Spouses end up paying a high price for the extra commitment we invest in the office this time of year.
Christmas season in the church world can be truly all-encompassing. From late November all the way until the end of the year, the lives of many in ministry revolve almost exclusively around planning and executing the year's most important services.
If it results in a great worship experience but leads to relational or physical damage, was it really worth it?
Even this year, when many churches are moving towards an online-only experience, there remains pressure to effectively plan and execute a high-quality Christmas service.
For many in the church tech arts, this is a season where “badges of honor” are earned through late nights, long work weeks, and buckets and buckets of caffeine.
But is that the best way to do it? Is it really the most healthy process, and does it yield the best results? If it results in a great worship experience but leads to relational or physical damage, was it really worth it?
In a year that has already been so different, perhaps this can be the season where we break the pattern of past years and work to effectively implement healthy boundaries around the Christmas season, redefining how it looks both at work and at home.
Getting our priorities straight
For those with families, spouses and kids end up paying a high price for the extra commitment we invest in the office. We may miss Christmas parties, fun outings, and long-lasting family traditions.
We don’t want the family’s lasting memories to only be that we were absent from everything fun—and then have them blame the church for damaging the family.
Instead of just shrugging about the fact that we’ll miss out on some things, maybe we need to start being more intentional about managing our time before and after Christmas so we can invest in our family and create traditions of our own.
When the rehearsal and service schedules are finalized, we need to immediately identify a night or day before then that we can commit to protecting as a family day. That can then be the day we go look at Christmas lights, bake cookies, make memories. That way, we’re able to still invest time and energy into creating meaningful moments with our family that can help carry them through the following weeks when we’re unavailable.
Likewise, we might miss opportunities to do things with family on Christmas Eve or Christmas day due to church programming. So, are there things we can set aside time for on the week after Christmas that can become new family traditions? Can we create a “day after Christmas” tradition of staying in pajamas all day and watching movies?
Before things get cranked up, we need to identify windows of time (or days) that we’re committing to not working on show prep.
In this busy season, we don’t want the family’s lasting memories to only be that we were absent from everything fun—and then have them blame the church for damaging the family. Instead, we need to take advantage of opportunities to create new traditions and memories that can help offset those we missed.
For any of this to work, though, it requires us to take responsibility and be proactive in changing things.
This holds true on the work side, as well.
We need to mentally shift away from being proud of how many hours we work leading up to a big event. So it’s critical that we set boundaries at work. If we’re constantly running ourselves ragged, eventually our effectiveness wanes and our work takes twice as long.
So, before things get cranked up, we need to identify windows of time (or days) that we’re committing to not working on show prep, and to allow others, whether at work or in our families, to hold us accountable.
There needs to be clear breaks where we can leave the building, get some sunlight and a real meal instead of bagged chips and bottled soda, and recharge our batteries. We need to have defined days off to spend time with our families. We need to have defined stopping times where we are willing to leave the church and go home, regardless of what still needs to be done—time to catch up on sleep and keep our minds sharp and effective.
Beware the unending rehearsal
When rehearsals are discussed and planned, there needs to be group consensus on implementing a hard stop time so that they doesn’t run until midnight. Sometimes there’s a limit to how much you can run the same thing over and over again at 10 p.m., so perhaps it’s not worth staying for hours to keep beating a dead horse. Maybe it’s better to just cut off at a certain time and come back tomorrow.
So, if there’s commitment that the band, drama team, or dancers will wrap up rehearsal at a certain point, we need to add our own boundary of how long we’ll stay after rehearsal to tidy things up. Yes, we may need to make tweaks with lighting programming or how a certain instrument will be EQ’d, but we need to set a limit on how late we’ll stay to do those things once the room clears out.
The point: we need to cultivate a big picture perspective of the long-term consequences on our physical and relational health.
Setting the proper boundaries at Christmas, and committing to them, can help ensure that we're truly balanced enough to offer our lives and efforts as a sacrifice to the King who gave us so much more.
