Pastors and their time

I imagine every pastor has been accosted at some point in their career by someone demanding to know how they spend their time. Is the congregation getting 'value for money?' I'll even admit to heckling a young pastor in my church one day many years ago (along with a couple of other equally ignorant members) about what he was doing with his day.

So I was a bit surprised to see Todd Rhoades encouraging people to use Twitter to find out how pastors are using their time. He introduces his brief article in this way: Most church conferences have a time set aside for speaker Q&A, and one of the first questions asked nearly every time is "What does your day look like?" In other words, "How do you schedule your time, and how do you prioritize your tasks?" The answers are always interesting and insightful.

He then goes on to list a bunch of pastors who have offered their Twitter addresses to the concerned public at large. Is it just me who thinks this is crazy? Do pastors really need to account for what they're doing to such a degree?

Rhoades writes: You can find out when their days start, what they're reading, the meetings they're attending, how they balance their family time, and what gets them really pumped (or ticked off).

Good grief. Twitter only allows 140 characters at a time. Is this really going to tell anyone what their pastor is doing, and shouldn't these people be doing something more productive with their lives anyway? As my colleague says, he's a right twitter!