The value of time

I was at St Mike's yesterday for a tutors' meeting over lunchtime, and spent part of the afternoon getting to know one of my tutor group members, before meeting the group for our session before supper. Students have a 9.00am lecture start most weekdays. Their day starts with Morning Prayer at 7.30pm before breakfast, but for those with neither car nor bike it's over a half hour walk over Llandaff Fields into the University Faculty of Theology, and using the bus could take just as long. So if prayer time goes on too long, there's a risk that breakfasting is squeezed to a minimum. Some students living outside College travel in before Morning Prayer, and so have a very early start. It's all a good deal less leisurely than it was in my day, and requires commitment and stamina to sustain. 

Talking of busyness, a friend of my sister wrote this to her recently from New Zealand:

"It’s disappointing that many of the smaller parish churches here are closing, due to low congregation – first they started sharing ministers, so a minister would serve over a couple of parishes (or more). But you know, I've virtually stopped going myself. It’s difficult fitting everything in and actually gaining some peace or message from a church service. However, I do feel that the church could respond in different ways – be open evenings and after work times, have smaller & more frequent services during the week of a slightly different format – prayers & communion / singing & praising god & in different ways / groups that discuss issues like islam, etc.  I don’t see any of this happening – they all tend to just keep the same liturgy repeated once a week (& Weds mornings).  The modern way of looking at time is the problem – you can’t expect people to be able to spend half a day at church – it has to be easier & simpler, otherwise no-one will come." 

She's right that the problem is the modern way of looking at time - how we value it and what we use it for. Easier, simpler, more frequent, more convenient. That's a huge ask with diminishing resources. Maybe she doesn't realise that what's on offer is all that's sustainable. 

My worry is that the tone is being set for busy crowded pressurised ministry, in which there are too few clerics attempting to maintain several times more church communities than any of their predecessors had to a couple of generations ago. Admittedly, lay people take a lot more responsibility for running parish affairs these days, and some can be encouraged to do more and find satisfaction in doing so. But pastoral ministry consisting of replicating Sunday and weekday Eucharists, weekday offices and church council meetings may leave little time for creative idleness, hanging out with people, whether churchgoers or not, to get to know them and their lives better. 

The cleric's role (and what people expect from them) has gradually become more restricted to that of a 'services provider'. Parishioners having to work together more actively to sustain the life of their church may come to know each other better over the years than their priest can get to know them. They get used to saying to their parson: "I understand how busy you are." It's that much harder for a pastor to get the time with people needed to accompany them, understand and sympathise with their circumstances. Or, it's possible only to achieve this quality of ministry with a smaller circle of people, perhaps only church goers, and this limits the relationships that can be built up in service of the wider community. How can this be turned back into a virtuous cycle without a radical re-appraisal of the value time has for us?