Practicing Peace » Opinion

Keep Moving

jasoningalls — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:00:11 +0000

It’s reading week at Wycliffe College, which means that I am taking the time to focus on catching up and getting ahead on the larger projects in my life, like term papers. In place of a original post, here is a fantastic quote from David Allen’s Making It All Work.

Sometimes I think we all need to lighten up a bit about goals, plans, and priorities. Do your best to capture, clarify, and organize what you can, have the basic conversations you need to have with yourself and other key people at the horizons that are calling you, and then just get moving. If and when you find yourself off base, course-correct and then get going again–ad infinitum. Frankly, that’s what you’ve been doing all along and will continue to do, so let’s not set ourselves up with overly romantic or idealistic standards for attaining some perfected state of total clarity about everything we’re doing, all the time.

[...]

Ultimately, motion is key. Truly, taking any action will give you more of a sense of control than hanging back in hesitation, even if the action might not be the “right” one or best one to take. One of the critical things that I learned while training in the martial arts was that being in motion is the optimal state in which to be effective. It takes less energy to change direction 180 degrees while moving than it does to start in that direction from a standstill. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should allow yourself to get wrapped up in frenetic busyness [!]. There are times when slowing down and retreating into a more reflective mode are called for. That’s not actually slowing down, however; it’s slowing the body down, so that the mind can continue to be active at a more dynamic level (191-92).

“Good Administration is Ultimately Pastoral”

jasoningalls — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:00:19 +0000

The Rev. Annette Brownlee is the chaplain at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, where I am currently attending. She oversees all the services performed in our chapel during the week, a total of eleven services including the morning and evening offices and two Eucharists. At each service, there are at least six people involved in officiating, reading, leading music, and greeting, and in the Eucharist services there are even more. Every week, Annette has to fill over seventy slots with volunteers, so when she said to me, “Good administration is ultimately pastoral,” I paid attention.

“Good administration is ultimately pastoral.”

There is something about this that feels right to me and resonates deeply with the mission of Practicing Peace. This blog is mainly about self-administration, and the underlying assumption throughout has been that if you can manage yourself, then you will be a better pastor in every single way.

But good administration is not just about us. Many of us have been called to be pastors, and as pastors we are called to be “pastoral,” a funny word that derives from the same Latin word as “pasture.” To be pastoral is to take care of or tend something, like a shepherd takes care of his or her sheep by leading, feeding, guiding, and protecting them. Our task as pastors is to take care of and tend souls in those same ways. In being pastoral, we take care of a congregation by leading, feeding, guiding, and protecting it as a shepherd does his or her flock.

What does being pastoral have to do with administration? Administration is about handling details, not for the sake of the details themselves, as micro-managers do, but for the sake of the ministry. Bad administrators ignore details. Decent administrators catch as many details as possible. Good administrators know where they are going and handle the details in such a way that getting there is half the fun. Administration is about movement.

The shepherd does not merely manage his sheep, as though keeping them in good order were enough. Instead, he moves the flock to where it needs to be, keeping a watch on the old and the young together and making sure that all the details are in order, so that the flock may find itself drinking from the waters of life.

Good administration is ultimately pastoral.

But why would we need to say that it is “ultimately” pastoral? We need to say it as a reminder to ourselves, because we have so thoroughly segregated our minds into sacred and secular, spiritual and physical work, that we ignore the details in our own lives, either hiring a secretary to clean up our messes (rather than as a partner in ministry) or claiming administration is not our spiritual gift or strength and therefore finding an excuse to ignore it. We have to say that good administration is ultimately pastoral because so few of us believe it is pastoral at all. Yet, every piece of drudgery, every piece of mundanity, every piece of pain that no one sees but that comes from administering well is pastoral. We cannot separate one from the other.

Chaplain Brownlee’s sage maxim, and the way it is carried out at Wycliffe, ensures that I can walk into our chapel every morning at 8:30a and meet Jesus. Her administration is not at this point only pastoral in some distant sense, but it is pastoral in the here and now. At 8:30 in the morning, good administration IS pastoral, full stop.

The Rev. Annette Brownlee is the chaplain at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, where I am currently attending. She oversees all the services performed in our chapel during the week, a total of eleven services including the morning and evening offices and two Eucharist services. At each service, there are at least six people involved in officiating, reading, leading music, and greeting, and in the Eucharist services there are even more. Every week, Annette has to fill over seventy slots with volunteers, so when she said to me, “Good administration is ultimately pastoral,” I paid attention.

“Good administration is ultimately pastoral.”

Many of us have been called to be pastors, and as pastors we are called to be “pastoral.” Pastoral is a funny word that derives from the same Latin word as “pasture.” To be pastoral is to take care of or tend something, like a shepherd takes care of his or her sheep by leading, feeding, guiding, and protecting them. Our task as pastors is to take care of and tend souls in those same ways. In being pastoral, we take care of a congregation by leading, feeding, guiding, and protecting it as a shepherd does his or her flock.

Good administration is ultimately pastoral.

But why is it “ultimately” pastoral? It is ultimately pastoral because we have so thoroughly segregated our minds into sacred and secular, spiritual and physical work, that we ignore the details in our own lives, either hiring a secretary to clean up our messes or claiming administration is not our spiritual gift or strength and therefore finding an excuse to ignore it. We have to say that good administration is ultimately pastoral because so few of us believe it is pastoral at all. Yet, every piece of drudgery, every piece of mundanity, every piece of pain that no one sees but that comes from administering well is pastoral. We cannot separate one from the other.

Stuff You’ll Need

jasoningalls — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:00:39 +0000

We’ve had a bit of a hiatus here at Practicing Peace due to my wife Monique’s and my recent move to Toronto. Now that classes are starting soon, I should have the space to begin posting again. Please let me know what topics you would like me to cover.

In “The Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day,” I outlined a five-step thought habit that will help you figure out in what order you should tackle the mountain of responsibilities you have. Scheduling rest, driving, maintenance, due work, and important things, in that order, will make sure that you have your bases covered while still giving you time to pursue new ministry initiatives. It really is possible to be a pastor who is known for keeping their promises.

Today, we’re talking about the stuff you’ll need.

1) An inbox – this needs to be a box or tray that is easily reached on your desk. This is for everything physical in your office that requires a decision from you. If it’s “stuff,” it goes here.

2) A collection device – whether it’s a notebook, a flip pad, or just a bunch of loose sheets of paper, you need to keep something with you to collect your thoughts as you have them. I’m currently using a spiral bound journalist pad. It lives in my pocket. I jot down one idea per page, and then tear the pages out and put them in my inbox. That way, I know it’s somewhere I won’t forget.

3) A calendar – it doesn’t matter what kind of calendar. The only requirement is that it has space in which to write a goodly number of items per day. Put to-do items like regular maintenance and due work on each day (e.g., as “All-Day” appointments in MS Outlook”) and then schedule them out as we’ve discussed already.

4) A to-do list – This is a list for important things. Remember that important things are things that need to be done, but do not have a day or time attached to them.

Those are the basic items you need to manage your workflow. We’ll be talking more about how to use them soon.