 |
| Credit: Creative Commons (Fortune Live Media) |
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently set off quite a debate in the tech world when she told an interviewer that she works a 9-to-5 schedule:
"I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I'm home for dinner with my kids at 6, and interestingly, I've been doing that since I had kids," Sandberg said in a video posted on Makers.com. "I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it's not until the last year, two years that I'm brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly wouldn't lie, but I wasn't running around giving speeches on it."
Here's the essential questions raised by the tech executive's comments and the debate that followed: In a competitive industry where your work is never truly complete, has it become socially awkward to leave work at a time that used to be the standard?
And are those working eight-hour days that end at 5 p.m. being quietly judged by their co-workers? Whatever happened to "work-life balance"? Worse still: Are those who work these "standard" hours being overlooked for promotions?
Sandberg's timing would suggest that such biases exist. She only felt comfortable talking about her work hours once she had entered the highest levels of management.
I'm not sure that the tech industry is the only field where putting in an eight-hour work day is seen as perhaps a bit too little. It happens a lot in ministry, too.
"But," you might protest, "Being a pastor isn't a 9-to-5 kind of job!" No, it isn't. I have office hours during the week, but I also have early-morning coffee meetings with volunteers who can't meet at any other time, Saturday volleyball and soccer games to attend, and of course, more than a few late-night events. But just because ministry isn't a 9-to-5 sort of job doesn't give us the excuse to overwork ourselves at the expense of our family, our health, or our relationship with our spouse.
We love to work too much.
In some youth ministry circles, it has become a badge of honor to get way too little sleep and to spend way too many nights out "doing" youth ministry. When I ask a youth ministry friend how things are going, they might explain how busy they are and how many things are going on. Usually, that's not a complaint, but rather their attempt to communicate that since they are so busy and so sleep deprived, God is really doing a lot of great stuff.
I understand that there are seasons when things are just busy. During Holy Week this year, my wife understood that I would be leaving early and coming home late for most of the week, because there was simply a lot to be done. And during seminary, I had a friend who regularly pulled all-nighters because he worked almost full-time to maintain health insurance for his family while keeping a full course load. But these should be exceptions, not the rule.
Thankfully, I serve at a church where our leadership would never let busy seasons be the norm. If my boss senses I've been working a bit much, she encourages me to make sure I'm taking time off to be with my family. But I know that not everyone works in that kind of environment. Many years ago, I had a colleague who knowingly scheduled a meeting that easily could have happened on another day on the night of his anniversary. Too many of us have been in a ministry culture where overworking oneself has been the norm so long, that we fail to recognize that there's anything wrong with it.
It's who we belong to, not what we do.
I think the root of overworking oneself as a badge of honor is that we derive our worth and identity from what we do rather than who we are in Jesus. When we believe that we're a good person because we're a good pastor or a good employee, we see no problem regularly sacrificing time with our families to spend more time working. But our work is not our identity. Our work is simply part of our calling, whether we're a doctor, barista, writer, or pastor. Our work--no matter how important we believe it is--is simply one way we serve God.
What's ironic is that when we view your work as a calling, and not as the primary source of your identity, it doesn't require us to spend more time working. Rather, it frees us up to not focus on our work all of the time. Because when you view your work as a calling, you understand that you work in service to a God who is sovereign over everything. And if he is sovereign over everything, you don't have to be, which means you're free to leave your office at 5:00pm to go have dinner with your family.
I love that Sheryl Sandberg--who has made a habit of working 9-to-5 since she had kids--is now speaking out about her work habits. Because she understands a truth that far too many pastors and youth workers need to grasp: Our work is not who we are, and it isn't even the most important thing we do.
If you're interested, here's a video of Sandberg discussing her decision to work a 9-to-5 schedule, even as a high-level tech executive:
QUESTION: Do you think Sheryl Sandberg's work habits are possible for full-time youth workers? In what ways have you struggled to "turn off" your work so that you can focus on other areas of your life, especially if you have a family?
