At a meeting recently I heard another pastor say with a big sigh, “Boy, what I wouldn’t give for a regular forty-hour-a-week job!” He was fishing for sympathy-as we all have done at times. I find such comments common among my colleagues. Stress and burnout are catchwords.
Although the demands made on us and our time are a concern, I wonder if we may not at times be fooling ourselves.
Since coming to my present church, which includes many executives, my thinking has undergone some alteration on this subject. I found myself much more prone to grouse about my hours until I started trying to schedule time with some of these execs. Lunches were booked far ahead, and they regularly hit the office at 7:00 A.M. and didn’t get home until supper was cold. I began to realize that every successful person I knew put in long, disciplined hours (and usually without complaint).
Then I remembered that I was asking these very same successful people to volunteer additional time, outside their already-heavy schedules, to help in the work of our church. And they were doing it! Their dedication put me to shame. If they could devote themselves to their work with such vigor and still be willing to volunteer extra time for our church shouldn’t I be able to face fifty to sixty hours of work a week without feeling overworked?
The more I thought about it, the more I had to conclude I was not really overworked. What ends up causing stress and burnout for many of us begins with faulty assumptions and mistakes in our organization. I decided to be honest enough to recognize this and try to correct the mistakes rather than plead for pity.
In my own experience, I find most “overwork” turns out to be mistakes of expectation, concentration, or delegation.
Mistakes of Expectation
Our expectations of ministerial life strongly influence how we feel about our experiences.
I know several people, for instance, who entered ministry with the notion that it would resemble a nine-to-five job. Warned about the danger of too much work getting in the way of family life and personal growth, they went to the opposite extreme. They answered the phone at home with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, bordering on hostility. Even the rare week with all the evenings booked prompted visions of failed family life.
The fact is, of course, that virtually no job working with people can be confined to an eight-hour day or a five-day week. People’s needs don’t run on a clock. Ministry keeps happening whether or not there has been a holiday earlier in the week.
Anyone entering ministry thinking it will resemble a clock-punching job is sure to be dismayed. Yes, concern for priorities is wise, but as a pastor, I need to remember that being faithful in my work for God is no different than in any other area of life; it takes hard work and long hours.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the “poor me” expectation. These people enter ministry with a mental image of a pastor being on call all the time, buried in a myriad of details, never able to get caught up, always having one more phone call to make, and chronically late for appointments.
My observations have been that when we harbor that sort of expectation, we usually live up (or down) to it. We program ourselves to be harried because it gets the sympathy strokes we want.
This was, in my first fifteen years of ministry, my tendency. I let myself become a slave to the annual records I had to send the denomination. I couldn’t let my number of baptisms or sermons slip. The more patients in the hospital, the better; I’d get more calls logged and help my statistics. I was running myself ragged for the sake of the record, not for ministry.
The sad thing was I thought that’s how ministry was supposed to be. My expectations, not the ministry needs, were creating the overwork.
In both of these cases, we are not really overworked. Either we have not understood what hours ministry realistically demands, or else we artificially keep ourselves busier than we need to be in order to maintain an image. We may feel pressured, but it is pressure of our own making.
The answer is not simply doing less work. Rather, it’s aligning our expectations with reality through wise planning. What must I do to fulfill the responsibility God has given me? How can I best invest my energies happily? With good planning and the willingness to serve aggressively, we may be surprised at what we can accomplish for God-without feeling overworked in the process.
Fresh out of Bible college, I was ruled by my mental image of a pastor as a busy person. If I were to have status, if I were to attain the stature of my heroes and not lag behind my classmates, then I would have to be busy-I thought. With a little more time and a lot more wisdom, I realigned my thinking toward ministry. Instead of calling on people just to pad my statistics, I slowly learned to love people, to minister to them, and let the year-end numbers reflect rather than determine my ministry. I was freed from the compulsion to be busy for the sake of appearances. Now, though I still don’t make the calls I might, I’ve learned to live with lesser goals in some areas and focus on the strategically important areas. I try to run with my strengths in ministry, not my mistaken expectations.
Mistakes of Concentration
I hate to bring up this point because it pegs me: Many of us do not know how to concentrate on our work. Consequently much of our “overwork” is simply the result of wasted time.
Here’s how it shows up for me: the lunch meeting lasting thirty minutes longer than business warrants, the extra hour of the “Today Show” getting me to work late, the phone call stretching to forty minutes of chitchat, the decision to leave work an hour early to get some shopping done, the attempt to call that golf game “ministry” even though it was simply relaxation, the newspaper that takes forty-five minutes to read, the acceptance of too many outside projects that distract me from my primary duties. I’m sure you could complete the list.
