fatigue?
I get tired lately. Perhaps I mean fatigued:
a lessening of one’s response to or enthusiasm for something, typically as a result of overexposure to it
Some of you might say that I need to get out more. Take breaks! Go fishing! Take a ride on your motorcycle! I do that, but that only helps momentarily. There is something deeper that is wrong. It is more serious than just overexposure. I believe that it is somehow related to the fact that much of what we do isn’t related to real life. Somehow, we find ourselves sucked into doing something that isn’t essential to who we are. We carry this gnawing suspicion that we are serving a system we don’t believe in. Most of our energy is consumed slaving under meaningless duties. Years ago I took a time management course because I felt I was wasting too much time on useless stuff. The seminar was expensive. I left that course very passionate about organizing and managing my life. After a few months, however, I realized that all I was doing was organizing and managing the same old useless stuff. I had a revelation that managing my life was meaningless unless my life itself was changed.
Years ago I read a book by Easum and Bandy called Growing Spiritual Redwoods. I don’t recall anything else about the book except one declaration that the future church would not support codependent relationships. I remember how radical and dangerous an idea that was because that would pretty much empty most churches. Imagine if you stopped supporting codependence in all your relationships. Do you wonder how lonely you’d become? Most of what we do is fulfill other’s expectations of us. We grant other’s their desires.
Something else I’ve noticed: one week I decided to analyze the phone-calls and visits I was getting at the church building. The greatest majority of them were business related… that is, almost all of them had to do with somebody wanting something or trying to get me to want something. It’s like when you’re having supper with your family… that’s when the tele-marketers call.
It’s one thing to be actually engaged in life and relationships in a healthy way. It’s another to be entangled and trapped in an artificial pseudo-life and in unhealthy codependent relationships. I don’t think I suffer from overexposure to church and ministry. I compare it to fishing when you are being inundated with black-flies and mosquitoes. The fishing itself is a pleasure, but after a while the perpetual menace of insects exhausts you. It’s the distractions that kill us. Like someone once told me: “It’s hard to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators!“
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I know exactly what you mean. I’ve been pastoring for about 7 years now, and for most of that time I’ve had no energy to do what it was I signed up for. I always find I’m so busy doing my job I’m too tired to do my work.
Cameron,
Learn to say, “No,” and start doing your work. And if they say “Go,” well, could it get worse than it is now? Dang it, man, make a change.
fishon
Yes, yes!
Making necessary changes is a good thing, but don’t think it will solve all the problems. Life is a dam with cracks in it…you fix one and another leak springs…it’s just the way it is.
We do the best we can, and suffer for a little while in this “veil of tears”. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of beauty of joy and laughter too.
But compared to the next life, this one really is a veil of tears.
As Larry Crabb says, we need to stop being managers, and become mystics. That is, become lovers.
I’d never heard/read that quote about co-dependency in the future of the church before you quoted it. I think it is a very true statement but I think your conclusion is also true, it will be a much smaller church.
On the other hand though, I wonder if this is where the mega-churches have gotten it right? Can you get so big that co-dependency becomes less of an issue because it’s all so big that we just don’t have a structure that supports or needs to be supported by co-dependent behavior?
But certainly the average church both rewards and creates co-dependent behavior and we’ll never survive if we don’t stop.
I wonder if the mega-churches avoid relationships altogether. Unless they have smaller groups. But then you’re back to the danger of codependent relationships.
“Learn to say, “No,†and start doing your work. And if they say “Go,†well, could it get worse than it is now? Dang it, man, make a change.”
It’s been a long slog, but that’s pretty well what I did. There’s no chance of being moved on—in fact, the denomination moved us to a less hectic congregation to give us time to heal and learn how perfect we aren’t.
Part of the problem is defining ‘work.’ I know what my calling is, my church folk know what they expect and the denomination has a few expectations as well. Once I stopped worrying about their expectations (and hence my reputation) I was able to get to a place in which I was much clearer about my job and I was able to serve others far more effectively.
Cameron,
Praise the Lord. I am happy to hear that you are not still in the situation that was eating you alive.
I have no problem with people having certain expectations of me–but if they are outrageous and unreasonable, I ignore the expectations. Sounds to me like you have taken back control of your yes and no’s.
The great thing about the congregation I pastor, they know all my weaknesses, and they try and take up the slack. Sound like you have one that is similar, now.
fishon
Burn out sucks. I find vacations, etc. seem to make it worse. I mean I get back and the work piles up even more.
