If you are a pastor, has anyone ever asked you, “What do you do all week?” If you haven’t been able to before, now you have an answer. Pulpit and Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership did a study on this question and came up with the following results. The median work week for Protestant clergy is 46 hours. The following is a breakdown of the percentages:
- Percentage of week spent preparing for worship and preaching – 33% – 15.18 hours
- Percentage of week spent providing pastoral care – 19% – 8.74 hours
- Percent of week spent administrating congregation’s work and attending meetings – 15% – 6.9 hours
- Percent of week spent teaching and training people for ministry – 13% – 5.98 hours
- Percent of week spent in denominational and community affairs – 6% – 2.4 hours
- Hours spent in prayer and meditation – 7% – 3.22 hours
- Hours spent reading, other than for sermons – 4% – 1.84 hours
I’d be interested in hearing what you think of this. Does this match your experience? In general, what do you think about these numbers?
mattjudkins.com 
Matt – Thanks again for sharing what you have read. I think that this is an interesting graph. My experience does not match up as I do not currently find myself in a role of preaching on a weekly basis.
Ideally, I would hope that prayer, meditation and time spent reading other than for sermons would move up. I do think that preparing for worship / preaching is appropriate at number 1, but I think that teaching and training people for ministry should be number 2. Well, enough of dreaming…
What about percentage of time keeping up a blog?
For me that comes in my “free time” and doesn’t take more than an hour or so a week. I read friends blogs and online news much like our parents would read the paper with their morning coffee.
Hi, Matt.
I didn’t know if you’d seen this . . .
http://www.cartoonchurch.com/content/cc/what-the-clergy-do-all-week/
Great stuff Keith, and it’s probably true!
I’m looking for the percentage of time pastors cast out demons, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers,and raise the dead. Anybody do that?