Ministry might just be the perfect storm.

If you have a marketplace job, your life has some definable components: your work, your family and your personal life.   You might get up, spend some time with God, head off to work, come home and hang out with your family. 

In ministry, these worlds get fused.  You wake up, spend time with God. Go to work, which in some ways is spending more time with God and serving God.  Then you go home, and wait – you are a Christian family.  And you attend work with your family. Or hang on, is that work or is that personal or is that family?  

See what I mean.  It gets confusing. 

In my first year in ministry, I found I was tempted to combine my personal spiritual walk with sermon prep.  If I was preaching Exodus anyway, why not hang out in the text during my quiet time?  

I don’t know why, but early on that just struck me as unhealthy.  So I decided to adopt a discipline of personal bible reading that had zero to do with "work".  My plan the first year was just this:  read through the Bible in a year.  I did, and it revitalized my devotional life.  Fourteen years later, I’m still reading through the Bible every year. I’d never say everyone should do it.  But for me, it’s been awesome.  For whatever reason, it’s liberating to be reading through 2 Chronicles and realizing you may never preach on it all year long.  

Naturally, I find things in the Bible I end up preaching on.  But the point is that that wasn’t the point.  

I do pray for things that impact our ministry, but I try to spend a lot of time praying about things that I would pray about if I wasn’t in ministry.  For me, it’s boiled down to a simple, haunting question:

If I stopped ministry tomorrow, what would be left of my spiritual life? 

By cultivating a spiritual walk that has little do do with work, I hope I can answer that question with a resounding "quite a bit."  

This principle has helped my family sort out the thorny question of what to participate in as well.  The rule we adopted early on was that as a family, we would do those things we would normally do if we were just Christians and I wasn’t the pastor.  It would be normal for our family to serve in some ministries, but not every ministry. Normal to be out at church a night or two a week, but not every night of the week.  Normal to attend church, but not necessarily multiple services every Sunday just because we hold them.  So my wife and kids serve because they are Christians, not because I’m the pastor.  It’s been so healthy. 

We’ve been fortunate to be part of a community that understands that principle, respects it and even thinks it’s healthy.  So grateful for that! 

This is the fourth practice that’s helped me stay alive and engaged in ministry more often than not over fifteen years:  to cultivate a spiritual walk that has little to do with "work".

How about you?  What helps you?  If you stopped ministry tomorrow, what would be left of your spiritual life?  If you stopped ministry tomorrow, what would that do to your family’s rhythm of service? 

I was terrible at this for years.  Rest was for people who just couldn’t handle a real workload.  If you went home at 4 p.m., it was because you really weren’t committed to the cause.

There was a strange justification that happened in the back of my mind that told me the harder I worked, the more pleased God would be with me.  After all – I was doing his work. And if you were working for God, why wouldn’t you give it everything you had plus an extra 30%. 

People would tell me all the time: your pace is unsustainable.  You’re going to burn out.  I just ignored them. I thought I was stronger than that, and the strange thing is, for the most part, I was.   I could sense burn out and pull back from the edge just in time.  And for years I just ran in overdrive.

But I’ve come to realize some things:

• Just because you don’t burn out, doesn’t mean you don’t miss out.  I told my oldest son (who’s 18) the other day that if I could get one thing back in life it would be some of those hours when he was in elementary school.  He’s heading off the university this fall, and we’ve had some great times together over the last few years (as we did when he was very young), but I can’t get his formative years back.  God redeems time, but I’d love to get some of those hours back.

• Rest is a gift.  It’s also great strategy. We all know that God rested on the seventh day.  But life was also designed with regular pauses scripted in.  There was to be no work done once every seven days.  And if you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you might realize God loves a party.  There were regular holidays, festivals, and even mandated celebration in Old Testament life.  For us A types, remember – God wants us to enjoy life. As the creators of our bodies and souls, he also realized that we function best when we’re rested and full of good things.  Most of us realize that we’re not nearly as productive on hour 12 of a day as we are on hour one.  Pay attention to that.  Rest is also a strategy.  We’re so much better at work when we’ve rested.

