I recently got the question, “What do you do when it’s not Sunday?” Before I could answer his first question, my friend asked, “Does a preacher have anything to do when you aren’t preaching?”
I was tempted to say, “No, we just work that one hour (in our case three hours) and then we are done”, but I remembered that typical cliché’ joke aggravates me and this guy was not trying to be funny. He simply didn’t know.
I tried to explain some of what my average week looks like. Activities of a normal week include items such as:
- Preparing to preach…Bible reading, prayer, research…
- Church administration and budgeting…
- Counseling, coaching and disciple-making…
- Managing and leading a staff…
- Writing…
- Vision-casting…
- Planning and dreaming…
- Networking…
- Community involvement…
Of course, it is ministry, so there isn’t really a “normal” week. Each week has its own unexpected circumstances, but these are the things that have to be done in a typical week. I also realize our church is different from other churches, so other pastors have different responsibilities. For comparison purposes, we are a mid-sized 4 year old church averaging about 1,500 per week attendance. The size of the church usually does alter the role and responsibility of the pastor.
What did you think were the responsibilities of a pastor between Sundays?
For more posts on ministry click HERE.
You could add to that answering countless phone calls and text messages from your congregation at (I’m sure) ALL hours of the day and night. I guess that would fall under counseling, maybe.
I remember being at my best friend’s house growing up, her dad was a pastor, and I don’t think there was ONE night that the phone didn’t ring after my friend and I were already supposed to be asleep! LOL I just remember thinking, “WHAT could someone possibly need RIGHT now?!” He worked hard, all the time!
.-= Renee Garcia´s last blog ..TLC show =-.