Pastor's working conditions?????

I know not many people read this so I should be relatively safe having a little vent - I think.......

Now, I do not treat being a Pastor as a job. It is nothing so trivial as that.

However, I recently spoke to a few people at church about sorting out some sort of "employment agreement" for the position.

There are reasons why I think this is a good idea:

1. It protects the church from a future Pastor who is doing something wrong by giving them some solid guidelines for dismissal.
2. It protects a future Pastor from being dismissed for "personality clashes" or trivial matters.
3. It lets everyone know exactly where they stand in relation to the Pastor in a business sense.

To be honest, my concern is largely for the next man who comes here, if the Lord tarries. If things are set in place, then he will be fully aware of what his position is and how the church is going to look after him.

After all, even if I stay here for the rest of my life - which is my intention unless the Lord clearly directs me otherwise - I will eventually die and someone else will take over. Assuming of course that the Lord doesn't return for His saints before that time - which He may well do.

So I want to prepare for the next guy. I have already had to put up with full time work, part time work, living on almost nothing, pressure from people who have decided not to like me, a church that couldn't help my family, and some people who don't want to help my family.

So I proposed to a few that we need to work up some sort of document to cover the "business" part of the position.

And the response I got from a few was surprising to me.

There was one comment that a Pastor doesn't need holidays, and after all if he wants to go to the fellowship meetings he just takes the time off anyway, so that is his holidays.

This surprised me because I wonder if people would consider going to a business conference and taking their family along constituted a "family holiday". And that is aside from the fact that when I go to the fellowship meetings I usually end up preaching at a church or two over there, and often a message at the meetings themselves, and I still have to prepare fro the Sunday that I return for - so if anything a week at the fellowship meetings is MORE WORK for me, not less.

That got me to thinking: Why shouldn't a Pastor have annual leave and long service leave just like any other worker?

Now don't get me wrong - no Christian should take off being a Christian.
But the work of the ministry is a full time plus job.
And it is a constant "on the horizon" job.
Aside from the Pastoral care that arises without notice at any time of the day or night, there is the constant, ever approaching Sunday pressure.
Sunday doesn't stop just because I have a family crisis to deal with or a hospital visit comes up, or some administrative issue arises.
Sunday is always coming.
And for each and every Sunday I have Adult Sunday School and two messages to prepare for.
And if go to the fellowship meetings, I still have to get them ready for when I return.
If I take my family away for an overnight trip (but who has the money for that?) I still have to prepare for Sunday.
I went into hospital for an operation and I missed one Sunday - but after being in bed recovering for a full week, I got up the next Sunday and led the singing and preached twice - one week off. And of course I still had to prepare while I was flat on my back recovering.
Even Jesus went apart at times to rest:
Mat_14:23  And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.

I wonder why it is that people think that a Pastor doesn't need a rest from all the pressure?

Or why it is that people don't think his family doesn't need a family holiday?

Or if they think it would be of benefit for him to take three months off after 15 years of solid preaching and Pastoring to simply sit under the preaching of the Word for himself for a short while.

Don't they think it would benefit them to have him refreshed?

I don't know if I could stand to be away from my church and my people and my pulpit for three months. I don't know if I could even do that.

But it might be nice if people considered that I might need a rest or that my family could do with a proper holiday once in a while.

I don't want to be lazy, and I don't want to appear to be lazy or selfish, but this is something that I have been thinking about. 

I may very well find some trouble out of this if it is seen and talked about - maybe I need the protection of some sort of employment agreement so that I don't get into too much trouble.....

:lol: