Minister Health – Part One
In my previous article, I presented the results of Journey’s conversations with small groups of young ministers across America on the good and the bad of life in vocational ministry. I also shared what they deem to be the essential elements needed for living a healthy life in vocational ministry. Their responses reveal great insights and wisdom. You can read that article here.
In this and my next article, I discuss minister health. As a pastoral coach who focuses exclusively on young ministers, I believe the ten essentials I share—five in this article and five in the next—require the careful attention of young ministers in America right now, immediately.
Even as I mentor young ministers, I am their student as they share with me the challenges they are facing. This gives me a front-row seat for observing those challenges and helping them incorporate the essential elements required to live healthy in vocational ministry today. While some of these challenges and essential elements are timeless, others are unique to this time in history.
My list is not an exhaustive one, but rather a “Titanic” one: the icebergs I see in the immediate path of most young ministers today. Let each minister of the Gospel take heed, and so, take action.
1. Beware a Busy Life
The devil’s first weapon of warfare against the minister of the Gospel is busyness: working for God rather than with God. This weapon is enormously effective in the life of the American minister because we so readily equate effectiveness with busyness: activity means productivity. It’s a ministry gospel my generation bowed to and now works to pass on to younger ministers. May God forgive us. The stay-busy-be-effective mantra has harmed God’s church, exchanging pastors for managers. It has wounded pastors, leading them out of their calling and even causing many to burn out. Worst of all, it has hidden the glory of God from His church and the world.
Not only has a busy life burned out ministers, but it has robbed them of their life as a child of God. Like a son or daughter who feels they must perform to earn their father’s love or favor, ministers who buy in to the activity-means-productivity gospel wonder if they are doing enough to earn their Heavenly Father’s love and favor: “Maybe if I worked a little harder, God would give me a bigger or better ministry.” It leaves them finding their identity in their performance rather than as sons and daughters of God.
Look to the life of the Master. He did not give Himself to endless activity but only to doing the Father’s will. He often turned away from busyness to quietness. He said no to “opportunities” to be still with God in prayer and seeming inactivity. One wonders what a difference it would make to the Kingdom if vocational ministers looked at the blur of our daily lives through a Kingdom lens: “Is this activity the Father’s will or mine? Is this what the Father is doing, or only my mad dash past the secret place of the Most High?” The Living Word showed us that life in vocational ministry must be a contemplative one, one well acquainted with quiet and stillness. The Written Word shows us that sitting at the feet of Jesus is a based life.
“If the devil can’t make you sin, he will make you busy, because either way your soul will shrivel. Our world will divert your soul’s attention because it is a cluttered world. And clutter is maybe the most dangerous result because it’s so subtle.” John Ortberg
2. Learn the Way of Solitude
To beware a busy life is not enough. We must cease earthly activities that we might then enter soul activity.
But it does not come naturally; we must learn solitude. But Pastor, it’s worth it. So worth it. For the glory of God, the good of your church, and the health of your own soul, learn solitude.
“The main thing you will give your congregation, just like the main thing you will give to God, is the person you become. . . . If your soul is unhealthy, you can’t help anybody. . . . You and nobody else are responsible for the well-being of your own soul. Dallas Willard
If the devil’s first weapon of warfare against the minister of the Gospel is busyness, the second is noise. This one is effective because it resonates with our fallen nature: we do not like silence; we do not naturally seek quiet. The French philosopher-mathematician Blais Pascal wrote:
« Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir demeurer en repos dans une chambre. »
(“All of humanity’s problems stem from one thing: man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”)
People naturally prefer sound – talk, TV, music, and background noise – to silence, where we have to be alone with our thoughts and reflect on life’s deeper matters.
Solitude 101 . . . . One Bible and a quiet room. Close the door. Turn off the tech. Put your toe into solitude by reading Psalms like 23, 37, 91, 103, or 121. Read slowly and carefully, drinking in the theme and pausing over individual thoughts. Still all outside thoughts—keep a pen and paper at hand to quickly write down to-do list items that invade your meditation.
Your goal is to meditate on the Word of God until you reflect on the God of the Word. Allow the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to you in His Word. Don’t be in a hurry. In quiet, still your soul; focus your heart and mind on Him. Allow the written Word to reveal the Living Word and His life to you.
“We must quiet ourselves regularly in solitude and allow the bonding we have with God to embrace us and the Spirit to cry out in us, ‘Abba, Father!’ People may seduce us into being with them too much, to our detriment and theirs. We must pull away in solitude and silence so we can contemplate Christ who is the ultimate promise of God. In this intimacy, we revel in that we are in him and he is in us.” John W. Frye
3. Forget Church Growth. Focus on Making Disciples
This principle will generate some heat in the American industrial church complex. But along with the heat, may it generate much light.
The third weapon in Satan’s war against the minister is diffusion, the scattering and dilution of our energies on lesser things: church-building instead of disciple-making. When we focus on church-building ahead of disciple-making, we invert the organic process Jesus modeled and taught.
We put the cart before the horse.
Try this, Pastor. Rent a horse and a horse cart. Put the cart in front of the horse, attach the cart to the horse, and try to move the cart. Then, put the horse in front of the cart, attach the horse to the cart, and try again. Which way is easier, and which way wears you out?
Putting church growth before discipleship is a primary reason for pastoral burnout today.
