I was speaking to a lady a few days ago, who I’ve known for a long time, but who hadn’t realised that I was a schoolteacher, who told me that she thought I was a ‘full-time’ clergyman. She meant, ‘full-time’ in the sense of it being the job that provided my main income. I explained that without ‘volunteer’ clergy like me, many churches would find it difficult to sustain regular service patterns let alone serve the communities in which they’re set, in the ways they would want to do

 

The cynics amongst us are often heard to accuse clergy of only working one day a week, and along similar lines, schoolteachers often have to face accusations of ‘short hours – long holidays’, which again, from over forty years teaching experience I know to be similarly well wide of the mark

 

But whatever we do, whatever defines us as the people we are, be it clergyman, teacher or whatever else, we take that persona with us wherever we go

 

As I reflected on this notion of always being a clergyman or teacher, wherever you are, I remembered a session from my ministerial training, some 25 years ago, where we considered the idea of ‘work is worship’. In a Christian sense, of course, the word ‘worship’ usually relates to religious devotions focussing on honouring God, and with that in mind, ‘work is worship’, could seem a novel idea to many people

 

However, the fact that most of us ‘trainee minister’, back then, would be operating as clergymen alongside, or in addition to, our roles in our working lives, we were encouraged to consider other ways of understanding not only’ worship’ but our roles as future clergymen. We did so acknowledging that the English word ‘worship’ is actually a contraction of ‘worth-ship’, so that worship, in this sense could relate to a sense of worthiness in all we do, not just the ‘church’ bits or ‘holy’ bits. Basically it means that every aspect of our lives is important, or worthy

 

When I look back on my ministry, I suppose it is holding true to that wider concept of worship/worthship that has led me to be as active outside the church as in it.  I would suggest that the notion of ‘worthship’ provides a sound principle for life when linked with not only work, but family life, leisure, social life, in fact everything we do

 

If we set out to do the best we can in whatever we do then not only, ‘work is worship’ but ‘life is worship’ too