everyday, we set examples.
(even in the tiniest bits of minutia.)
how we drive.
what we wear.
what we buy.
how we spend our time.
my friend shared a podcast with me (here)…which honestly and boldly notes that christians are the worst at taking a day off. finding rest. family time.
we operate 24/7.
and with that in mind, more specifically, i’d like to ask…
those of you who are pastors…what kind of example are you setting for the team that supports you? even if you don’t push them to go-go-go-all-the-time-like-you, what does your example say to them?
those of you who are leaders…what kind of example are you setting for those who follow you?
even if you don’t think you’re a leader, you are. someone’s watching. your kids. your spouse. the girl who doesn’t talk a lot that sits in the cubicle across from you. your team. maybe even your boss.
what kind of example are you setting?
just a little something to chew on today.
Comments
23 responses to “MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO”
I’m setting a horrible example. My wife and kid see it more than anyone else. I can’t seem to let go on the weekends. I want to get “one more thing” done all the time. I’m working very hard to stop this in my life and truly “unplug” on the weekends.
I love my day off (Mondays!) I take my time off so seriously that I don’t even do work around the house :-)
I do however feel guilty about taking Monday off after a youth ministry weekend trip when my volunteers have to go back to work after giving up their weekend. That’s why many times we will take off a couple random weeks during the year and I’ll provide volunteers with a gift cert. for a local restaurant and tell them to get out and enjoy themselves.
oh crap! thanks for the reminder, anne!
Our pastor, Stovall Weems, does a great job of getting us to take the day off (mondays). We also have no services after Sunday a.m., which in essence gives us that 1.5 day thing which we love. He also is big on giving us the extra day off after large events (easter, women’s conference), and an extra day when our monday happens to be another holiday (aka memorial day/labor day).
I’m happy to say that we have a very good balance of family and ministry. We cancel practices so our team can have time with their families or for the team just to hang out and bond. We are seeing so much spiritual growth and a willingness to come to practices and services because we aren’t working them to death. We also reward them with a fun BBQ or outing if we do have to work them hard to prepare for an outreach or retreat.
Great post!!!
Saw this on the NY Times website and thought of you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/us/02malaria.html?em&ex=1212552000&en=a324660d96110e09&ei=5087
I stink at it. Today my facebook status is
Harold is wondering how he will get his entire weekly to-do list to-done!
I’ll tell you how I’ll get the non time sensitive stuff done. Fill my weekend with it.
Trying to observe the sabbath or a sabbath can be especially hard on your most committed volunteers too. The worship team the workers in your children’s ministry and others are almost all holding down a fulltime job during the week, craming the yard work and whatever else in on Saturday and there at your church giving of themselves bright and early on Sunday morning only to rewind and start all over again on Monday and I left out the soccer and baseball and basketball and all the other extra activities on both the weekend and during the week.
You see more and more children’s sporting events held on Sundays as well. It is the recipe for a life out of control. I am right in the middle of it and have been my whole life. It can be overwhelming but how else do you keep up is the question you always ask yourself.
Now throw in a weekly bible study and a meeting or two and my goodness it can be out of control.
I need to remember there are actually 10 commandments, not 9.
I used to be really bad abut this and worked at a church that boldly asked every employee to work at least 60 hr weeks because asking others to help the church required them to work there regular work week plus what they did for the church. A year or so of counseling later and a lot of repentance to my wife and children (and serving a different church), and now I rarely work more than 50 hours (unlike the regular 80 hours before). I used my work to get value for myself. When I found out that I could have value apart from what I do, it ended, though I still struggle often.
When I read Richard Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity for the second time five years ago, the thing that stood out was his point that saying “no” can be a spiritual discipline – even when you’re saying no to being on another committee or team at church. That was remarkably freeing for me, and I now don’t feel guilty about refusing to work at VBS or not sponsoring every youth retreat.
I think all this guilt and compulsion to be at church isn’t usually a good thing, by the way. The American church spends way too much time trying to get people in the doors, and not nearly enough time letting people live in the freedom of Christ. Jesus didn’t really seem to be too concerned about how many people were walking through the doors on Wednesday night.
I try to set a good example to the kids I teach. I go 100% while I am at work, but when it is time to relax I pursue my relaxation with the same zeal as my work. Even to the point of turning off my phone on my days off.