Why? Because, Pastor, God did not form you for or call you to church growth. Your principal calling is disciple-making: You make disciples, and Jesus will build His church. Fulfill your calling, Jesus will build His church, and you will still be there to watch it all happen. And if the church across town is growing more rapidly than yours, what’s the problem? You make disciples. Let Jesus build His church.
“Jesus knew the power of a rested soul. He slowed his followers down so that their souls would not become fatigued. We seem to spend most of our time trying to draw crowds and please crowds; Jesus seemed to spend much of his getting away from them.” John Ortberg
4. Fire the Hireling: Don’t Be a CEO. Be a Pastor
“I will give you CEOs after my own heart, who will sell you with programs and events.” I Hereticals 1.1
“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.” Jeremiah 3.15
Pastor, Jesus didn’t call you to be a business leader. He called you to be a pastor. So be what He called you to be. Yes, the church has a business side, but it should be just that: to the side, not at the center. Our center is the worship of God, the strength of His people, and the salvation of those separated from Him. This work requires a pastor.
Many of the energy-drains endured by young ministers today are the fruit of a Trojan Horse gift from my generation that taught them to be CEOs instead of pastors, holding out the carrots of “success” and “influence.” But it was no gift. It was a forgery. And it has proven to be a curse. For all our bowing to the gospel of the business model, the American church is not growing, authentic disciples are an endangered species, and pastors are depressed, burnt out, and dropping out. Check the studies.
Shepherds after God’s own heart focus on two priorities: ministering to the Lord and pastoring God’s people in their ministry to each other and the world. They live Psalm 23 and John 10.
“I’ve been around just long enough to have watched churches turn their pastors into managers. On Sundays, they’re expected to preach and inspire us. But then, when Monday comes, they’re supposed to be at their desks, running an organization. They oversee staff, crunch numbers, start and kill programs. Oh, and if they’ve got time left over, why shouldn’t they be therapists? So, when did we stop asking our pastors to give their primary energies to the thing they were called to do: turn people into disciples of Jesus, become spiritual leaders who can help the church do what it’s supposed to do?” Gordon MacDonald
5. Rebuild the Altar
“(Abram) journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.” Genesis 13.3-4
Pastor, remember when you used to spend precious time at an altar alone with God? At your home? Your home church? Bible College or Seminary? Good news: it didn’t move; it’s right where you are. Journey back to Bethel. Rebuild that altar again and call on the name of the Lord.
Pastor, remember when you met your people not on a stage but in altars? Lead them back to Bethel. Rebuild those altars, come down from your stage, and invite your people to meet you there to call on the name of the Lord. Call on the name of the Lord for them and call on the name of the Lord with them.
Be sure to build that altar in your church study. Real pastors don’t have offices; they have studies, and in those studies, they make an altar with God daily.
“Some churches have converted their altars into stages, and that is a real problem. On a stage is where celebrities shine; on an altar is where God’s presence comes down. The two are incompatible; we will have to choose: human celebrities or godly impact.” José Luis Navajo
A FINAL THOUGHT
In two weeks, I’ll share the final five of my essentials for minister health. One of these is sure to give you a start. But as I close, a true story.
Years ago, I had a ministry colleague who pastored a solid church of average size. This church had every sign of health and vibrancy. God had blessed this church with His presence and a good pastor.
But this pastor wanted more. He lifted his eyes to the greener-grass hills where he saw that more. His church could exit the ordinary and become a platform for Bigger Things. But these Bigger Things would require a change: the church would have to see itself not so much as a faith community but a tool for those Bigger Things. And they would have to give him the space to do them.
By all appearances, his church was still a church, and he was still its pastor. But in fact, both he and the church had been radically transformed. Sunday was big event day at church, while the rest of the week was devoted to pursuing those all-important Bigger Things.
Where he used to devote time and energy to study and prayer, he was now occupied night and day with getting those Bigger Things up and running. Where he used to revel in preaching the Word of God, he now gave his congregations rehashed sermons preached by others. Where he used to love the day-to-day work of pastoring his people, he was now too busy. But it was all in a good cause, a Bigger Things cause, one that required the transformation of the church and his leadership role.
But the pursuit of those Bigger Things revealed several little but very important things. His people couldn’t reach him, or, if they could, he wasn’t available because he was in Bigger Things meetings. His preaching was mechanical. Yes, it sparkled with alliteration and clever expressions, but it didn’t touch the soul. It no longer comforted the afflicted nor afflicted the comfortable. A congregation that had been a faith community was becoming a group of people who attended the same meeting on Sunday morning.
People couldn’t get time with their pastor to talk about their concerns, and so, some left. Others spoke to fellow church members, who nodded in agreement. Soon, the church saw two large waves of people leave en masse. A once strong church had been reduced to a handful of hopeful saints.
Rather than return to his pastoral calling—prayer, Word, and shepherding—the pastor resigned to give himself to the Bigger Things. The church, already reeling from the depletion of its numbers and the breaking of its community, found itself deep in debt and uncertain of its future.
It all began when a good man, a godly man, forgot the five essentials above. He stopped making the health of his own soul Priority One. And he sold his call as a pastor for that of a CEO.
The main thing you will give your congregation, just like the main thing you will give to God, is the person you become. . . . If your soul is unhealthy, you can’t help anybody. . . . You and nobody else are responsible for the well-being of your own soul. Dallas Willard
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