Clocking in and out of ministry
And what actually counts as work
For years, I have used the app HoursTracker on my phone to track work time. Primarily I would use it for my job in which I get an hourly wage and submit hours once a month. I can’t speak to how it stacks up against current competition, but at the time it was the best free option that allowed me to have several jobs, email total monthly hours to myself, and have that all important clock in/clock out button.
Typically when we think of tracking work hours we think of what I do when I submit hours. We track hours for a manager and to get an accurate wage.
But I also took up more careful tracking of my time when I switched this summer from 28 hours a week to 20 hours a week at my pastoral ministry job. I wanted to genuinely make that shift and not just guess. So I began opening the app, clocking in, and logging whenever I arrived at the church building, fielded a phone call from a church member, or sat down to write a sermon.
Those were the easy times to categorize work hours. Less simple were the times in which I was out on a walk and realized I had spent a majority of the time internally rehearsing my sermon. Or what about my lunch break? What on earth was I supposed to do on a holiday weekend? What about conversations with friends who were colleagues but who were friends?
I have begun to lean into including more of these “extras” into my official working hours. Doing so both makes me more thoughtful and creative, but it also helps establish a more just working environment.
Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen’s book Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home provides invaluable insight into the necessity of space around our work. They describe this scenario:
Let’s say you need to take a week off to recover from an operation. You’re assured that others will pick up your slack and handle your correspondence. But your colleagues are already operating at full capacity and can’t take on the additional labor. Your emails go unanswered or inadequately answered. When you come back from recovery, you spend days picking up the pieces. You might as well have just kept checking your email from the hospital: at least there’d be less of a mess and you wouldn’t be left with passive-aggressive frustration at your co-worker’s incompetence. But the fault is neither yours nor your co-workers’. It’s your team’s—or the company’s—for failing to adequately resource time off.1
Even in my part-time world, this scenario feels all too familiar. (Insert congregation member for co-worker, perhaps.) If I am working at full capacity, all the time, and no one else can do my work—well, what happens when I’m not there? Becoming a fully efficient and automated worker allows for no disruption scheduled or not. But routinely incorporating in flexibility provide realistic expectations.
Because what we also know is forcing everyone to maintain a stuffed workload leads to resentment, burnout, and poor health. Beware the line between efficiency and exploitation.
For my 20 hours a week I almost always have an hour of reading, a meal shared with someone else, and a bit of unfruitful writing time. It’s not lazy. It’s not unexamined. It’s fulfilling. It allows for my time off to be a little gentler on everyone else. It allows me and my congregation to know what is actually possible in my role and not set wishful expectations. It’s resourcing time off.
What I’m reading
Just in time for spooky season, The Dead Romantics by Ashely Poston is a sweet romance novel—but with ghosts. Our main protagonist comes from a family that runs a funeral home. As someone who also professionally deals in funerals, I loved the straightforward and yet thoughtful conversations around death.
Quote I’m still thinking about
Julia Roberts in this interview (emphasis mine):
I just take it all as it comes. I try to be super present and not plan, and I don’t have any upcoming acting jobs. Getting back to a routine feels really good. And I love being at home, I love being a mom … because I’m not built to be one person anymore. It’s just not in my cellular data.
What life looks like
Still adjusting to life with a very energetic kitten
Warzel, Charlie, and Anne Helen Petersen. 2021. Out of Office : The Big Problem and the Bigger Promise of Working from Home. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.