The Facts and Feelings of Overwork

It was Tuesday morning. Monday, my day of rest, was over, and I was sitting at my desk. As usual it was littered with mail and papers. I had phone calls to make, meetings to prepare for, and a list of people to visit. Already my appointment book was filled for the week.

It was like standing in front of a dam with twenty-two holes leaking water and knowing I had only ten fingers and ten toes to plug them. So much was happening, and my energies were so dispersed that I felt I lacked the strength to accomplish one task, let alone all of them.

Overwork is a feeling-a subjective, internal experience of being overwhelmed by your job. Others may label it fatigue, frustration, stress, or pressure. Because we are taught to live on faith, not feelings, we tend to deny or ignore our negative feelings. Unfortunately, pretending we don’t feel overworked, when we do, does not solve the problem. Ignored, the feeling refuses to go away.

My feeling may be compounded with guilt when I’m reminded of the benefits of full-time pastoring. After all, my hours are flexible, I have the privilege of helping fulfill the Great Commission, and I have an influential position in the community and the personal lives of my congregation. Why should I complain?

But in spite of the benefits, in spite of an honest enjoyment of being a minister, the treadmill feeling still surfaces. Why?

The surprising fact is that feeling overworked has very little to do with the number of hours a minister puts in. Though some of the diverse tasks in the ministry are time-consuming, cutting back on hours does little to alleviate the feeling. It’s simply not the volume of work that makes a pastor feel overworked.

A pastor who spends seventy hours a week preaching, teaching, counseling, and administrating may not feel the slightest twinge of overwork. On the other hand, a pastor putting in 50 hours a week may feel hopelessly bogged down.

If it’s not the work load, then, what does cause pastors to feel overworked? After talking with twelve other pastors, I’ve discovered several factors.

One of the most obvious causes is that ministry involves intimate contact with people problems-problems that originate from sin. Pastors can’t just yank out the root of the problem. They need the deft skill of a surgeon to cut it away without damaging the people involved.

“I came back from vacation and immediately got four phone calls about who was and who wasn’t going to teach in the new Sunday school trailer,” said one pastor. “People got nasty over the issue, and suddenly I was caught in the middle of four personality clashes.”

It’s tiring to deal with sin. Emotional and spiritual energy is drained. Pastors who put distance between themselves and the people can’t be effective; they have to be involved. And being involved means being susceptible to feeling overworked.

This same pastor also shared how struggling with a decision whether to perform the wedding of two previously married people had siphoned off his energy as he stayed awake at night wrestling with the problem. It was not the amount of time spent deciding, or even the late hours, that made him feel overworked. It was the total involvement of himself.

Unlike an hour counseling a couple considering divorce, an hour spent chatting about sports is not emotionally draining. It’s the difference between a bucketful of feathers and a bucketful of rocks. The measured amount is the same, but the scales tell a different story. People don’t cause a pastor to feel overworked, but dealing with their hurts can.

Every day, pastors deal with life-and-death issues-spiritual salvation, physical death, depression, marital problems. The stakes are high. When the air traffic controllers were on strike, one of their chief complaints was that no one realized the tremendous stress from being responsible for the lives of people. In the spiritual realm, being a shepherd of a flock is an equally heavy load. We are entrusted with the spiritual health of our congregation, an awesome responsibility.

What is the key to dealing with the stress of this responsibility? Dave Philips, pastor of the Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Connecticut, says a thriving devotional life is crucial.

“I’m just like Peter. As long as my eyes are on Jesus, I’m fine. But the minute I take them off and become slack in my devotional life, I begin to be swamped by the needs and problems of people and sink into the water.”

It’s important to remember that ultimately the responsibility for people and their problems does not belong to me. They are God’s people; I am only a caretaker. When I slip into the attitude that my actions will determine a person’s future, I am replacing my role as God’s servant with the role of God himself. Reading God’s Word and spending time in prayer reminds me that the responsibility for people lies not with me, but with God.

The Pinball Mentality

Feeling overworked can also come from the unpredictable schedule of the ministry. A person with rigid work hours looks at the pastor’s freedom and says, “Boy, I wish I could have that flexibility.”

But the blessing is also a curse. A pastor has to be available when people’s needs demand it, not when it’s convenient. As a result, a pastor is never really free from his job. People’s needs do not operate on a timetable. A pastor can’t punch a timecard at 5 P.M. and say, “Well, that’s all for today.”

Consequently, time management skills are limited in their usefulness. Even if you’ve attended every seminar on the subject, interruptions are still going to wreak havoc in a neatly organized day.

“I blocked out three hours for sermon preparation one day and got interrupted four times. I basically got nothing done, and shifting gears back and forth was a tiring process,” said one pastor. Another pastor said, “I was busy all day, but I only hit 60 percent of what I planned to accomplish. That’s frustrating!”

