Functioning Workaholic...

"By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." -Genesis 2:2-3

"We have enough work, but too little time for God and life. We have enough money, but we opt for a cycle of consumption and waste. We canonize the American dream and worship it." -Matthew Sleeth, 24/6

"I think you need to be a worse youth pastor." Those were my words of encouragement to Travis Garner. Or maybe they were words of conviction. Or maybe compassion. I'm not really sure, all I know is that, at the time, I felt like they might have been the most insightful words I'd ever breathed into existence. More likely, they were the words of a spunky college student with an inflated sense of self-importance.

First, let me give some background. I was a college chaperone of a winter youth retreat for the church I'd grown up in. Travis had been my youth pastor growing up, and against all reasonable wisdom, he'd invited me to be a "responsible adult" for this weekend retreat. (At this particular stage of life, "responsible" and "adult" were terms held very loosely in any sentence involving my name.)

At some point overnight, one of our more adventurous high schoolers had attempted a physics assignment: to discover how much force his hand, when applied as a fist, required to create a hole in the drywall of the cabins. I'm not sure what the result was in Newtons, but he eclipsed it.

After the big group session that morning, Travis pulled all the high school boys aside and erupted in a tirade of epic proportions. Veins were bulging. Decibel level records were eclipsed. I think at least 1/3 of the boys were in tears. (At least that's how my memory remembers it, because I might have been one of the boys crying.)

As the gang shuffled out with the timidity of a scolded puppy, I caught Travis looking like he'd reached the breaking point. It was the kind of moment when you realize this isn't really about that. The talk hadn't really been about the hole in the wall. It was simply the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Yes, the hole needed to be replaced, but this was a man who needed a break.

So of course, once it was just the two of us, I interjected.

"I think you need to be a worse youth pastor," I offered with my infinite depth of perspective and wisdom. "You seem stressed. You can't do it all."

Now, if I heard that feedback from a college chaperone as a student pastor now, I think I'd explode. It's a testament to the patience and wisdom of Travis that my tongue wasn't ripped out at that moment.

I imagine he's forgotten that moment. I, however, have that conversation forever seared in my mind. With any luck, it'll seep into the fiber of my being and become my life motto: become a more mediocre student minister every day.

Don't get me wrong: I love teenagers. I love my work and I love the church I get to serve. It gives me so much meaning and I feel so fortunate to be able to live out my calling doing something I love. But in loving what I do, I've bought into the lie so many of us invest in: the busier and more tired we are, the more value we have. The less we rest, the more we work, the better our lives will be.

Let's test this, shall we? When someone asks you how you are, I bet your default answer is similar to mine. When I don't offer the half-hearted "OK," it's almost always "I'm tired." We pass it along as a badge of honor, and we've bought into this idea that exhaustion is the default gear in which we were made to operate.

We can respond to all of those emails as we fall asleep in bed.

We can reschedule that meeting, even if it means delaying a date night or our kid's soccer game.

We can plow ahead and work the weekends when what we need more desperately than anything is a nap. (But we can't nap, because there's no time for that silliness.)

I'm beginning to think I might be a functioning workaholic. Sure, it's all good on the surface. But there's collateral damage when we are willing to perennially say yes to work.

But that's not how we're made. We're made for rest. From the very beginning, we were structured for work and wired for rest. In the very beginning, the very first rule God gave the people was something called Sabbath. God had created for six days, and then God laid down on a La-Z-Boy and dozed. It was a "gift" we're told. (Just as an aside, I figure the duck-billed platypus is one of those things that happened while God was on break.)

And over and over again in scripture, we hear this reminder to observe the Sabbath. It wasn't just some theoretical proposition. It was held in the same 10 Commandments that include things like not killing and not stealing. We don't hold those particularly casually, but we're quick to skimp on the resting and recovering.

And God kept reminding the people continually that this wasn't just a suggestion. It's in our DNA. Based on personal experience, there was good reason. Taking a stop doesn't come natural. We always stretch our capacity. If we make more money, we spend it. If we have more time, we spend it. But what I've discovered in giving money away is what I assume happens when we give time away. It re-orients the time we do use for work. We become more focused. We become more present. We realize we were made for something more.

And then we rest. I need it. We need it. We can't keep up at this pace. We weren't made for the hamster wheel, and the good news is, believe it or not, we can step out of it at any time. Because the even better news is, we are not defined by what we do or what we produce. Our value and worth is not determined by our work.

What's true of planted fields is true of us: every so often we have to stop and recover if we want to operate at our full capacity. And life is meant for full capacity. We've got to stop telling ourselves that we can keep on going. We can't. If God can rest after forming the world, we can certainly rest after a weeks' worth of conference calls and planning meetings.

So here's my promise: I'm trying to be a worse student pastor. I'm trying to be more present and invested in the moment to moment in front of me. I'm trying to put my phone down and experience the world going on all around me. I'm trying to let emails sit unanswered over the weekend because my worth is not tied to response time. I'm trying to rest and say "No", and in the process, I'm betting that by accident, I might just become a better student pastor too.

forever unfinished...