It’s Almost Time To Rest!
The Wounds
December 31, 2022 was the last day of a six-year term as a ruling elder at my Presbyterian Church. About a month later, a friend, Steve, and I were at a meeting together and we had to introduce ourselves to the speaker including our position within the church. Steve, who had completed the same six-year term I did, introduced himself as a recovering elder. I wholeheartedly agreed. During the six years we let our music director go, encouraged our youth leader to step down, navigated COVID, had a pastor leave, and dealt with a toxic interim pastor that wounded several people in the church. This experience was one of the reasons for starting the DLGP program. Except for preaching a message one Sunday, I took a sabbath in 2023 from all leadership roles within the church. I felt that I had wounded others and at the same time been wounded myself. I needed to heal from the experience. Leading up to December 31, 2022, I vowed to never step into the elder rule again. I felt that I had wounded others and at the same time been wounded myself.
In the Introduction of Healing Leadership Trauma the author(s) write “Leaders also have issues, struggles, unprocessed pain, and trauma.[1] I find comfort in these words to know that I am not the only person to be wounded by serving as a leader in the church. The authors also write “Dear Leader, you must not try to heal in isolation. While you may choose to read this book solo, consider inviting a trustworthy family member, friend, or therapist on this journey.”[2] I have invited my coach on my journey. Janet has helped me process the healing that is taking place, questioning me throughout if I still have the same attitude about never serving again.
The Necessity of Rest
As leaders it is our responsibility to ensure that we and those who we lead are taking care of themselves. One way to do that is to ensure that rest is practiced. Rowe and Rowe discuss nine different ways to rest in chapter 11, “The Necessity of Rest,”[3] I want to discuss three of these.
Rest in Sabbath
When I first started meeting with my coach Rest in Sabbath become one of the things upon which I focused. I read Peter Scazzero’s The Emotionally Healthy Leader and was convicted by Chapter 5, “Practice Sabbath Delight.” [4] When my older brother was in medical school he would study for 16 hours on a Saturday but always took Sunday off as a sabbath to spend time with friends and family. This is a practice that I have sought to follow for myself and my kids over the years. Rowe and Rowe write “The word sabbath means ‘to stop, to take pause, to be at rest.’ The Old Testament command to honor the Sabbath is for our benefit.”[5] While I regularly take a sabbath from school work and my job each Sunday, what I have struggled with and have sought to correct is doing housework on the sabbath. It seems that there is not enough time during the week to do house repairs, laundry, and/or clean, and Sunday afternoons seem like the perfect time to get caught up. Am I really being at rest when I clean the house or weed the garden? I am not perfect but over the last year I have sought to truly rest on Sundays.
Rest in Play
Rowe and Rowe write, “When we play, our focus shifts from our worries, reduces stress, and nourishes our minds, body, and soul.”[6] This is something Jonathan Haidt discussed in The Anxious Generation, the need to let children play.[7] While in Cape Town I walked into a toy store and was looking at the various toys and games. There was a lady in the store who was asking an employee for recommendations on a game for their family. When he pointed out UNO, she commented that UNO almost caused a divorce in her marriage. Clearly, someone doesn’t understand the purpose of playing a game is to have fun. Now, I’ve seen this win at all costs and throw a fit when things do go your way attitude in my kids growing up. But as a family we played most games without keeping score. Going back to UNO, in our family someone would win a round, but we never kept score. Play should be about taking a break from everyday routines and spending time and having fun with those around you.
Rest in Gratitude
My coach challenged me to read Psalms and explore all the emotion found in them. As I took time to study them, I was amazed at how many of them expressed gratitude toward God. Even those that seemed to start out accusing God of abandoning them ended with the Psalmist praising and thanking God. In the movie The Ultimate Life a young Red Stevens leaves his family and along with a hobo hops a train.[8] Red wakes up to see the hobo writing with his fingers in the air. Red asks him what he is doing, The hobo responds “’I’m making my golden list.’’’ The hobo explains that his ma’ taught him and “Every day, rain or shine, I make a list of ten things that I’m grateful for.” As this program is nearing completion, I want to make a list of ten things that I am grateful for regarding this program.
I am grateful for:
- For my former co-worker who introduced me to the program.
- New friends who live in different countries/states. It’s great to say I have a friend who lives in the UK or in northern Africa, or even Minnesota rather than just Ohio.
- The opportunity to travel and do things I never dreamed I would have ever done.
- The opportunity to read books and hear from authors that I would have never picked up or sought to hear.
- The ability to engage in meaningful conversations over very difficult topics and to stay in the room with one another even when we disagree.
- The opportunity to learn about different ministries and ministry contexts and the passion that each one has for their contexts.
- The ability to pursue addressing a problem that I lament over.
- The opportunity to write weekly blogs, something I may consider continuing in the future.
- Having the opportunity to increase my faith by trusting God and trusting the process.
- Learning many things about leadership and the ability to apply my knowledge in my context.
Thanks to each one of you for your friendship, for challenging me with our conversations, and for doing what each one of you does. My prayer is that for each of us that has been wounded by leadership that we would continue in the healing process and use our stories to make us more effective leaders.
I also hope that each of us can get some rest after February 15th! We are almost there!
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[1] Nicholas Rowe and Sheila Wise Rowe, Healing Leadership Trauma: Finding Emotional Health and Helping Others Flourish, (Grand Rapids, InterVarsity Press, 2024), 1.
[2] Rowe and Rowe, 5.
[3] Rowe and Rowe, 144-154.
[4] Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2015).
[5] Rowe and Rowe, 148.
[6] Rowe and Rowe, 151.
[7] Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2024).
[8] The Ultimate Life, directed by Michael Landon Jr., (ReelWorks Studie, 2013), DVD, (High Top Releasing, 2013).
About the Author
Jeff Styer
Jeff Styer lives in Northeast Ohio's Amish Country. He has degrees in Social Work and Psychology and currently works as a professor of social work at Mount Vernon Nazarene University. Jeff is married to his wife, Veronica, 25+ years. Together they have 4 beautiful children (to be honest, Jeff has 4 kids, Veronica says she is raising 5). Jeff loves the outdoors, including biking, hiking, camping, birding, and recently picked up disc golf.5 responses to “It’s Almost Time To Rest!”
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Thank you for sharing your heart on this blog, Jeff. I have also learned that gratitude can completely change one’s perspective. Thanks for sharing your list of 10. I am thankful for you and the wise insights you bring to this cohort.
Jeff, like Kari, I am grateful for YOU and the contributions you have made to the growth of the cohort. I appreciated your remark in a previous post about changing your mind on something after learning more about it. I think that is an important thing to highlight and celebrate – that it is okay to change your mind. In your teaching role, do your students ever share their reflections of a threshold moment when something changed for them?
Jeff, I am sorry for the experience that you had. Eldership can be a difficult calling. I hope that you will serve the bride of Christ again. The church needs godly people to lead, and you are certainly one of them. The fact that you were wounded in this process and also took responsibility for wounding others, is a sign of your sensitivity to the work of God’s Spirit. I think you have so much to offer. I am also glad that you found sabbath and rest to be restorative. If you were to go back now, what would you do differently?
great post Jeff. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. How do gratitude and grief go together in the Psalms? How do you see the discipline of gratitude being a helpful response, and antidote, to woundedness?
Hi Jeff, thank you for your honesty in this post. I am very grateful that we are in the same peer group and have had more time to get to know and appreciate the person you are. Question on your church, does a change in leadership impact your willingness to consider becoming an active elder again? And finally, I would echo Graham’ss question of what you might do differently.