I do remember though when I first started in the parish, I had decided to start every morning with my own personal studies, having nothing to do with up coming sermon’s or Bible Studies. I felt guilty at first. But then I read through Acts, My guilt lifted in Chapter 6. Acts 6:4 (ESV)
But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
So I don’t make much time for sales associates, etc. I find the word of God to be like rain. So I study it a lot, go and do a few visits, members, or people outside the church. And I don’t worry about the rest. It falls into place.
As for codependant relationships. Well, we are codependant. The Church is one big codependant relationship! 1 Corinthians 12 among others should make that apparent. For that matter what would a non-codependant relationship look like? So go lean on a brother, and drink a beer with him. That is what he is there for.
well, codependence is “excessive emotional or psychological dependence on another”, so I would say that’s unhealthy and shouldn’t be nurtured. I think we should be dependable and depend on others for help, friendship, etc… it’s the excessive we should avoid.
I guess I have to wonder about the wisdom of having only ONE leader for a church. This archaic and useless hierarchy should be abolished. Being a First Nations person, I realized that the majority of modern christian church is full of Eurocentric ideals, which are not comfortable for a lot of people.
Think about this, going to church is like going to school (a Eurocentric idea). I hated sitting in a classroom being talked down to. I understand that as a teacher it’s no fun either. Getting lessons prepared, and having to deal with unruly students every now and then.
Also the heirarchy of one leader comes from the Eurocentric model of a king, which G-d has put above everyone. Well that doesn’t fly where I am from. Originally in most First Nation’s cultures (not all) but there was a council of leaders and wise people from the tribe.
Even Moses get’s burn out and what does his fatherinlaw suggest (My biblical knowledge is not what it used to be, I could be wrong here)? Get a group of judges to help out. That makes sense to me.
I know that if I am healthy and in a sense “full” of love and care for myself, then I can help others much more easily.
See I guess I was confused by the use codependant relationship, because I have never really known the church to support (possibly tolerate, but not support) “excessive emotional or psychalogical dependance on one another.” Maybe this is just a difference in experience.
What I have noticed, is a push toward larger churches, some to the extent that you can successively appear Sunday after Sunday without ever being known, by the pastor or anyone else. I think in American culture there is an unhealthy tendency toward individulaism. The codependance thing, meaning excessive, is probably a rubber band effect in reaction to that. I tend to think though that the church should be fostering relationships. I don’t know is my foot codepanant on my big toe. I know it would have an awfully hard time getting on without my big toe. Yet I think it is a healthy relationship.
Sometimes I think these books are nothing more than pop psychology made worse by a pastor writing it.
I liked Wilf’s idea – who says we are to have one pastor or a small leadership anyways? I think that would help avoid this burn-out problem and also develop more positions for leadership for the community. I cna understand how this happens – too much pressure on one person to fulfill all the needs of the community – that’s tough to do. More leadres means more help.
I can’t take credit for the idea, I think Societyvs had this idea years ago.
SocietyVs,
I certainly do NOT believe in one man leadership/pastor, though there is by nature always someone who rises to be the lead dog.
As far as burn-out, it is not a matter of a pastor[s] totally stressed by the true work of the ministry, but the stress that is added on by the unwillingness for the pastor[s] to say, “No, I am not going to go to that meeting; I am not going to belong to that civic group; I am not going to….”
I realize that the concept of busy work is ingrained into the church and pastor culture. And it will not be, and is not easy for the culture to overturned. But if the church is to be what Jesus intended his church to be, then the culture of busy work must be done away with.
I agree; “More leaders means more help.”
fishon
NP, having been where you are on a few occasions. I know exactly what you mean. I pastored for 15 years and cycled through the disillusionment – recommittment cycle a few times.
You have two choices, I figure. Get out of the church altogether, because you are done. If you don’t now, all you will do is cycle through the disillusionment then recommittment cycle over and over again.
Or, you can change the church into something God, you, and the people want.
My situation did not allow me the second option. But option one is sure working out.
Breathe the free air, man.
Hey guys,
You do know there’s a whole decentralised church-worth of us outside the walls of the institution, don’t you?
Not to say that the air is necessarily clearer out here (though some, myself included, find it so). But to say that we are there for you too. Just as we know that you are there for us.
We don’t always come trumpeting our Christian credentials, and you won’t always recognise us until we’ve done our job and left, but we are there.
Delegate, delegate, delegate. I think this is something a lot of pastors find hard to do, but what a great difference it could make.
There have been many times I would have loved to have called my pastor to kick around a theological concept or ask them what their view was on some piece of scripture, but I truly felt they would not have the time for it. I felt like I would be imposing on their time. And that is a sad thing.