There’s is not a nerd known to humanity with a deeper sense of responsibility than the sound and production crews within houses of worship. However, along with that noble character trait, there lies an equally significant flaw: We don’t know how to rest.
We laugh about it like there’s a prize for whoever sleeps the least or stands behind the board the most Sundays in a row. Sometimes our rest is traded for a bit of delusional pride. But none of us would ever fall for that, right?
For a group of people who have essentially built careers around people of faith, we often become intertwined with the most critical hours of their social engagement every week. We want to rise to the level of expectation and beyond, but we have to set a realistic pace that we can run for years – or it goes downhill quickly. Do you know anyone who’s ever burned out? It’s not socially endearing. We have to take time to rest.
Down time doesn’t make appointments with us so we have to schedule it. (Write that down.) If you’ve created some life-consuming monster out of a position where plates are spinning as far as the eye can see, your best bet is to develop some recruiting and delegation skills.
If you’re trudging the same hamster trails, carrying more and more weight each year, you’re digging a rut. Keep it up and it could get too deep to escape. Then it’s a grave. What do you want on your tombstone?
Pedal To The Metal
At one point in my life, while employed at one of the three churches on my resume, I realized I had been clocking 80 or more hours each week for almost three months. We’d been preparing for a major facility upgrade and several large projects fell directly into my lap.
During a push to prepare for an international conference we were hosting for the first time, we painted everything in multiple buildings, replaced almost all the carpet on the property, upgraded the sound system in each building and added a multi-camera video recording system including the lighting rig from hell. All done in less than three months, with a dozen or so volunteers and me.
My position encompassed managing the property itself as well as production crews and systems, all under the formal title of media director. Basically, anything involving sound or maintenance required me to be on the property. Yeah, I should have seen it coming.
During this season, I became one of only two known male members of the church to ever sleep in the ladies lounge. The lighting came in late and without all the hardware for installation, literally the day before the conference. A friend stepped up and we worked through the night to get the lights installed and operational. The sound of the front doors unlocking for the Sunday morning service woke us up.
I freelanced during most of those years, so I would sometimes spend two or three weeks each month on the road. Out there it was a lot of noise, driving and slinging boxes. At home, it was long hours at the church and strained relationships. And it wasn’t getting better.
I was convinced I could manage the enormous web of responsibility I was rolled up in but the spider of inevitability was already closing in. I hadn’t slowed down and the good stuff in life was blowing past me in a blur of missed opportunities.
The Tipping Point
After working a long run in Fresno with overlapping Prison Fellowship events and a Billy Graham crusade, I came home utterly exhausted. I still remember the moment I touched the front door of the church on my first day back. The stress and pressure overwhelmed me and I went down. My knees buckled and I was on the ground before I knew it.
It wasn’t a heart attack but it was the first of a series of anxiety attacks that arrived randomly over several years. I ended up on antidepressants and medication for hypertension. Not long after I was presented divorce papers. It wasn’t my best season.
