We’ve all had bad days at work. You know those days when we wake up and just don’t want to go to work, or just cannot wait for a rough day to end. Days that we wanted to find a new job that would truly appreciate our wonderful untapped gifts and talents. Most of us have had times of being overworked, overlooked, and underpaid. It seems to go with the territory of having a job. Have you said to yourself in the past month “I’m just not paid enough for this?” If you’re like most of us, you have had a moment or two when you felt this way. But, I also know that there are other times we look at what we are a part of and say “I can’t believe I get paid for this!” Especially those moments when we see someone that we support have experiences, successes and opportunities that they’ve never had before they came out of an institution. It is at those moments we are getting connected with the true value and meaning of work.
We are living in a world when frustration and stress induced behaviours are on the rise, road rage incidents are becoming increasingly dangerous and frequent, and sick days are no longer accumulating. Depression is skyrocketing and impact of stress leaves are crippling businesses. Just because one is employed by a ministry doesn’t mean that these issues or feelings disappear even though perhaps we had believed that it would/should be different. Rates of depression, stress and suicide are becoming as significant among the clergy as in other unexpected professions such dentists, doctors and police. The feelings of frustration, unfulfillment, helplessness, loneliness and simply just being overwhelmed, are significant and impacts a person’s, and an organization’s, ability to do ‘its work’. It starts when we believe that the work we are doing is no longer making a difference to anyone, especially ourselves and it can happen in a ministry too. Henri Nouwen shares about his own experience and battle of losing purpose and meaning in his work as a Priest in the book In the Name of Jesus: Reflections of Christian Leadership. Nouwen was a successful Yale Theologian, at the height of his career, and hit a personal crisis that threatened to destroy him. In this book he poses the questions that plague the human condition:
- Is there anybody who loves me?
- Is there anybody who really cares?
- Is there anybody who wants to stay home for me?
- Is there anybody who wants to be with me when I am not in control?
- When I feel like crying, is there anybody who can hold me and give a sense of belonging” (Nouwen p. 34).
His challenge to us is that true Christian Leadership is found not in the answering of these questions in our own lives but mostly in the lives of others. I wonder if these are not the same questions that many of the people we support struggle with as well. If so, what is our role in answering these questions for them?
He suggests that perhaps we find the very answers we are looking for in helping others find and answer these difficult questions. I encourage you to spend some time with this easy to read yet challenging small book.
As a Pastor, I have stood at the bedsides of a number of last days and moments of human life – and listened to regrets. It is true what has been said that one of the most common regrets voiced is, not “I wish I would have spent more time at the office or at the job” but spending too little time with loved ones and doing the important things. All have us have heard others make the same regrets and voice these deep frustrations. We can feel caught in a treadmill of life that we can’t seem to stop running on. American writer, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote, in “Walden’s Pond” in the mid 19th century, after watching people in his own time, that many live lives of ‘quiet desperation’, believing that they are only machines without purpose, hope or meaning. If this was his observation in his day, how much more of a reality is it today? One of the dilemmas is that unless we win a lottery, we ‘need to work’. However, I don’t believe the problem is work. My grandmother used to tell me every time I was in trouble, “idle hands are the devils workshop”. There is much truth to that. The reality is many are desperate for work that has value, meaning and purpose. Much of the work that seems to be available in our present day wouldn’t be considered to having value or meaning. The problem, however, is not work. The problem is a bad definition, understanding and application of work. As leaders, we can be instruments of change in people’s lives if we are able to come to a new vision of what work is to be, for ourselves, and for the lives of others.
In the coming posting, we are going to examine together what a new definition, understanding and application of work might look like. We will also consider the implications of work for the people whom we have been called to serve.
Neil Cudney
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