When I was a kid growing up in church, there were no mobile
phones, no email, and definitely no such thing as a "FaceBook." If
you needed your pastor, you called the office administrator and left a message.
If it was an emergency and the offices were closed, you basically either looked
at last week's bulletin for the on-call pastor, or you looked up your pastor's
phone number in the book... but those home calls to your pastor were likely few
and far between.
Fast-forward thirty years and much has changed. We moved from
a time where no one had their pastor on the home speed-dial to instant access
via smart-phones, texts, and social media sites. There's actually a great deal
about this that I enjoy. It makes a luxury like a home office much more
manageable. I can work, conference call, start a chat, and even video chat with
congregants while still wearing my pajamas. Visits that a pastor would have
been required to make in person thirty years ago can often be handled
wirelessly and instantly using today's modern technology. I also greatly
appreciate social media websites, like FaceBook, because they can alert me
instantly to a member's status -- whether that status is joyful, anxious, or
depressed. I can learn family names via pictures posted and get to know how various
family traditions are celebrated. All in all, modern tech has brought an abundance
of ministry tools to the table, for which I am grateful.
There are a couple of downsides though. Chief among them is
what I have called the "Always On Pastor." The Always-On pastor is the one who just can't step away from the job.
It isn't necessarily his/her fault, nor is it the fault of the pastor's
congregation. It's simply the 'plugged up' world we live in now.
The Always On pastor has given his personal email, cell phone
number, and home address to any who've asked. He or she has said yes to almost every
request on social media sites, following several hundred people on Twitter, Instagram,
Blogger, FaceBook, etc. At any given time, night or day, weekday or weekend, the
Always On pastor could be connected
to hundreds of different people at once, just like any of us... but people want different things from these connections when it comes to their pastors. Receiving dozens of texts, scores of email,
and requests to "chat" the moment he/she logs into a
social media site, the Always On
pastor has trouble with boundaries.
Confession: I suffer from this condition. Part of it is just the way we
pastors are wired (no pun intended). We sincerely WANT to read every status
update that a friend or congregant posts on a social media site. We sincerely
WANT to see every baby picture, grandchild picture, and beach vacation video. We
want to do these things because most of us have a deep, deep love for people that compels us stay connected.
That's why we became pastors!
Although I suffer from inner compulsions to be the Always-On pastor, I am trying to get
better. It isn't easy. There are just too many cultural expectations to stay "on."
Here are two examples of how this expectation goes down:
Scenario #1 --
Pastor walks into church Sunday morning and sees Jim-Bob sorting
bulletins in preparation for the service. He slaps Jim-Bob on the shoulder and
says, "Why so grim? It's just bulletins." Jim-Bob replies, "My uncle
passed away on Thursday; that's why." Pastor feels embarrassed and says,
"Sorry, I had no idea." Jim-Bob says, "I was surprised you
didn't call. I mean, it was all over FaceBook. I even blogged about my
childhood memories with him. I thought we were friends and you read my stuff."
Pastor confesses, "No, I am sorry," and as the guilt slips in adds,
"It was a busy week, I must have missed that particular post."
Scenario #2
-- The pastor and family are planning a movie night about an hour after dinner. During dinner, the
pastor's smart-phone has notified him of two emails and a FaceBook message.
Knowing he has an hour before movie night begins, he moves to answer the
emails. Then, the pastor quickly logs into FaceBook to check the message that
arrived there. Up pops a FaceBook chat request from Sally-Jo: "Sorry to bother you, but I have really
been struggling with something." Afraid of sounding rude or dismissive,
the pastor begins a chat with Sally-Jo that lasts through the first plot point
of the movie he'd planned to watch with family.
In both these scenarios, the Always-On pastor is assuming a degree of guilt and allowing his
personal boundaries to be eroded. In the
first scenario, the guilt is actually being applied by the congregant. Jim-Bob
is applying pressure by implying that since the pastor doesn't read his blog or
follow his every FaceBook post, then the pastor must not truly be a friend.
In this first scenario, we pastors rarely confront these
kinds of expectations from our members. We feel the guilt of having missed a
birthday, an announcement, or a special post that our members have placed on
social media and we sidestep the disappointment they feel (and often project
onto us) with a quick apology. It's the courteous thing to do, but is it the
right thing to do?
I believe that over time if Jim-Bob's game is to repeatedly call
the pastor out for not following his every post via social media, it may be
time to have an old fashion 'sit-down' with Jim-Bob. There is simply a glut
of information for pastors to muck through on the internet. Following every
member perfectly can't and won't happen.
The second scenario is a little bit different. The correct
response from the pastor should have been: "I hate to hear that Sally-Jo,
would you like to schedule a time to meet and discuss?" The problem is
that feels really harsh and abrupt. We pastors are softies and when people want
to talk or need to get something off their chest, we feel obliged to hear them
out immediately. That's a big part of our own illness too as we fail to set
boundaries.
What strikes me as most odd about these scenarios is that our
culture treats no other profession in this manner. Practically no one would
consider befriending their psychiatrist or counselor via social media. And if
for some reason they did, I doubt seriously they would ask for a quick
counseling session at 8:00PM on a Thursday night. Can you imagine your doctor's
amazement if you walked into his office and suggested he was falling down on
the job because he failed to read your latest health-related FaceBook post? Or
even keeping your doctor's personal cell phone number in your contact list and
texting him health related questions through the week?
Always-On pastors are a product of both inner
compulsions and societal expectations. We want to be connected and are mostly
expected to stay connected. But there are simply too many ways to connect and
too much information for any single person to follow in our modern world.
Attempting to stay "Always-On" will lead to burn-out. It might even
kill us.
Learning to find the off switch is difficult for pastors. And that's the subject of my next entry.
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