Workplace trauma after the earthquake

In response to the urgent need, Skylight has developed a practical and unique hand book for employers, managers and team leaders in organisations and businesses impacted by the Christchurch Earthquakes and aftershocks - When trauma and grief come to work.

Employers are not only dealing with their own trauma and grief but are faced with the trauma and loss in the lives of their staff and customers too.

Hard copies are also available 0800 299 100 or email rs@skylight-trust.org.nz

The booklet/pdf looks at a variety of issues: post traumatic stress, grief, coping with staff reactions, looking after yourself as an employer, support organisations and more.

Short sleeps = poor concentration

Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for a week. At the end of seven days, how would you be feeling? You'd probably be hungry, perhaps a little weak, and almost certainly somewhat thinner. But basically you'd be fine.

Now let's say you deprive yourself of sleep for a week. Not so good. After several days, you'd be almost completely unable to function. That's why Amnesty International lists sleep deprivation as a form of torture.

So begins a short article by Tony Schwartz on the fact that we need more sleep each night than most of us allow ourselves. High achievers, in particular, always want to make the most of that extra late-night hour. Others just don't want 'to go to bed so early.' But Schwartz says that the result of having too little sleep is that we work at a considerably reduced capacity. Better sleep means better focus and concentration in a shorter time.

I'm pointing to this article out of concern for the health and wellness (are they the same thing?) of ministers, many of whom have broken sleep and interrupted sleep; it's part of the nature of the job. But few of them make up that sleep. And that only leads to worse sleep patterns.

Keeping the Sabbath

Vineyard USA puts out a magazine on church planting called Cutting Edge that I haven't come across before - it's available online. In volume 14 no 3 (which is undated but by the looks of some of the content came out some time before October this year) the focus is on being bi-vocational, that is, having a job that keeps the food on the table at the same time as you're trying to establish a church.

This may not be something many NZ pastors experience (but I could well be wrong) but the articles on this topic are very interesting. However there's another focus in these articles, particularly the first two, and that's the point that in order to survive two jobs you actually need to keep taking Sabbath rests.
Peter Scazzaro (author of The Emotionally Healthy Church) discusses emotional health and bi-vocationalism, and has important things to say about giving priority to cultivating your relationship with Jesus, placing your wife and family before the church, and keeping your own emotional health healthy by having times of rest and change. He warns people that to practice bi-vocationalism any other way is cultivating peril. He also has some interesting things to say about the idolatry of 'success' that can arise in church planting.

There's also an interview with Marva Dawn, who's been a great promoter of Sabbath rest for many years. She says: Pastors often say to me, “I can’t keep the Sabbath; I’m much too busy.” And I respond, “Then you’ll really want to keep the Sabbath, because you’re much too busy.” Sabbath is a great cure for busyness. To take that day enables us to reorient all of our time. Furthermore, in practicing Sabbath, we rethink how we spend our time so that we use it the best and most wisely.

She notes how when she was doing her PhD she was expected to read 350 books in seven months, and discovered that it was still healthier to take a Sabbath than try and work through every day of the week in order to keep up.

There are three or four other interviews on church planting from various aspects, all of them equally worth reading.

Get thyself a spiritual director!

Len Hjalmarson writes: If you are in paid ministry, or if you are overseeing a group of people and have oversight of their souls (you may be a CEO but your heart is pastoral), find a spiritual director. For your sake, for the sake of your family, for the good of the kingdom – do it.

He goes on to quote Henri Nouwen, (writing in Reaching Out):

“At least part of the reason for this lack .. is that we ourselves do not appeal to our fellow human beings in such a way as to invite them to become our spiritual leaders. If there were no students constantly asking for good teachers, there would be no good teachers. The same is true for spiritual guides. There are many men and women with great spiritual sensitivity whose talents remain dormant because we do not make an appeal to them. Many would, in fact, become wise and holy for our sake if we would invite them to assist us in our search for the prayer of our heart.

“A spiritual director does not need to be more intelligent or more experienced than we are. If is important that he or she accepts our invitation to lead us closer to God and enters with us into the scriptures and into the silence where God speaks to both of us… Often we will discover that those who we ask for help will indeed receive the gift to help us and grow with us toward prayer.” (p 98)

Palliative Care

We don't have to remind our regular readers that one of our main topics in this blog is the increasing 'grayness' of New Zealand, that is, the proportion of our population that is elderly is increasing.   This is providing challenges for those in charge of infrastructures and social policy.

