Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

I begin today with a confession: Sometimes, when I feel like my life is just too full, I skip church. About a decade ago, this is something I would have judged myself pretty harshly for. You go to church not because it’s easy and you feel like it, but because it’s an essential part of a life of faith. Now, I feel I was a little too rigid.

Occasionally, my life just feels too full. Work has been busy lately and I’ve been traveling. I’ve got several to-do lists and several writing and side projects, dozens of emails I haven’t responded to, and of course, I really need to get to the gym. I want to be a good steward of the limited amount of time I’ve got on this earth, but I’ve only got so much bandwidth. I know I'm not the only person who feels this way.

When I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, I often read articles about productivity (instead of actually checking things off my to-do list), and one of the articles I read recently was about information overload. Our brains have a limited capacity for decision-making. We're made to do one thing at a time. Now, we are given more choices than ever and more information than ever and that doesn’t necessarily make our lives easier. We’re meant to be uni-taskers, but we’ve forced ourselves to become multi-taskers.

This is something church leaders and staff should keep in mind: Congregants are overwhelmed with choices in a way we haven't been in the past. Church is another choice to be made and another activity to fill up our time.

Of course, that's not necessarily a reason not to go to church. Church isn't a commodity to be consumed and I also don't believe it should simply be a chore. Sometimes, congregants can't make the meeting because they need to spend time with their family, or they can't come to church because they absolutely need to rest after a week of sleep deprivation.

The flip side of that, I think, is that people don’t want to be a part of an organization that doesn't ask anything of them. Sometimes they need encouragement or even to be challenged. How do we balance that flexibility with accountability?

The answer is, through relationships. We have to know what is going on each other's lives to be both sources of accountability and support, to avoid being just another item on the to-do list. The only way to know when to ask people to step up and when to let them step back is to know them. It’s only when we have some insight into each other’s lives that we can be good stewards of each other’s time.