A friend commented recently that I use the word ‘unpacking’ a lot.  It’s true: as a traveller I find myself unpacking frequently, and being of an orderly disposition I don’t really feel settled in until the case is unpacked  and everything’s neatly packed away.  You know I’m really tired if I get home late but leave the bags unpacked on the floor till the morning.

But it’s not this sort of unpacking that she was talking about.  It’s when unpacking is a metaphor for reflection on an experience, an emotion, or event.  You could equally call it processing, but I think that sounds a bit too, well, process-oriented.

In my experience mission workers do far too little unpacking.  We carry a lot of clutter around with us, and often pay a price for taking our ‘excess baggage’ with us.  It can be very unhealthy to take with us everywhere we go our crates of past disappointments, frustrations and hurts.  Spiritually and emotionally, it’s good to travel light.  So how do we get rid of our excess baggage?

Unpacking is the activity of reviewing what has happened to us, reflecting on it, learning the lessons, and moving on.  We are most accustomed to doing this when we have a debrief.  We look back at our last term of service and review what went well, or badly, and how we grew as a result.  Truthfully recognising our role in the events, and how we reacted to them, helps us.  It can bring emotions to the surface which, once acknowledged, can be dealt with.

People who follow Ignatian spirituality do this practice regularly, in many cases at least once a day.  They call it the Examen.  It’s a very healthy procedure which involves analysing how we feel, particularly if a strong emotion has surfaced.  We can do it periodically, often in the aftermath of a challenging event or incident.  Asking ourselves such questions as Why was I so angry?  What was I afraid of? or What made me feel so happy? will help us learn about our emotions and understand our responses.  By examining our choices and our reactions, we create a place in which we can forgive those who have wronged us, and repent of the wrongs we have done.

Sometimes when emotions rise up it’s because  we feel vulnerable (even if it’s only subconsciously) It has been compared to  sitting on top of a wobbling pole, so we try to re-establish security by placing big rocks around the base of the pole to stop it wobbling.  These rocks represent potentially compulsive behaviours like shopping, drink or drugs, being a star employee, excelling as a parent/partner/child, eating, or having sex.

These activities, while not necessarily wrong in themselves, help to bolster our short-term feelings of self-esteem, so when we’re tempted to indulge in one or more of them to excess, it is helpful to ask why.  It may be that some recent experience has undermined our self-esteem so that we need to take steps to feel good about ourselves.  The problem is that none of these activities actually delivers long-term good self-esteem, so we have to keep on doing them to feel good.  Only a full appreciation of our relationship with God in Christ can set us free from this cycle of compulsive self-destruction.

Sometimes we experience emotional instability because we are carrying too much excess baggage.  It’s rather like having a case which won’t shut without us sitting on it, so the stuff inside keeps spilling out at inopportune moments.  This is what happens when our emotions burst unhelpfully into daily life.

The solution is to open the case and get everything out.  Take a good look at each individual item (memory, emotion, experience) and decide whether you really need to keep it.  If not, throw it out.  If you do need to keep it, fold it up neatly and put it back in the case, which will now shut properly.

Orderly unpacking will help us travel lighter.

(with respectful acknowledgements to the AA)

Earlier this year I was at a conference where the speaker tried an icebreaker.  ‘If your organisation were an animal’, he asked, ‘what would sort of animal would it be?’ Everyone around my table was studiously avoiding eye contact, trying hard not to go first.  I was muttering to myself ‘I hate things like this.  I’m just not creative enough for this’ when he asked his second icebreaker: ‘If your organisation were a car, what sort of car would it be?’

And it instantly hit me – Syzygy is an AA van*.  We help broken down mission workers.  We fix the problem.  We get you where you’re going.  And though you might only see one person when you deal with Syzygy, there’s a whole team of experts behind him.

Within a matter of minutes I had refined this image further, to detail the types of services we provide:

Roadside assistance: We’re there for you when you break down.  Advice on stress, debriefing, mentoring and hospitality can help get you back on the road.

Relay: Wherever you’re going, we’ll help get you there!  We provide practical  support, from lending you a car to advice on preparing for re-entry, with online guides to missions on our website.

