Working from Home

I decided today that I would actually work from home. It generally takes me a little longer to get motivated to make it to the bonus room in the house than it does to my real office at the church, which is odd, since the bonus romm is right up the stairs, and the office is like 16 miles away. The bonus room is a great room above the garage that I have managed to fill with odd junk, like my turntable and all my vinyl, a bunch of low-brow art (think Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and Eric Pigors), some hand painted tattoo flash, several pictures of the Kings (both Jesus and Elvis), pictures of the Blessed Virgin, my upright bass…well, you get the picture.

I get so much more done, feel far more at peace, and end the day far less cranky when I can sit here in my Frankenstein t-shirt and write than I do at my church office. Maybe I am wrong, but I never thought of ministry as a desk job, one where administration of an organization took precendence over “doing” ministry and being a practicing pastoral theologian. Perhaps I fooled myself. I like preaching and teaching, I like being with the people. But when I look what I like to do versus what I actually spend my time on, I realize that I spend less than 15% of my time doing the stuff I enjoy. The senior pastor I work with is an administrative type, and seems to enjoy spending his time this way. Maybe it is the place where I serve…who knows? But I sure would like to spend more time reading, writing, preaching, teaching, administering the Sacraments, praying and the like than I do. Yet all of these things have been made peripheral issues to such things as running programs and institutions.

I’ve been weighing going back to school and pursuing a Ph.D. for a few years now. I graduated from seminary in 2001 and took a lay professional job which was supposed to last one year. Well, needless to say, I kept the job and never went back to school. I managed to get ordained, which was a small miracle and a real source of joy. My wife has really been encouraging me to go back, but I have this genuine fear that I would not even get admitted to a program. I also really need to “finish” this first call. Am I just making excuses?