This is Just Wrong

I rolled out of bed this morning, fed the cats, saw that I'll have to shovel snow today, and got online to check e-mail.

Among my normal NYT and Dilbert daily mailings was an ad from Church Laughs. I get a Church Laughs weekly mailing on Mondays with some sort of funny take on church life. And today I received an e-mail from them for a 2010 Church Planning Calendar.

Among other things, this little gem features a Holy Week Planner, church year calendar, common lectionary, etc. Not only that, but it has Time Management Tips for those of us in the church business. The first sample of one such Time Management Tip to help make you more efficient:

"When people drop by to visit, train yourself not to ask questions. Questions prolong visits and make it more difficult to get back to office duties."

Ummm . . . This is wrong on so many levels. Since when do office duties take precedence over visits from people? Since when does the printing of the Sunday ordo become more important than the person who needs to talk about their own personal struggles? If I'm not asking questions of my visitors, I'm not learning anything about them.

And maybe I'm different because I'm a priest in a small rural town with an even smaller membership. Maybe life is different for the priest or pastor of an 800 - 2500 member parish where you really are a CEO of a corporation. But, like a colleague of mine pointed out, it's often the interruptions that are the point of the job.

". . . train yourself not to ask questions." Seriously?? Is this how you want to be treated by your priest/pastor? With all due respect to Church Laughs, they can keep their planning calendar; I don't need that kind of advice.