This will be our final entry in the “Behind the Scenes” articles on what a pastor’s life is like. There certainly could be more, but I’ve tried to capture some of the major items that take up time in a pastor’s day, week, month, and year.
This final article is about the expectations the Conference has for each clergy person serving within the Conference – outside the local church. Ordained and appointed clergy hold their membership in the Conference rather than the local church. And just as members of a local church agree to serve within the local church (as part of their membership vows), clergy are expected to serve within the Conference – on committees, task forces, and so forth – at the district and Conference level.
For over 10 years, I served on the Conference Board of Trustees; and for 8 of those years, I was the Chair of the Board of Trustees. The Conference trustees have responsibility for the various properties owned, rented, leased, and sold by the Conference – much as a local church’s trustees have responsibility for the buildings and property of the local church. As it happened, I was chair of the trustees during a very tumultuous period: the season of disaffiliation that the United Methodist Church went through. I was involved in every single disaffiliation in the Indiana Annual Conference in some way. It was a disturbing and sad period for the Conference.
The period of disaffiliation notwithstanding, there are churches within the Conference that choose to close every year. Their property reverts to the Conference upon closure, and the trustees are the group that sells or otherwise disposes of the property. The proceeds are distributed in accordance with the Book of Discipline. During my period as Chair of Trustees, we also dealt with the lease of the Conference headquarters (twice), and with the sale of one episcopal residence and the purchase of another. And, of course, we went through a global pandemic.
Currently, I’m serving as chair of the district Committee on Ministry (dCOM) for the Eastern Rivers District. This group oversees the ministry of the district’s licensed local pastors, certified lay ministers, and candidates for ordained ministry up to the point they’re passed to the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry (BOM). By virtue of my position as dCOM Chair, I also serve on the BOM.
Additionally, I serve on the Conference Missions & Justice Grants committee. We review requests for grants from the various individuals, churches, and organizations that meet the requirements for such grants as they are administered by this committee.
These district and Conference responsibilities tend to take an average of 10-20 hours/month, but there are periods when the workload is greater and when it is less. As is true for the service each church member engages in for the local church.
Finally, I have to mention the “duties not otherwise specified” category. This is in the Book of Discipline under its (lengthy) description of the “Role of the Elder.” It’s a “catch-all” category for all the things a pastor does in his or her appointment that seem kind of random, but have to be done.
As an example, here at High Street, I currently am the person who sets the livestream links for both Facebook and YouTube each week. If they’re not set correctly, we can’t stream our service. In other churches where I’ve been appointed, we’ve had either a tech specialist on staff that did this, or a volunteer within the congregation who had this responsibility. I’m still hoping to find someone else to do it here; trust me – I should NOT be any sort of “tech expert” – here or anywhere!
I also create all our sermon and sermon series slides and images. While – again – this isn’t necessarily something I ever thought would be part of ministry, it has to be done.
Pastors almost always love their work and what they do. No one goes into ministry expecting to get rich (thank heavens!). But, I hope these five articles have given you an idea of some of the things that fill (and overfill) a pastor’s time. We definitely work more than the “one hour” most people see on Sunday mornings.