We need to give ourselves a break
Tuesday, October 26, 2021 at 03:38PM 
Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!’ – Matthew 13:8-9 (Gospel lesson from Today’s Daily Office)
We clergy like to think we’re the good soil in the Parable of the Sower; that when the Sower scatters his seed (Gospel) indiscriminately, it falls on us and we produce good work/fruit for the sake of Jesus and his Gospel. And often we do. But the seed from the Sower isn’t the only thing being scattered upon us to which we’re called to respond. For parish clergy, there are myriad demands placed on our life and work. Managing these demands is necessary if we wish to survive and thrive in parish ministry. A “Demand System” is any formal or informal, spoken or unspoken, set of expectations that we receive in our lives. Naming them and responding to them with spiritual and emotional intelligence by separating out that which is important (as opposed to urgent) from that which is less important is key to our surviving and thriving.
For example, if clergy have a family, a demand system exists. Our families have obvious expectations for our time and energy. All the other demand systems circle out from that one: our neighbors, the parish, the community where we serve, the bishop’s office, the national church, not to mention our own ordination vows. Those vows, too, are a demand system in that we promise to produce fruit when we’re ordained. All of this can become exhausting as we try to navigate (and in some ways, satisfy) the demands placed on us in the various systems in which we live. Some are bound to receive less of our attention than others.
Let’s stick with only church demand systems. The parish makes certain formal and informal demands on us. Some are unknown/unspoken and we only learn about them the hard way. Just trying to meet all the demands the system makes is overwhelming. And just when we’ve learned to manage these demands well, the bishop’s office and the national church lay more demands on us (lead the parish through racial reckoning, advocate for LGBTQ rights, combat climate change, work for affordable housing, etc.). The list could go on and on. And those are all important concerns that need addressing, but the continual onslaught of these demands (and often they’re unfunded) come at us and can beat us down to the point where we wonder whether we’re the only one exhausted by trying to meet them all. So, we ask: “How do other clergy do all that? Surely, they have their acts together more than I do? My hunch is they’re asking the same questions, but they’re keeping it to themselves, afraid to show any vulnerability.
We need to give ourselves a break. God has (it’s called Grace), so why won’t we give ourselves one? The answer probably has to do with our need to be seen by others as gifted, competent, and a producer of a great fruit. So, we all pose as such and together, we drive one another to exhaustion. What if the church changed its demand system to function by grace and not by the works/fruit we produce? What if we acknowledged Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest and we are not? I know we say that with our lips, but then why do we spend so much of our time and energy trying to satisfy the church’s demands in order to somehow justify our positions in the system?
+Scott
Brother Scott Anson Benhase, OA
Vicar, St. Cyprian’s, Oxford, NC
VP of Province IV
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RELATED RESOURCES
In Shaping the Parish Resources in the Core Models section are several PDFs on demand systems
A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery" A Practical Theology of the Parish Church includes several mentions about demand systems. In the paperback see pp. 105-106; as an Ebook do a search for "demand system"
In Your Holy Spirit: Shaping the Parish Through Spiritual Practice looks at the demand system issue on pages 16-18, 132 - 136
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