I’ve been at a couple of events recently where people have asked me what it’s like working for the Church ‘part time’. Although I’m getting used to it, the question always throws me – it’s a bit like being asked how it feels being a Christian on Sundays. For all of us it’s a 24/7 way of being rather than a set of activities which happen at specified times in the week.
The question makes me think about how we define what we are and how often we identify ourselves and other people by the functions they perform. That in turn makes me wonder whether if I had an accident and became severely disabled I’d be any less what I am, even though I couldn’t ‘do’ the same things. The answer, for me at least, is always a resounding ‘No’ although I’m certain there would be plenty of challenges to what I am if that were to happen. And yet we are called to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. So how does all that fit together?
Generally we understand ‘doing’ very functionally – a tick list of jobs to be done: the shopping, writing a letter, cooking tea, going to work, giving a birthday present, helping the person next door, going to church etc. Each of these things comes from a sense of caring, whether that’s about others, God or ourselves. Whilst the activities are an expression of the caring they are ‘doing of the Word’, but if they become simply a list to be waded through do they lose some of that positive edge? Paul talks about our contributions without love being just a noise - maybe then wading through a tick list is about hearing only and not about ‘doing’ at all!
It’s a challenge for all of us in the way we spend our time every day to translate what ‘doing of the Word’ might be about in our context. And I guess that when people ask me about my part time work in the church they are thinking about the activities which clergy undertake rather than about that deep sort of doing which we are all involved with. I don’t see a division between who I am or what I do in the parish and at work. Being in the work place extends the Church’s formal support to people who, for whatever reason, don’t attend services and enables it to offer the support in a different context than through the parish. That fits well with the Church’s belief that everyone is entitled to know that God loves them, and that people don’t necessarily have to come into a church building to discover that. I’ve also found that it creates opportunities which probably wouldn’t arise in any other context – walking alongside people who don’t attend church as they face bereavement or serious illness, listening and supporting as life unfolds, offering energy where someone wants to change their situation, taking services or just talking. I’ve even been asked to engage with equality issues on behalf of the Church because of the context in which I’m working.
So, it’s hard to give a list of what I ‘do’ in my workplace. What I hope is that it is a way of Church being accessible to people who don’t know how to walk through the door of a church building and that my availability is part of all of our presence as Christians in all of the bits of the world in which we spend our time.
Sarah Hayes