My friend Sarah is co-hosting a discussion on the book Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic
by Anne Jackson over at her blog Living Between the Lines. If you are in any way connected to either full time or volunteer ministry, you should read this book. It is extremely eye opening! At any rate, I started writing my commentary to her posting and realized it was going to be way too long to contain in a comment box. So here’s my take on Chapter 4 which covers External Risk Factors.
I think a major risk factor, when it comes to pastoring anyway, is the mindset of many churches (I almost said ‘small country churches’ there, but I corrected myself, realizing it really exists everywhere) that it is the Pastor’s job to do everything, be at every event, and participate in every activity. If there is a ministry meeting, the Pastor should be there to give input. If there is a church “work day” the pastor better be right there on the roof washing the steeple. If there is a Sunday School class party, the Pastor is obligated to attend. Holidays should be spent having special church services, not visiting relatives he never sees. (Side note: If he’s a youth pastor, he should be at every ball game, every recital and every play of every kid in his youth ministry.) If someone’s cousin’s sister’s brother-in-law’s uncle is in the hospital with gall bladder surgery, the pastor should drop everything he is doing and rush over there, because only prayers by the pastor, in person actually have any worth. He should work every fundraiser, attend every birthday/Christmas party, be the first one to arrive and the last one to leave. He’s paid to do this, after all – and he really doesn’t have anything else to do except preach on Sunday and Wednesday.
The expectations aren’t limited to the Pastor though. His wife better be at every baby/wedding shower, every engagement party, every tupperware/pearl/Southern Living/Creative Memories/Pampered Chief party (and buy something) or you can go ahead and count on there being some evil talk in the church about her. Many churches still expect her to play the piano, be the president of Women’s Ministries, head up the nursery, teach Sunday School, coordinate the prayer chain, prepare food for every death, and basically do a full time job for the church without a cent of pay. His children should act like little adults, not children, should never misbehave, never get cranky, and never act unspiritual in any way.
Even when all of this is done, you will still hear comments of “So you are a pastor, huh? So what do you do the rest of the week?” “You know, you really don’t act like a pastor’s wife.” “You know, I really think we should have a (insert various ministries here) at our church. Why don’t you go ahead and head that up? You have Friday nights free, right?” “Well, I’d really hoped your wife and the baby would have come too.”
When is “family time” occuring in all of this madness? How do you avoid burnout when you may very well be voted out if you refuse to juggle all these balls? How do you have normal family relationships when the only time you see each other is at church?
I didn’t grow up ‘in church’ – I was saved as a teenager, so my perspective on family life is much different than my husband who grew up in a pastor’s home. We spent a lot of time at home and a lot of time with my extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins. The only evening activities that ever took me out of that circle of family – and then only to a very small degree – was girlscouts once a month (my mom was the troop leader), dance lessons for a few years once a week, and little league baseball during the summer (my brother and my two cousins were all on the team together). That was IT! Most of my growing up was spent wandering in the woods behind my house with my brother, riding horses with my Grandaddy, swiming in the little above-ground pool in our backyard, or riding bikes up and down our driveway. Mama was always there; we had her undivided attention. Daddy worked a lot, but when he was home, we spent time together – shooting basketball at the top of the driveway, playing tag in the backyard, or just being together.
Already when I compare my daughter’s growing up to mine, I am saddened by how dissimilar they are. How much of her life has been spent in church nurseries? How much time has she had to entertain herself during practices of all kinds? Home is the place we sleep to her – not where we live. Grammy has an ‘outside’ – we don’t.
When I read some of the testimonies in this book of Pastors who made it a priority to be at home with their families at 5pm every evening my first inclination was to laugh rather bitterly. And then I stepped back and really looked at the thing. Is it any wonder so many ministers are plagued with poor health, failing marriages, depression and moral failures? How do you have a healthy lifestyle when the expectations placed on you by church boards and often even the church congregations themselves are so UNhealthy?
So bottom line: why don’t we say no? Why don’t we draw a line in the sand and say, enough is enough? Because our jobs are on the line. Because most of us don’t make enough money in the ministry to have a cushion to get us through unemployment (gratefully our denomination has taken great strides to provide a safety net in that area) so we just keep toughing it out. Because we were trained (like my husband) to think this lifestyle is normal and to be expected. Because we think if we aren’t working ourselves to exhaustion “for God” we aren’t really loving Him with all our strength. (That we equate works with love is some screwed up doctrine, isn’t it?) Because we are riddled with guilt – of our own manufacture and that aimed at us by others – if we don’t.
Don’t get me wrong. Like Sarah said in her blog, I love ministry – real ministry. The kind where lost souls are saved, hurting families healed, addicts find deliverance, and the church really is the hands and feet of Christ. I love being a part of that. But all this other stuff…all this ‘adding to the law’ that I see in our modern church age….not so much. I have a mission statement of my own: I will not sacrifice my family on the altar of church. Period.
It is a mad, mad, mad world.
A Healing Place 