Finding a Healthy "Off" Button?

An Always On pastor is one who truly has trouble separating his or her personal life from the job. Technology makes for easy access and this is both a blessing and bane for clergy (discussed in part one below). All of our lives have become increasingly more public and intertwined. As many debate the pros and cons of this massive influx of electronic transparency, it definitely poses some unique challenges for clergy that are worth discussing.

I know many pastors whose online lives are strictly business. Twitter exists to promote the upcoming church event. FaceBook exists to showcase photos from the last church event. Blogs are treated as theological treatises. I believe there is tremendous wisdom in this approach because it allows a pastor's personal life to remain largely private and separated from his or her work world. It's not too unlike many teachers I know who will not friend a student until after they've graduated. There's too much risk involved when "personal" and "professional" lives collide.

I know many other pastors who take a different perspective with their online identities and display a willingness to inject a healthy dose of personal life into the mix. For some, it is even part of their ministerial calling -- to live "authentically" with their congregations and remove the myth of what my mentor called the "Phantom Christian;" a term he used to describe a Christian whose life seems too good to be true (and in time, it is often revealed that this life was indeed too good to be true).

I've spent most of my ministry career as one of the latter types of pastors, meaning I tend to let it all hang out and let the chips fall where they may. What you see is what you get, warts and all. It's freeing because it is authentic, but it doesn't come without a cost. I am beginning to see great wisdom in the former method because of the buffer it creates around a most precious resource: Time.

On any given day, I will receive between 30-40 texts, emails, and phone calls. Not all of them require a response, but many do. Because most people are at work/school every Monday through Friday from 8:00 until 4:00, a significant portion of these contacts arrive in the evenings and on weekends. That makes setting any "formal" work hours difficult because the moment you start to feel settled in, that smart phone starts buzzing.

Couple that with the burgeoning reality of social media and the sheer volume of people mingling on social websites during the evening hours and suddenly the lines between work life and personal life really begin to blur. As pastors, we might be tempted to believe that we're logging into FaceBook as individuals, just ordinary people connecting with friends and family; however, to many of those who know us in our professional lives, we have just logged in as pastors.

Truthfully, despite whatever we might believe we are doing, we have in reality logged into FaceBook as both pastor AND person. It's not like there is a "pastor cap" that we can put on or take off with ease. No amount of protest or request for more personal space changes this fact. It is like trying to outrun your shadow.

If we can't outrun it or change it, how do we become "regular people" again?

What kind of spaces exist for pastors that are private, personal, and protected?

Finding a healthy "OFF" button is a must for Always-On pastors. Let me be just really honest about it here, I haven't found one that works just yet. I mean here I am on holiday weekend refusing to relax or find an off button. I am blogging about relaxing and finding an off button. I am working for Pete's sake! That's hypocritical to an extreme.

Far too often my personal "OFF" button has been a glass of red wine or an ice cold beer. That's not too unlike most of America I suppose; except we all know what happens: one becomes two, two becomes three, and three becomes something your body regrets. The phone still rings, the text messages still come, and the emails still 'ding' on the smart-phone, but let's be honest -- they are much easier to put on a shelf after two drinks.

This is no solution.  According to some studies, alcoholism among the clergy is a staggering 3-4 times higher than the general population. Those estimates may be high, but certainly there is some truth to the numbers. For many priests and pastors, alcohol has become the only way to resist the compulsions of returning that phone call or answering that text straightaway. I believe the Apostle Paul likely realized this tendency in minister-types early on, which is why he admonishes Timothy to appoint only church elders and pastors who are "not lovers of strong drink."

Sometimes my "OFF" button has a pure disconnect from everything, family included. Overloaded, I have unplugged the phone, but also allowed part of my soul to be unplugged too. I have retreated at times into a mass solitude, ignoring even my most basic needs; I start skipping meals, losing sleep, and as recently as this summer would sometimes chain dip an entire can of spit tobacco in only a few hours.

Other times I retreat into a comic book or better yet, an online game filled with comic book characters! Gaming has its own set of addictions though and it's not uncommon for me to forgo a responsibility in the home just for an extra hour of "play time." It's one boundary for sure, but it costs my closest, most tangible relationships in wife and family.

Although not my personal "OFF" button, many pastors have retreated into the arms of secret lover, carried out illicit affairs, or as in the one of the more publicized pastoral failures of Larry Craig, settle for cheap, meaningless sex in an airport bathroom; or go the Ted Haggard route and trade sex in order to feed a  methamphetamine addiction.

You get the picture. No need to bare out all the details, but if there is one thing I have learned about clergy, it is that we all handle the erosion of personal boundaries differently and not all these ways are healthy. It is often more an act of self-preservation than anything; an attempt to carve out a space that you can call your own because you emptied every last drop of your soul for everyone else. As someone once said, "You can never pour yourself out for others if your own cup is empty and needs a refill." Truer words have rarely been spoken.

Another thing is also most certainly true: the more connected a pastor is into today's technology-ridden culture of immediacy, the harder it will be to find the dividing lines between personal and pastoral time. Truthfully, pastors just about have to get out of town and leave the phone behind to succeed.

In my case, a good vacation really isn't a cure-all. My compulsions run too deep and I find myself returning calls and even making a few of my own. "Just checking in, for posterity's sake," I tell myself. I manage to convince myself that's ok to work on a sunny beach while my children build sand castles and I've been graciously given a week-long holiday to build a few of my own. "Just a quick call," I say. Right, that always works. Not.

Truth is, I've been on holiday for five days now and my mind won't shut off. So what do I do? I spend it contemplating ministry boundaries and writing a blog! And when the writing slows a bit, I jack up on extra black coffee to be more productive. It doesn't get much more ill than that. ;)

In the gospels, Jesus retreated many times from the crowds. He even retreated from the Twelve. I sometimes wonder if He had a cell phone if He would have been tempted to take it with him. Jesus said, "Come to me all who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest." This is one of many great promises that He made.

The irony of Jesus' saying is that answer to our need for an "OFF" button lies at the very center of our "work." The person that we've just put in 70 hours talking about, reading about, praying to, working for is somehow supposed to transform into our personal rest. A great irony indeed.

I think maybe at the end of the day, all this talk of an "OFF" button is misguided. Pastoral rest and personal boundaries are simply a different kind of "ON."

In that sense, the Always-On pastor must be just that -- Always On. It doesn't feel like a solution, but it is the best thing we can do. Retreating into His presence is a boundary all its own, if we allow it to be. It certainly beats the alternatives.

Stay rested friends!