Homestart: When things start going wrong in the field, we can help by providing pastoral visits, problem solving, crisis management and relief staffing.

As a result of that revelation, we are changing our image.  We think that this imagery fully encapsulates our ethos of help, support and practical problem solving.  In future we’ll be using a photo of a flashing orange light as our logo, and we’ve adopted a new tagline:

THE SUPPORT SERVICE FOR MISSION WORKERS

I did think that ‘rescue service’ or ‘emergency service’ sounded more punchy, but on reflection we decided that this doesn’t accurately reflect the fact that much of what we do is not done in a crisis, but is about preventing a crisis happening.

A new image, but the same service – striving to keep mission workers in good physical, emotional and spiritual condition so that they are able to at carrying out their God-given mandate.  Our new flyer is out this week.  Click on the image to the left to read it.  If you’d like some copies to display at church or in your workplace, please email tim@syzygy.org.uk

*Other breakdown services are available.  Actually I should have chosen RAC because at least they’re orange like Syzygy.

Early autumn can be a beautiful time in England.  It’s often warm, and the golden sunshine lights the reds, russets and browns of turning leaves.  Fruit ripens, seedheads pop and dewdrops diamond the spiders’ webs.  In a tradition going back millennia before the start of their own religion, Christians take some of the harvest into their places of worship to honour the God who gives them food.  Yet in the midst of the rejoicing, there is hard work organising sheafs of wheat, displays of elaborately plaited bread, and vases of chrysanthemums.  One lady commented cheerfully to me, ‘I’m glad we only have to do this once a year!’

The feast of Passover is in essence a similar event.  Although six months removed from the English harvest, Passover is a celebration of the barley harvest as well as of the Exodus.  Joyful pilgrims went up to Jerusalem from all over ancient Israel to celebrate together.  The third day after Passover is called the Feast of  First Fruits, when they took their tithe of barley to the temple.  One Sunday nearly two thousand years ago, such a band centred on a rabbi from Nazareth.  With his twelve lieutenants, assorted women who funded his work, and possibly dozens of hangers on, he would have found difficulty staying in the crowded city, so they all stayed at the home of some friends in Bethany.

Martha and Mary remind me of Marilla and Anne in the book Anne of Green Gables. I can imagine Martha fussed with the responsibility of catering for so many: ‘Well, Anne, we’ll need to wash all the best crockery, and get some of my pickles out of the larder, and for goodness’ sake let’s have none of your daydreaming today!’

‘Oh but Marilla, isn’t is SO exciting that Jesus is coming to our home!  I’m so happy that I could die perfectly contented even if the rest of my life were misery and squalor.’

It’s not surprising that Martha got stressed with the catering.  It would be a massive task hosting such a crowd.  Yet Jesus, who presumably ate the supper she cooked, said that Mary, distracted from her responsibilities by the joy of being with Jesus, had made the better choice.  It seems that Jesus is not looking for servants – he already has plenty of those.  Jesus is looking for kindred spirits.

Many of us active in ministry are so busy with the work we do for God, that we often don’t have the time to sit down and be with him.  We run around Marthaing away, and seldom sit and Mary.  In order to combat the stress and busyness in our lives, we need to make time listen to what Jesus has to say to us.  One friend of mine has it in his job description to spend one whole morning in prayer each week.  We may think that’s a luxury we cannot afford with so much responsibility to carry, but if we asked Jesus whether he’d prefer us to be busy, what do you think he would answer?

"He had compassion... go and do the same"

…He first loved us (1 John 4:19).  I never really understood this verse until a woman I hadn’t really noticed began to pursue me.  Slowly, I responded to her persistent overtures until I realised she had provoked in me a sentiment that resonated with the love she had for me.  And then I understood that I do not love God out of my own resources or efforts; I simply respond to God’s lavish love for me.

In his first letter, John writes a lot about love.  For him, it is proof of how genuine our salvation is.  An ancient story tells that he endlessly repeated his injunction ‘Little children, love one another’, to the exasperation of some of the younger members of the Christian community.   The Apostle of Love had come a long way from being a Son of Thunder (Mark 3:17).  I am sure many of us working in the mission field often feel more like calling down fire from heaven (Luke 9:54) on those who don’t receive our message than persisting in faithful love for them.