True emergencies, however, do not cause the frustration. A call at 2 A.M. from a teenager contemplating suicide is anything but irritating. But interruptions over details can be annoying. “It’s the peripheral things-like how many cookies we need for the church social-that tire me out,” commented one pastor. “They’re important, but they’re not important.”

Interruptions make a pastor feel he’s not getting anything done. The pastor trying to write his sermon feels that all he is doing is answering the phone and attending to urgent hut not necessarily important details. He’s frustrated because his attention has been constantly pulled away from the task at hand.

It’s tempting to give up scheduling altogether and simply respond to whatever comes your way like a pinball being thrown from one bumper to another. Priorities are more difficult to live by than circumstances. But priorities can free a pastor from enslavement to interruptions and circumstances.

Nothing can take the place of a well-organized schedule and the ability to say no to unimportant requests. Planning ahead is the basic principle in dealing with interruptions. Accept them as a way of life and don’t schedule preparation for the youth retreat talk at the last minute. Procrastination only invites Murphy’s Law. Interruptions seem to multiply when there is only one hour left for a job that must get done.

The diversity of the ministry is another benefit that can trip up a pastor. Doing five different tasks in one day will make anyone feel splintered, unable to work at maximum efficiency. Dave Philips copes with the variety of the ministry by having one day for each major activity. Monday he works on administration. Tuesday, he’s involved with lay training. Wednesday is set aside for study, and Thursday for sermon preparation. Friday is his day off, and Saturday is discretionary, to relax or catch up. Sunday afternoon is for counseling and visiting. Some weeks, following this schedule is not possible, but having a day for each area does concentrate his efforts.

General priorities and goals can also minimize feeling overworked. “I’ve stopped trying to be effective in every area,” said Tom Parsons, associate pastor of St. Giles’ Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia. “Last spring I concentrated on the singles program. This fall I’ve been focusing on the high school program.”

Zeroing in on the needs of a particular group enables Tom to function more efficiently and with less frustration. The group receives the full strength of his energies and expertise.

Another factor leading to overwork is that pastors are always identified with their calling. People rarely see them apart from their ministry.

“One reason why I feel overworked is that as a minister, who I am and what I do are one and the same. Anywhere, anytime, with anyone, I’m expected to be the minister,” says the pastor of a rural church.

The distinction between job and self can be nonexistent for a pastor. Whether I’m helping the local emergency squad sell sloppy joes or meeting a stranger in town, the fusion of identity with work makes pastoring a never-ending job.

A minister needs to be a whole person, not just fill the role of cleric. Taking time to be with family, developing nonministry friendships, and pursuing a hobby or sports-anything that’s a change of pace- helps bring wholeness. These activities remind me that the ministry exists without me and that I have common interests with most people in the community.

One minister is a serious photographer. When he’s trying to capture the right mood in his lens, he’s not thinking about his role as a pastor; he’s a photographer.

For me, building bookshelves on my day off transfers my mind from the stresses of the ministry to the feeling of solid accomplishment when I put the finishing touches on the shelf. It’s a reminder that there is more to my life than being a minister.

Great Expectations

Everyone who works, whether a housewife, teacher, or banker, likes to say at the end of the day, “Here’s what I accomplished.” But pastoring works on a different premise, what the author of Hebrews calls “the conviction of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Results in the ministry cannot be manufactured in assembly line fashion. But without visible results, pastors may feel tremendously overworked.

One pastor recalls how the lack of results in a special Lenten Bible series affected him. “I didn’t have to do it, but I thought it would be useful. I worked hard to develop it, but the response was not commensurate with the investment of time. It made me feel fatigued and frustrated.” Another pastor said, “A lot of frustration comes from not being able to measure what you’ve done. I come out of a three-hour committee meeting and ask, ‘What did we accomplish?’ “

Work without measurable achievement becomes a discouraging job. Imagine the physical and emotional weariness of a mountain climber when, after four hours of climbing, he finds himself back at his starting point. If this happens a second time, he’s going to start questioning his reason for climbing, as well as the guidebook.

It’s no wonder that pastors become preoccupied with numbers. It provides visible results. We can’t measure spiritual growth, but we can count the number of warm bodies in the sanctuary. We can’t see the effect of our preaching, but we know if giving has increased.

Lack of results in one area of ministry may not discourage a pastor if things are happening in another area. But without visible results, pastors will naturally question the value of their work. Pastors feel overworked, not because of the time spent preparing a sermon and visiting members, but because the time apparently has been spent in vain.

When I’m not seeing results, I begin to be weighed down by guilt that I’m not doing enough, and I become even more overwhelmed by the task. “If I only were working harder and longer,” goes the reasoning, “perhaps I’d see results.”

