If you will remember, we have been chatting about the idea that tiredness is the symptom, not the problem. Maybe we need to stop and see what the tiredness is telling us about ourselves, the way we see God, and the way we see creation.

Today, the topic is perfection in an imperfect world. Perfectionism is an easy sin to hide. We may say that we “pursue excellence” or simply “want to do things right” and those are admirable goals. The opposite of perfectionism is not what I am calling for in this article. This is not a celebration of slothfulness or slovenliness; it is simply facing what is true about ourselves and the world around us. Perfectionism seems to be born from two faulty beliefs, first, that perfection is possible on this side of heaven, and secondly that you are responsible and capable of making perfection happen.

Embracing the reality of a fallen world can be troubling. I want to arrange my life so that if Christ returned I wouldn’t be disappointed—I want everything in order, my kids growing in wisdom and love, ministry going well, and a fully funded 401K. God never intended for the odd chasm between Eden and heaven to be so comfortable and perfect that our hearts would be fully content. He allows us to long for Him. As Larry Crabb states, “there is something wrong with everything on this side of heaven”.

Armed with our false belief that perfection is possible, the perfectionist then believes it is up to him to put it all in place. This can show up in many different ways in a person’s life—it can look frantic, desperate, overly organized, or it can look as if he is procrastinating. Yet no matter how it looks on the outside it is exhaustion on the inside. This belief will also destroy interpersonal relationships.

There are two types of perfectionists—internal and external.

External perfectionists compare themselves and their behaviors against others, exhausting themselves in comparison and analysis. At the seminary, I see students not just comparing themselves to Steve Brown or Tim Keller, but attempting to copy and emulate them to the point of exhaustion. This type of perfectionist is easy to spot. These students are rarely enjoyable to spend time with; however, they are often very effective in ministry due to their drivenness.

The more troubling type of perfectionist is the internal perfectionist. They are comparing themselves to an idealized version of self that does not exist. They spend hours in internal dialogue chastising themselves for mistakes and flaws. They may be quite gregarious on the outside, but on the inside they are exhausted. What is the solution for our false beliefs and our perfectionist comparisons? One must begin with the image that one carries of himself and of God. It is not what we say we believe that determines how we behave, it is what we really do believe. If the core image of yourself is that “I am a failure, I can never amount to anything”, or “I must prove myself” these are all images that lead to perfectionist thinking.

The fig leaf of perfectionism doesn’t cover up a flawed view of oneself. It also doesn’t cover the flawed view of God. Most of us in ministry are secretly working out some cosmic deal we have made with God. If we are good enough, if we serve enough, if we are “perfect” enough, then He will be pleased with us and is “obligated” to bless us. How surprised we will be in heaven, when we realize that it really was not about us. He bestowed his blessing by making us his children. He was calling us his beloved from the very beginning.

So from one internal perfectionist, who is repenting from taking so long to write this blog,
I hope this day finds you resting in the arms of a loving perfect God, in an imperfect world.

Wow, that seems angry.

The problem is that I also love our youth pastor. I thank God that there is someone speaking to my kids about truth. I have prayed for other adult Christians to influence my kids. Do you think the youth staff and maybe even my own kids can sense my ambivalence? (I’m getting tired just writing this down. Holding two competing ideas in your soul at the same time will exhaust you.)

My hope in this entry is not to come clean about my incongruent emotions about our youth staff, no, my hope is to speak to the issue of tiredness. A few entries ago I suggested that maybe our tiredness was a symptom of a problem and not the real issue. Last time I suggested that understating your internal wiring (and the natural tendencies of others around you) would help alleviate your tiredness. In this entry I would like to explore the issue of incongruence.

God often reminds us in scripture that we will reap what we sow. Certain fruit tress will consistently produce certain fruit. Jesus’ hardest words were reserved for individuals who lived one way on the inside and very differently to the outer world. He compared them to white washed tombs. The lack of congruence has the long term effect of exhaustion. First of all—all of us struggle with some incongruence. My most common prayer is “God let me become the man I pretend I am”. No one on this side of heaven is completely free from the reality of our own inconsistencies and sins – it’s just that God takes them seriously. The greater the discrepancy between the real and fake, between our condition and our calling, and between our internal and external, the greater our tiredness will be.

