{"id":1656,"date":"2012-11-23T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T19:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thisrestlesspilgrim.wordpress.com\/?p=1656"},"modified":"2015-03-19T16:02:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T23:02:17","slug":"the-ministry-iceberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2012\/11\/23\/the-ministry-iceberg\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ministry Iceberg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ah! It&#8217;s good to have another day off work! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>The other day while I was in the car my thoughts drifted back to the first time I coordinated a large church event. I remember I was amazed at how much time it took to plan, prepare, run and clear up afterwards. I had been to similar evenings before as a participant, but I had no idea how much work was involved in staging such an event. I&#8217;m equally sure that the majority of those who attended that night saw\u00a0only fraction of what was involved, in much the same way as you only see a small portion of an iceberg above the water:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-15504\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/iceberg.jpg\" alt=\"iceberg\" width=\"287\" height=\"191\" srcset=\"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/iceberg.jpg 768w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/iceberg-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 287px) 100vw, 287px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with a friend who&#8217;s deeply involved in lay ministry in the Church and I shared with her the image of the\u00a0<span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8220;ministry iceberg&#8221;<\/em><\/span>. We spent quite some time talking about this and about work-ministry-life balance. Unfortunately, I&#8217;ve known lots of good people who were involved in ministry &#8211; young adult groups, Bible studies, social ministries &#8211; and they eventually ended up quitting, exhausted and burned out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/exhausted-300x216.jpg\" alt=\"exhausted\" width=\"270\" height=\"194\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s often said that if you want something done, ask someone who&#8217;s busy. I&#8217;ve found this to be equally true in parish life. It is those who are already far too busy who are at the top of the pastor&#8217;s list when he&#8217;s looking to hand out jobs. This routinely results those people being overloaded, like <span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8220;too little butter spread on too much bread&#8221;<\/em><\/span>, to quote Samwise Gamgee.\u00a0This has happened to me a couple of times and it&#8217;s not pleasant, being run so ragged that I&#8217;ve been of no real help to anyone.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Burn-candle-at-both-ends.jpg\" alt=\"Burn candle at both ends\" width=\"270\" height=\"175\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Over the last few months I&#8217;ve worked very hard at forging an improved work-ministry-life balance and getting better at saying <em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;No&#8221;<\/span><\/em>. I&#8217;m interested to hear about your experience with similar situations:\u00a0<em><strong>H<\/strong><strong>ave you ever got burned out? What do you do to prevent it?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah! It&#8217;s good to have another day off work! \ud83d\ude42 The other day while I was in the car my thoughts drifted back to the first time I coordinated a large church event. I remember I was amazed at how much time it took to plan, prepare, run and clear up afterwards. I had been to similar evenings before as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1786,2969,635,1785,1787],"class_list":["post-1656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-burn-out","tag-featured","tag-ministry","tag-stress","tag-tired"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56611,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions\/56611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}