Pastors and Self Awareness

This week I want to share with you a short article about pastors and their self awareness and how that impacts issues of spiritual and emotional health. This article is written by my good friend, Dr. Russ Veenker, founder and director of Mountain Learning Center. MLC provides a mountain retreat where a physically enjoyable, emotionally gratifying, and spiritually invigorating experience revitalizes pastors and their spouses' relationships with God, self and others. Russ has been providing Pastoral Retreats for over 25 years in beautiful June Lake, CA. This article is copyrighted by Dr. Russ Veenker and first appeared in his January/February 2009 Ministry Newsletter and is used by me with permission of the author.

Here are his thoughts that were stimulated by a report on a recent clergy survey taken by Dr. Dave Carder.

“Pastors and Self Awareness”

One of the highest compliments I ever got from a client was when he told several others at a gathering, “I didn’t have any problems until I went to see Dr. Veenker.” That brought out a lot of laughter---including myself! I find it a great statement in regard to how unaware we are of ourselves. I mean, what is it REALLY like to be on the receiving end of me? One must be courageous to ask that of their friends…

I have had pastors spouses share in counseling the observation that what the pastor is like at church is very different from whom they are at home. Many times the pastors in the room look so surprised---even caught off guard--- when their spouse shares their personal perception: “Sometimes it feels like I’m living with two different people.” Yes, more often than pastors like to admit, they aren’t the same person at home as who they are at church. And that observant comment may reveal a compartmentalized life which can lead to all kinds of harmful distractions. Yes, at times pastors tend to be very unaware of this dual-dynamic in themselves.

Take for example, a recently completed study regarding pastoral infidelity by Rev. David Carder (Pastor of Care and Counseling @ EVFree Fullerton, CA, and author of Torn Asunder: Recovery From Extra-marital Affairs, Moody Press). The research team discovered significant mood signs that indicate when a pastor could be a candidate for infidelity: Hungry for emotional connection; generally angry; lonely; tired; and bored. Ministry is a lonely and isolated vocation accompanied by 24/7 work demands that amount to the same routine week after week with little time for a personal life. No wonder so many clergy fall prey to immorality --- the nature of the work role sets them up for it! Fore sure, unless clergy AND their spouses are trained and sensitized to the hazards of ministry, and have healthy boundaries in place, they can easily fall into sinful distractions. Out-of-balance living can lead to sexual wandering.

One of the by-products of Carder’s study I found quite intriguing in terms of self-awareness: “Fully 90% of the pastors who admitted to sexual infidelity in the survey chose phrases like, ‘I was blind-sided,’ ‘It was out of the blue,’ and ‘I had no idea what was happening’ to represent what they felt like when the infatuation of the affair engulfed them.” I think those quotes adequately prove my point: Pastors lack self-awareness! 90%---wowie zowie Batman!

Yes, many clergy lack basic individuation, differentiation, and self-awareness. One reason for this is because they are so focused and absorbed in other people’s lives, they neglect their own. That usually follows for the marriage as well. Many do not have a life outside of ministry as work---they allow their work to define and occupy their identity to the point of emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion. The devil doesn’t have to work very hard on Christian leaders in North America --- he just keeps them busy with ministry and they self-destruct! Someone has insightfully said, “The greatest threat to devotion to Christ is service for Christ.” What a paradox! But true none-the-less.

At our Pastor Retreats I will often engage pastors in conversation about how they spend their time. I nearly always get around to asking pastors about their hobbies … what they do together with their spouse as a couple…and what kind of time do they spend with their kids. Prior to the Retreat each participant is required to take a battery of inventories that objectively help to assess how things are going for them personally and in their marriage. Most clergy couples we see are overwhelmed with ministry to the point of martial neglect. There’s no time for hobbies, spouse or kids; they are too exhausted for hobbies, kids, and spouse---they’re just “another person who sucks the life out of them.” Yet the inventories indicate their level of denial regarding their own sentiments is quite pronounced. Once again, a lack of self-awareness appears in this dynamic.

It is only when they get honest with us, themselves, God, and their spouse, they become teachable. Specific Scriptures speak volumes to their condition of no work boundaries and lack of awareness:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Mt. 11:28-29 (NIV)

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Romans 12:3 (NIV)

Self-awareness begs self-examination in a safe community of openness and gracious wisdom. That’s the kind of environment most Clergy Retreats strive to create for clergy couples. Helping them to become more self-aware, establish healthier working and relational boundaries, and assisting them in intentional growth and development will enable them to finish well at life and ministry.

I challenge you to ask your spouse the tough questions, “Do you see a drastic difference in me when I am at church apart from who I am at home?” “What is it like to be on the receiving end of me?” The answers may surprise you. May be time to consider a Retreat to revitalize.”

What are your thoughts about our self-awareness as a pastor. Does this ring true for you or for a ‘friend’? At Genesee Home we focus on the strategies that help us maintain our emotional and spiritual health in ministry. Two of those strategies that are very important are 1) having Space in our lives in the form of Sabbath times away from ministry and 2) having healthy hobbies that we pursue that are not connected to ministry. Take time reflect on your own self-awareness and how you might maintain the healthy balance that helps you maintain long haul ministry.

The Fruit of Ministry

I love to read biographies of great Christians. They don’t need to be famous, but they need to have led an exemplary life for Christ. I am often amazed as I read their stories of the persistence and longevity in their Christian life and Ministry. Often I ask myself where does this come from?
Last wee one of our pastors made a passing remark as they prepared to leave Genesee Home and Genesee Valley. I asked him to send me the thought for I believe it is a key to a long, strong Christian life and ministry.

These are his thoughts:

Friday Morning at Genesee Home

It is Friday morning, a very special time at the Genesee home as we gather for a send off breakfast with new friends that seem like old friends after such a delightful week together. With heads bowed and eyes closed for prayer, I envision the end view of a cut log with all the growth rings… A little while later, I look across the field and see mountains covered with thousands of beautiful trees, the kind that remain green year round and are often harvested for a host of very useful products….. construction lumber, particle board, pencils and paper.

Turning my attention back inside the house, I can’t help but notice the Genesee home dining room is furnished with a variety of beautiful wooden furniture. There are different grain patterns, colors and finishes, different styles, some ornately carved with other pieces more simply stated. The common thread is that it was all built to last… whether Oak, Cherry, Mahogany, Birch, Maple or Walnut, each piece was made from trees that went through seasons of rest, growing strong and steady. Hardwood trees aren’t always pretty on the outside as they let go of all their dead leaves and prepare for a new season, but they are solid on the inside able to handle the storms of life.

Thank you Charlie and Bev for the time of refreshing,
Pastors Rory and Pam Frink

Strength and beauty in wood comes from fine, tight grain, which comes from tight growth rings that in part come from rest. Do we want our lives, our marriages and our ministries to display the beauty and strength of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Then we need to take time, to rest, to stop and sit at the feet of Jesus on a regular basis. We need to open ourselves to the presence of the Holy Spirit that becomes a ‘well of water springing up to Eternal Life’ in our souls.

During this Lenten season take time to rest, stop, to Sabbath God’s presence.

Reflections on Lent

This is an interesting time of the year. We are approaching the first day of spring and so winter is coming to an end. In fact today in our little mountain valley the temperature is a wonderful 70 degrees. The birds are out enjoying the warmth, and even a little humming bird came looking for our feeder.

We are also in that special time of the year called Lent. Our brothers and sisters in Liturgical churches are preparing themselves through various spiritual disciplines to celebrate Easter. Those of us who don’t follow the Church Liturgical Calendar are still preparing for our Easter Celebrations. It is a time to remember the new life that comes with spring and the New Eternal Life that came with the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have been preaching in our local Methodist church the last few weeks and enjoying the discipline of preaching on the great gospel texts of Lent.

They are reminders to all of us of the importance of an examined Christian life. This week the Gospel lesson is that favorite of most people, John 3:16, actually the complete text for preaching is John 3:14-21. This passage with the great gospel kernel at the center calls us to bow before the Cross and examine our lives and commitment to our Lord and Savior.

I plan to remind the congregation that Lent is a time of reflection and self examination of our spiritual lives. As I prepare for Sunday, I am also reading Frederica Mathewes-Green’s little book The Illumined Heart. Her chapter on repentance struck a cord in my life this week and will probably have an influence on my sermon on Sunday.

She writes, “Repentance is the doorway to the spiritual life, the only way to begin. It is also the path itself, the only way to continue.” [pg 39]. She reminds us that Jesus’ preaching from the first to the last included a great call to his hearers to “Repent.” Repent is the transforming of our mind, a coming to understand our situation and a change from it. In the First Testament the Hebrew word for ‘repent’ means “to change the path we are on, to move from the wrong path to the right path so that we arrive at our destination of being in God’s presence.” Often in preaching I reminded the congregation that repentance was a radical change of direction, a total 180 degrees, from walking north to walking south. That is the key to our new life in Christ, isn’t?

We need to acknowledge that our life is not taking us any closer to God. Of course this is very true when we first believe in Christ as our Lord and Savior. We acknowledge in the words of that great hymn, Amazing Grace:

“That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, hut now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”

That is how we begin. We should celebrate that first turn to Jesus, that first act of Repentance. In fact Mathewes-Green writes, “The starting point for the early church was this awareness of the abyss of sin inside each person, the murky depths of which only the top few inches are visible. God, who is all clarity and light, wants to make us perfect as he is perfect, shot through with his radiance. The first step in our healing, then, is not being comforted. Is taking a hard look at the cleansing that needs to be done.” [pg 41.] That is how we begin.

