Defining Work: Gender, Professional Work, and the Case of Rural Clergy
by Muriel Mellow
McGill-Queen's University Press
“Location, location, location” matters not only in business; it also impacts how ministry is done. Muriel Mellow, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Lethbridge, has listened closely to her informants, for she accurately describes the ambiguities confronting rural clergy.
Is attending a community event ministry (work) or not? Recently the Mitchell Hawks, our local Junior “D” hockey team, made it to the league finals. Our family decided to take the 90-minute road trip to see game two of the series. at the second intermission I was getting hot chocolate when a man from Mitchell said to me, “It was good of you to come all this way to support the team.” No longer was being at the game something the Bushes were doing for fun, I had a role, a function. I was not just a fan, I was “the minister.”
Where are the boundaries between private and public life, between family and community? For some rural clergy the minister's study is in the manse; more ministry happens in the family's home than does in the church building. The family and the private are incorporated into the work of ministry.
What does it mean to keep professional distance, when the people I curl with are also the people who sit around the session table with me? Rural clergy are professional advisors and neighbours. They are people paid for services rendered and a friend to talk to while waiting for children to get out of school.
Mellow, married to a United Church of Canada minister, interviewed 40 United Church rural clergy for her study seeking to elucidate the connection between work and rurality, in particular how female and male clergy conceptualized their work. The subjects were equally divided, women and men, and were clustered in various parts of the country. She claims she found no significant regional differences.
Rural clergy challenge a number of stereotypes. First, rural clergy, women and men, blur the line between public and private life, making “work in the private domain visible.” Mellow argues rural clergy do not follow masculine patterns of work that demarcate private and public, but rather use feminine patterns of work in which private and public are indistinguishable. Second, rural clergy challenge the lines between professional work and volunteer work. They are paid to work alongside volunteers often doing the same tasks: think for example of presbytery and session meetings or congregational suppers. Further, clergy are paid so that they might volunteer in the community. Third, rural clergy help reveal the limitations of professional definitions of ministry, opening up the possibility of finding more helpful ways of conceptualizing ministry.
Exceptionally well written, it provides lots of opportunity for conversation and will reward readers with glittering insights.
