self-care – Page 3 – Salvaged Faith

pastoral discoveries

Posted on October 22, 2009Leave a comment

So – my last post kind of cryptically talked about growing and stretching and being challenged and stressed. As I’m wading around in all of that still, I thought it would be good to talk about some of the things that Im learning about what it means to be a pastor in the midst of it.

1) It’s okay to not answer your phone. At our Healthy Ministerial Relations workshop we talked about boundaries and many people shared that they turn their phone off on their sabbath days. I wouldn’t do that simply because my cell phone is also my personal phone – but I did remember that advice when I recieved five phone calls from church folk on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t have my pastor hat on then – I was being a sister and was helping paint my brother-in-laws new house. So I let the calls go to voice mail. And then I listened to see if they were important. And then I let it wait. When I started my day on Monday – I called each one of them back. And while initially I felt kind of guilty about doing so, it was a reminder that I don’t have to be “on” 24-7.

2) Why do pledge drives/stewardship campaigns have to be in November? With how busy our lives are right now it just seems like one more thing on top of every other thing. I think for the most part we like the connection of offering and thanksgiving and consecration all going together, but there is no time left. We are now talking about pushing all of that back to January. We don’t use our pledges to make our budget anyways because we don’t have enough history with them. What difference would it make if as a congregation we commit to support the church at the end of January instead of the end of November? Plus – it gives us the opportunity to really push our small group study and having a “new year, new finances” kind of focus might work out really well!

3) Rookie mistake – don’t talk to reporters. And especially don’t talk to people when you really don’t have time. As I was finishing up the funeral orders – about 15 minutes before the family was scheduled to arrive – I got a phone call that I really didn’t have time to answer. I told him I didn’t have time to talk, and was trying to show that I had no information that could help him, but in my rush to get on with my business, and because I had no idea what he was talking about I said something that was taken out of context in the article. Note to everyone else: just say no comment. (see also #1 – it’s okay not to answer the phone and screen the calls through voicemail)

4) Your support network keeps you sane… or at least helps you let off steam. Without my best friends and facebook, without my brothers/sisters (in-laws too), and without being honest and vulnerable with my congregation, some of this week might have been unbearable. But because we talked (and typed) and prayed and hugged and watched football, we got through it.

5) You have to keep the joys and thanksgivings at the front. I carried around the pictures of my new nephew and showed him to lots of people this week – it gave me a chance to celebrate in the midst of the stress.

6) Sometimes you can get away with swearing during a sermon. At the funeral this week, the family didn’t want to get up and speak, but had some things that they wanted me to include. And so I said them – and it cut to the heart of who this guy was and everyone understood and I didn’t get any snide looks from anyone who thought it was inappropriate.

7) Once you use powerpoint in a sermon, you may never go back. I preached on the three major atonement theories in worship on Sunday and used visuals/bullet points. I had so many positive comments that now I’m wondering how we can adapt the technology in our worship space to make it easier to continue doing so.

self-care out the whazoo

Posted on September 22, 2009Leave a comment

Yesterday, we had one of our world famous (in our minds) young adult clergy lunches. In our area of the conference we have been slightly disjointed in getting something regularly going, but we definately recognize the importance of clergy fellowship, accountability, and networking.

It says a lot that we all looked at our watches and realized that three and a half hours had gone by without realizing it. We had amazingly fantastic pieces of pumpkin cheesecake. And we talked about everything from the Board of Ministry to church administrative assistants to how we motivate our members to move beyond the walls of the local church… and also personal stuff like family and boundaries and what not.

But we also are getting ready for our (hopefully) annual 37:5 retreat (the name of our conference young clergy gathering). Our big job was to decide on programming and we really decided that we need to focus on self care… but in the sense of actually sitting down and figuring out what our plans would be; how we would let our SPRC committees know; what are some ways that we currently practice and how can we encourage one another. Oh, and some good old fashioned financial planning. AND – we are looking into hiring a massage therapist for the afternoon.

Then today, I have my professional interview and self care came up again. My CS was right – I had listed all of the physical and emotional things I do for self-care, but I had completely left off spiritual self- care. As a pastor, that’s kind of a “duh!” but then again we read/pray/worship as part of our jobs and so we really do need to intentionally set aside time to be with God in our personal lives as well. I’m re-committing myself to do the daily prayer from “A Guide to Prayer for All Christians” that was put out a while back by Ruben Job. AND – I’m counting on my young clergy group to keep me accountable. And I hope to do the same for them.

trying too hard

Posted on May 23, 2009Leave a comment

wYesterday, I shot my best two rounds of disc golf ever. On both courses, I had back nines of 6 and my combined scores for the two courses was only 29!