However, if we stop our ‘repenting’ with that first act we miss out on the deeper areas of our walk with God. As Mathewes-Green says, “repentance is the path itself.” It is the continual act of a growing maturing Christian. We need to take a spiritual inventory of our life on a continuing basis. Lent affords one such time to spend quality time examining our life, asking in the words of David “Examine me, O LORD, and try me; Test my mind and my heart. For Thy lovingkindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Thy truth” (Psalm 26:2,3) or “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.” (Psalm 139:23,24)

As we take time to reflect on the state of our soul, we come to a deeper understanding of how great our sin and misery are and how great the mercy, lovingkindness and grace of God are.

Again, Mathewes-Green writes, “our first step then is to decide where we want to go. If we are resolved to move daily further into union with Christ, we must be ready to face our sins, the things that holds us back, and to let God begin to heal them. Repentance is the way back to the Father. It is both the door and the path, and there is no other.” [pg 45]

For the next few weeks I am going to take some extra time to let God examine my heart, soul, and life, to see where I need to practice Repentance and accepting the healing that flows from His presence.

Clergy Self Care

Last week Lillian Daniel had an interesting blog on Faith & Leadership entitled "What clergy do not need." It was about taking a moratorium on talking about 'clergy self care."

She wrote,

"But ultimately, the notion of self-care does not work because we don’t have in us what is required. Self-care is the Band-Aid we put on spiritual exhaustion, dark nights of the soul, and the disappointment of consecutive losing seasons in a long ministry. It seems odd that as Christians, we would tell one another that the answer to such woes lies in ourselves, and in our own will power and our own resolutions to do better. We take a spiritual problem that affects a community and give it an individualistic and therapeutic answer."

I like her thinking. Often we speak about self care and forget that our life, and power in the ministry doesn't flow simply from our lives. It comes from the greater source of God. He has provided what we need to survive and thrive in pastoral ministry.

First, He has given us our salvation through our precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Second, He has filled us with the Holy Spirit to teach us, guide us, and empower us.

Third, He created a healthy schedule of work six days a week and on the seventh have a Sabbath, a break a time to STOP and sit at his feet.

Fourth, He has surrounded us with other Christians, some in our churches, and some are fellow clergy.

All four of these 'things' are given for helping us in the life of pastoral ministry. But often we as clergy don't take advantage of the second, third and fourth gifts.

We forget that along with our faith in Jesus Christ we have been filled with the Holy Spirit, 'who proceeds from the Father and the Son,' to fill us and empower us. We have been given this wonderful person as a gift to assist us in carrying out the mandate that God has given us in our call.

But we also don't take time to STOP and take a Sabbath. So often I talk with pastors and they tell me how busy they are. No time to take a week off, no time to sit in the presence of God for an extended period of time. But as I have said before "Sabbath rest comes before ministry." And as Dan Allender writes in his new book Sabbath: The Ancient Practices, Sabbath may be good for us, but in the beginning it is a commandment.

The final part of our taking care of ourselves lies in a healthy community of committed followers to Jesus Christ. As clergy we should participate in community as well as lead the community of faith. Having Christian friends, prayer groups, places to have fun and laugh all help in our own self care.

If you are reading this as a full time pastor, I would encourage you to not only talk about self care, but to do it. Instead of always working as a pastor take time to sit at Jesus feet. Take time to go fishing as Peter and the apostles did after the first resurrection. Ask God for a fresh in-filling of the Holy Spirit. Watch a great movie with your wife and family.

