Something from the pastoring side... although this applies to many jobs I think:

I want to say up front that I know there are parts of any job that one doesn't care for, or that seem trivial but nonetheless need to be done, and that's just the way it goes. Ministry is no exception. But lately I'm running into things which cause me to say, "It doesn't take a huge amount of time for me to do this, and it's an OK use of my gifts, but should someone else be doing this instead of me?" An example of this for me is assembling (and often writing up) blurbs about various programs and e-mailing them to the various local newspapers for publicity purposes. That takes 5-15 minutes a week, which is nothing, but since it is a more-or-less weekly task I'm wondering whether I should invest the time in inviting and training someone to be able to do it for me.

Along similar lines, a member of the church made up a flyer for a lecture series, but I spent some time today adapting it because we're inviting some other congregations to one of the evenings of the lecture and something needed to go out to them ASAP. That probably took 45 minutes, which again isn't a whole lot, and I'm OK at flyers, but little things like that seem to add up and crowd out other things; for example, I currently have NO Sunday School lesson for Sunday and am booked for the next couple of days. Saturday Night Specials apply to Sunday School as well as sermons! And if I'm going to work Saturday night I'd rather it be because I was making pastoral calls instead of looking up the e-mail address for the "Faith Notes" section of the local paper.

I am the pastor in charge of communications, but shouldn't that be overseeing a communications team that does this kind of stuff instead of me? Or is the fact that I can basically do that stuff myself, and it's not a *huge* burden of time or energy (although it does take away from other pastoral activities) a sign that these things are "mine to do"? Is this my ego talking ("this stuff is beneath me"...?) or a nudge that I need to realign my priorities?