How can you counteract the discouragement of invisible results? A strong calling to the ministry in general and specifically to the church where you are can help. “With a sense of call, you get comfort and assurance,” says Paul Toms, pastor of Park Street Church in Boston. “Even if you don’t see results, you trust that God has put you where you are for a good reason.”

Knowing God has called you gives you patience to persevere. The results may be buried under the surface, or they may just take time to develop. Dave Philips says, “I’ve been here eight years and I spent a good three or four years building a foundation. Years five, six, seven, and eight have seen tremendous fruit.”

Affirmation also helps. It’s like a form of spiritual credit. Howard Varner, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Wheeling, West Virginia, found affirmation lifted him off the merry-go-round of result seeking. “A few months ago, for the first time in my twenty-one years of ministry, the church board said, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing.’ I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.”

A pastor’s drive for results may turn him into a program pusher, a spiritual salesman trying to sell his congregation on the latest evangelism method or film series, hoping that it will unlock hidden potential. Pushing a program contributes to feeling overworked. One pastor commented, “If programs are generated out of the life of the church, fine. But I served in one church where the senior pastor and I were creating programs and then having to sell them to the congregation. Having to justify a program was very draining.”

Programs that originate with the people or meet the true needs of the congregation are usually not a problem. But when pastors want to see results and think the responsibility for maintaining the life of the church depends on them, they often create programs that don’t satisfy the needs of the people. Those programs end up as deadwood.

There’s a theological issue at the center of program pushing. Who is the church? When I see myself as the church, then I place on myself not only the responsibility for initiating programs but carrying them out as well. When I see the people as the church, I am free to examine their wants and needs, allowing them to shape the life of the church.

A pastor is a leader, a visionary, a guide for his flock. But if the sheep do not follow, the pastor is not to abdicate and become a sheep. He needs to examine why they aren’t following and decide how they can be persuaded to follow.

An associate pastor who was pushing programs decided he was tired of being a manipulator and cajoling people to do what he thought should be done. When he came to his present church as pastor, he decided that if something failed because no one was interested, he was not going to fight it. He stopped imposing his agenda on the church.

He has not been inundated with requests for new programs. “Historically, this is not a busy church,” he says. But he is at peace because his definition of success has changed from having several high-powered programs to being faithful to the people over whom he has charge. He no longer feels overworked because he spends his time caring for people, not manipulating them.

Breaking the Tyranny

It’s not easy to deal with feeling overworked. We may not want to acknowledge the problem, but strong feelings that are pushed under eventually resurface with even greater intensity. Just admitting you feel overworked and being aware of why you feel that way is a big step in easing the pressure.

As one minister commented, “Learning how to cope with feeling overworked takes minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master. Feeling overworked won’t disappear overnight, but it’s important to realize there is hope. For above all, we have the assurance of Christ that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. He will help us carry the load.

OVERCOMING OVERWORK

Besides understanding the problem and admitting it exists, here are five specific ways of neutralizing the feelings of overwork:

1. Evaluate your expectations and schedule. Set aside a few hours for this task and be prepared to ask yourself some hard questions. Do your expectations for yourself and your goals match up with your abilities and limitations? Does your schedule look like that of a superman? (Your spouse may help you be honest with your answer.) Have your good intentions for church growth caused you to push programs that don’t really meet the needs of the congregation? With the answers to these questions you can begin to make some changes in your schedule by dropping unnecessary activities and modifying your expectations.

2. Negotiate a specific job description. Some church boards may be reluctant to do this, especially if they’ve never done it before. You can facilitate the process by writing up a tentative job description and presenting it as a possibility. Or you could go over a normal week’s schedule with them and let them see exactly what you do with your time. Agreeing on what is expected frees you from trying to meet invisible or unrealistic expectations.

3. Plan for interruptions. It sounds simple, but if you stop pretending they don’t happen and start writing them into your schedule you can ease a lot of frustration. Accepting them as a normal part of your routine enables you to have some degree of control over them.

4. Play deep. Have a hobby or sport as an outlet for the frustrations and tensions of the ministry. An activity with immediate and definite results can balance the lack of results and gives you a sense of accomplishment and identity outside of the ministry. It can help also give you a proper perspective on who you are as a person and remind you that some of your needs can and should be met outside of the ministry.

5. Concentrate on family relationships. Spending time with the most important people in your life not only builds self-esteem, it restores your energy and renews your vision. A healthy family life prevents the tendency to be consumed by the ministry and supplies love and encouragement from people who see you in terms of who you are, not what you do.

Jack Wald pastors United Presbyterian churches in Smithfield and Piney Fork, Ohio. His wife, Ann, is a writer.