I’m still not busy
Iii times in the last week or so, I have received a communication from someone which says 'I know you are very busy…' and these have stuck in my mind. One of these said 'I am certain you are very busy—I know that I am.'
A couple of things struck me immediately. The first, and most urgent, was: What have I said or done that has provoked this comment? Am I looking tired, or hassled? Have I failed to give people my attending? Accept I not replied to messages? What is it that makes me wait 'busy'? If I am giving off signs that I am busy, that suggests that I broadcasting a bespeak 'I don't have time for you'—and that is worrying.
Christianity Today are currently republishing their best twoscore articles from the last 36 years of their beingness, and they take just reposted the 1981 article by Eugene Peterson 'The Unbusy Pastor'.
The one piece of mail certain to get unread into my wastebasket is the one addressed "to the busy pastor." Not that the phrase doesn't depict me at times, only I decline to give my attention to someone who encourages what is worst in me. I'1000 not arguing the accurateness of the adjective; I am, though, battling the way in which it is used to flatter and express sympathy.
So my 2d question is, how do I reply to this annotate? In our civilisation, are we allowed to say 'Really, I am not very busy'? I practised saying this in my head, and information technology sounded odd. What kind of people say 'I'm not busy'? When my late mother retired, one of her comments was 'I don't know how I e'er found the fourth dimension to work!' Even in retirement, she was busy. We announced to have created a civilisation where the only people who are not 'decorated' are people who are, well, a fleck sad. Busyness has become the mark of a full and satisfied life. But is it really so?
Then what practice nosotros mean when we say 'I am very busy'? Information technology might actually hateful 'I am in a function which demands more of me than I want to give.' This might exist the case for those in 'secular' employment or with responsibilities for family members. We might genuinely be in a situation which, through little pick of our own, makes unsustainable demands of us. Economic pressures accept recently robbed us of an 60 minutes'due south sleep; we sleep too little on average; and the hyper connectivity of digital devices makes it worse. Clergy need to have this reality seriously. They are in the incredibly privileged position of having more control over their own fourth dimension than well-nigh in their congregations; woe betide the vicar who takes the forenoon off so complains when commuters who were up at half-dozen am don't attend an evening meeting!
Peterson takes a more than ruthless approach to the possible reasons behind this phrase:
I (and most pastors, I believe) get busy for two reasons; both reasons are ignoble. I am decorated because I am vain. I want to announced important. Significant. What better way than to be busy? The incredible hours, the crowded schedule, and the heavy demands on my fourth dimension are proof to myself-and to all who will notice-that I am important…
The other reason I become busy is that I am lazy. I indolently allow other people decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself. I permit people who do non understand the piece of work of the pastor write the agenda for my day's work because I am besides slipshod to write it myself. Simply these people don't know what a pastor is supposed to exercise.
I believe that the phrase 'I'yard very busy' is sometimes a cry from the heart—I experience oppressed by the brunt of the things I am supposed to do—either from a sense of guilt, or need, or the agendas others impose on me.
Ane of my favourite books on time management isPractise It Tomorrow past Mark Forster, who also wroteGet Everything Done and Still Accept Fourth dimension to Play.Mark refreshingly blows away a lot of nonsense about time management—including the idea that you can e'er 'manage' fourth dimension. The problems about busyness nosotros face are not issues oftime direction, but issues ofselfmanagement—how we perceive things and how nosotros organise our lives. Romans vii is actually highly relevant to our 'fourth dimension management' issues!
Just Forster too highlights early on on a primal reality: if we are 'busy' so it might only be that we are over-committed. How much work can you do in an hour? Answer: an hr's worth. Merely if you are committed to 2 hours' work in an hour, no amount of 'fourth dimension management' is going to solve that. You actually need to cut down on your commitments. That is more easily said than done, but information technology still raises a challenge for me. Practice I accept on too much? Am I too quick to say 'yes' to things? Even if a big office of the commitments we take isnot under our control, there are always parts which are.
Saying 'I am very busy' can limited a different kind of frustration too. It might non but be the corporeality of work we have, merely the way it comes to u.s.a.. Abiding demands and a steady stream of interruptions can frustrate our sense that we are achieving annihilation. (Enquire my married woman!) Mark Forster again puts his finger on this: what nosotros need is 'sufficient focussed attending' on the things that are important. And that ways setting bated some of the firsthand demands. Exercise emails need to be answered on the mean solar day they are received? Tin can I talk to that person tomorrow, rather than right now? Does that meeting need to be this week, rather than next? This is where nosotros need to employ careful judgement; putting people offcan communicate the 'I am very decorated' line. But surely ameliorate to say 'I'chiliad not too decorated; let's chat tomorrow' than 'Yes, I tin can talk now…but I have a lot to practise!'
Simply there is also a third possibility: we brand ourselves decorated considering that is the mode we gain a sense of significance. If we were not busy, in that location might be the gnawing sense that we are not, after all, totally and absolutely indispensable to the projects nosotros are involved in and the people we are in contact with. And that is securely threatening unless nosotros have a well-rooted sense of identity and confidence in who nosotros are.
God gives us two gifts which can serve equally a defence against these feelings. The first is the gift of Sabbath. The command to rest (not just me, but all my household) is at once an invitation to trust in God for his provision (the crops will notwithstanding grow, the emails will wait another day) as well as a bulwark against the presumption that the universe will not run unless I do my fleck to proceed it going. In fact, Sabbath residual can often be a central to fruitfulness. Last calendar week I saw an interesting 'infographic' which suggested that the earth's greatest creative geniuses had only achieved what they had because they took rest seriously.
The second is the gift of calling. If nosotros are involved in the things nosotros are because God has called us to them, is our level of busyness a reflection of that call? Is God calling us to be busy? In one sense, yeah. We are to 'redeem the time' (Eph 5.16). But I am not sure that this is always the source of my busyness.
Peterson believes information technology is vital to accost this question if we are to do what God has called to. For this in full-time Christian ministry, this has pregnant consequences.
I want to be a pastor who prays. I desire to cultivate and deepen my relationship with God. I want all life to exist intimate–sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously–with the God who made, directs, and loves me…
I want to be a pastor who preaches. I want to speak the word of God that is Scripture in the language and rhythms of the people I alive with. I want to know the Scriptures thoroughly, personally, intimately; so be able to say them again to the people effectually me…
I want to be a pastor who listens. A lot of people approach me through the week to tell me what is going on in their lives. I desire to have the energy and time to really heed to them and so when they are through, they know at least one other person has some inkling of what they're feeling and thinking.
So: are you busy? What is the reason for your busyness? Is it poor use of time? Or circumstances beyond your control? Do you need to give more 'sufficient focussed attention' to some of the things y'all are doing? In the cease, is your activity borne out of your sense of God's phone call on your life? Are you complimentary to say to someone 'I'm not decorated'?
(Much of this piece was beginning written two years ago. I retrieve it is nonetheless relevant.)
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