Should clergy count their days and hours?
A few days ago, Donald Allister, Bishop of Peterborough, wrote to his clergy and talked about cocky-management in relation to time keeping and time off. It has garnered some interesting reactions. This is the extract in question:
Clergy Intendance
In a number of dioceses, bishops accept started instructing clergy to accept two consecutive days off once a calendar month, as well as a full day off in the other weeks. This is in addition to the normal annual leave assart. I accept been asked if I intend to do the same. My answer may seem a strange one, and I'm very happy to talk over or explain it, but it represents a firmly held position.
I have no intention of telling clergy how many days off to take, or how to configure their days off or their annual get out. To do and so would make me a manager, and would make the clergy employees. (I am referring to parish clergy; chaplains and some diocesan staff are employees and come under different arrangements.) During my 26 years in parish ministry, and now 17 as archdeacon or bishop, I have rejoiced in the freedom we have to organise our own lives: to take lunch at habitation sometimes, to share in children's bedtime or the schoolhouse run or see children in a school play during the daytime, to get out for a walk or to the cinema or read a novel on a "working" day when I experience the demand to practise that. I have never counted my working hours in a week, or even my days of leave per year, and I have never felt the need to practise so. I know that I piece of work difficult at my ministerial calling. I am a priest and bishop 24/7, and I am also a hubby, father, brother, friend – and a person with my own needs – in the aforementioned fashion. (I tried to be a 24/7 son too, when my parents were still alive). I rejoice in belongings these duties, joys, responsibilities and privileges together. I delight in our foreign and somewhat unusual status, as neither employed nor self-employed, but "office holders". I am perplexed and a footling saddened when parish clergy want to be employed and line managed, or run across their calling as in some way analogous to a job. To the parish clergy I would say, Give yourself wholly and joyfully to the various callings, responsibilities and privileges the Lord has laid on y'all; Look afterwards yourself equally well as others, taking the time you need for refreshment, recreation, and remainder; Work hard, pray hard, honey well, care for those in your charge including yourself.
I think there are at least four virtues in Donald's approach here.
The outset is that this is a long way from the kind of management speak that seems to be growing in the C of E, and which (from my conversations) it appears that quite a few clergy are beginning to resent. No mention here or targets, goals or commitments to growth.
Secondly, and related to that, this approach seems to be a genuine try to capture the sense of 'office' that describes what information technology means to be an ordained minister in the Church of England. This concept is under pressure levelboth from bishops and other leaders who would like to have more than control over their clergy,and from clergy who feel they need more protection from people similar that! It came nether some force per unit area in the last report on clergy stipends,Generosity and Sacrifice in 2001 (to which I fabricated a small contribution). And information technology is repeatedly scrutinised whenever questions ascend about management and control of numbers at a national level. It has been an embarrassment that clergy have non retired in the numbers predictable, so that the growth of ordinands is filling a gap which has not quite materialised—the disability to manage that at a national level is related to the quirky nature of clergy as 'function holders' and not employees. And it is refreshing to read a bishop existence positive about this reality.
Thirdly, it is also refreshing to read an honest business relationship of the positive benefits of this practical situation. There is a strong tendency at the moment to commiserate with one some other amid clergy at the pressures we are under, and how difficult done we are, and how difficult our situation. But the reality is that, spiritual blessings aside, there are many advantages and practical privileges enjoyed by the ordained, and it is good to recognise that without prejudice.
Fourthly, I call back this is a delightfully personal communication, which is realistic near the personal realities of life, and in which ministry building is non all consuming. At that place is a sense of undefended openness here, in which as a bishop Donald is offering with an open mitt the pattern of his own feel. (No-1 has commented on it that I know, just I was fascinated to see that the post-obit paragraph talks of his own blueprint of fasting and why that might also help others.)
Despite these positives, there were quite a number of negatives responses in an online give-and-take of this approach that I was a part of. Some disliked the laissez-faire approach, especially to taking holiday, since they felt it failed to acknowledge the struggles some clergy take in this expanse. Others wanted more guidance, whilst still others pointed out that, under Common Tenure (which replaced clergy freehold from 2011), the Argument of Particulars (SOP) which dioceses are legally obliged to provide to all stipendiary licensed clergy do actually offer some specific numbers in relation to holidays and days off:
You are entitled to an uninterrupted residuum menses of 24 hours in each menses of seven days.
Y'all are entitled to 36 days' almanac leave in each get out year.
SOPs usually specify the fact that retreats, conferences and report days should non count as annual get out, and note the liberty and lack of need to report leave that Donald refers to in his letter.
So are in that location reasons why we might need more than guidance than the general principles to 'give yourself joyfully' and 'wait subsequently yourself as well every bit others'? Once again, I would note four things.
