Office Transitions

I have written about how cleaning is a relaxing thing for me. So, for my Sabbath Day, it actually felt good to get some cleaning that done. :)

Anyway, yesterday I tackled the project of cleaning our home office. The office still had some church papers in it. When I arrived as the pastor for Tabor and Oakfield, I decided that I wanted most of the office work that I did to be done out of the church office. I felt better about that. The transition of materials was a slow process, but yesterday completed the project.

The papers were moved over to the office, but a bigger transition was completed. The Oakfield church line also rings to the house. The fax line is also the church line, so we had that in the house as well. This does offer some advantages:

• People can easily get a hold of me for urgent or crisis situations.
• I can field calls at times when the church office is typically not open.
• I can return call quite quickly.
• I can work at home and still easily be able to handle church calls.
  

But,it also posed some challenges:

• Fax calls are made at strange hours, like 3:00AM. When you hear the phone ring and you rush to get it, expecting an emergency...you are saddened (and frustrated) to hear the fax beeping on the line.
• You feel compelled to answer the phone, because it's there. So, when it rings on a Saturday or a Monday, I don't want to ignore it.

So, yesterday I moved the fax machine to the church office and the church answering machine to my church office in Oakfield. I have one church line still in the house that we will have removed on February 1.

Now, our home office is for the home. Christa will be using it primarily, but it does provide a place for me to work when I need to also be watching over the dog. I do appreciate the flexibility that comes with being a pastor.

I also realize that you can not draw a clear line between when you work as a pastor...it was no different when I was a Residence Hall Director. For my own well being, however, I felt like I needed to create some kind of a line for when I am not working at the church. Parisioners can still call our home line or my cell phone if they need to get a hold of me right away. We'll see how it goes.