By Elizabeth Evans Hagan
While I have great respect for the work of my Episcopal and Catholic clergy friends, I am glad that I’m not one of them. Not because of theology or tradition or even the clergy pay structure, but because of the collar — the uniform that comes with the job. There are times that I want to be off duty.
One of the hardest identity questions I’ve faced since becoming a pastor is how to navigate my social time in that role.
Since a pastor is a shepherd of a particular group of people, it is always important to know the folks you are serving alongside — really know them. What do they do for work? What makes them tick? What upsets them more than anything? How do they live? What do they fear the most? And the list could go on.
The only way to begin to know these things is to spend time with your people. Dinners, coffee meetings, birthday parties and anniversary celebrations are among the many social engagements that come with the job.
But, as you might imagine, all of this can be quite weighty on a pastor when everyone expects him or her to be at everything. My week, as is the case with almost every pastor I know, is filled with hard choices of what invitations to accept (and don’t take this to mean I don’t want to be invited to things, I consider it an honor and an important part of my work, so I tell my church to keep them coming). If I say “no” to a birthday party or graduation ceremony or even a anniversary dinner, it doesn’t mean I don’t love my congregation.
In her famous memoir, Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor actually describes her exit from the Episcopal priesthood in part due to the burdens placed on her by the congregations she pastored. While she loved her people, her work and the community where she served, she couldn’t go anywhere without someone asking for prayer, commenting on her sermon or noticing the appropriateness (or not) of her jewelry, shoes, etc. She knew she needed to find a better life balance somehow.
The longer I am in full-time ministry, the more I understand the decision Barbara made to leave the church. As much as you love what you do, it can become suffocating to your soul.
Though I will have pastoral colleagues who disagree with me on this, I am learning to say it is a non-negotiable for me to: A) take my days off, B) take all of my vacation, and C) cultivate relationships outside the church with folks who will never attend a service. My soul is energized by people who know me as simply a friend and with whom I spend time in lovely places where God’s presence can come to me, rather than me feeling the pastoral instinct to care first about those under my care.
Some may call this selfish or unrealistic. I heard one of today’s leading church-growth experts say to a workshop of young clergy, “If you want to be a pastor of a successful, growing church, then you need to be prepared to work 60-80 hours a week at all times.” What? Is this the standard now? Always on. Always pastor. Always available?
Then, I refuse.
For there is so much I learn about God when I am able to sit on the beach for a long conversation with a friend, or spend an afternoon doing errands with my husband, or just take in the quiet of home without responsibilities. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go to the grocery store with a collar on and be inspected by onlookers, judging what my vegetables, soda, and vitamins say about God.
There are just times when I need to be off.
Of course this means that every visit cannot be made and every phone call cannot be returned immediately. Sometimes projects get put off for a little while. There’s a cost to this kind of decision-making, but it is a cost I am willing to accept.
This doesn’t mean that I’m not trying to be a follower of Jesus in all that I do (even as I fail in countless ways everyday). It means that pastors need space. They need time. They need parts of their lives in which they can remember that while they are called to pastor, they might also be called to be a wife, a friend, or a lover of afternoons in the hammock.
After all, I’m running a spiritual marathon. And marathon runners need their rest.