"Why do we work so hard?" The question is asked by a man standing before a pool and manicured lawn. "Other countries, they work, they stroll home, they stop by the cafe, they take August off, off. Why aren't you like that? Why aren't we like that? Because we're crazy hard working believers."
The recent Cadillac commercial that featured this message has been heavily criticized for endorsing materialism and workaholism. But what critics often overlook is the ad's accuracy.
According to the International Labor Organization, Americans work more, take less vacation, and retire later than people in any other industrialized country. In the U.S. 86 percent of men and 67 percent of women work more than 40 hours per week.
Does the church really need to be talking more about work in a culture that's already obsessed with it?
By any measure work is an enormous, even overbearing part of our lives. Our culture is more work-centered than any other on the planet and, very possibly, more work-centered than any other in history. In such a culture, those of us tasked with making disciples of Jesus Christ cannot ignore work as a critical area of spiritual formation, but two-thirds of churched adults surveyed by Barna said they have not heard any teachings about work at their church.
At a recent Leadership Journal event to address this topic, a few pastors challenged me. "Does the church really need to be talking more about work in a culture that's already obsessed with it?" one asked. That's a fair question, but let's apply the same logic to another cultural obsession—sex. For generations many churches avoided talking about sex apart from periodically condemning the culture's warped sexual values. Most pastors have now abandoned this ignore-or-condemn approach to sex for more mature, biblical discussions about an inescapable part of our humanity and spirituality.
Similarly, ignoring work or condemning our culture's idolatry of it is not enough. Instead our task is to affirm the original goodness of work as a God-ordained part of our humanity without falling into the culture's trap of making work into an idol. We must present a redeemed vision of work. In a culture full of "crazy hard working believers," however, that requires not only talking about work but also rest.
Music isn't just sound
A few years ago, visiting relatives in Southern California, my brother and sister-in-law took me to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. As the sun was setting behind the outdoor amphitheater, the members of the orchestra began taking their seats. The sounds of the musicians tuning their instruments were odd. Screeching strings randomly echoed from the left. Blasts came from the wind section on the right. It was chaotic and a bit unpleasant.
Finally, the conductor emerged. He calmly raised his arms over his noisy instrumentalists. Silence. After a few moments of quiet anticipation, the conductor's hands moved and the music began.
Redeeming work requires an orderly rhythm of work and rest.
While the musicians were tuning their instruments, they were certainly making sounds and even notes, but not music. "Music," said composer Claude Debussy, "is the silence between the notes." It is the orderly rhythm of sound and silence that creates melodies and the soul-stirring music we value. Without silence there can be no music, only noise.
Similarly, redeeming work requires an orderly rhythm of work and rest. Without regular periods of rest, our work loses its meaning and value and deteriorates into chaotic toil. We may ridicule cultures that legislate six-hour work days and eight weeks of vacation every year, but ceaseless work does not lead to flourishing either. What our culture has lost is a rhythm of work and rest in a frantic pursuit of achievement. As a result we are making a lot of noise but very little music.
The most obvious example is the loss of the Sabbath. A weekly day of rest as prescribed by Scripture no longer fits with the demands of an ever-growing 24/7 consumer economy, and even many Christians see it as an antiquated pattern of life. But taking a day each week to rest is more than a way to find rejuvenation and the stamina for another six days of work. Sabbath gives us the opportunity to step back from our immediate daily demands to put life into perspective, to appreciate the fruit of our labor, and to see our work in the larger context of God's work.
In other words, far from diminishing the importance of work, Sabbath frames and defines our work so we can see its true value. Sabbath is when the Cosmic Conductor raises his arms to bring silence and stillness over his noisy orchestra so that something truly beautiful can be created.
There are more subtle ways we've lost a work/rest rhythm as well. Mobile technology means many of us never leave the office. Research has found that 90 percent of young adults check their phones before getting out of bed in the morning. Some of us are checking emails and responding to work issues all evening, during meals, and I'm guessing, even during worship gatherings.
Advocates call it multitasking. Technology allows us to work from anywhere. In truth, it causes us to work from everywhere. Clifford Nass, a psychology professor at Stanford University, says multitasking is a myth that wastes more time than it saves. "Without space to rest and reflect," says Nass, "the evidence shows these technologies may be killing our concentration and creativity rather than cultivating them."
I have found that transforming the noise of toil into the music of work requires weekly and daily rhythms of rest. Keeping boundaries on my phone usage, pausing regularly through the day for prayer and Scripture reading, and practicing the Sabbath have not diminished the value of work in my life, but instead helped me appreciate its value far more.
Space to hear a still, small voice
Apart from giving our work greater order and meaning, rest also creates the necessary space to discern what work God is calling us to. Before the Reformation it was believed that the word vocation, which comes from the Latin vocare meaning "to call," only applied to the clergy. Luther, Calvin, and others rejected this and said that every Christian was called by God in three ways.
First, the Reformers taught that we are all called to unity with Christ.
Second, all Christians share a set of common callings as revealed in the Scriptures.
Third, each of us is also called to a specific, good, God-honoring work in the world. We all have a vocation.
Sabbath is when the cosmic conductor raises his arms to bring silence and stillness over his noisy orchestra.
How do we discover our vocation? What work is God calling us to do? Unlike our common callings, which can be found by reading the Bible, I cannot open to a chapter and verse to discover my specific calling. Discerning these callings comes through a mature communion with the Holy Spirit. In other words, a theology of vocation is contingent upon a practical theology of prayer. But if we do not slow down, cease from our work, and learn to commune deeply with God, we will not be equipped to hear his call.