Now, those aren’t great scores. But for me, they are fantastic scores. I did twice as good as I normally do. And do you want to know why? I stopped trying so hard.

The same thing happened last week with my sermon. I have been a manuscript preacher – although, if I’m honest with myself, my manuscript isn’t the polished manuscript of some, but I write it exactly how I would say it, stream of consciousness style. Only without the stress of a congregation in front of me when I do it. It’s a style that has helped my preaching be a bit more authentic and yet it also gives me the security blanket of those pieces of paper in the pulpit.

In two of my last three sermons however, I haven’t really used a manuscript that I prepared before hand. And you know what – they were pretty good!

I think that I have always been raised to believe that we have to put 110% into everything that we do. And while that is a good philosophy, it’s not sustainable in the long term. Because giving 110% means that you are giving more of yourself than you have. In otherwords, it’s terrible for self-care. If you are always giving and not taking the time to fill yourself back up 110% then you will burn out.

The other problem with that way of thinking is that it makes it all about you. It becomes about what you have put into it, rather than thinking about all of the other factors that come into play.

For example, in disc golf, if you throw the disc at 110%, your arms will tire out quite quickly, but you also are not using the discs properly. You aren’t factoring in for the wind, or the nature of the particular disc that you are throwing. In my case, backing off from the throwing power also has helped me to work on my form and I have far more accurate drives and putts than I did before.

In the case of my preaching, when I get out of the way a little bit, and leave just a little bit more up to God in the moment, I am ALWAYS amazed at how God takes what I have already done and makes it amazing. If it’s all about me and the way that I wrote it, then there is very little room for God in the moment – even though God was a part of the process.

I have always been a hard worker… and I firmly believe that we need ot love God with our whole selves – heart, mind, soul, strength. But sometimes that also means we need to understand that God is God and we are not and empty ourselves so that God can work through us, like empty vessels ready for the wine.

Last Fridays FF: Friends

Posted on May 22, 2009Leave a comment

Ever since I found out I could be the hostess for the third Friday Five of each month, I have not been able to get the thought of friends out of my mind. Being an only child (all growed up) who moved around a lot in my lifetime,
friends have always been very important to me. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once
wrote: “The way to have a friend is to be a friend.”

So today let’s write about the different kinds of friends we have, like childhood friends, lost friends, tennis friends, work friends, and the list goes on. List 5 different types of friends you have had in your life and what they were/are like.

1) JSTACK – there is no other way to describe this group of friends than to simply call us who we are (JSTACK is based on the first letters of our names). We are six women (well, girls at the time) who fell in together somewhere in 7th grade and haven’t fallen apart since! Think “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” meets “Now and Then” and “Stand by Me” only there are six of us and we get together regularly. We have built some amazing rituals around watching each other get married and I can’t wait until some of us start having little ones! Our kids will have five aunts to love them!!!

2) My college “activist” friends – these are my friends who would drag me to protests and who I lived with in a community house with a focus on social justice and peace and the environment. We had a blast together and I did all sorts of things that I never would have had the courage to do on my own.

3) My college “religious” friends – these are terrible distinctions to make between people, and I had quite a few friends who fit both categories, but for the most part, I had my friends in the “progressive action coalition” house and then my friends in “religious life council.” These are the friends that I talked theology with, and discerned my call with. These are the friends that held me accountable through covenant discipleship groups and I worshipped with. These are the friends who worked through parts of the ministry process with me. Five of us went to seminary out of my graduating class.

4) My seminary friends. In many ways – seminary was the opportunity to meld together the “activist” and “religious” sides of my life. My seminary was also known as the “school of the prophets” so it was no surprise that my colleagues would protest injustices and would stand up for the rights of others AND that we had deep theological discussions about why we would do so. My one regret is that I wasn’t more involved in some of the direct action things that happened while I was in Nashville. Some of my closest women friends and I also had a regular tuesday night out during this time that WAS the deepest form of self-care that I’m still trying to find here in my ministry setting.

5) My husband’s friends. Well, they are my friends too =) Since moving back to Iowa, we started hanging out with my husband’s brother and friends – mostly playing video games and watching movies and playing disc golf. And now they are the guys (and I do mean GUYS) that I see most often. In some ways I miss having really good girlfriends around, but at the same time, it’s nice to just be able to hang out with the guys and not have any of the pressure of church around.