Yes, I’ve heard (and used) all the rejoinders:
“Sometimes you just need to be with people longer.”
“Some of my best contacts have been in social situations.”
“I need to keep up on current affairs.”
But I look at my schedule and find literally hours of nonproductive time-time that could have been used to accomplish the tasks that make me feel overworked. Ironically, the resultant sense of overwork keeps us from planned leisure that could refresh us and our families.
I will never forget hearing about one of the men in our congregation who was visited by a well-known public figure. After thirty minutes of conversation, the man called in an associate to meet the honored guest-and to take him off of his hands so he could get back to work. He’d broken his concentration long enough. Had it been me, I probably would have visited all day with the celebrity-and then complained of overwork the rest of the week.
Another friend involved in research told me his day is a success if he can spend two to three hours of solid, concentrated time on research. He knew there would be plenty of odds and ends to fill up the rest of the day.
At first I thought he sounded lazy. The more I thought about it, looking at my own schedule, the more I understood. I had to ask myself, How many times do I seriously devote even two uninterrupted hours a day to my important projects? If I constantly shuffle my attention between different people, daydreams, projects, leisure, and permitted interruptions, I will accomplish my work in the time available only with difficulty.
Again, that’s my fault, not the ministry’s. I don’t want to plead burnout for my mistakes of concentration.
Here’s where a thirty-day time study helps. After honestly keeping track of our time in fifteen- or thirty-minute intervals for a month, it starts to become apparent how we waste time or how we could group projects more advantageously. We might be surprised at what we could accomplish by eliminating those time wasters from our schedules.
I discovered that I was too loose with my time. When I began to block out solid chunks of uninterrupted time, I found I could finish the sermon some time prior to Saturday evening and still get in a game of golf. By refusing to label nonministry items “ministry,” I realized that many of the hours shopping and chatting and lunching were really my own rather harried leisure. If I were busy, I couldn’t blame only the church.
I hold the keys to my schedule, and only I am to blame when disorganization rules out accomplishment.
Mistakes of Delegation
One day in a circle of pastors, I heard a self-diagnosed overworked church planter tell of his busy schedule. In the list of duties he ticked off, he included “setting up the chairs each Sunday.” My immediate thought was, Why in the world are you doing that? There has to be someone in your church who could take on that duty.
But often we fall victim to the need to be needed, and so we become the omnicompetent leaders who are omnibusy. If we print the bulletins, do all the calling, prepare the church dinners, accept all the recruiting responsibility, serve as janitor (I actually saw a pastor do this in a church of four hundred), buy all the supplies, and attempt most everything else, we obviously will be overworked. But who said we had to do all this work? Not the Lord!
For all our talk about gifts and the ministry of the laity, many of us have a lot to learn.
“It’s easier to do it ourselves, and it gets done better when we do it,” we plead, not without some truth. Yet even if that’s true (which it is-rarely), it isn’t right. I’m learning that my job is to allow others to participate in ministry. To do otherwise is to rob them of their right. And it can turn me unnecessarily into a crusty old martyr.
Recently when our church participated in a community fair, I experienced the lesson of delegation in a most uncomfortable way. Through neglect I failed to get people assigned to all the necessary tasks. In those tasks where I had delegated, I had no worries. But I left myself too much to do alone. I paid the price of late nights and nervous hours.
Was I overworked? If I was, it was my fault. I couldn’t blame the ministry.
Mending the Mistakes
I don’t want to spend my life with either the feeling or the reality of too much work. By the same token, I don’t want to be lazy. I want my work load to challenge and stretch me, to pull the best out of me. It should make me tired but give me satisfaction at the same time.
I want to come off not as a martyr but as a person excited about my challenge from God. Frankly, I think I can accomplish that in just about any situation if I form my expectations correctly, learn the art of concentrating on my tasks, and engage in the biblical ministry of delegation.
I never fail to discover this possibility during the week before my vacation. During that week, I work harder but feel less overworked. Why? Probably because my expectations are accurate; I’m neither surprised at the amount of work nor do I feel sorry for myself for it. I simply know it has to be done before I leave. Furthermore, my concentration is at its best. I’m able to give my attention to the priority issues. And finally, I delegate liberally, assigning all sorts of work to others-because I have to.
It’s always a great week. Maybe it is supposed to be something like that all the time.
Donald Gerig is pastor of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois.
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