We see this pattern in Jesus' own communion with his Father. The start of his public ministry, the selection of his apostles, and his journey to Jerusalem and the cross were all started only after first ceasing work and devoting space for prayer to discern the Father's calling.
I regularly meet with college students who are eager to discuss vocation. "How do I know what I'm supposed to do with my life?" they sometimes ask me with more than a dollop of anxiety, depending on how close they are to graduating.
"Tell me about your communion with God," I'll ask. "Tell me about your prayer life."
Some have been confused by this question. They assume their vocational calling is to be found by studying Scripture more carefully, by exploring their gifts through an assessment, or by uncovering a great need in the world they should devote their lives to remedying. Those are all well and good, but they also feed our cultural bias of taking life rather than receiving it.
Many of the callings that have shaped my life have been received in silence and solitude, including my call into ministry. These callings were subsequently affirmed by others in the church who also possess the Holy Spirit, but the process started by cultivating the space in my life for prayer and reflection.
Henri Nouwen noted that we like to stay busy because we want to avoid the noise within us. "Your inner life is like a banana tree with monkeys jumping up and down," he said. The discipline of rest forces us to acknowledge and tame our inner monkeys. Only then can we hear God's calling, and then engage our exterior world accordingly. In this way the fruit of our work is not determined by how much we accomplish around us, but by how connected we are to God's Spirit within us.
What church leaders can do
If a redeeming vision of work in our workaholic culture means cultivating a rhythm of rest and the space to discern God's calling, then what is the church's role in reestablishing these healthy patterns? Christ has called pastors to shepherd his sheep. That metaphor certainly includes feeding, leading, and protecting the flock of Christ, but we often overlook the shepherd's role in providing rest. "He makes me lie down in green pastures … He restores my soul," says David of his Shepherd in Psalm 23.
Many of the callings that have shaped my life have been received in silence and solitude, including my call to ministry.
When I left my full-time pastoral role to work with Leadership Journal, I began keeping track of my time. What I found surprised me. Between my editorial work, my family relationships, the tasks of maintaining a home, yard, and body, I concluded that about 12 percent of my time was discretionary. From this 12 percent, I could read a book, volunteer at the homeless shelter, or take a nap. This 12 percent was also what the church was eager to fill with service opportunities.
It was often indirect and subtle, but from the moment I entered the church building on Sunday mornings, I felt like my 12 percent was being targeted. Whether it was the children's ministry seeking volunteers, or the upcoming Missions Fest dinner, or the new tutoring initiative with the local elementary school—between the songs and Scripture, the morning was crammed with ads. Sometimes they were even cleverly embedded in the sermon.
Ultimately it was my responsibility to say yes or no to these opportunities, and I did not fault the church leaders for making me aware of the needs or the important work happening in our community. After all I was in that pulpit for many years pushing the very same activities with the very same good intentions. But after a few months in the pews rather than the pulpit, I felt exhausted. After a challenging week of work, there were some Sundays where attending a worship service brought more noise than music to my life.
This led to me to reflect more honestly about my time in ministry and how I had led the sheep entrusted to my care. Was I a shepherd that provided rest, or was I singularly focused on winning a larger slice of their discretionary time? In the most work-focused culture in history, was I helping to create a harmonious rhythm of work and rest, or adding to the cacophony of noise and the idolatry of achievement?
I wonder if our culture's addiction to work, including within the church, is contributing to the church burnout and dropout rates. Based on conversations I've had with former church attenders, I think it is. Of course the work we're calling people to in the church is good, godly, and important, but when they've not been shown how to bring redemptive patterns of work and rest into their professional lives, and healthy rhythms of rest are also absent in the church's life, eventually the sheep will leave to find a pasture where they can lie down—even if it's a couch in front of an HDTV.
In 1974 Colonel William Pogue became the first American to go on strike—in space. The astronaut was part of the last, and longest, manned mission aboard the Skylab space station. About halfway through the 84-day mission, Colonel Pogue and the other astronauts requested ground controllers adjust the work schedule for more rest. "We had been overscheduled," Pogue said. "We were just hustling the whole day. The work could be tiresome and tedious, though the view as spectacular."
Ground control refused. The work was too important, they said, and time was limited. Some worried the astronauts' request was a sign of depression or a physical illness. Pogue insisted neither was the case. They just wanted more time to look out the window and think, he said.
Eventually the disagreement between the crew and the controllers became so intense the astronauts went on strike. Finally a compromise was reached which gave the crew more time to rest during the remaining six weeks of the flight. Pogue later wrote that having more time to look out the window at the sun and earth below also made him reflect more about himself, his crewmen, and their "human situation, instead of trying to operate like a machine."
Isn't Sunday supposed to be a time to cease from our work, gaze out the capsule window, and contemplate our lives and calling from a cosmic perspective? Aren't the songs, sacraments, and sermons supposed to reveal the wonder of God's kingdom amid the chaos of our world, and prepare us to reenter the atmosphere on Monday with a renewed sense of meaning? How did the goal on Sunday shift from feeding sheep to recruiting them?
There is no denying that our culture has embraced a broken vision of work. As the Cadillac commercial states, we are "crazy hard working believers." But the church can help redeem work by modeling daily, weekly, and annual rhythms of rest. When we cease from labor, it affords us the space to discern God's calling so we may return to our work with a renewed focus. Rest also brings an order and efficiency to our work as well as harmony to our lives. And when pastors shepherd their flocks on Sundays to see the world from a heavenly perspective, we may be reminded that they are not machines and neither are we.
Skye Jethani is executive editor of Leadership Journal.
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