A recent report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, entitled 'The Quality of Death' ranks New Zealand third out of 40 countries for our quality end-of-life (palliative) care.   (Palliative care means relieving or soothing the symptoms of a disease or disorder without effecting a cure.)    It says: It is no surprise to find countries such as the UK, Australia and New Zealand high in the overall ranking, given their relative wealth, advanced infrastructure and long recognition of the importance of developing national end-of-life healthcare strategies.

As the Maxim Institute notes: The report points out that palliative care makes financial sense, but perhaps more importantly, it challenges us to ask important questions about life and death.

They go on to say:
A doctor's job is, appropriately, to preserve life. But death is also a reality for every person, and must be faced. The "Quality of Death" report ranks various countries' performances in end-of-life care, using a few key indicators: public awareness about death; quality of care available; and cost and availability of that care. New Zealand comes in third behind the UK and Australia. Countries that rank particularly poorly tend to face the challenge of negative taboos or cultural perceptions about death that make palliative care very difficult. Some countries also are challenged by restrictions around the use of painkillers, resulting from concerns about drug trafficking and illicit use.

The remainder of the Maxim Institute's report is on their website and the full report (39 pages of pdf) is available online here.

Theology of self-care

Roy Oswald's book, Clergy Self-Care, begins by looking at the theology of health/wellness. A colleague provided the following notes in relation to this section of the book:

• God is omnipotent and omnipresent, ministers are not!

• God in Christ has done all that is necessary to redeem the world. Ministers do not need to save the world again.

• Mission and ministry belong to whole Body of Christ; a communal activity. Ministry does not belong solely to the Minister.

• Ministry should be a response to an experience of the grace of God. However motives can become distorted and ministry can flow from guilt or the seeking of personal fulfillment.

• Ministers are created beings, and with all humanity have limitations and weaknesses.

• Human beings are responsible for the stewardship of God’s world and themselves.

• God has given a model of self-care in observing the sacred rhythm of work and rest, the Sabbath. Jesus provides a model of doing ministry and taking care of himself; a balance of work and rest.

• Ministers need to learn that to be a person of compassion; we must not to be strung out with every human need that comes along.

• The biblical view of human beings is that the body, heart, soul and mind are all interconnected, parts of our whole being.

On being a new minister

There's an excellent post on the Per Crucem ad Lucem site today, entitled: Pastors aren't Prophets - some unsolicited advice for newly-minted ministers. It's by Rick Floyd.

In it he discusses (amongst other things) the need for ministers to gain the respect of their congregation by being a faithful pastor to the people day in and day out - only then can you speak prophetically to them, and have them listen.

You need to be aware that in spite of all our calls for self-care and avoiding burnout, a minister's job is never going to consist of a forty-hour week, with no evening/night calls or weekend work. It's truly a full-time job...though that doesn't mean you mustn't take any time off. As he writes:

One of the modern heresies (but by no means the only one) of the contemporary mainline church, is that you can have something akin to a normal 40 hour a week professional life and be a faithful pastor. It isn’t true. A pastor’s life, and the life of the pastor’s family is necessarily involved in the community of their congregation in season and out of season. Sometimes, even often, it is wonderful; other times it isn’t. That’s the way it goes. It isn’t the Canyon Ranch spa. I often say being a pastor is the best vocation there is, but perhaps the worst job. If you are not called to it, it is something you really don’t want to do.

And a little later:

One of the things I learned was that you have to love your congregants, even the unlovable, of which there are far too many, and who take up a good deal of your time. If and when you find yourself loving them, you know you are on your way to really being a pastor. Some of them you will just never learn to love, and you have to turn them over to God, who does.

Floyd probably packs more wisdom into this one article than you'll find in many a day. Essential reading.

Steinke on congregational health

Peter Steinke is well-known as a writer who deals with issues in churches. One of his most widely read books is Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach.

Whether you find lists of suggestions about problems helpful or not, the one he presents in an article entitled Twenty Observations about Troubled Congregations is worth a read.

The list covers quite a lot of ground, and on one reading you're unlikely to take it all in; quite apart from that, some of the points take a bit of unpacking. If you're having issues in your church, it's probably better to consider two or three of the points that seem particularly relevant, and begin from there.

Just for starters, here's point number one:

Most people are interested in relieving their own anxiety rather than managing the crisis or planning for a clear direction. Their primary goal is anxiety reduction, not congregational management.

You may or may not agree - it may depend on how easily you fall into anxiety or whether you're a person who stands up straight when everyone else is becoming anxious (!)

