Study Leave Report Summer 2011 Ian Manson This is the first time I ...

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ut I don't think there are any others in which the boss is assumed to know your every action andeach hidden thought. Nor for that matter will the assessment include every private moment as wellas the public carrying out of your duties. One minister stated openly that he recognises he stillstruggles to accept the grace of God, but I suspect that we all do to some extent or another.There is also a sense in which I have felt the need to justify myself among my colleagues. I reallydon't know if, at some level, this is connected with my not having any background in the church,only starting to get involved in my late teens. Is there a voice from somewhere telling me that, likeimmigrant workers, I will have to work twice as hard and do my job twice as hard if I want to beaccepted? I'm not consciously aware of that but it might be one contributory factor to the pressurethat I have often felt. Certainly I have heard far too many examples of ministers speaking abouttheir colleagues in negative and even cruel ways, and confess that at times I have probably takensome comfort in that, as in “I might not be a great minister but at least I am not that bad”.Of course one thing I am aware of is the need to prove myself to my congregation, which evercongregation that might be at the time. They have chosen me, at least in theory, over othercandidates, and most of all they are paying for me to be here. Unlike in most other areas of life thatmeans that they are voluntarily giving their own money because they value my services. So what ifthey don't value them any more, or what if they think I am not doing enough, or what if they don'tthink I am giving enough emphasis to the things they think are important. I realise that ourPresbyterian system is deliberately designed to keep us free of such concerns, that this is why weare not accountable to our congregations for the conduct of our ministry, but we all know this is stillthe underlying reality. All ministers, however good or poor they might be, have to chair meetings inwhich the financial concerns of the church are discussed. There is also much hand wringing abouttrying to keep to budget, struggling to cover costs, striving to find ways to encourage people to givemore. Yet we know that by far the biggest cost on the budget sheet is the stipend and employmentcosts of the minister. The unspoken message can seem loud and clear – if there were no ministerthen there would be no problem.Naturally we all know that the purpose of the church is not pay its bills, and if there were noministry going on then we would be better to close the doors no matter how healthy the bankaccount might look. However this is an important and visible matter in terms of the ministerneeding to convince people that he or she is worth all of the effort, that they are giving all that theycan in return for what is provided for them. But what can you do to prove that? What can we do toprove our worth? We work as hard as we can, try to convince people that we are not slacking, andtend to favour those parts of our job that more likely to get noticed. The consequence is that timefor prayer and study and reflection get squeezed out in favour of meetings and visits and activities,leading in the long run to weariness, dullness and shallowness. It is when we are so anxious toavoid the appearance of inactivity that ironically our fears are likely to be realised, we are not worthmuch as we don't have anything distinctive to offer.I should make it clear that this is not specifically the fault of the congregations I have served in. Aswith most of the colleagues I discussed these things with I can say that the vast majority of those Ihave worked with have been polite and encouraging. Nonetheless as one of them observed,churches do tend to attract hurting people and one of the symptoms they demonstrate is awillingness to ease their pain by bringing others down. The minister is the least likely to respond inan aggressive way and is therefore the easiest target. Another factor is that there are some peoplewho care passionately about their church, or more accurately who care passionately about oneparticular aspect of church life. They do not have the same perspective as us on the overall work ofthe gospel that we have and find it hard to accept that we don't put as much energy as they wouldlike into their particular thing.
Overall though, the problem is one of perception. One colleague had been a school teacher beforehe entered the ministry. He told me that he had taken his job very seriously, going in early in themorning to do his preparation and often staying after hours to help with other activities. Howeverwhen he got home in the evening he did not feel guilty that he was no longer with his students. Hecontrasted this with ministry where, no matter how much you do during the day, you will always goto bed knowing that there were other people you might have seen, other conversations you mighthave had, other words of guidance or encouragement you might have given. Of course this isillogical, irrational and unhealthy and we are all intelligent enough to recognise it. Nonetheless thisconsciousness remains difficult to overcome completely.Through all of this it has become clearer and clearer to me that the nagging sense of havingsomething to prove is really at heart a sense of having something to prove to myself. One colleaguewho certainly shared that understanding in his own life summed it up well. “It is ironic that wewho believe in the incarnation find it so difficult to accept our own humanity”. We talk about aGod of grace who accepts us unconditionally and loves us before we have done anything to pleasehim, yet something within us, dare I call it a demon, pushes and presses us on to ever greater effortsin order to get to a point where we might feel satisfied.But where would such a point be. I haven't yet spoken to anyone who claims to have arrived there,at least not by their own efforts. The closest I have come are the ministers who have come throughsome sort of breakdown and have returned to their jobs humbled and to some extent broken, butwith a more realistic understanding of what they can expect of themselves and what was simplyimpossible. One retired minister remembers the anger he felt when the Assembly Council broughtout a Report in 1990 called “The Ministers of the Gospel Report”. It set out a list of activitieswhich it described as the basic tasks of the the minister. For him this simply a summary of all of theunrealistic expectations that congregations sometimes place on their minister, or at least thatministers imagine that they do. “No one person could possibly do all of those things well at thesame time”, he said.Yet we need to recognise that these things I am describing are not restricted to ministers. By coincidenceon my return I read an interview with the actor David Tennant, himself the son of a wellknown Church of Scotland minister. Talking about his work, he said, “It's the old Presbyterianthing, just like the work ethic. It's all connected, isn't it – that sense that you're not worthy andtherefore you have to prove your worth, and you don't get above your station." Perhaps that sumsup my experiences rather well.Tentative conclusions – the personal stuffAs I did my personal reflection and wrote “My Memoirs” I came to understand myself in new ways,and while it may sound self indulgent it also seems only fair to share something of the tentativeconclusions that I was coming to. The main thing that I discovered about myself is that I am aminister. I realise that I could have received that answer simply by asking anyone in mycongregation but of course I mean it in a different way. It is not that I do the job or a minister oreven that I have a calling to full-time ministry, a minister is who I am. I have come to realise that Iwould always have been a minister whether or not I had ended up in the employment of the church.The work of caring for people and proclaiming a message bigger than my own and accompanyingmen and women on the path to the bigger life is part of my make up, an important part of the personI can now see I was always becoming.This revelation is significant, for it reminds me that the ministry I carry out is such a privilege. Ineed that reminder because it doesn't always feel like a privilege. When I panic because I am
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Study Leave Report Summer 2011 Ian Manson This is the first time I ...

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