Guilty Conscience

Clergy schedules can be a nightmare to lay out on paper. We don't have standard "office hours" and we usually work from home. We don't ever clock out, and each week is different than the one before it. Just tonight someone came over to my back door at 8:30 PM wanting financial assistance. It never ends. And because each week is different from the one before it, days off are very difficult to keep with any kind of regularity.

We've been experimenting with taking Saturdays off. One of our kids will begin school this year, and we decided to take Saturday off so that our day off coincides with his day off too. We want to be able to do things together as a family. So far this has worked out well. However, this week there was a conflict. Jeff was going with the youth group on their senior trip. It was on a Saturday and so we decided we'd take Friday off instead. It was all well and good until we passed a church member on Friday. We were on a walk and he was driving by. My first thought was, "What if Joe Parishioner thinks we're slacking off when we should be working?"

Where does that come from?

I remember as a kid my mom would say, "What's wrong? Guilty conscience?" if I ever reacted like that. The truth is, I don't really think I have anything to feel guilty about, but I worry (way too much) about what conclusions other people draw when they observe my actions. There has to be a balance. I need to feel  confident enough in what I do that I don't need to worry about what others are thinking, but I also know there is great value in not giving other people something to talk about.

So, how do you deal with this tension in your own life and ministry?