• You’ll actually get the rest you’re ignoring one way or another.  Even though God mandated regular rest, there’s little evidence the Israelites took him up on his advice.  The Sabbath was probably broken more than it was observed. And most people believe that the Sabbath of Sabbaths – (the year of Jubilee, where work was shut down for a full year every 50th year) was never actually celebrated.  Well, that’s not exactly true. Consider this:  

So the message of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah was fulfilled. The land finally enjoyed its Sabbath rest, lying desolate until the seventy years were fulfilled, just as the prophet had said. (2 Chronicles 36:21)

Did you hear that?  I mean, seriously… Did you actually see what God is saying there?  He’s basically pointing out that if you don’t take the rest, the rest will take you. Israel never celebrated the Jubilee, so God said "I’ll make you take it – you’ll be invaded, and against your will, you’ll be in exile for seventy years. There’s your Sabbath.  There’s your Jubilee."

I wonder if burn out and stress leave are the modern equivalents of exile. 

Over the last number of years I’ve had to work a rhythm of rest and refuelling into my life.  It’s meant huge changes.   In fact, we’ve programmed Connexus so that staff and volunteers are home most nights.  I actually take my vacation now.  I have work from my home Mondays and Fridays because I write best when I’m alone out of the office.  I’m only good with people about 50% of my work week.  Being home Monday means I can pour into staff and volunteers Tuesday – Thursday with enthusiasm. That might not be your rhythm, but it’s mine. 

This principle is not a blank cheque for laziness. This isn’t about counting your 37.58 hours down the minute to make sure you’ve got what’s coming to you. Not at all.  But it is about realizing that ministry happens deepest and most profoundly when you pursue God’s work using God’s ways and not your own.  You end up accomplishing more in every sphere of your life. 

When I started, I wanted to run this marathon like it was a sprint.  I still sprint in seasons, but I’ve come squarely to terms with the truth that this is a marathon.  A marathon God actually even intends us to enjoy. 

In what ways are you tempted to cheat rest?  Why?  What rhythm of rest and refuel works best for you?  

Chances are you’ve had it happen before – you completely navigate a difficult situation and your friends ask "how do you stay so calm and composed when everyone’s losing it?"  You don’t really know the answer to that question, but you make something up and tell yourself you’re doing really well.

Then someone cuts into your lane on the drive home and you almost lose it. His action was a two out of ten, but your reaction was an eight.  Or someone sends you a slightly critical email and you brood around the house dumping on the people you love and then can’t sleep for two nights because you’re so angry/upset/emotional about it. His slight was a three out of ten.  You reacted with an eleven.  

Sometimes the things we think don’t bother us really bother us.  The emotions we never process don’t disappear, they just go underground and decide to bubble up in the most incovenient and inappropriate ways.  

A mentor told me a few years ago that he’s convinced that one of the silent killers in ministry for church leaders is what he calls "ungrieved losses".  I think he might be on to something.

The Jews have an elaborate mourning ritual when someone dies. Consider how Job’s friends responded to the tragedy that Job experienced.  When was the last time you said nothing for seven days, tore your clothes and sat in silence when something catastrophic happened?  Today, many of us process grief while talking on the phone with iTunes playing in the background while we’re trying to finish making breakfast so we can get the kids off to school.

My mentor friend’s theory is this: people in ministry suffer loss every day. Heck, life brings loss every day. Every time the grocery bill runs too high and the bank balance gets tight, it’s a loss.  Every time someone leaves your ministry, it’s a loss.  Every time someone steps back from your team, it’s a loss.  Every time you give something only to find ungratitude, it’s a loss.  Every time someone tells you’re great but you should really see the other guy who’s awesome, it’s a loss.  Then add in death, illness and strained or lost relationships and, well, you get the picture. 

And my friend’s theory is that so many people up and quit ministry or lose their effectiveness in life not because any one incident made them snap or quit – but rather because the loss that provoked their exit is tied to dozens or hundreds of ungrieved losses along the way.  They might not even understand why they’re stepping back, shutting down or resigning.  All they know is they just can’t take it anymore. 

One of the practices I’ve adopted over the last few years, as strange as it still seems to me, is to try to grieve my losses as they happen.  I try to take time daily and weekly to review what’s bothering me and simply pray about it. Sometimes I talk to others about it.  I try to let myself stop and feel what I’ve experienced.  And when I feel it, something surprising happens – the negative feeling pretty much disappears.  If I do it promptly when a loss occurs, I can even respond to a four out of ten email or remark with a two out of ten reply – not a twelve.  I can actually offer grace.

How about you?  Do you find life full of losses?  How do you grieve them?  What have you found helpful?