Shoving off

The presentation has just started and we are now past the initial words. Time to get on with it.

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I am assuming that if you didn't use the internet and social media in ministry, you would not be here. Consider this pastor's activities:

Not counting weekly worship festivities, here is a glimpse of my technological life in a typical week:

• Twitter: 150-200 tweets
• Facebook: 40-50 interactions and connections /li>
• E-mails: 300-400 e-mail that require a response /li>
• Blogging: 2-3 postings /li>
• Time: 20-25 hours online /li>
• Cafe hours: 15-20 hours /li>
• Home visits, face-to-face meetings: 2 /li>
• Emergency hospital visits -- none in eight years/li>

And this is Bruce Reyes-Chow, formerly the Moderator of General conference -title- for the Presbyterian Church USA But this kind of pattern is becoming more and more the norm. I know people whose ministry leadership work keeps them at a screen at least four hours each day broken up by the occasional meeting. And they feel like they are spinning their wheels.
I'm sure you all have had days like that.Perhaps more than a day or so. Consider this experience from John Plotz:

By some miracle, you set aside a day to tackle that project you can’t seem to finish in the office. You close the door, boot up your laptop, open the right file and . . . five minutes later catch yourself thinking about dinner. By 10 a.m., you’re staring at the wall, even squinting at it between your fingertips. Is this day 50 hours long? Soon, you fall into a light, unsatisfying sleep and awake dizzy or with a pounding headache; all your limbs feel weighed down. At which point, most likely around noon, you commit a fatal error: leaving the room. I’ll just garden for a bit, you tell yourself, or do a ew little charity work. Hmmm, I wonder if my friend Gregory is around??

And he didn't even mention that quick research on a topic in Wikipedia for just a minute or watching out a hot new viral video or two, or just quickly reviewig of your Facebook messages or repeated checking of email for whatever reason.Sound familiar? So does any of this sound familiar?

• restlessness
• inability to stick to a project or a plan - not seeing matters through, 
• becoming or allowing oneself to be easily distracted, in attention
• allowing tedium and boredom to creep in.
• laziness of a kind, or sluggishness
• easily becoming tired or even exhausted, 

This may not a problem with time management, or simple procrastination, or even overuse of the internet, at least not by itself. The danger here is not limited to the psyche -- what I am describing here is what may be a malady of the soul -- acedia.