I don’t have a study to back up my assumption that church staff members need to pray more, but based on my own observations I feel comfortable making the assertion. As Yogi Berra is credited with saying, “You can observe a lot just by looking around.”
Not only that, church staff members I have known would also say they needed to pray more.
But getting pastors and staff members to agree they need to play more might be problematic. Play is something we usually associate with children, playgrounds and recess. When one reaches adulthood, our culture values settling down, getting serious and nose-to-the-grindstone productivity. If this is true of adults in general, it is especially true of ministers. The nature of their work has eternal consequences, after all. They are doing God’s work. That’s serious business. No time for play.
But clinical psychologists and social scientists say adults need to rediscover play. Of course, play takes on a different meaning for adults. After a certain age, playing tag and teeter tottering doesn’t sound like fun! But according to author and psychiatrist Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, play is art, books, movies, music, comedy and daydreaming. In short, it is whatever we find enjoyable that gives our minds a disconnect from the overstimulation of stress.
Competitive play
Does your church staff play together? Do they play at all? I can almost hear some of them talk about playing golf or tennis. But according to Bowen F. White, a medical doctor and author of Why Normal Isn’t Healthy, the only kind of play our culture honors is competitive play. The problem is, if we take the “game” seriously, competition doesn’t disconnect us from stressors, it adds to them. For many people, this kind of “play” is more stressful than working. This isn’t to say that golf, tennis or even Scrabble can’t be play, but it isn’t automatic.
According to Julie Baumgardner, president of First Things First, “Many adults have the mindset that they are too old to play. There is actually strong evidence that this could not be further from the truth. Play may be the very thing that keeps you young and healthy. In fact, studies show that a life lived without play is at increased risk for stress-related diseases, mental health issues, addiction and interpersonal violence.”
Looking for time
But I can almost hear ministers say, “All this sounds good, but who has time to play?” A few years ago, a study conducted by Fuller Seminary found that 90 percent of pastors work more than 46 hours per week. If your pastor is one of those who has a healthier approach to balancing personal needs with professional obligations, you should feel fortunate. But church staff members are often their own worst enemies. Being unable to disconnect from the stress of their positions, they become susceptible to role fatigue, frustration and apathy.
Role fatigue occurs when a person is unable to de-role. I have often heard pastors and pastors’ wives complain that they have to be “always on.” By this they mean they can never step down from the expectations of their roles. Always being “in role” is exhausting work.
Play is the antidote. If a church staff can play together, so much the better! When I was a pastor, our staff tried to take an annual staff retreat. We were fortunate to have a church member with a large beach house and we would drive to Kill Devil Hills each year in the off season to plan and play.
Again citing Baumgard-ner, “The National Institute for Play cites studies that indicate that play refreshes a long-term adult-adult relationship. Some of the hallmarks of its refreshing, oxygenating action are: humor, the enjoyment of novelty, the capacity to share a lighthearted sense of the world’s ironies, the enjoyment of mutual storytelling, and the capacity to openly divulge imagination and fantasies.”
“Playful communications and interactions, when nourished, produce a climate for easy connection and deepening, more rewarding relationship- true intimacy. Who wouldn’t want this in a relationship?” she concluded.
Clinical psychologist Tian Dayton echoes these assertions. She says, “Friends or couples who play together report feeling greater intimacy and closeness. And this sense of closeness develops at a faster rate than normal. Play bonds those who engage in it and helps to shake off tensions and aggressions that might interfere with work or relationships.”
As a personnel committee, you can help your staff build healthy and happy relationships by communicating to the staff and to the church that time away from the stress of their ministries is expected.
In addition, you can provide opportunities for them to “play” together. For example, an afternoon spent watching a movie, then meeting for dessert to evaluate its implications for Christians and the church could be playful, but also useful.
The Gospels do not attempt to shield the reader from Jesus’ need to get away from the press of the crowds and the demands they placed on him. He often withdrew to an isolated place to pray. And he was accused by the religious leaders of his time that he was having too good a time (Luke 7:33-34). He should take things more seriously, they thought. Jesus must have known about playing as well as praying.
Jim White is executive editor of the Religious Herald.