To protect us from ourselves
A retired bishop once told me: 'Half the clergy in my diocese were lazy; the other half were workaholics'. I run into both these tendencies in different parts of the Church—and in fact I wonder if the temptations to laziness and workaholism are paradoxically nowadays in all of usa at unlike times. Information technology is a claiming to generate healthy patterns and disciplines when you piece of work independently (even if part of that fourth dimension is working in a squad), and having frameworks and guidelines tin help with basic disciplines and offer accountability. This year I have been trying to write something on the gospel lectionary reading to support and encourage those who are preaching on a Sunday—and it has been interesting to see how many people leave their sermon preparation to Saturday evening! This might be a well-refined approach offer an optimal preparation moment—only I suspect it is more of a sign that, under the immediate pressures of parochial life, we struggle to be pro-active and disciplined in our use of time.
On the other hand, I have friends who are struggling with ill health and from patterns of exhaustion that have arisen because of overwork and insufficient patterns of residuum. Ministry is a task without boundaries, and it demands a peculiar subject field to say 'no' to the needs of others for the sake of ane'southward own boundaries—in a context where, past definition, clergy have (hopefully) been selected considering of their pastoral concern for others.
To protect us from others
Ane friends writes of a challenging fourth dimension in curacy when, as a parent with small-scale children, this person was told past the preparation incumbent that a 60 or 80 week was normal, without any regard of the needs of the family. In theological education, I once worked for someone who appeared to delight in never taking a twenty-four hours off ('well, there'southward just so much to do') and privately scorned other kinesthesia for not having a similar attitude.
There are still many places in the Church were there is a perverse pride in overworking, and I am sure that this unhealthy civilisation is one of the reasons why there has been a positive reception to the thought of a clergy covenant, which majors on the shared responsibility for enabling clergy to work with salubrious patterns of subject area and self intendance.
For the sake of comparability with those in employment
I was on the station getting set up to catch a railroad train to London for yet another meeting when I met a member of our congregation on the platform. He has quite a specialist skill, and to notice appropriate employment he had previously been getting up at five am in club to drive to Birmingham each 24-hour interval. He had then been fabricated redundant, then plant piece of work in Leicester, which was a much easier commute. I was struck by how privileged clergy are, and how removed from these realities, past both the security they enjoy and the benefit of working based at home, whatsoever the challenges that might also present.
A while ago, I heard report of a vicar at an evening meeting, who apologised that the meeting did not have a proper agenda, considering this person had fallen asleep in the afternoon and so had not had fourth dimension to do the preparation. I suspect lay people attention the coming together afterward a long 24-hour interval at work, possibly with an early beginning, would not have been impressed! When I visit clergy friends in London, I am struck by the different attitude there to working hours and subject field compared with my local context—because church members in London work longer hours, and that shapes clergy attitudes. We might want to challenge the workaholism in our civilization, merely we cannot simply exempt ourselves from the pressures of those around usa past taking advantage of the freedoms we enjoy.
For the sake of consistency
It might seem like a small point in comparison, but it seems to me that at that place is some significant virtue in clergy beingness more consistent from place to place and time to time in the way that they utilize their time. Comparisons tin can be odious, but it might be wise to avert unhelpful comparison past our being consequent in our practice. There was a time when one-half the members of the Royal Society were clergy, since so many chose to prepare 1 sermon and service a week, and and then use the rest of their time in scientific research. Those days are long gone!
There are insoluble paradoxes in the notions of 'piece of work' and 'rest' in ministry. Afterwards all, just spending time with people in various ways is not 'work' in the way that nearly employment is work. And it always feels strange to consider Sunday worship every bit work when for virtually other people it is office of their 'leisure'. The oddities here are perhaps the mirror of the oddities in thinking almost clergy remuneration. And we need infinite and fourth dimension if we are to reverberate and exist creative in our ministry building.
I don't want to let get of Donald Allister's refreshing and engaging perspective when he says:
Give yourself wholly and joyfully to the various callings, responsibilities and privileges the Lord has laid on yous; Look afterwards yourself besides as others, taking the time you need for refreshment, recreation, and rest; Work difficult, pray hard, dear well, care for those in your charge including yourself.
It embodies something delightful about both the joys and responsibilities of ministry. Merely in practice I call up we all need something added to this to say: '…and this is a healthy pattern which will enable you to do this'. A full 24 hours off each week; time spent relaxing when the opportunity comes; 36 days (that is six full weeks!) a year annual leave. A good dominion of thumb for weekly working is to be committed for 14 sessions out of the 21 in that location are in the calendar week (morning, afternoon, evening for each of the 7 days).
So the question is: what has worked well for yous, or others you have observed?
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