Rest for our souls!

So where, in the face of the dynamics previously discussed, do we find rest for our soul? This seems to be the starting point for the way ahead. No surprise then that ultimately and first off this can only be found in God and in His Presence. It’s been interesting that as I have sat with the guys who have experienced burnout in recent times we have found that their identity is wrapped up in their work – more than they thought at first. That’s how many guys are wired. I have done some personal reflection on this and tried to find out how much my own identity is founded on God’s love for me and His acceptance of me in grace, rather than my performance and what I do and achieve. In Ex. 33:14 God says ‘My presence will go with you and I will give you rest’.

A couple of years ago King’s church stopped growing for the first time in 10 years. One of the biggest challenges for me in that situation was asking myself, ‘Is this it then, Steve?’ Keeping one’s peace in God at a time like that is a challenge. I’m looking to grow a big church – unashamedly that’s what I’m going for. I don’t know if it will happen – ask me in 20 odd years when I’m preparing to hand the baton on to someone else! But what do we do if the prophetic words that we’ve had spoken over us don’t seem to be coming about? Or if our hopes and dreams seem to go cold and stale?

God is not impressed by the size of your church, nor the scale of your ministry. It’s all grace. It’s all from Him. We are stewards of that grace and one day will give an account to Him. As that grace comes from God, so does the peace that comes from knowing we are loved by Him. If we get hold of this fact, it has the power to transform our lives at a foundational level.

Rest - what are you trying to prove?

Along with the compliant pleasers, the second group are the controllers. Controllers! According to Ortberg, ‘when you hear the word ‘No!’ you hear the word ‘Maybe’… When you hear the word ‘Maybe’ you hear the word ‘Yes!’… ‘No’ is a personal challenge which requires the steamroller approach.

Controllers have a tendency to not respect the boundaries of others. If I ask controllers to identify themselves, they won’t – compliant types will admit to their tendencies, controllers say, ‘I’m not admitting to that!’ And what happens when a peaceful compliant type meets a controller? They get married and, you know, it starts really well. Do this. Yes. Do that. Yes…. Oh, yes.

We all have external circumstances that bring pressure to our lives. The issue is what is going on under the surface and what motivates you to respond in a particular way. What are you trying to prove? Who are you proving it to? Yourself? Your peers? Your parents? What’s driving you? Who are you trying to impress? Who are you comparing yourself with? Why are you shaped by the expectations of others? Do you have a competitive spirit? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you at peace about your measure in God?

Honest answers to these questions will reveal what’s underneath.

Rest - the delusion of the slower day coming

Again, please note, I’m not speaking against hard work. Work is good. I work hard. If I listed my responsibilities you might become tired just listening to them. Many of us might be tempted to think that there is a slower day coming. It isn’t. In fact, there is more work coming. There is a vision for 1000 churches. There are the major cities of the earth to be touched and reached. There’s the poor to care for. There’s a culture of constant change. In fact there will be more to do in the next two decades than we’ve done in the last 50 years and I’m suggesting that we will only be able to do it if we rest well.

I hope I’ve got your attention. I hope you can relate to this.

So – why do we find this so difficult? You know about icebergs. You see only 10% of the volume above the surface. At this point I could get into all the hints and tips on how to manage your life… but most of you know them already. These are the surface things. What I want to do is go below the surface – what is happening on the inside of you when it comes to the choices you make and the boundaries you set.

Part of my preparation for this subject was to listen to a fantastic talk on work and rest by John Ortberg (formerly of Willow Creek Church, USA.) He describes people falling into two categories (I think there may be more, but these two make a good start!). Firstly there are compliant pleasers. They have a hard time saying ‘No’. They want to avoid conflict, they prefer peace and they can be motivated by fear. They feel guilt and blame if they don’t step up. They are nice people, they are pastoral people, they are really likeable people! I like these people and enjoy being with them – I really do!

The trouble is, resentment can build up deep inside them as they continue to care for people while others don’t step up to help. From time to time – as if out of nowhere – they explode. Anyone out there like this?

Rest - exhaustion as a badge of honour?

One of the conclusions that Sean Gubb came to in his survey of lead elders is that overall the (Newfrontiers) movement scores more highly in the scale of emotional exhaustion. Some of this emotional draining can come from working outside our gift. Also he discovered that most of the leaders want to be preachers and teachers. They don’t want to be managers, administrators or fund-raisers for the churches. However, for church planters and those leading smaller churches (which make up 80% of our movement) a ‘generalist’ gift is what is needed. A bit of everything to cover all the bases until such time as the church grows to a point where you can delegate some tasks. Meanwhile you will be more easily drained by those areas that you are less confident about and not so gifted in.

