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 When You Need a BreakWhen can active lay people find rest and refreshment?
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In When I Relax I Feel Guilty, Tim Hansel writes of his years working for a Christian organization: "I would work … six or seven days a week. And I would come home feeling that I hadn't worked enough. So I tried to cram even more into my schedule. I spent more time promoting living than I did living." Many active church people know what Hansel's talking about. One committee meeting leads to another. One event is hardly done when the next one looms ahead. Add responsibilities at work and at home, and soon a weekly schedule can feel like, as one person put it, "an overstuffed glove compartment." Stress vs. DistressThat kind of pace can lead to burnout. Lutheran psychiatrist Paul Qualben raises an intriguing question, however: "Why do some [church workers] … seem to thrive in stressful situations, find satisfaction in their work, and weather the ups and downs … with equanimity, while ones in the next parish burn out?" Qualben concludes: "Most work - in the church and elsewhere - is done by people under stress. Stress is not the issue. The problem is rather distress. Distress is the product of frustration and repeated disappointment. … There must be other factors within each individual - that account for the difference." Church leaders prone to distress are often, he says, Type-A personalities, "hard workers who set high goals for themselves but suffer from 'hurry disease,'" or people who base self-worth on the attendance, budget, and other outward results of their ministry. When only three kids come to a youth-group function, they feel bad not merely about the kids they could be reaching, but also about themselves. We who invest ourselves in our churches feel a tension. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that we are both workers (filling the role of elder, teacher, or whatever) and persons (relating to people as we are within, apart from what role we take or work we do). Most of the time we balance the two well. We become burnout prone, however, when the scale tips toward the worker side. When I show up for church, I'm thinking about schedules, people I need to give messages to, and how many people will show up. There's little time, it seems, to talk about my struggles in my job or my fears about my son. Somehow the needs of the person get squeezed out. There's always the temptation to emphasize the worker side. It brings affirmation. Constant work pays off in increased visibility, a feeling of being appreciated and necessary. I felt great during my years as a youth-group leader when parents would stop me in the church hallway on Sunday morning and say, "We're so grateful for what you're doing for Wendy." What a wonderful feeling! And yet when we make work the center of our lives, distress sets in. Though loved for what we do, we may nevertheless miss being loved simply for who we are. That can come, by definition, only during times of nonactivity, of rest, of refreshment. As a result, often when we're most "successful" we may be most insecure. |             |
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