Check the twenty observations out. You're bound to find some of them useful.

Leaders keeping on learning

In the book, Supervision in the Helping Professions, the authors discuss the need to continue to learn and flourish in your work environment. Since this relates to National Mission's ongoing concern for the health of ministers and leaders in the church, I thought I'd add here a couple of lists they include in their chapter on the topic (notes in brackets are mine).

Firstly, in relation to being effective at work:

1. Be in love with learning. Stay at your learning edge and have a learning project.

2. Be clear about your learning style and keep expanding it. [Knowing your learning style helps you be sure that you're learning at your own pace, not at the pace of others.]

3. Attend to your emotional well-being.

4. Increase your capacity to relate to and engage with others. [They suggest going outside your comfort zone of people you relate to easily.]

5. Attend to your physical well-being - diet, exercise, sleep, breaks. [Days off!]

6. Have a personal or spiritual practice. [For Christian leaders, this means not neglecting those spiritual disciplines - they're often one of the first things to fall off this sort of a list.]

7. Find a group of good co-learners/fellow travellers. [People who encourage you - people who can mentor you.]

The second list will appear in a separate post.

Clergy Self-Care?

I do not think clergy need more lectures about self-care.

It seems that at every ordination or installation service I attend there is a charge given about clergy self care. One minister stands up and tells another minister that they know they are about to work themselves to death, so resist the temptation. “Take your day off…set boundaries…don’t try to be all things to all people.” All this is done in front of an audience of lay people who are supposed to be impressed that we clergy would need such a lecture. It has become a cliché, and seems to have trumped prophecy, theology and the love of Jesus.

Lillian Daniel begins a short post on clergy self-care in the above fashion. Is she right about what she's saying: do clergy make more noise about self-care than they do about actually achieving anything in this area? Are clergy worse off than the average working person? Do you think her answers to the question are the right ones? Read the post and let me know.

Mission - and Health

In today's 'Star' - one of the local Dunedin freebie newspapers - there's a front page article about Dr John Arnold and his plans to open a Health Centre in the main street before Christmas.

So what, you say? Well, the difference with this health centre is that services will be free to any and all patients. John is concerned that there are a lot of people slipping under the radar in terms of health care, and he's hoping that by providing free care, more people will be able to have access to health advice and services.

And why am I particularly interested? Well, John and I have been getting together nearly every week for several years, since I first met him and took him through a discipleship course after he became a Christian. When the course was complete we decided that it would be good to keep getting together, and so we have.

The result is that I've been witness to John's long journey to get this free health clinic idea off the ground. And it's been quite some journey, particularly this year when John took a deep breath, began to work only part time at his usual practice, and spent many hours a week looking for premises and getting people involved and finding additional funding and everything else that was needed. The premises have been in hand for a couple of months, but of course there have been the usual delays from those in the world of bureaucracy.

We often hear of people going to third world countries to do medical mission. Here with the Servants Health Centre is an example of how you can do it in your own country.

Cracked Pots

While trying to track down a book called The Cracked Pot, the state of today’s Anglican parish clergy, by Yvonne Warren, I came across an article from 2007 on the Church Times archives, called What Price Priesthood? by Rachel Harden.

It discusses clergy burnout, stress, the difficulties of being ill and then having to recover within the parish, long hours with little time off, and other problems of ministry. Yvonne Warren, herself the wife of a clergyman for 40 years, notes that the Church in the 21st century is experiencing a cataclysmic time of change, with huge implications, and says, “This has affected patterns of ministry more than most, and many clergy are feeling the impact of this, not just in terms of workload, but in their sense of frustration and feeling of increasing irrelevance in a largely secularised society.”

Another book is mentioned in the article: Clergy Burnout: Recovering from the 70-hour work week. . . and other self-defeating practices by Fred Lehr. Lehr had a terrible time saying “no”, and loved feeling needed. “In reality it exhausted me, and I hated constantly being caught between my family and my congregation. I found myself helplessly falling in what we call burnout.” He sought help, and used his experience to work on a specialised treatment programme.

The Society of Martha and Mary produced a report in 2002 called, Affirmation and Accountability. In it they called on dioceses and other church structures to provide more constructive solutions for clergy who were on stress-related sick leave.

The article is fairly long, but well worth checking out. There are several personal statements at the end from people who have been through burnout and similar struggles.

Unfortunately, The Cracked Pot is now out of print, and only available through Print on Demand at the publishers, Kevin Mayhew. Affirmation and Accountability is also hard to get hold of in NZ (there is one copy, at the Kinder Library). Clergy Burnout is more readily available.