How will this play itself out? For some the place of incongruence is a secret habitual sin. The secret use of porn or the over reliance on a prescription drug are examples of hidden areas which may be causing great exhaustion as you try to live out your calling to pastor and struggle unsuccessfully against a habitual sin. You will notice that you are becoming less vulnerable and more cynical. Yet, not all incongruities are sin. For example, doubt about your faith is not sin. This is a hard one for pastors –after all, we are professional Christians. How can I doubt-and more honesty what will I do-for a living if I do not believe. Doubt about our faith then becomes buried and our faith becomes wooden and stiff. We only speak about our problems in the distant past tense. God is not afraid of your doubt or your honest questions… we are the ones who are afraid.

Another place of incongruence is found in secret plans to leave your church (or our family) and find another church or even a different profession. Over the years I have found pastors to be notorious for conjuring up fantasy jobs and careers. I know pastors who spend hours each week combing the listings but never applying for a different position. They are actively building one ministry while they are actively dreaming of another. This is very common in church ministry or any other position that is so relationally and politically charged. Yet, if you do not admit it, you will feel double minded and that tension will manifest itself in fatigue, anger or irritation. I don’t think Jesus was kidding when he said the truth will set you free – just be careful where you tell all the truth. Recently a pastor told me about his hidden fantasy that his wife of ten years would die in a car accident (of course he would never leave her) and he could pursue his old college sweetheart. I bet his wife can sometimes sense the ambivalence.

Please do not believe your own hype – we are all scared. We all have fears. Everyone feels lost and lonely at times. God will meet you in all of this if you seek him. Maybe the reason He invites us to live in the tension of the “already but not yet” is that it produces a bit of incongruence that invites you to be more dependent upon Him.

The common solution for competing ideas is to compartmentalize or become numb. If you compartmentalize, the anger or doubt becomes locked away in a hidden room. It may manifest itself in your life with a tough attitude or actions, yet many people live very compartmentalized lives. The problem is that it takes significant energy to keep everything locked away in separated places. You live your life like the kid in the swimming pool trying to hold two beach balls under water at the same time. You can do it but it’s hard to enjoy the swim. It will exhaust you.

The other common strategy with incongruence is to be numb – after all, you feel kind of crazy that you both hate and love your job. No one wants to feel that tension – so we try to feel nothing. We all know stories (from our own lives) and see them in the news about people who have been caught in a behavior that they had outwardly strongly opposed. Allowing locked, hidden rooms in our minds or attempting to just numb the problem can produce that kind of behavior.

So how do I deal with this and maybe even find some peace?

First of all, do NOT confess all your incongruence in your next sermon. It might be your best sermon ever but it may also be your last. Find a safe place to tell the truth. Start with a friend (not the head of the elder board), an old college friend from seminary days, a spouse or a counselor. The negative power to make you tired is in the keeping of the secrets. Satan has a vested interest in keeping you quiet, lonely and tired. I am not just talking about secret sins, I am including benign secrets. How you feel about church leadership, how you feel about the youth pastor who is trying to make you look bad and how you feel about the slow movement in your own spiritual life. The most important conversation about your incongruence should happen with God. You are not alone in this, you have good company. One third of the Psalms are laments and the writer often sounds crazy. He is ranting at the beginning of a Psalm and yet at the end he is praising God. Maybe real praise begins with sorrow and confusion. Maybe a prerequisite for new and strong faith is confusion and confession.

Jesus did not die on the cross, and shed his precious blood so we could pretend. So dump your bucket – first to him (just be willing to sit and listen to what God might have for you). Then share it with others when it is the loving thing to do.

I need to finish this blog; I have a meeting in a few minutes with the youth committee at church. Thanks to my confession here I am looking forward to going.

Next time we will continue our series on “what is your tiredness telling you” by talking about perfectionism.

