Dear People of God at St. Luke's,
Denise has suggested several times that I share this sort of information. So what is a priest's typical day or week like? You know where I am and what I do on Sunday mornings and Wednesday midday. A big challenge in answering the general question though is that no day or week is 'regular.' Take today for example, Wednesday May 28th, 2014, although expect digressions. My work day started at home around 8 a.m. as I looked at the first emails of the day, mostly about scheduling future meetings, but also closing loops of earlier conversations. It seems every Tuesday a.m. is taken up answering all the accumulated emails that weren't time sensitive after taking Monday off. My choice, but I often deal with emails on Monday if there is some reasonable need for a quick turnaround. On Mondays my custom is to read the scripture passages for the coming Sunday, to start mulling them over.
OK, back to today, Wednesday. Prayer is part of the morning. I spend time checking out all the websites I enjoy...do the daily Jumble, read the comics, visit news sites, but also spend time on Facebook which bridges personal and professional life. Social media at its best lets me keep up with concerns and joys of parishioners and clergy. I'm usually a late starter with new technology. So I started using a cellphone later than many, but when I did so I jumped fully in. My cell number is on every piece of business communication, bulletins, websites, and outgoing message at the church, so the phone can ring or text messages and emails come in at all times of the day. All that to say, I'm wondering about Twitter. Advice welcome.
I arrived at the office at 11:30, in time to check in on things before starting the noon service. Writing this article now, after the service, could very well stand in for any number of communication or paper work tasks. My office is open and so I have lots of drop in short visits about building issues, today especially as our construction efforts draw to a close, and the yard. Yesterday the paper work task was to choose all the readings from the options of readings on Sunday from now until Labor day, communicate those choices to supply clergy coming this summer to cover when I'm in D.C. performing a wedding for the child of a parishioner, and the two Sundays in August when I'm in Mexico on our service trip. All of this includes keeping the Wardens, treasurer, and Martha in the office in the loop. Often this includes some further back and forth by email, text, calls.
Next up I'll be following through on funeral plan communication for a service upcoming and a wedding. Then I have a home visit to make for a shut in. Lunch happens somewhere on the fly. Then I have a meeting at the Diocese in Boston from 5 p.m. till 9, so I'll need to be on the road by 3:30. This particular meeting is with the HUB implementation committee to hear presentations from 4 applicants. Another digression is called for here.
The HUB Implementation Committee has grown out of a commitment I made two years ago when a much larger group of clergy and lay persons started meeting once a month at the diocese to figure out how to allocate $7.4 million for regional, new, collaborative ministries. The money is part of the money raised by the Diocese in the Capital Campaign. This committee has evolved into a smaller implementation committee that continues to meet once a month at the diocese for on average 3 hours each meeting. Tonight the committee will hear from four groups, North Shore Deanery, Metro West which is Framingham and region, North Shore, and South Shore.
I serve on two other committees of the diocese. I am a co-coordinator of the Clergy Sabbatical Committee. The diocese sets aside financial aid for clergy to take a three month sabbatical once every five years. Along with two other clergy and two lay persons we set up the criteria for the applications and review them as they come in. This duty is fairly light in time demands, maybe a couple meetings a year at a central location, most often the parish in Braintree, for an hour or two. There's of course reading the applications and fielding random questions from clergy and lay people about the guidelines. A dinner with all the applicants and those who have completed their sabbatical the previous year, chaired by a bishop, in November concludes the year cycle.
Finally, I am in my first year of a three year appointment to Diocesan Council, which is basically the vestry of the Diocese. We meet 11 months out of the year, with one of those meetings being a Friday to Saturday retreat in January at the Barbara C Harris Camp and Conference Center in NH. Usually the HUB committee meets before the Council meeting so I only have to make the drive up for one, longish, day into evening.
Other commitments outside of the parish include a monthly lunch with Scituate clergy and another with clergy of the South Shore Deanery (as far south as Duxbury, north to Quincy, west to Brockton).
Looking back over the rest of this week, I had a funeral at 1p.m. Saturday, so was at the church at noon. After burial in Cohasset I had a 4 p.m. meeting with the group going to Mexico. Sunday p.m. included the community dinner where I try to offer the wonderful women of the kitchen doing all the real work whatever support I can. I'm good for clearing dishes from tables and lifting piles of cleaned and dry dishes back into the cabinet for example.
What can't be captured in this description of a day or week comes with the variables of people in the hospital, the planning for special services such as funerals, weddings, and baptisms, the visits with people who want to talk and explore issues of their lives. I have three of those scheduled in the week remaining. While everything I have listed here is a privilege to do, these pastoral moments are some of the most satisfying and can make up much of my work week.
Now it's time for me to send off a couple emails before I leave the office for the visit and then Boston, so tonight after I'm home around 9:30 or so if we end on time and I'm lucky with traffic, I'll field the emails that have arisen and then write the next two articles I need to for the newsletter...I'm delinquent already in getting them in on time.
In Christ,
Grant