And therein lies our challenge: we are called to love the unlovely, the hostile and antagonistic, the corrupt, the uninterested and indeed all the different types of people that we come across in the police stations, immigration offices, shops, schools, farms and churches where our work takes us, yet we so frequently run out of love.  We give so much that the well runs dry, and a relationship is damaged as a result.  We end up breaking down from exhaustion.

In the discussion preceding one of his most famous parables (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus makes it clear that we fulfil the greatest commandment by loving our neighbour as ourselves.  Our devotion to God is expressed in our compassion for humanity, of which the Good Samaritan was a prime example as he rose above racism and hostility to care for his enemy even at risk to himself.

The ability to live like this can only come from God.  As the Holy Spirit lives in us, so does the love of God, inspiring us and equipping us to love others (1 John 4:16).  It should not be something that we have to force or fake – since we are born of God, it is only natural that the children should bear the family likeness, and do just what they see the Father doing (1 John 4:7).

When we find ourselves ill-equipped to express this compassion, when our resources have run out and we feel we have given all we have left to give, then it is time to read again 1 John chapter 4 and remind ourselves how much love God has given us…. and then pass some of it on.

This is the first in what we hope will become a devotional series, aiming to provide some spiritual input to complement the practical and pastoral support Syzygy provides for mission workers.

It’s a while since we last talked about stress, but it hasn’t gone away.  So far in this series, we’ve looked at recognising our response to stress, and using some simple management tools to analyse our selves so we can identify our optimum working conditions.

This week I’d like to examine what is one of the principal causes of stress from mission workers – overwork!  There are others and we’ll be looking at these in future blogs, but this is one of the most immediate and one of the most critical.  I lost five years of my working life due to stress-related illness brought on primarily by overwork, and I’d like to think I’ve learned some of the lessons!

Overwork is commonplace in Christian missions.  It seems that there are never enough workers to meet the needs, and we all end up doubling up, taking on more responsibility, and working long hours.  Most of us also have to work on Sundays, so we seldom get a full weekend break.  These factors all add to our stress levels, and when compounded by the effects of colleagues being on Home Assignment or off sick due to stress, add up to a working environment which is often critically short-staffed and places the surviving workers under often health-endangering levels of stress.

The solution to this situation is for management to either engage more staff or take on fewer responsibilities.  Focussing on the core ministry of the organisation may help eliminate superfluous activities, and reducing dependence on ex-pat workers could ease staff shortages.  While these are organisational issues which it may be above our pay grade to resolve, we can however manage ourselves and our own situations better, and one solution can be to say no.  This is a skill few Christians have.

(with acknowledgements to Rob Cottingham)

The reason for this is partly the protestant work ethic.  We seem driven to pay off the debt we have incurred by accepting the ‘free’ gift of salvation.  We believe in ‘laying down our lives’ and expect to suffer from overwork without complaining about it.  We’re just following in the footsteps of our predecessors (a predecessor, interestingly enough, is someone who has pre-deceased you!).  While it is true that Christians are called to make sacrifices, as Kelly O’Donnell writes in Global Member Care, we should try ‘to balance the realistic demands of suffering and sacrifice with the realistic needs for support and nurture in our lives.’ Failure to take care of our legitimate needs does not allow us to maintain ourselves in peak mental and physical condition, and paradoxically means we are less able to carry our workload.  Surely our prime responsibility should be to keep ourselves in a condition to be able to carry out our other responsibilities!

The other principal reason behind so many people taking on too much work, is that they suffer from low self-esteem, though most would deny it until confronted with the evidence.   Many people find it hard to say no because they want people to like or value them, and when they deliver results, they are affirmed.  How often does your manager affirm you for what you have achieved rather than who you have become?  So we work harder, in order to achieve better results and reap more plaudits so that we can feel good about ourselves.  Yet when we have worked so hard that our deteriorating health forces us to stop, we can’t carry on earning plaudits and so cycle down into depression.

