who would lift me up spiritually and provide a longer view of life than I could manage on my own.
The level of activity most people experience extends to the evenings and weekends, including Sunday, traditionally a day to meet at the church for worship, meetings, or study. It’s hard to get people together, though, because they’re busy. And when they do get together, they’re tired. What they really need is rest and refreshment, not more engagement with leadership challenges in the church.
Churches rely on happy and healthy volunteers to staff leadership positions. What they find is that the folks who wish to help are very busy and very tired. This puts an added strain on the clergyperson, who typically spends hours recruiting, persuading, training, and hoping that somehow this person will do their job well and, if they’re any good, stay with it for quite a while.
Another challenge for the church is the competition. So many worthwhile agencies are doing important work: how do you—or do you—persuade someone that giving their time to the church is more important than being involved as a volunteer in their local social service agency?
Life is busier—more options are available, people are living longer and are able to do more things. All of this makes life much more challenging for the clergy because there is always some role that needs to be filled, some job that needs to be done. There is another problem and that is, often the folks with the most time to offer are not healthy themselves, or have needs that aren’t being met at home or at work, or they have difficulty getting along with people. And so in the name of helping, they may cause more problems than they solve and in the end, the job doesn’t get done.
What helps, I think, is to simplify things so that the priorities are well considered. What are the basic core functions of the congregation? These need to be looked after by the healthiest and most capable people.
We can’t turn the clock back—we have to deal with realities. And the church needs to adapt its decision making and accountability structures, and its ministry priorities, to recognize that active people like to be busy and it’s going to be a challenge for the clergy to manage this.
