Work-life balance is the most recent term for it, but Australians have long been keen on putting work in its place.
We led the charge with the Eight-Hour movement in the 1850s, campaigning for a shorter working day with the slogan “eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” The success of that movement is still marked with annual public holidays for Labor Day in all states.
By 1948, Australia’s national arbitration court approved a 40-hour, five-day week for all workers. That’s more likely to be 35 or 38.5 hours these days, and discussion rages about flexible working arrangements and four-day weeks in offices and schools.
It comes as a surprise to learn that most clergy are still expected to work a 48-hour week, six days a week, in many dioceses, including Canberra-Goulburn, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.
Melbourne’s synod passed a motion in October calling for a working group to review working hours for clergy and proposing a standard five-day work week for full-time clergy in the diocese. Two main reasons back this proposal: the biblical principle of Sabbath rest and burnout among the workers.
The exhaustion is real. A 2023 survey of 200 clergy by psychologist Dr. Valerie Ling found more than a third seriously contemplated resigning in the past year due to feelings of loneliness, work stress, and the effect on their families.
The Rev. Chris Bedding left ministry in Perth in 2022 after 20 years of working in traditional Anglican parishes. Although he never had a formal diagnosis, he recalls his burnout from “the emotional cost of just dealing with the wide range of issues that a modern clergyperson has to deal with,” he said.
“When I look at my colleagues, it strikes me that it’s a normal part of life for people to be consistently exhausted, consistently at the end of their tether, and always looking for the next opportunity to have a rest or regroup. Instead of operating from a place of wellness, they are often operating from a place of exhaustion if a crisis or a challenge comes along.”
Bedding is now the part-time executive officer of the Faith Workers Alliance, the first trade union in Australia for people engaged in faith work. In the United Kingdom, clergy have had a branch of a much bigger union, Unite Faith Workers, for 30 years.
The Faith Workers Alliance has been active for two years, and membership is open to anyone who does faith work, so a chaplain employed by the health department is eligible, but a gardener or administrative assistant in a parish would not be.
“Priests, rabbis, pastors, ministers, youth workers, imams, insert job title here, are all eligible,” Bedding said.
The alliance offers advocacy and support for clerics caught in the changing expectations of what their roles entail.
Bedding explained that a clergy stipend used to be understood to be payment so you didn’t have to work. It freed ministers for study, prayer, reflection, worship, and to be available at times of crisis — illness or death — to drop everything and go to a parishioner’s home or hospital as required.
But in his experience of life in a parish, “at an absolute minimum,” two days were spent on administration, governance, compliance, communication, volunteer management, event management, and site management.
Add a day to plan worship and research write a sermon, and “How much time realistically is left to run the youth group or to do visiting or to plan a Bible study?”
The time constraints are even tougher when priests combine part-time work in a parish with another role, like chaplaincy.
Bedding suspects neoliberal capitalism has, since the mid-1990s, been part of the push to make church workers meet performance targets to justify a fee for service. The cold reality, he said, is that it’s regarded as a job.
The Anglican Church of Australia published a highly commended policy on ministry well-being in 2021, clear directions for supporting clergy throughout their working lives. Prescribed leisure time will help, and Bedding predicts a domino effect as dioceses around the country formally specify a proper day of rest.
But five-day weeks are really “low-hanging fruit,” he said. The real challenge is in our expectations of church workers, Bedding said. We should ask what sort of ministry structure we will need for the future. Why are we putting people through a spiritual formation process and a degree in theology in order for them to work predominantly as small-business managers?
Bedding asks: “Is there a better way that we could manage the business side of the church and free up people for mission and ministry with their gifts and skills and training?”
And that’s a question that will need to be answered — not just by church leaders, but clergy and lay people together.