If any of the above rings bells with you, stop work for a while (yes, you can!) and consider the following questions:

• Do I regularly work more than 50 hours a week?
• Do I regularly work weekends without a day off in lieu?
• Am I carrying the responsibilities of more than one person on a regular basis?
• Am I trying to prove something through my work?  What?  To whom?
• Do I feel guilty when I’m not working?
• Am I unable to finish work ‘early’ occasionally just because I want to?

If the answer to any of those questions was ‘yes’, have a think about how you can say ‘no’ in future!

One of the best ways of managing stress, is to know yourself.  Understanding what works well for you, how you like to do things, how you respond to varying situations, will help you recognise potentially stressful situations and develop plans for managing it, and your own response to it.

There are innumerable tools, models and theories out there vying for your attention, and it can be hard to know what is going to work, and what isn’t.  The simplest is good old-fashioned common sense, which someone once observed, is clearly not common at all.  Though it should be relatively easy to work out whether you’re a morning person or not, and to plan your work pattern accordingly.  It’s also easy to work out whether music playing in the background distracts or invigorates you, or whether for you office banter makes the atmosphere congenial or chaotic.  Armed with this knowledge, you can plan your work area accordingly, and discuss with your colleagues how to make things work well for all of you.

But there are deeper issues which can lead you to feel frustrated with your work or your colleagues, and which if unresolved can lead to significant problems resulting from stress.  These are personality issues which affect who people are and the way in which they approach life: why does that person never get his paperwork done?  Why can’t she finish the job properly before starting another one?  Why is he so bureaucratic?  There are many reasons for the way people are – culture, upbringing, nationality and gender are some of the typical ones – and until we understand that the way people are is unique and often very different to us, we aren’t fully equipped to make appropriate allowances for the differences.  Which is where self-analysis tools are useful.

My personal favourite is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which helped me to understand not only why I like to do things in a certain way, but why others can misunderstand my actions and motivation.  It relieved an awful lot of pressure!  I think MBTI should be compulsory for all new mission workers, and many sending and training organisations provide it as part of their preparation or ongoing team development.  You can find out more at http://www.myersbriggs.org.  Some people criticise it because people can easily us it to label others, but that’s the fault of the labellers, not the tool.  This tool needs to be used by a qualified trainer, and there are many in the UK and abroad who provide this service.  Please contact Syzygy for further information.

Another popular tool is Strengthfinder, which works on the deceptively obvious premise that rather than working to strengthen our weaknesses, we should concentrating on doing what we’re naturally best at.  It will help you focus on what your principal skills are so that you can reorganise your commitments around them.  This tool can be used by yourself, working through a book, but can also be used together with an experienced counsellor.  See http://strengths.gallup.com/110440/About-StrengthsFinder-2.aspx for further information.

The Belbin Team Role Inventory concentrates on behaviour in the workplace and is focussed on the role that each individual will play within a team.  It helps team leaders work out who is best at starting something, keeping it going, and finishing it, since it is highly unlikely that one person will be able to do all three roles well.  The result is that people can be assigned to role which suit their aptitude, and thereby increase their effectiveness and reduce their stress.  Go to http://www.belbin.com for a further explanation.

So there are three different tools, each focussing on different aspect of who we are:

• Our core personality (MBTI)
• Our key strengths (Strengthsfinder)
• Our ideal team role (BTRI)

Of course, you don’t always need to go to the trouble of this level of training.  Sitting down and creating some thinking time, perhaps with a trusted friend, and asking yourself whether there might not be a reason why you find a certain situation or person stressful, can lead to more self-awareness.  If only we had the time…..

How do you respond to stress?

One of the reasons people do not always recognise that there is too much stress in their lives, is that they don’t understand their own response to it.  People react in different ways, and knowing how you react is a good way to understand the warning signs.  When I worked in Zambia, I knew that when I spent the evenings going round apologising for how I treated people during the day, it was time to go on holiday.

One of the key determinants in anyone’s response to stress is whether they are introvert or extravert.  Many people don’t know which they are, and sometimes people assume that because they are shy or lacking in social confidence they are introvert, or that if they’re outgoing, they’re extravert.  But that’s not necessarily true.

