When the Job Suppresses Faith

Ironically, working for the church body often got in the way of my own faith growth

Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash

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My new teaching job in Indianapolis didn’t change the amount of work I was doing, it just changed the type of work I was doing. While I only had to plan for two courses a day, I had significantly more students. Picking up both the fall play and the spring musical meant I was still spending hours after school with rehearsals and set building. The big difference was I could do rehearsals immediately after school because my entire cast wasn’t involved in a sport and we now lived only five minutes from the high school. I could easily make it home in time for dinner, even if it was a little late. As an important bonus, Jeff was now only driving about 15 minutes to work daily, which made for significantly less time on the road and more time together.

But I was still a young, childless teacher in my mid-twenties. As happens in most schools, especially small private schools dependent on “volunteer” labor from teachers, I was still spending countless hours at school grading and either planning for my next production or working through the process of the current one. I had no boundaries. I didn’t have them with my students—especially my theater kids—as I invested in both their learning and extracurricular success. I didn’t have them with the job, as I would give up nights and entire weekends I could be spending with my husband and new friends because I was working on sets or choreography or finally grading those piles of papers that had been sitting on my desk for weeks.

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A Light at the End of a Tunnel

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Ironically, I had a job where I was constantly ministering to teenagers as I educated and integrated faith connections throughout my lesson plans and theater productions, yet I had no time for my own faith development.

Yes, I usually made it on time for faculty devotions every morning.¹ Yes, I appreciated our weekly chapel services and it was a welcome change from the daily chapel services we had at my previous school. Yes, my husband Jeff and I attended weekly worship at our new church where we had budding friendships and were being spiritually fed on Sunday mornings.

But that was it.