The First Month In The Job

So It’s nearing the first month as an Ordained Deacon.

I could have written many posts in that time, but I haven’t. Mostly because time has vanished. The oddest thing is that though I’ve not really done anything, I’ve found my time being full up with little bits of this and little bits of that. The strange thing is that there’s no real guide that anyone can give you to your first month as a deacon, because everyone’s is different. Mine, like the rest of this year, has been spattered with illness, which though it hasn’t impinged on any of my duties has meant that some of the peripheral stuff, like organising the books on my study, spending time walking the boundaries in my parish, and other stuff that I would have like to have gotten done just haven’t been done.

It’s still worth it though.

Though there is much to get a handle on, the 6-day week, the strange approach to time-management, the odd way that people look at you when your wearing a collar, it’s all that kind of thing that takes time. It is perhaps even stranger being in a cell group with others, with everyone moving at a different speed. I have to constantly remind myself that my late placement here has meant that I’m still playing catch-up. My place here is still not defined, and with 5 Parishes, (rather than 1 parish and 5 churches), the dynamic is very different.

Perhaps the thing that took the longest to sink in, actually, was the distinction between serving 5 parishes, rather than 5 churches in 1 parish. The problem this leads too is a question of division of time. With each of the 5 parishes giving an equal share, it is only fair that each gain an equal share of the time of the clergy. However, with only 2 parishes holding midweek services and other midweek activities this has meant that my time has been naturally spent at these two parishes in greater proportion to the others. Further, one parish is the only parish with an evening service, which means that I have, on balance, spent more hours in that parish than any of the others. Presumably over the year the hours work out, and it is not the kind of job where one would want to sit down and add up the hours, but it is something that needs to be kept in mind in this form of rural ministry. The ministry of Presence, that is, where parishioners see their clergy is important to them. This is harder in these particular villages, as there is very little village activity going on to enable the clergy to be present in the villages; there are no café’s, there are no shops or coffee mornings to attend, or WI meetings.

Then again, it’s only the first month.

I still have the fun of expenses to look forward too, as well as my first baptism, and then quickly followed by my first solo baptism. Though hopefully now things have sorted themselves out into a pattern that can be dealt with sensibly, and I can return to updating the blog, reading theology, exploring history, and generally making notes for the inevitable personal book that all clergy seem to write when they retire.

~BX