Blogs are supposed to be sorta personal, and I do enjoy sharing some elements of my life here (though I also recognize the inherent danger of doing so in a public format when you have many folks who will twist your every word listening carefully). So the following personal note I hope will be taken in the proper context.
This is a SMALL ministry. See Rich and I? That’s the staff. Period. Yeah, a few volunteers help with e-mails, [and, having gotten in deep trouble for not having noted it in glowing language, I am grateful to them for their help, their support, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without them, and they are the backbone of our non-paid help, and are truly great apologists on their own, and they work really hard, and….ok, you get the point] but that’s it. We’ve lived on a shoestring from the start, and unless I get PC real quick, we always will. Yeah, we do big things with our small staff, but it takes a lot of work! Anyway, that means that at times the two of us are simply going at Mach 3 with our hair on fire (I know, I know), and just one more “please, could you do this for me…” type request will be just enough to send either or both of us off to Alaska to open a tire store. Both of us are going 12+ hours a day at the moment, he trying to keep up with a flood of orders, website issues, etc., and I with book deadlines and the like. So, if you write me an e-mail, and I don’t reply within five minutes, show some patience, please? I don’t have a secretary. I have to respond to them myself. And sometimes I just have to let them sit since it is a choice between “finish book, hopefully bless thousands vs. write an e-mail, delay book by six months.” And please realize, when you ask me to write you a small book, compile bibliographies, and in general function as your on-line personal research assistant, the chances of your getting a reply will diminish proportionately. It isn’t personal. It’s that I have to prioritize my time, and how much time I will invest in folks outside of my church and my immediate ministry. And remember, I make myself more available than almost anyone else I know of who does ministry similar to mine. So I tend to need to go do forced reps on the incline bench to work off the frustration when folks complain that I won’t drop important research just to “minister to their needs” in the time-frame they ask and in the manner they demand.
There, I feel better. (8-D