A quick and easy way to tell your ‘version’ is to ask yourself what you feel like doing at the end of a busy week.  A week you’ve worked late every evening to hit a deadline.  A week when a sick child has kept you up every night.  A week when crisis has followed crisis and you haven’t had time to eat properly.  And now it’s Friday, and it’s all over.  What do you feel like doing?  Getting a few friends together and going out for a meal, or do you want to shut your door and read a book by yourself?

By and large, extraverts want to gather their friends around them, because they recharge their batteries in community.  Introverts would rather be alone, since solitude provides them with the space they need to recuperate.  Neither is right or wrong, they’re just different, and knowing which you are will help you interpret your behaviour when you’re under stress.  It’s particularly important that couples understand each other’s response to stress, since if one wants to talk while the other wants to hide, there can be significant relationship problems.

So if you find yourself locking the door, turning off the phone, and pretending you’re not at home, that could be perfectly normal behaviour for you.  Likewise spending an evening at a café till it closes might be your way of managing the stress.  But if you find yourself doing this every single night, it’s a warning that you’re under more stress than you can reasonably cope with, and that’s when you need to do something about it.

Next month: tools for self-analysis

I wonder what you think when you see the word ‘stress’.  Does it make you tense up?  Do you feel you have already experienced all you need to know about stress?  Does it make you want to stop reading straight away?  If so, you’re probably suffering from too much stress.

Stress is something with which we are all familiar.  It’s part of the territory for missions workers.  We expect to have it.  But we don’t always realise the long-term impact of it in our lives, or know how to unload it.  So I am going to publish a series of articles about stress on this website: what it is, how to recognise it, how to deal with it, where to get help, and what happens if you don’t get help.

Much has been written about stress, and we don’t claim to be the experts.  There are many other websites where you can find experienced counsellors or detailed descriptions of the psychological impact of stress.  Most of the missionaries I meet suffer from some level of stress, often resulting from  over-work, the strain of living in an alien culture, or working in cross-cultural teams that often cause more problems than they bring solutions.  Many of them are ill as a result of stress.  It concerns me, because mismanaged stress can lead to burnout, which is a major cause of dysfunction and attrition in missions workers.

I’m sure we’ve all seen a small vehicle that’s overloaded with too many passengers.  35 people balanced precariously on the back of a Hilux.  You think it’s going to be fine, and perhaps it is at first, but it puts an unseen strain on all sorts of hidden but essential parts like tyres, brakes and suspension.  So it can easily overheat, or struggle to go uphill, or even worse, it will fail to take a corner and end up having a bad accident.

Stress is just like that.  We think we can cope, but underneath, it’s taking its toll on our heart, blood-pressure and brain.  All it takes is one extra demanding event and there’s a breakdown.  So if you’re thinking you’ll be fine, you’re nearly there and nothing’s gone wrong yet, stop right now and throw off a couple of passengers.  Get rid of one or two burdens.  Lighten the load.  It’s better to leave one or two by the side of the road than to have the whole lot crash.  You can always come back and pick them up later if necessary.

It’s important that we talk about this issue.  It’s a personal issue, so I’m not asking for comments on the website, except of a generic nature, but anyone who’d like to discuss their stress is welcome to email me confidentially on tim@syzygy.org.uk.  Alternatively, talk to a friend, a pastor, a colleague.  Talking to someone is the first step in resolving the problem, so do it today.

Statue of Aidan at Lindisfarne

I’ve recently been reading a biography of Saint Aidan, the founder of the Holy Island monastery and the man who brought Christianity back to Northumbria in the seventh century.  There were many impressive things about this celtic missionary to the pagan Angles, but what struck me most was his commitment to prayer.

He regularly spent hours in prayer, often alone on a small island.  He prayed as he travelled, and of course, as a monk, kept regular times of prayer throughout the day – and the night.  When he was first given the island of Lindisfarne to build the monastery, faced with the task of starting a farm to become self-sufficient in food, building a church, setting up a school and building shelter for the brothers from the bleak north sea weather, Aidan and his team spent 40 days in prayer instead.  They wanted to build on firm foundations.

