24-7

'This is my 19th day working without a break and it's going to go on', said Hilary at the Deanery Chapter, and at one stage I thought she might cry. Hilary is unusual in this diocese in looking after a collection of four churches, though two of them have very little going on in them these days. In many rural dioceses, of course, this is nothing unusual and there are swathes of countryside where benefices might comprise groups of churches that run into double figures. Taken to that level, it makes a mockery of the parish ministry we all have in the back of our minds as the model of what we as local clergy are supposed to be doing; no clergyperson can hope to replicate that with such a proliferation of sacred buildings and their communities to care for. My only limited experience of that kind of thing came when I was still attached to Lamford but looking after Goremead; I wasn't doing very much at Lamford during that time, just the odd service and some of the many weddings we happened to have that year, but it was still disorientating trying to remember where I was supposed to be at any one time. 

That's one issue: clergy overwork is another. I always feel a tremor of guilt when this subject comes up because I don't feel overworked. There are periods when what I have to do seems overwhelming, but this is always in anticipation of work and linked to my sense of inadequacy rather than the sheer weight of activity I have to cover. I defend my day off jealously, and although I sometimes end up biting into it there is still a sense of balance. Last week, for instance, Candlemas Day fell on my usual Thursday break, so I did a service in the evening and was glad to, but the evening before I was in London seeing Monsieur HaslandGraphica's pictures on show, which was compensation for Candlemas. I did that rather than shift my rest day around and miss the Toddler Group and other things happening on Friday. I remember some years ago Colin, a really experienced priest not that long off retiring who looks after another parish in the Deanery, saying to me 'When a funeral comes up on your day off, you have to do it, don't you?' and I didn't have the courage to say, Well, I don't, no. The local undertakers know when I can't do funerals and don't ask me to. Our friendliest undertakers are reluctant even to call me on Thursday, and always apologise if they absolutely have to to get a date for a service sorted out. If it was for a member of the church and there was really no option other than a Thursday, I'd do it, but I've found that anyone who really wants me and nobody else to take their Auntie Doreen's funeral will wait a day or two.

I don't think I'm the one that's wrong about this. Sabbath is a Biblical principle and even if clergy require a Sabbath different from everyone else's, they cannot ignore the basic idea without, frankly, breaking one of the Ten Commandments: 'on this day you shall do no work'. Hilary and Colin wouldn't dream (I imagine) of pinching someone's lawnmower from their back garden, but this Commandment is fair game, it seems. 

Now some of this may be due to a clergyperson's need to be needed. Hilary mentioned especially a recent OfStEd inspection at her church school which came up on what would normally have been her day off, and so she had to be there 'to support the chair of governors'. In Swanvale Halt our church school has had three OfStEds during my tenure, and I've always felt my contribution is best made by going nowhere near the place apart from finding out how it's gone once it's over. They really don't want me around exposing my sketchy knowledge of what's actually happening in the school: I could drag it down a grade single-handed. I wonder whether Hilary is really so clued-up about the technical aspects of the school that her presence really makes that much of a difference beyond, say, making the headteacher a cup of strong coffee. 

But not all of the pressure falls into that category. Sometimes there are, indeed, parochial activities it would be good to have, and might have had in the past, but there's nobody to run them apart from the priest. Because a priest's work is so undefined and shapeless, in those circumstances the only way you can possibly prioritise is to ring-fence time when you do no work, and what doesn't get done in the rest, doesn't get done at all. I have seen from bitter experience what happens to priests who go bang: they are packed off on sick leave, and usually never come back. They don't get a medal. The diocese treats them as an embarassment, and their parish quickly forgets them. They may tell themselves that they have made themselves sick in the service of the Lord, but what were they really serving - him, or an institution?

Fr Somerset Ward said that a priest who did not have a full day off in every seven should examine his conscience. Mind you, he also said that of anyone who didn't get eight hours' sleep a night, and insisted that no average Christian could get by on less than an hour's silent prayer each day. Oh, it's hard!