I get to be around a lot of pastors and church planters (yes, I did say that I get to be around them). I love to hear how God is working in different church families throughout the region. I am fascinated by hearing about different church models and approaches to discipleship. I often think of The Church (all local collections of believers living life together) as a beautiful mosaic, or one of those pictures that’s made up of a bunch of tiny pictures. Every church has convictions and every church has a model and how beautiful when we all work together to make, mature and multiply disciples.

But, quite often, when I talk with pastors and church planters, there’s a disturbing trend (a disturbing trend besides “Pastor Fashion,” that is). So many pastors and church planters are simply stressed out. Many of them, though in the infancy phases of their church plants, are already wrestling with burnout. Many are ministering out of obligation and struggling to keep the status quo.

It’s no wonder that so many pastors are so stressed out. After all, we’ve created a culture in which inordinate and unhealthy amounts of pressure are placed on pastors. We’ve adopted the “Three B’s” (Buildings, Butts and Budgets) as measures of success and failure. After all, the church with more people must be doing something right, right? And if that’s the case then we’d better adopt a model of church that gets and keeps people in our main gatherings because that’s where we can count them and make sure they give money to make sure that we excel at the “Three B’s.” Once we adopt the B’s or some variation thereof, we are required to “x” number of people in our main gatherings because our business model, uh, er, I mean ministry model is tied to that baseline number of people. And, much of the pressure of getting and keeping “x” number of people falls on the pastor.

This creates all kinds of false expectations about the role of the pastor and what church should look like. Consider this description of a new book on Amazon: “Churches are defined by the weekend teaching.” Wow, that’s a ton of pressure on 35 minutes-1 hour/week (depending on your pastor’s preaching style). So consider the pressure that the pastor now bears: if I have an “off” week, the entire church is in peril. No wonder so many pastors are so stressed.

A few years ago, I remember listening to a message from Tim Chester. He was talking about something very similar; he found himself talking to a lot of pastors who were wrestling with burnout and saying things like: “I can’t wait for my sabbatical; I can’t wait to get away from all of these stresses.” To this day, I remember Chester responding that he simply didn’t understand such sentiments. He loved ministry and felt like ministry was anything but a burden.

I think I finally have a glimpse of what Chester was talking about. Don’t get me wrong, I could use a sabbatical, but that’s more because I want to write several books than I can’t wait to get away from my church family. For perhaps the first time in my ministry life, I can say that ministry is a joy. I mean, come on; I get to see Jesus change people’s lives! I get to see idols exposed and knocked down. Of course there are difficulties. Of course there are problems and even stresses, but I think I’m finally beginning to understand what Jesus means in Matthew 11:28-30:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

How is it that so many of us and so many pastors feel the Christian life and ministry as a burden? I will labor with all my strength to help the people of Church of the Cross, but their problems are not my burden, they belong to Jesus. It’s not my church, it’s Jesus’ (Matthew 16:18, Ephesians 5:25, etc.) and it’s not up to me to “grow the church,” I’m called to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20) and to shepherd (1 Peter 5:2) and equip (Ephesians 4:11-13). Ultimately, so many of our pastors are wrestling with burnout because we’ve forced round church in to a square hole. We expect our pastors to be salesmen, PR people, organizers, ralliers, motivational speakers and, above all, business men. That’s a heavy burden. One that we’re not meant to bear.

I wonder how many ministers view ministry as “easy and light”? Not that it’s easy because we don’t care; it’s easy because it’s ultimately Jesus’ burden, it’s Jesus’ church, not ours.

Success or failure in the church should not be measured by buildings, butts and budgets but by transformed lives. But let’s be honest: I’m not going to be invited to speak at a conference because our church contains many people whose lives are being transformed. That’s not sexy but it’s biblical.

It’s no wonder so many pastors are stressed. But it’s insanity to think that we can keep adopting false measures of success and failure and that the church will somehow change.

•  Read Sabbaticals, Burnout, Ministry Models and Missional Communities
• Read Sabbaticals, Burnout, and “Leadership”
  

I heard a story the other day on NPR about a new theory of  social engagement called “gamification.” “Gamification” is defined in the piece as: “the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems.” In other words, it takes the idea of reward/consequence and applies it to everyday situations, it turns things like obeying the law into a sort of game.

To help us understand what “gamification” might look like in everyday life, the following example was given:

Say you’re zooming down the highway, when you spot one of those speed-limit enforcement cameras from the corner of your eye. You hit the brakes, but not before the camera’s flash catches you breaking the law. A speeding ticket is surely on its way to your mailbox.

Now, imagine that same camera also snaps a photo of your car when you are driving at or under the speed limit. For your safe driving, you are entered into a lottery to win a portion of the money from fines paid by speeders.

The piece goes on to say:

Instead of being structured around punishment and negativity, the speed-camera lottery is all about positive reinforcement. If you drive the speed limit, or under it, you may win some money.

And that positive incentive to create better behavior is a core tenet of games.

Another great example is The Biggest Loser, a show where they have taken something usually very private; the admission that I’m over-weight and the journey to rectify that, and turned it into something not only public but competitive. Gabe Zichermann, co-author of the book Game-Based Marketingand chairman of the Gamification Summit says:

What’s interesting about Biggest Loser and other gamified examples of weight loss is they hew to a model for user rewards that I call SAPS.

SAPS stands for status, access, power and stuff. Zichermann says those are things people want in their lives as rewards — in that order. “It turns out,” he says, “that cash isn’t that good of a reward. Status is a fantastic motivator for getting people to do stuff.”

My first thought was that this was ridiculous but the more I thought about it, of course it makes sense. Our popular sayings remind us that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. We are motivated by reward. In fact, the more I thought about this concept, the more it began to remind me of “Christian Hedonism” (which now has it’s own Wikipedia page, so you know it’s legit).

The basic premise of the concept of Christian Hedonism is that, yes, we have been created to pursue joy and fulfillment and even reward. But the problem is that we seek these things in all the wrong places. Instead, we should pursue them whole-heartedly, even zealously, in God. We have been created to pursue joy. In fact, many biblical passages support this idea:

• Nehemiah 8:10: the joy of the LORD is your strength.
• Psalm 16:11: You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore
• Psalm 34:8: Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
• Psalm 43;4: Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy
• Psalm 119:3: How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
• Hebrews 11:6: He rewards those who seek him

There are other passages we could look at, but the thrust is still the same: we have been created to seek reward. We have been created to seek joy. It’s so interesting to me that the Swedes have now tapped into our natural desires to get people to drive better. What if we adopted this strategy with all of life? The problem (or at least one of the problems) is that not enough Christians are truly filled with joy to suggest to others that there is truly a better reward to be had.

This is part of the irony of someone like Ned Flanders on The Simpsons; on the outside, he always pretends to be so happy, but on the inside, he’s just like everyone else. But, what if we really believed that in God alone there is “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore”? What if we obeyed out of supreme gratification and joy for what He’s already done for us instead of trying to earn His favor? What if we full-throttle, whole-hearteedly, over-the-top pursued reward, but we pursued it in God?

The idea of “gamification is not wrong in and of itself, it just offers the wrong reward.