Today I am a pastor of a pretty regular church again – Quinns Community Baptist Church – and I imagine I will need to do some adjusting.

The last time I did this was at Lesmurdie where I was the pastoral team leader for a couple of years before heading off to Brighton. It wasn’t a long enough stint to really settle into the role and the last 6 years have been very different from what is required here.

As I have alluded to before ‘Pastor’ is a pretty bad description for my role, but there you have it. I describe myself as a ‘church leader’ rather than pastor, but perhaps that’s just me being pedantic.

Two of the challenges I face immediately are those of trying to balance a normal working life with church leadership responsibilities as well as trying to become a little better at having a regular day off. I am not seeing myself going back into full time church work as I reckon it is of real value to be working in the community and to be experiencing the stuff everyone else does.

Last night we had our monthly leaders meeting and I had just spent 8 hours digging and fixing people retic. I was pretty wiped by 7pm and happy to see a short agenda. These days I am reminded that most people come to meetings after a hard days work and don’t have the option full time pastors do of having a ‘quiet afternoon’ in lieue of an evening meeting. It has increased my sympathy for the non-paid leaders!

Taking a day off will also be a challenge. Because we have lived at such a steady pace over the last 6 years I haven’t been too concerned to be highly regulated with a sabbath. I have had plenty of rest spaces and life has never got too busy. I don’t expect it will ever get ‘too’ busy again, but I would like to be a little more dedicated to a sabbath.

Currently Saturday looks like the best day to fit with the rhythm of our family and community. It just means I have to get my act together early in the week if I have a teaching role on Sundays as its easy to leave stuff to the last minute and then wipe out what was going to be a day off.

A week day off would be nice, but its prime earning time for my business and Saturday is part of our rhythm as a family now and is probably where we should stay.

I just need to get organised earlier to make sure it actually works…