{"id":70,"date":"2011-03-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/work.html"},"modified":"2011-04-22T21:48:21","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T01:48:21","slug":"work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/work.html","title":{"rendered":"Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite things about by job as a campus minister is it&#8217;s amorphous nature. Between ministering, fund raising, networking, and personal development it is very difficult to find an activity that I might participate in which is <strong>not <\/strong>part of my job.<\/p>\n<p>Flying Kites in the park? That&#8217;s a &#8220;Gathering Event&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read a book in the local coffee shop? That&#8217;s called &#8220;Reasearch&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Going to a bar with some freinds? We call that, &#8220;Evangelism&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Earlier today I went to an event at the International Student Center and ended up being interviewed about multiculturalism by the campus newspaper&#8230; But I didn&#8217;t go with the intention of forwarding InterVarsity&#8217;s value of Ethnic Reconciliation. I went because I like Korean food!<\/p>\n<p>I understand how this might drive someone else crazy, because you&#8217;re never really off the clock. But you&#8217;re also never really on the clock, you do the work you want to do, when and where you want to do it, and if it get&#8217;s interrupted, so be it! Nobody is going to tell me that my 15 minute break is not for another 6 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Often I&#8217;ve been out somewhere, at about 10 at night. and people will start to recognise that they need to get to bed. &#8220;I&#8217;ve got work in the morning&#8221; someone will say &#8220;I&#8217;ve got to be in the office by 9&#8221; Another will say &#8220;Yeah I&#8217;m opening tomorrow, I have to be up by 6&#8221; and one lucky person will say &#8220;I can stay up, I don&#8217;t have to be in until noon&#8221;&#8230; That&#8217;s usually when all the heads turn to look at me as if to say &#8220;And what about you Ryan?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And I look around at them, shrug and say &#8220;I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;m <em>at <\/em>work&#8221; It&#8217;s phenominal.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s not something available only to Campus Ministers. Actually I&#8217;d argue that&#8217;s the call for all of us, we just have to define &#8220;work&#8221; differently.<\/p>\n<p>See I&#8217;m lucky enough to get paid for what every christian is called to do anyway: Spread the Gospel, Love the Neighbor, Make the World a Better Place. The difference between me and a Mechanic, is that a Mechanic also fixes cars for people.<\/p>\n<p>And It&#8217;s my hope that everyone will have a job they love. Whether that&#8217;s fixing cars, or performing surgeries, or teaching windsurfing, because when you love your job you never work a day in your life. But it&#8217;s also my hope that every christian, would love their ministry, and engage in it constantly, and never, never, be off of God&#8217;s clock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite things about by job as a campus minister is it&#8217;s amorphous nature. Between ministering, fund raising, networking, and personal development it is very difficult to find an activity that I might participate in which is not part of my job. Flying Kites in the park? That&#8217;s a &#8220;Gathering Event&#8221; Read a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[51,53,52,50],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-ministry","tag-campus-ministry-2","tag-off-the-clock","tag-onthe-clock","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Work - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/work.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Work - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of my favorite things about by job as a campus minister is it&#8217;s amorphous nature. Between ministering, fund raising, networking, and personal development it is very difficult to find an activity that I might participate in which is not part of my job. Flying Kites in the park? That&#8217;s a &#8220;Gathering Event&#8221; Read a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/work.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-14T04:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-04-23T01:48:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"rgaffney\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Work - A Fear of Whales","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/work.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Work - A Fear of Whales","og_description":"One of my favorite things about by job as a campus minister is it&#8217;s amorphous nature. 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