Mike
Wow, great reminder. As you already know, I struggle on and off with this. Attempting to do better and find a balance that honor’s God, my family and the people I get to serve with.
I’m dead set on getting this one right!
I go through seasons where I’m good at this and seasons when I’m not so good. Interestingly enough, the seasons I’m faithful to God, I tend to get more done…
When it comes to leading a team, I’ve found the members respond to what the leader praises. As a leader it is easy to praise someone for the extra hours, but hard to confront someone for not building a team.
For me, chances are if I’m “doing what God has asked,” and it’s taking more time than God has asked, I haven’t surrounded myself with the people God would want.
I don’t care for this post. I don’t like how you point out things that are true in our lives and how little things like this post make us take a step back and make us think about our own lives.
Seriously though, I am SO guilty of this myself. As much as I feel like I give myself rest and set an example from time to time, it’s more lazyness when it comes down it. Cause I end up working harder to make up for “lost” time. When it comes down to it, I didn’t rest at all.
I feel like it’s something I am still trying to learn. I know that when I was on staff at a church, I was so guilty of ALWAYS being busy. And I in no way set the example to my staff what it meant to rest or even take time to collect one’s self.
Anne,
I’ve blogged about this a lot in the last year (since our son was born.) Here is just one link:
http://www.zakwhite.com/?p=302
Praying for you over the next few weeks for the move!
we get fridays off but being the workaholic i am, i would take that opportunity to do freelance work and earn a little extra moolah. but this year i quit all of that and made myself take that day off and do…absolutely nothing. it has worked wonders with my stress level. fridays are my days to do whatever the heck i want besides working.
i had to work this past friday to help get our stage ready for our new series, but my pastor gave me today off because that’s the awesome leader that he is. i love my job.
I always encourage and even make my team take time-off for family, rest, health; however I have not been a good example. I am excited to say that we have some great mom and daddy vacations set this summer, as well as some great family vaction time… I am feeling like a kid waiting to open some presents.
You know, Anne, sometimes i don’t like to think of these things. On one hand, i believe I’m doing a dang good job. On the other, I raise my voice to my kids too much. I criticize myself too much. I fail all the time. I do my best some days and other days I don’t give a rats you-know-what. Sometimes it’s hard to be the one raising the family. Blessing to be me — you betcha! But hard work and a lot of times dicouraging. I am aware of my influence on my children. More often than not I feel mediocre at best. Striving, praying, hoping I don’t damage them or pass on bad personality traits or hang-ups. Praying!
Our disobedience to the Sabbath command is arrogance, and it’s killing us. It’s not that hard. Work for six days. Stop for one.
Personally I tend to flip flop; either working too much, or being too indolent.
Good post Anne! I bless the day when I first started right out of college and the Sr. Pastor I worked with told me to take a day off and guard it with passion. I have made a few people mad at times because of that but I also still have a wife and 2 daughters who love me and my sanity (although that is called into question at times). :) I am not a bow hunter but ask any of them what happens to the string if it would always be taut.
Best wishes on your move.
I stay at home with my three boys and EVERYTHING I do is imitated. Tone of voice, gestures, attitude, words, actions. It is spooky. Sometimes I even see my oldest treating the younger two exactly the way I treat him. What’s so sad is that sometimes I don’t make the best choices.
Thanks for the reminder.
funny you should post about this now…joy and i – as a follow-up to a spiritual retreat a few weeks ago in lovely st. simons island, ga – just wrote out our “rhythms of life”.
a key part of it? sabbath.
i spent a bunch of years unwittingly and subtly making a golden calf of constant activity and “production”. no more. Biblical balance is not just a nice suggestion. it is a part of the abundant life that Jesus modeled.
thanks, friend. :)
Ummm,guilty!
Great post. In my experience of serving in church, often those employed by the church have a day off on Monday or Tuesday usually but those who work full time go full on on Sunday on the team and then have to crawl to work exhausted on Monday morning. This was my life until my body came to a grining halt.
I think that as employed leadership you need to be careful not to make the volunteers feel less than you, they could easily be working over 70 hours a week with their jobs and church work and for me I realised I wasn’t getting to just hang out with people for fun and relax and stuff.
I’m not sure how to get around the Sabbath issue, I persoanlly think it’s why there is so much burn out in the church. God rested on the 7th day and we think we don’t need to! How silly are we?