Speaking of my job – the purpose of this note to you is to address one of the possible reasons for our tiredness. In my last blog post, I suggested that your tiredness is not the problem but a symptom. So in the next few entries we will explore some of the reasons that you are exhausted. One of the possible reasons lies in not understanding how you are wired. Psychologists call it temperament and with both great anecdotal and empirical evidence it seems that we all have tendencies that are not based on character or simple choice. They are based on hard wiring in our personalities. Consider two different pastors who are attending church socials after a long a hard week. The extroverted pastor can participate in introverted activities and can learn to enjoy solitude, but receives energy from being with people and most likely always will. An extroverted pastor will “work the crowd”. He will be tired but becomes revived around people. He will stay until the end and will be heard saying, “The church needs more events like this.” An introverted pastor at a “covered dish” supper may show up late, find one person to sit and talk with, be extremely gracious with a few people the entire evening and not particularly enjoy the activity. He will leave the event even more tired than when he arrived. He will look at his watch and wonder “how soon can I leave and still get credit for being here”. Being alone energizes an introvert. The issue is not character, the issue is temperament.

Fun facts about temperament – most people do not leave the pastorate for theological reasons – most people do not leave the mission field due to theological differences. They leave because of interpersonal issues with co-workers, elders and parishioners. It is often not issues of right vs. wrong that drives anyone out, it is the inability to read, understand and manage our own hardwiring and the hardwiring of others. We spend countless hours trying to convince a realist that they need to think like an idealist. You may try to get your youth pastor to be more detailed – after seeing all the empty fast food containers in his back seat. He may own stock in McDonald’s. We all have internal tendencies that are based on biology rather than discipline. Researchers have even identified basic temperaments in infants. Follow up studies show that the temperaments identified in the nursery are very consistent into adulthood. So, some of your tiredness may spring simply from a lack of knowledge of your hard wiring and shear exhaustion from swimming up stream.

We still need to do things that are difficult for us – but we need to prepare for it. I need an entire morning to grade papers or write. When I do our taxes the whole family has to leave the house and I need to prepare – I listen to blues music. I surf the web for a while. I must be up against a deadline. When you are working against your wiring it helps to have a sense of urgency. I eat nasty food because I feel so entitled and then I get to work. The guy who says, “I just spend a few minutes everyday putting in my data” and shows me his spreadsheets is not wired like me. If you work against your wiring it will take more energy and will need a better plan. I still need to do my taxes –it will exhaust me in a way that it will energize someone else.

The first step may be just to identify your own tendencies. Become a student of your own temperament. It can be done formally by taking some basic personality tests like the Myers-Briggs or a Disc test.* Contact a coach, spiritual director or a counselor and have them give you one of the formal assessments. You could also do it more informally by asking your spouse, friends and co-workers to describe your relational style. Remember the reason you study yourself is not for the sake of self – there are such better things to focus on in life than ourselves. You do not want to become self focused. No, you look at your temperament so you can untimely love others better and serve Him more effectively. See what things in your job description go with your wiring and which ones go against it. Get help and assistance with your weaknesses – don’t try to hide them. Everyone who works with you knows anyway.

Next become a student of the people around you – how is your spouse wired, your kids, your elders and members of your staff. As an extrovert I think while I talk – so I do not need time to formulate an answer. I figure out what I am going to say as I am speaking. However, one of my kids is more of an introvert – when confronted he needs time to formulate his answers and to think on how to respond. I had to learn to parent him in the way he was wired instead of demanding a quick response to my questioning or concerns. I am finally learning that he will be more comfortable and more thoughtful in his responses if given time to think about the situation before he is forced to go toe to toe with me. Real love is giving the way the recipient needs it not in the way the giver wants to give it – doesn’t the cross teach us that?

You may be tired because you are swimming up stream and do not even know it. You may be tired because you are trying to make your staff, family and friends work, think and behave like you. I guess with the right experts and enough resources you could teach a pig to sing but the pig would not like it and it would never be very pleasing to the ear. So learn about your wiring. Realize that some wiring was yours at birth and some developed as a way to cope with life. It’s good to explore how and why you are wired the way you are. It will save you a lot of time and it may be one of the reasons for your tiredness.

