My colleague has been on sabbatical now for exactly one week. For the first few days lots of people were asking how I was doing with intent questions of concern. When I was feeling snippy I wanted to remind them that I have been a solo pastor before for five years, with a lot less support than I have here. And, after all, Erik had only been gone for all of 3 or 4 days. And we've been planning for months. And lots of people have offered help and assistance.
But it's never the planned stuff that is the problem. It's what you cannot plan for. I call this Ambrose's Law.
Ambrose's Law* states that you will be called to perform more ministry than you are ready for, under the circumstances that are least likely to happen, which you would least have chosen. For pastors, this is something of a corollary to Murphy's Law.
If your business administrator position is about to turn over, your laptop hard drive will fail in the midst of that transition -- and the outsourced computer network person will be away on jury duty.
If you try to arrange for someone to do backup pastoral care so you can get away, that person will get walking pneumonia.
If you have finally stopped making excuses and scheduled yourself to run a half-marathon, and trained for it for 5 months, circumstances will conspire --and even though your congregation only has 2-7 deaths a year -- to have you presiding over a funeral that very same day as the race.
* Ambrose, you might recall, was the guy who ended up baptized, ordained and consecrated as a bishop within one week's time, all because a near-rioting crowd clamored for his leadership. This in a time when being on the wrong side of the theological fence could get you exiled, or worse. (He was a catechumen by choice, at least -- but you'd think his experience might have scared a few of his peers away from Christianity for good). There's a story that will make a girl quit whining.