Presenteeism

In the August edition of NZ Management, there’s a one page article called, Why Health = Wealth. It's written by Peter Tynan.
We’re all familiar with the word, absenteeism, but in this article a similar word, presenteeism, is introduced. It relates to people who come to work sick, and the impact on productivity associated with having them there in that state. The biggest cost to businesses in relation to their staffs’ poor health is presenteeism.
It’s not a matter of making sure people stay away when they’re unwell, but ensuring that people are more healthy in general. According to some stats, 70% of workers have a “state of health equivalent to an older person, with 20% rated as having the health of someone a decade older. Nearly a third were rated as obese while stress levels were poor to bad for 43%.” As recession stress only adds to ill-health.
At present it’s estimated that “two thirds of New Zealand companies offer employees health and wellness interventions. “ But further investment in this area is needed, particularly as the workforce ages.

Old people and mental health

In a national study of older peoples' mental health services in Britain - Equality in Later Life - the following paragraph stands out:
As a result of the ageing population, the number of people with dementia in the UK is set to increase significantly. At present, there are approximately 700,000 people with dementia and it is estimated that there will be over a million people with dementia by 2025. The financial cost of dementia to the UK each year is over £17 billion and is set to increase.
While younger people in Britain have been increasingly assisted in terms of mental health issues, older people have received the short end of the stick. In fact, the framework for mental health only addresses the mental health needs of working people up to the age of 65. Part of the issue is cost: it's estimated that eliminating age discrimination in adult health services in England could require an additional £2 billion, against a current spend of £8.4 billion.
The situation is unlikely to be dissimilar in New Zealand. Here is another area in which churches could begin to think beyond their current approaches to older people, and become innovative.

Loneliness

How lonely are you? How lonely are the people in the congregations you work with?
You can check out your own state of loneliness by looking at the UCLA Loneliness Scale - it'll only take a couple of minutes.

Chronic loneliness is as unhealthy as never exercising, not looking after your heart or your blood pressure. Increasingly medical people are realising that loneliness may be a major factor in people dying younger than expected.

Salon.com published an article by Katharine Mieszkowski a few days ago on the subject. Even though it doesn't mention the spiritual side of life to any extent, it looks closely at the problems of loneliness and their physical effects.

How can congregations minister to the lonely? Can they be helped at all?

Child stats in NZ

The Otago Daily Times' editorial this morning uses a number of highly emotive words in its discussion of child injury and death in New Zealand. The writer tells us that two children die every week as a result of accidents, and that we are killing our children in their hundreds.

But a look at the Ministry of Health figures, rather than World Health Organisation or Unicef Report Cards (both of which have are flawed because they don't always compare like to like) show that between 1991 and 2005 the unintentional injury death rate for children under five dropped from 23.1% for males under five to 15.1%. The female figure, on the other hand, grew a couple of points from 12.8% to 14.14%.

In the 5-9 age range, both male and female figures dropped, from 12.8 and 9.5 respectively, to 6.7 and 6.3.

10-14 year-olds showed the same downward trend: males down from 20.4 to 8.7 and females down from 6.3 to 3.3.

Part of the issue of using international comparisons is that reporting is inconsistent. Reports may not relate to the same years or the same basic standards, and many countries take time to catch up with reporting on issues. The current reporting on bullying dates back to the early part of this century, not only in NZ, but also abroad.

In the editorial, Jean Simpson, of the Injury Prevention Research Unit, is reported as saying, 'compared with other wealthy nations our statistics are appalling.' Unfortunately, like so much else in this editorial real stats are not actually given, only an emotive statement.

According to my reading of the Ministry of Transport's graph on Road traffic injury and death rate per 100,000 population aged 0–14 and 15–24 years, 1985–2007, deaths from road accidents for the period have dropped, rather than increased.

The Ministry of Social Development report on Children and Young People: Indicators of Wellbeing in 2008 (Safety) states,

In 2006, New Zealand’s road death rate for youth aged 15–24 years (16.9 per 100,000) was just above the OECD median of 15.8 per 100,000 for that year. New Zealand ranked 18th out of 27 OECD countries, a considerable improvement compared to 2005, when New Zealand ranked 25th with a rate of 22.4 per 100,000. New Zealand’s 2006 rate was similar to that of Canada (16.4 per 100,000 in 2005) and Australia (15.8 per 100,000 in 2006), well above that of the United Kingdom (11.2 per 100,000 in 2006), but well below that of the United States (25.5 per 100,000 in 2005).
[This report can be downloaded from the Ministry of Development]

Stats are a useful tool, but always need to be checked, double-checked and possibly triple-checked. In one episode of TV series, The West Wing, Sam Seaborn commands his staff to find the stats on some obscure area, and to get three different lots of stats, so that he can compare what is being reported. Clarity is always an issue.