When it comes to meetings – especially strategy meetings - I could sit in them all day. I can go from 8am to 10pm and find that the whole day has fuelled me. That’s just the way I’m wired. My team, however, have other gifts and other areas that energise them. If we’re in meetings all day, by mid-afternoon they are trying hard to stay focussed and with me. But if your expectation of what full-time Christian ministry really involves is different from your experience then that will add to the emotional drain on your life.

Could I go as far as to say that we could fall into the trap of seeing exhaustion as a badge of honour? When was the last time you spoke to a lead elder and in response to your question, ‘How are you doing?’ the reply was, ‘I’m remarkably fresh. I just feel totally on top of everything. My wife is loved. My children are getting quality time. I’ve got time to enjoy life while the church is prospering.’ I don’t think there would be many conversations like that!

Rest and burnout

God has ordained rest. And while many people in the UK find their sense of personal value in work I would suggest again that many of us would serve God, family and church more effectively if we rested more. Taking a training illustration from the world of swimming – research on college swimmers in the US shows that every year 10% of this group experience ‘burn-out’ because they overtrain. They train so much and put in so many lengths they reach a point where performance drops off.

In the last couple of years I have sat with at least two pastors who are experiencing burnout – both significantly. When we are serving God, called by Him, we may feel trapped by our call. We serve not some shareholder in a firm but the Owner of Everything! This can magnify our sense of responsibility and drive us to overwork and so to underperform.

We all come to understand the goldfish bowl of Christian ministry. This is what I referred to when I talked about the wedding reception. That for us, work, church and friendship are all integrated and it’s sometimes impossible to know where one ends and another begins. So you can feel you’re on duty all the time. Living in this bubble means we can get ‘peopled out’. Some of you are far better at handling this – your capacity for people is greater at the moment! But note – this message is relevant to you and I know this because of some research done by Sean Gubb from the Farnham Church. Sean surveyed lead elders within Newfrontiers churches and 70% of you responded. 30% didn’t… I was one of the 30%. Why didn’t I respond? Because I was too busy, ok? Or I had such excellent boundaries - I was resting and didn’t do it…

Rest and the Long Hours Culture

So why do we work so hard? What drives us? Let’s look at that for a moment. Cary Cooper, Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at Lancaster University says of the UK,

‘If you work constantly longer hours – over 45 hours every week – it will damage your health physically and psychologically.’‘

In the UK we have the second longest working hours in the developed world, second only to the USA. We have longer hours than Japan, so that’s l-o-n-g hours and that’s our culture. For some of us as church leaders this impacts us more than we admit since we have guys in our churches who are in business and we don’t want to be seen as slackers. We’re still shaped by the ‘Oh, you only work on Sundays’ attitude. I believe that church leadership is far more demanding than being in business!

Derek Simpson, the General Secretary of the union Amicus says, ‘It’s no co-incidence that the UK is the least regulated economy and is also the least productive in the industrial world.’ Amicus also did a survey where they found that almost 1 in 5 workers were put off sex because of the long working hours.

I want you to know that when I read that I was really concerned. I’ve honestly just never been there. This would worry me. I’d better continue. The union said that a third of people said they didn’t have enough time to spend with their partners, husbands, wives or children. Community work, socialising, personal fitness and hobbies all lost out to excessive working hours.

Rest - patterns of life

God has built rest into the normal patterns of life. There’s a daily pattern. It includes that moment when you put your head on a pillow. It’s called sleep. I love sleep. I don’t see it as a distraction from work. Eight hours. Wonderful. It’s physical rest and even better for me, it’s mental rest. I like the moment when it all goes away and when I open my eyes it’s morning and I’m refreshed.

There’s also a weekly pattern. God wants us to have at least one 24 hour break each week. I have to confess that I like other slots of rest in the week as well. And there are annual patterns. There are seasons and there are slots of rest built into those seasons – I suggest that they are called holidays!

I meet so many pastors who don’t take their holidays! I have had this issue sometimes with some of my team members and I really stress to them how important this is. This is not a problem of the work ethic of Christian workers. We are totally committed to what God has called us to do, but we can get out of shape if we don’t address the patterns of our work. In my contract of employment I have a sabbatical every seven years. Excellent! That’s three month’s rest. Sorry, I mean study and reflection…

Remember, I’m not saying that we aren’t going to work hard. I’m not saying that we’re not going to build big churches. I’m not saying that we’re not going to touch nations. I’m arguing that if, as a movement, we build a culture of biblical rest - then we’ll be more fruitful.