As a Certified Lay Pastor, (CLP), you need to recognize that you are entering a phase of your life that holds both promise of great satisfaction and also an experience filled with stress and temptations. The training that you will receive from your presbytery will help you but will never be sufficient to prepare you for all that you will face. Both the sense of call and the preparation may fill you with a new hunger and excitement. However, whether you are newly retired, or trying to fill these new responsibilities while you are still working at another job, one of the major challenges will be that there is never enough time.
As you begin, the temptation will be to try to meet every need and expectation that the church has and you will quickly discover that three other areas of your life can suffer. Your other job, if you are still working, your family, and your own care of self. A quick way to view this is to consider the week in daily blocks of morning, afternoon, evening, and sleep time. That means that each week there are 28 blocks of time that need to include attention to church, other work, family & friends, and personal needs. If this is a dual career effort, then you can identify the number of blocks of time required for your other career. Next, don’t neglect to identify your need for sleep time. While we can occasionally sacrifice some sleep time, eventually it catches up to us and begins to degrade our ability to lead a healthy life.
Now think about that church you are going to serve. How many of the remaining blocks of time each week do you think you need to devote to your work at the church. Include in that calculation the time you need for sermon preparation, the leadership of worship, preparation for and conducting of meetings. We will consider this more thoroughly tomorrow, but in your initial consideration, have you left blocks of time for your family and your personal life?
