Overcoming the Doing Addictions
Working Ourselves to Death: The High Cost of Workaholism and the Rewards of Recovery by Diane Fassel HarperCollins, $14.95 Reviewed by Greg Asimakoupoulos, pastor, Crossroads Covenant Church, Concord, California
Once upon a time there was a pastor known in his community as a conscientious caregiver. His twelve-plus years in the pastorate could best be described as goal-guided ministry in motion.
Although he was a human being loved by God unconditionally, you’d never know it by observing him. He was a human doing. Constantly.
What he did was good. But the reasons behind his efforts reeked of an addiction to accomplishment. His name was Workaholic, and he wore himself out.
If you identify with this pastor, you’ll find Diane Fassel’s Working Ourselves to Death intriguing reading. It is one of only a few volumes written in the past decade that attempts to make sense of a national epidemic known as work addiction.
According to Fassel, a management consultant based in Boulder, Colorado, you need not look far to find this disease. Whether in American corporations or churches, addiction to work is as common as any chemical addiction.
One author has called workaholism “the pain others applaud,” another “the only life boat guaranteed to sink.” Diane Fassel calls it “a progressive disease in which a person is addicted to the process of working wherein they seek work because it is their fix.” Simply said, it is an addiction to action.
The author understands her subject well. By her own admission, she is prone to workaholism. I tracked her down in Hawaii, where she says she retreats regularly to escape her tendency to “work herself to death.”
More than a catchy title for her book, the phrase is a red flag she refuses to salute. It is a flag she has repeatedly observed over two years of research.
“Everywhere I go,” she said, “it seems people are killing themselves with work, busyness, rushing, caring, and rescuing.”
Though not written with pastors specifically in mind, Fassel told me clergy are among the most notable professions where workaholism rears its ungodly head, and lives are left in ruin. She cites a convention of Protestant ministers in Iowa:
“The ministers come from farm families where the motto is ‘No one ever died of hard work.’ They believe this statement, for their experience is that hard work keeps you out of trouble and makes a positive contribution to family and community. Unfortunately something new is happening in rural Iowa. Young and middle-aged ministers are leaving the ministry-disillusioned and unhappy. Working harder doesn’t seem to help. They are burned out on caring.”
The results of her research indicate that insurance claims due to stress and addiction are greater among church professionals than almost any other segment of the population. The cleanest of all addictions in the most respected of all professions is taking the costliest of tolls.
Within the book’s 156 pages, she exposes several myths about workaholics, including the false assumptions that workaholics are always working, that workaholics can be managed with stress-reduction techniques, that work addiction is profitable for corporations, and that workaholics get ahead.
Fassel distinguishes between four kinds of workaholics.
The compulsive worker is the classic workaholic, always working, and doing so openly.
For binge workers, intensity, not volume, characterizes their pattern; between “normal” work patterns, they suddenly go on binges of work, often skipping sleep and meals as they do.
Closet workers, aware that constant working is a problem, secretly work when supposedly they’re off (for instance, saying they are going to play golf but instead doing paper work at a library).
The anorexic worker procrastinates and avoids work until the pressure of a deadline forces the issue, and then there is a rush to work and work to squeeze under the deadline.
Fassel also paints the characteristics of the workaholic’s profile: Workaholics are prone to struggle with other addictions, to have low self-esteem, to be obsessive, and to have difficulty relaxing. They can also be dishonest, judgmental, and perfectionistic.
“Essentially workaholics are no longer ‘showing up’ for life,” she says. “They are alienated from their own S bodies, from their own feelings, from their creativity, and from family and friends. They have been taken over by the compulsion to work and are slaves to it. They no longer own their lives. They are truly the walking dead.”
When preoccupied with “piles and files,” the workaholic loses touch with his inner self and works all the harder to fill a spiritual vacuum in his life. The author asserts all addictive behavior to be an effort to deny the pain associated with the absence of love and nurture.
According to Fassel, “Spiritual bank- s ruptcy is the final symptom of work- s aholism. It usually heralds a dead end. | It means you have nothing left. … It is frightening to be out of touch with a power greater than yourself and to find your disease, which you know is destructive, ruling you.”
But there is hope. “When the workaholic’s downward spiral is reversed,” writes Fassel, “spirituality is one of the first things recovering people regain.”
