UNSTACKING WORK OVERLOAD
Ronald B. Gifford
April 1, 1987
When I first encountered input saturation, I didn't recognize it. It was my first year of ministry, and our district superintendent had invited me and his other charges to the stark and therapeutic wilderness of Camp Fred Looke in Wisconsin for rest and encouragement.
Our retreat speaker was enthusiastically outlining new approaches for outreach Bible studies, or premarital counseling, or whatever was the current hot topic-I fail to remember now. I was scribbling notes as fast as I could, grateful for the practical help-good, solid answers to my general incapability.
Then I saw it: the man next to me, twenty years my senior, wasn't writing at all. I looked around and realized no one who had been in ministry more than five years had paper or pen! Many stared vacantly into space. The inspiration and instruction wasn't going to travel home with most of them. They had come to our annual gathering for relief from the grind, merely tolerating the superintendent's lectures. I prayed with naive arrogance, "Lord, help me never be apathetic about the work of the ministry (and I thank you that I am not like other men)."
My eagerness had me trapped by my third annual trip to Fred Looke. By then I had attended so many seminars and had read so many books about ministry, I was working wildly to do everything a conscientious pastor is supposed to do. There were many voices telling me, "If the Sunday school is going to be strong, the pastor will be actively involved in it," or "Invest your life in your young people," or a dozen other things-you-must-do.
This time, I escaped from the superintendent's seminar and went for a long walk in the frozen woods. I couldn't listen for another minute to somebody listing what else I needed to do. Sitting ...
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