Unending

Whenever I think of an unending task I think of the pile of articles I have waiting to be read and filed. When I was in Seminary I took a Christian Education class where we talked about filing systems. I promptly adopted the one that made the most sense to me and happily began filing things away. That system involved using hanging folders and as many subcategories as you could think of. For instance, I had a file on Church History and behind that I had a file on Baptist Church History, and eventually I had a file on Free Will Baptist Church History. I think you can probably visualize this idea. The beauty of this was in putting all the articles on a given subject in the same file, which could be done with just a glance at the article.

Along the way I began to get frustrated with this plan. I had probably been using this method for 15 years when I decided to revamp the whole thing. I was finding that it was not easy to cross reference an article, to find something by a bit of secondary information, like who wrote it or what publication it appeared in. What I decided upon is a modification of another plan that was also presented in Seminary. What I do now is to use hanging folders which will hold 25 articles. The tab simply reads, "1-25" or "576-600," etc. Whatever article I am currently reading becomes the next number. These articles are then indexed on my computer using Bento, a scaled back version of File Maker. This means that I can cross reference all of these articles by all sorts of secondary subjects and the result is much more use from the articles I have filed away. The down side to this is that I really have to digest the articles to know what all the secondary subjects are. That initially meant rereading everything that I had filed in 15 years of ministry. Once I got past that task, I decided to cut up all my back issues of Christianity Today and file them. I now have two huge stacks of articles, mostly from Christianity Today, but also some other sources, that I need to read, index, and file. I have steadily worked at this for something like three years and have seen some progress. It does seem to me that about the time I really make a dent in this mountain of papers another stack gets added. I suppose it could be called an unending task.

Now, what possible lesson can be gleaned from this little snap shot of my office work? First, it is good to have an efficient information retrieval system. I have benefited from this in my work, especially on sermons. I am glad that I have a good system. Second, I may never finish this task. I suppose I could say I know that I won't finish. Short of stopping my subscriptions to all periodicals and my mother in law not giving me any of hers, I will always have a constant flow of information coming in. In fact, I have articles coming in faster than I can get them read, indexed, and filed. That led me to a realization the other day. When I retire, die, or for whatever reason, end my ministry I will have a stack of unread papers on my desk. That is a subtle reminder to me that the work of the church, whether you are thinking about a local church, or the entire Christian movement, is bigger than me. You might be thinking, well you are quite the egotist to ever think it wasn't bigger than you, and you would be right. I am convinced though that I am in a long line of pastoral egotists who have entertained the same thought. There is always more than can get done and when an undue portion of it falls to you time after time you begin to think it all depends on you. Wasn't that Jeremiah's lament, "I alone am left!" Well, Jeremiah was not the only one left, and neither am I.

So, back to that mountain of paper, which has come to symbolize to me the work of ministry. Will I ever get through all of it? I don't think so, but I can get some of it done and there will be benefit from that. A perfectionist might throw his hands up in frustration, but a pragmatist will take the next article from the top of the stack and start reading.