Recovery is the theme of the lengthy last chapter. The author concludes with practical steps to get out of the dungeon of this dysfunction. Not surprisingly, the rungs of her ladder include the Twelve Steps of AA coupled with a system for maintaining daily control.
According to Fassel, recovery begins with admitting one’s powerlessness and resisting the tendency towards isolating oneself and trying to work on one’s problems alone. The help and accountability that come from other people is a necessity.
Those who read Working Ourselves to Death won’t necessarily live happily ever after. But they do stand a better chance of at least living.
Remember the once-upon-a-pastor with which I began? T know whereof I speak, and I heartily recommend this book as “a way” to new pastoral life.
Jump-Starting a Congregation
44 Questions for Church Planters by Lyle E. Schafer Abingdon, $12.95 Reviewed by Dave Wilkinson, pastor Moorpark Presbyterian Church, Moorpark, California
The only thing wrong with 44 Questions for Church Planters is that it came too late I got into church planting over five years ago, and at the time, I could only come up with one question on my own: “What am I doing here?”
I badly needed Lyle Schaller’s help t,) know the other questions I should ask.
Schaller, a consultant with the Yokefellow Institute in Richmond, Indiana, and with the J. M. Ormand Center for Research and Development at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, says that 44 Questions for Church Planters grew out of two roots.
The first was his “personal frustration” as a parish consultant in facing big problems that could have been avoided with proper planning early in the church’s life.
The second root was the requests from many people like me who have been seeking a practical tool to help chart the direction of a new church.
In fact, many of the questions he addresses are fruitful for established churches, as well.
Schaller’s first questions center around the theme, “Why start new churches?” After a survey of the history of church development in America, he states his conclusion that new churches are the major key to effective denominational growth. Schaller then explores twelve theological and practical reasons for en phasizing church planting.
For instance, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, congregations usually benefit from intradenominational competition.” He says that having two or more local congregations of the same denomination usually results in higher congregational health and vitality than when there is one congregation.
“One obvious advantage of . . . intentional redundancy,” he writes, “is that discontented members of one congregation can seek a new church home without leaving that denomination.”
The heart of the book is the second chapter: “Three Crucial Variables.”
Schaller’s first crucial variable in church planting is the pastor who is the mission-developer. He writes: “Experience suggests that the best way to start a new church that will attract a large cadre of enthusiastic charter members and continue to grow in numbers year after year is to identify the right person to be the mission-developer pastor and for that minister to continue as the pastor for a minimum of twenty-five years.”
I called Schaller at home to talk more about this. “In the sixties,” he told me, “the top three criteria for the success of a new church were location, location, and location. But in the nineties, the top three criteria are clearly the pastor, the pastor, and the pastor.”
Knowing that some groups are trying to connect religious leadership with Meyers-Briggs personality types, I asked Schaller if this personality test could help identify good church planters. He explained that Meyers-Briggs is too “gentle” an instrument to give the needed information.
“The key ingredient of a successful church planter seems to be productivity,” he said. “An introverted person who is highly productive will often be more successful than a more extroverted person who is less productive.”
Schaller’s second crucial variable is vision. He writes: “To a substantial degree the vision of what that new mission can and will become creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.” He says vision will determine such things as the choice of the church planter, the timing, the choice of a temporary meeting place, the scheduling and design of that first worship experience, and the selection of land for the first building.
Schaller argues that the creation of this guiding vision is the first priority. This allows the initiating body to identify the mission-developer pastor who will further the vision.
In his introduction, Schaller claims to have reached the advanced stage of life that carries with it a “tendency to substitute honesty for tact.” We see some of this in his observation that “relatively few self-identified ‘enablers’ or ‘facilitators’ have been effective church planters.”
Leadership is Schaller’s third crucial variable. By leadership Schaller means not just the mission pastor but the denominational leaders at the local level with their “leadership skills, experience, visions, courage, creativity, and gifts.”
He writes, “Rarely can this leadership come from a committee with a rotating membership. Far more often it comes from the person with a decade or two or three of experience in church planting.”
In one chapter, Schaller proposes twelve questions designed to help a church determine its identity. For example,
-Are we a commuter or community congregation?