Equally, stats tell us nothing of the pain and anguish of those involved with the death of a child. The recent Nia Glassie trial was atypical in showing adults expressing little concern over the death of a toddler; most parents and relatives are deeply shocked in such circumstances.

Thus, while any decrease in deaths from unintentional injury is something to be rejoiced about, there are still many people out there who have lost someone precious to them. And that should always be a concern. Guilt trips from anonymous editors do nothing to help.

Wellness and overwork

I was alerted to the following quote by . It comes from an article on the site called RethinkingMission.org. It was written by Neil Richardson.

"Finally, a more personal comment is about re-connecting with our deepest selves. In the first year of my first circuit appointment I had to take some time off through overwork, and I guess most of us battle with diaries which are too crowded for our own good. The New Testament encourages us to distinguish those pressures we are under which come either from inside ourselves or from other people, and those pressures which simply go with the territory of being a disciple and a presbyter or deacon in the Church of God. About those pressures the New Testament is extraordinarily positive; ‘in all these things, we are more than conquerors’ (Romans 8.37). But we need to distinguish the pressures which are inseparable from our vocation from those which are not. So I end with part of a letter written by Bernard of Clairvaux:

‘How long can you be like a spirit that goes out and never comes home again? How long can you give everyone else your attention – but not give yourself any? Yes, if people treat themselves badly, how can they be good for anyone else? So think on this: give yourself some space. I’m not saying, Do that all the time. I’m not saying, Do it often. But I am saying Keep on doing it, again and again. Be there for yourself, in the same way that you are available to everyone else – or at least be there for yourself when everyone else has gone’. (Quoted in Seeing Christ in Others, ed. Geoffrey Duncan, Canterbury Press 2002, p.184).

Incidentally, this blog has suffered a little from lack of posts over the last couple of weeks due to preparations for the Presbyterian General Assembly, which took place from the 2nd Oct till today (the 6th). For those interested in catching up with what's been happening there, you can read the daily reports on the PCANZ Presbyterian website.

MAKING DISCIPLES' above 'GROWING HEALTHY CHURCHES'

Neoleader suggests we should prioritize 'MAKING DISCIPLES' above 'GROWING HEALTHY CHURCHES'.

I've included the headings to the post here - check out his comments on the blog.

> Otherwise there might be a lot of people who never come to faith.

> Otherwise I might be tempted to do what is best for the church, rather than the person.

> Otherwise I might spend all my time celebrating the things that make our church healthier, rather than the stuff that is happening outside the church.

> Otherwise I might try and convince all our Christians to serve inside the church, and give 10% of their money to the church.

> Otherwise I will do whatever I can to make our church healthy and growing, even if it is sick and dying.

There'll be follow-up discussions on:

We should prioritize 'GROWING HEALTHY CHURCHES' above 'MAKING DISCIPLES'

We should consider them both to be equally important.

Men and Depression

One of the areas National Mission Office has been concerned with is the health of Presbyterian ministers around the country. Ministers can suffer from burn-out, depression and the symptoms that go with these. And often they feel forced to keep on keeping on because ministers are supposed to be capable people.

Male depression is only just beginning to be regarded as a prime source of suicide amongst men in mid-life - as recent tv ads will have indicated.

Via an article in the magazine, Grapevine, I've just become aware of a site called MenAlive.com. It focuses on depression, mid-life crises, irritable male syndrome (that's right, no typo there), and other related issues.

It's an American site, but it has a links page that is global in its range. And quite apart from that, depression is common to mankind (and womankind, or course!)

Suicide and Occupation

A report has recently come out called Suicide and occupation in New Zealand, 2001-2005. It's published by the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 14, 45-50.

It's published by Gallagher,L.M., Kliem, C.,Beautrais, A.L., Stallones,L. (2008)

You can access the full text online for free (although you have to register first, but that's free as well).

A total of 2,024 suicide deaths were reviewed. Being non-waged was seen as being a risk factor for suicide and those working in farming, fisheries, forestry and the trades had higher suicide rates. The article discusses the reasons including the depressive effect of chronic pesticide exposure and toxic chemicals amongst farmers and tradespeople.