You humble me with your willingness to read these thoughts – next time I will explore the issue of “incongruence” as the reason for your tiredness– until then I have some papers to grade.

* one of my favorite web sites dealing with temperament is: typelogic.com

Wait…before I go any further, maybe a personal introduction may be in order. Let me anticipate your discerning question, “Who is this guy and why is he writing on our pooped pastor web site?”

What qualifies me for this blog is that Steve Brown owes me big – I’m a story teller and Steve steals my stories and tells them to others. So from the bowels of guilt my friend and colleague at the seminary asked me to share my thoughts with you. Truthfully, I am humbled by this idea. To have an audience with you is truly a privilege. I am a licensed psychologist and have worked on church staff as a counselor and family pastor (in a previous life I was a youth pastor, I think, but that is blurry). At the seminary my greatest privilege is to teach future pastors, specifically issues related to counseling. I have a wife, two sons and a dog named Pavlov (you caught that didn’t you?). I submit these ideas to you for your encouragement; I pray that God will give you renewed hope and strength.

Now let’s return to my tired friend and the three streams of unhelpful advice. The first stream is the “whining creek.” The listener will often say things such as, “You poor guy, nobody understands you, and you have such a hard job.” This stream has a positive short-term effect, yet one that could become a justification for self absorption. There is some truth to the fact that people do not understand the pastor’s role and job, but accepting a victim’s cloak can lead to a growing sense of entitlement. This type of empathic stream is helpful is some ways, but it often misses God’s bigger purpose in the situation.

The next stream is the “suck it up” stream (it takes a big straw!). Often the advice goes something like, “You have a calling, now get to work and quit complaining.” This is the type of thinking that birthed the line, “Eat your brussel sprouts because there are children in the third world who are starving.” Just sucking it up and burying your emotions can foster legalism and burnout. Denying the symptom prevents one from trying to determine where the loneliness originates.

The third stream is the “fix it” stream. Day timers, Blackberries, seminars, the latest books and gadgets all indicate that you have chosen to manage the tiredness instead of wrestle through it to see where it leads. You have probably tried all of these options, and you know the latest lingo, but at the end of the day you still find yourself exhausted, misunderstood, and lonely.

What is the answer? What do we do with our exhausted souls? The obvious answer is rest. When Jesus was appealing to the exhausted and burdened, he promised rest, explaining that true rest is obtained by learning from the Gentle One. We often do not consider the unlikely route to rest: listening to the exhaustion. Being tired is not the problem; it is the symptom of a weary heart.

What does the beat of a tired heart say? It could be an invitation by God to explore. He seems to be more interested in our growth and loving dependence on him than our comfort. Don’t get me wrong, exhaustion is an invitation to rest, but it is also an invitation to reflect. One might be tired because he/she is working outside of one’s giftedness. The tiredness may be a result of living life by the demands of others, or your own unreasonable goals. Perfectionists are always tired.

Weariness could be the result of constantly scrutinizing ourselves against the perceived perfection of others. It could also be the natural result of ministering in a fallen world and doing it alone. Whatever it is, don’t repent of being tired. Don’t try to justify, manage, or deny it. Listen to it. The promise is that we will find rest. Don’t strain against this new yoke; we are learning He is gentle and humble in spirit.

Eugene Peterson once said that the job of pastoral ministry is “not to solve people’s problems or make them happy, but to help them to see the grace that is operating in their lives.” When you are tired, you cannot see the grace, so my prayer for my friends in pastoral ministry is to stop trying to ignore the tiredness, stop living as if you can figure things out and solve all your problems. Allow the tiredness to become a tool used by the Gentle One to move you toward honest reflection so you can see the grace and find true rest.

In the next few blog entries I will consider some of the possible meanings to our tiredness. I am humbled and delighted that you took a few minutes to read my thoughts – thanks. May our good God meet you, teach you and reveal Himself to you in your tiredness.