-Which generation are we trying to reach?
-Are we a high demand congrega¢ion or voluntary association?
-When does a new church become old?
In later chapters, Schaller discusses a host of practical questions established churches and new churches need to deal with, for instance: “The Place of Missions,” “Six Questions on Real Estate and Finances,” and “Why Is Continued Growth So Important?”
The Hartford Religious Research Center has said that Lyle Schaller is “America’s most influential religious leader among all denominations.” Schaller’s latest book is another reason why.
NEW AND NOTEWORTHY
Counselor’s Guide to the Brain and Its Disorders by Edward T. Welch Zondervan, $15.95
Is the behavior a sin or a disease? The line must be drawn in Christian counseling. So believes Edward T. Welch, licensed psychologist and professor at Westminster Theological Seminary.
He writes to lift the fog from the sometimes murky relationship between psychology and spirituality. This is a textbook for disciples of Christian therapy. It cross-examines modern medical thinking about diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, showing how even people suffering from psychological diseases with a physical root still retain some moral and spiritual abilities.
Lay Counseling: Equipping Christians for a Helping Ministry by Siang-Yang Tan Zondervan, $12.95
Can lay Christian counselors do more for people than glibly saying, “Let go and let God?”
Siang-Yang Tan, director of the doctor of psychology program at Fuller Theological Seminary, shouts an emphatic yes with this book. Tan outlines a step-by-step approach for outfitting a lay counseling program in your church. He supplies useful resources such as questionnaires, supervision ideas, and literature resources.
What Americans Believe by George Barna Regal, $14.95
In a recession, companies that lose touch with their customers’ needs fail to survive the economic downturn.
Churches also need to know their market, believes George Barna, pollster and analyst of American culture.
So he interviewed over one thousand Americans, both churched and unchurched, about their values, tabulated the results, and drafted this digest about America’s mores.
The respondents’ thoughts about such subjects as Satan and absolute truth are included as well as many charts and diagrams. Barna targets this book for church leaders dedicated to the business of church strategy.
Turning Committees into Communities by Roberta Hestenes NavPress, $2.95
Typically, the most exciting part of committee meetings is the coffee and brownies.
Roberta Hestenes, president of Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, writes to change all that. She advocates merging the intimacy of small groups with the muscle of committees to create loving, productive communities within the local church. Hestenes packs a wallop in this small booklet, telling how to turn mundane meetings into significant ministry.
52 Ways to Help Homeless People by Gray Temple, Jr. Oliver Nelson, $6.95
Paul Simon sings about 50 ways to leave your lover, and Gray Temple, Jr. writes about 52 ways to help the homeless.
To the socially minded, Temple, rector of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, gives 52 rapid-fire, easy-to-follow suggestions for alleviating homelessness in America. How to investigate the welfare programs in your area and stand in a line with a street person for shelter are just two.
Reading Scripture in Public: A Guide for Preachers and Lay Readers by Thomas Edward McComiskey Baker, $7.95
Bible colleges and seminaries graduate students with skills in preaching the Bible.
They also should be able to orally recite God’s Word, contends Thomas Edward McComiskey, a Trinity Evangelical Divinity School administrator. His book teaches techniques for delivering the unique literary structures of the Bible meaningfully and accurately. This is a self-help tool for public speakers wanting to read God’s Word more fluently in public.
-reviewed by David Goetz
Golden, Colorado
CLOSE UP
A Soul Under Siege: Surviving Clergy Depression by C. Welton Gaddy Westminster/John Knox, $11.95
Author: C. Welton Gaddy is the former pastor of Highland Hills Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia. He earned a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Main Help: Gaddy narrates his descent into and journey out of depression. He identifies the emotional minefields hidden in pastoral ministry and suggests principles for preventing burnout and depression.
One practical takeaway: Gaddy discriminates between selfishness and taking care of oneself. He sees responsible self-love as a moral issue for the pastor. Eating properly, enjoying leisure, and balancing work habits are compulsory practices for emotional and spiritual health in church work.
Key quote: “Fighting limits [in pastoral ministry] is a losing battle. Accepting limits is healthy as well as wise. To ignore, defy, or deny limits is to move from the realm of seeking to serve God into the arena of attempting to play God.”
Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
