Coffee Time!

 Recently I was asked by BMS world Mission to write a few words for an article on the differences between being a Pastor in the UK and abroad. Having learned lots of good time management techniques I noted the deadline date in my diary put reminders on my phone and made sure I allocated myself plenty of time to write my piece.

However, even with this careful in place I still ran out of time which struck me as appropriate as I wanted to write about how time challenged and time poor people in the UK seem to be. The problem seems to be there’s just not enough of it, people are busy; churches are busy places and appointments to see people have to be scheduled in weeks in advance. Invites for dinner or Sunday lunch often have to be submitted at the start of the year. My conclusion is that we seem to be so good (or bad) at time management that we’ve lost something of time wisdom.  

Let me explain what I mean by time wisdom...

My friend Qerim used to laugh at me when I would say I was too busy to stop and drink a coffee with him, ‘How can you be too busy to stop? ‘he used to say. You see Albanians generally put a high value on people and so value time with people so an unplanned house visit could quickly become an impromptu celebration.

A couple of weeks ago two friends popped into our house to quickly drop something off for us. That ‘drop off’ became one of the best evenings we’ve had for a long time as we enjoyed some wine and ate snacks and laughed together – all totally spontaneous, totally unplanned and such a welcome relief from having to book people weeks in advance.  I wonder whether putting people first is a wiser use of time that many UK churches could benefit from.  I lose count of how many emails and phone calls and visits start with ‘I know you’re busy but........ ‘

Qerim used to say, ‘But Graham I’m your friend – come and drink a coffee with me’

And with that time with people came an openness to talk about important things like what we believe and why we believe it. Now I’ve found that harder to get to with people in the UK and I wonder whether it’s because we don’t give people the time they deserve.

Being busy is a very British thing. I’ve heard variations of these phrases over the last two years:

‘A successful person is a busy person’ or ‘The best people are always the busiest’

And I’ve found myself starting to subscribe to this thinking: I must appear to be busy at all times otherwise............. what will people think?

Yet in Albania being too busy to see people was rude and disrespectful.

Another pastor friend of mine takes great delight in the incredulity on people’s faces when he says, ‘Actually I’m not very busy at the moment,’ he is determined to challenge the myth that we must all be busy and overloaded with things to do.

I think my old car washing friend, Qerim, may be wiser than he realised when he taught me the importance of people over appointments and 30 minutes drinking a coffee might be the best use of 30 minutes that day.

So if you ring me this week the answer is ‘Yes – I’m free for a coffee – shall we go now?’