I wonder if you are so committed to seeking God’s will for your endeavours.  I certainly am not.  When I set up Syzygy six years ago, of course I prayed, often, but not for 40 days.  I doubt that you did when you set out on your ministry.  We’re all too busy.  Yet Aidan realised that he had so much to do, he couldn’t afford not to pray.  Like John Wesley, who apparently spent three hours a day praying, and justified it by saying that he was so busy he couldn’t possibly pray less.  Like Jesus, who regularly withdrew to a lonely place to spend time with his father.  Time he could have spent teaching, or healing the sick.  He obviously thought it was important.

Perhaps our independent spirits lead us to be Marthas rather than Marys.  Of course, if it were left to Mary Jesus would never have got his dinner, but somehow I don’t think he’d have minded that much.  Are we so busy doing stuff for him that we don’t have time to sit and be with him?  Maybe that’s why so many of us are stressed and burnt-out.

I have decided to engage more in prayer, particularly in the workplace.  I pray at my desk before I start work, and  continue in prayer at regular intervals throughout the day.  Well, when I’m not too busy.

I few weeks ago I was talking to a lady who is angry with God.

30 years ago she and her husband moved to a part of the world where they confidently believed God would bring revival through their ministry.  Despite much prayer and labour, and many false dawns, there has been no breakthrough.  Moreover, her husband has a debilitating illness from which he has not been healed, and their only son has turned his back on God.

She is angry with God, because they haven’t succeeded, and life is not as sweet as she thinks it should be.

Yet she has a high standard of living, financial security, and is not persecuted for her faith.  Unlike most of the global church, which is far more accustomed to poverty, oppression, suffering and death.  As were the earliest Christians, many of whom would have been slaves.  Much of the rest would have been poor, and were accustomed to their property being confiscated, or facing death if they did not renounce their faith.  And yet the writers of the new testament insist that this is normal.

So, if like my angry friend, we feel tired and fed up in our ministry, what encouragement is there for us?

Jesus calls us to be faithful.  He promises the faithful a welcome into his kingdom.  Faithfulness is not synonymous with success.  In fact, it is possible to be faithful without being successful at all.  Faithfulness is persevering in a calling despite failure, discouragement and defeat.  Faithfulness is doggedly persisting when common sense is telling you to give up.  The martyrs in Revelation 12 suffered death, but we are told that they overcame.  What looked like defeat God considered victory, because they refused to give up even when it cost them their lives.

Faithfulness leads to fruitfulness.  Fruit is godly character produced under adverse circumstances.  I once met a man who had spent 18 years in prison for being a Christian.  Each day he was made to stand chest-deep in human sewage as he shovelled out the cesspit.  And the fruit of that labour showed in the joy and godliness of his life.  He spoke of his experience as if he were in a garden with the Lord, as the smell kept people away and he was able to sing praises to God at the top of his voice while he shovelled.

I draw encouragement from saints like these, for whom the grace of God which they have experienced is so much more important than their immediate circumstances.

” I did not labour in vain even if I am being poured out as an offering…”

Welcome to the revamped Syzygy website and blog!  I’m Tim, and I’m one of the directors of Syzygy.  One way or another, I’ve been involved in supporting missionaries for 15 years, since I realised that too many of them are either coming home for entirely avoidable reasons, or heroically labouring on under difficult circumstances.  Syzygy is resolved to do what we can to  support such people, help them continue in their mission, and become more effective.  And more importantly, we hope to encourage their sending churches and organisations to get behind them to do in the long term what Syzygy’s doing in the short term.

I hope that through this blog we will be able to stimulate discussion around various issues concerning cross-cultural workers, and draw more people into our ever-expanding network of volunteer supporters.  Whether you go, pray, encourage, finance, or support, I hope you’ll find something here for you.

Syzygy’s directors all have first-hand missions experience, between us having served short-, medium- and long-term in four continents, and although we’re all now based in England, we all continue to be involved in our own ministries to support missions overseas.  Our mission draws its name from our belief that global mission is a task whose burden should not fall exclusively on those who go, but should be shared by the whole church.  The word Syzygy – Greek for “yoked together” – conveys the image of oxen ploughing together, and the more oxen there are in a team, the easier it gets.

Join us!

For information on how to get involved with us, go to the CONTACT US page.