The Command that's Good for You

The Commandment to Keep the Sabbath is one of the few commandments on which Jesus specifically comments. During one of his debates with the Pharisees he says, “The Sabbath was made for Man, and not man for the Sabbath.” [Mark 2:27 NKJV] One point we can draw from this comment is that there is a beneficial aspect in keeping the Sabbath.
St. Paul reminds us that the Commandment to “Honor our Father and Mother” is the only commandment with a promise attached. However, in one of his many debates with the Pharisees, Jesus points out that the 4th commandment: “Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy” was “made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” [Mark 2:2 NKJV]
One thought we can draw from Jesus’ comment is that “Keeping the Sabbath” is beneficial. Usually we consider commandments or rules as restricting our freedom or causing us difficulty in living. Of course, we all realize there is freedom, joy and peace in keeping certain rules or commandments, but in practice we usually don’t live that way. I believe that Jesus’ comment goes deeper than saying that the 4th commandment is good for us. There is a benefit that accrues to us (women and men of faith) when we are faithful in keeping this commandment. In fact it is intended for our physical and spiritual health.
We read so much today about the stress in the pastoral ministry and the effect that it has on our lives, our marriages and our ministries. Part of that stress is in the constant demands that the calling of being a Pastor places on us: preparing worship services, sermons, counseling, administrating, planning, visioning, etc. Most of the statistics indicate that pastors work way too many hours with little or no days off.
This is the reality of modern service to the church and world. However, there is good news! This is not what God intended when he rested on the Seventh day after Six long days of creation. As both Watchman Nee and Eugene Peterson have pointed out “man’s work only begins after God has been at work,” and thus our work and indeed week should begin with Rest, a Sabbath for us to be in harmony with God’s will.
Thus, instead of being a ‘burden’ to keep, the Sabbath becomes a benefit to be enjoyed in our life, families, and ministry. Take time this week to pause, step aside, and rest. Take a Sabbath time to pray, reflect and renew your self. Understand that the Sabbath is the beginning of your week not the end and that when you go to work you are simply joining God in the work he has already been doing.
For pastoral couples this time may not be the traditional Saturday or Sunday but may well be another day in the week. For those not involved in full time ministry your Sabbath should be on Sunday, as you gather to worship with God’s people. The day is not as important as the taking of a Sabbath, a break, a ceasing. The idea is to get in tune with God’s holy rhythm. To use the words of that grand hymn, “Take Time to be Holy, speak oft with the Lord.”

Learning Sabbath from the Birds

As Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens are telling of the glory of GOD; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” I love to watch eagles soar on thermals in Genesee Valley. They are so big on the ground and almost awkward before they become airborne. But then they lift their mighty wings, and with a clear call rise from the ground. The other morning as I walked one of my favorite trails I heard the cry of a golden eagle. The clear “kee-kee-kee” got my attention and so I was blessed to watch two of these magnificent birds rise on the thermals in our valley to great heights above. They rose on the rising thermals until they were but two black spots in the blue sky above. But without the rising wind currents and the slow beat of their wings these two birds would never have soared to “heights unknown.” It reminded me of something I had read by Francis De Sales in speaking of our need to refresh ourselves in God’s presence.
He wrote: “If birds stop beating their wings, they quickly fall to the ground. Unless your soul works at holding itself up, your flesh will drag it down. Therefore, you must renew your determination regularly. Oddly, a spiritual crash leaves us lower than when we began. Clocks need regular winding, cleaning, and oiling. Sometimes they need repair. Similarly, we must care for our spiritual life by examining and servicing our hearts at least annually. Early Christians ordinarily took a spiritual inventory and renewed their vows on the date our Lord’s baptism. It would be good if we did the same.”*
As pastors and missionaries we often believe that our work, our ministry is all based on what we do. We pour our life into programs and people bringing God’s word to the world. But we forget that even though we need to flap our wings, without the wind and thermals around us we, like the eagles, would never soar to greater heights.
As De Sales reminds us we need to be constantly attending to our spiritual lives to remain healthy and growing so that we can soar on the wind of God’s Spirit to greater heights. As we use the various spiritual disciplines that have informed the church through the ages they act like the thermals in the valley. These disciplines and practices become the wind beneath our wings to lift us into the very presence of God.
One way we can retain that health is through regular spiritual inventories of our lives and ministries. These inventories are simply stopping, taking a Sabbath rest, and sitting before God asking a very simple question. Psalm 139:23,24 states it clearly, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”As you go about your duties this next week take time to pause, consider your life and open your wings to the rising thermals of God’s Spirit.

* From Authentic Devotion: A modern Interpretation by Bernard Bangley; Introduction to the Devout Life by Francis De Sales. Pub. Shaw Book, Waterbrook Press Copyright 2003. pg 105

Top Ten Strategies for Long Term Ministry

TOP TEN STRATEGIES
FOR LONG TERM MINISTRY

A few months ago I was thinking about the future of pastoral ministry. I am aware of all the current difficulties in modern ministry. But as I continued to think about the future the question slowly formed in my mind, “What are the best strategies for maintaining a healthy ministry for the long haul?” To help me with this question I emailed a group of friends all of whom are either counselors to pastors or provide ongoing care to pastors and missionaries. I asked them “What would you consider to be the top ten strategies a pastor could use to stay healthy in the next five to ten years?” After I received their responses I sorted and edited them into a Top Ten List of Strategies.

The list is as follows:

10. Be a servant leader of leaders in your church
9. Make People More Important than Programs
8. Have a Best Friend
7. Have a Hobby that you do on a regular basis
6. Have a Clear understanding that your Call into ministry is from God
5. Take Time in Spiritual Formation
4. Remember your self-image is who you are in Christ not what you do;
3. Take a Regular Day Off. A Sabbath Day
2. Maintain a Vibrant Marital Life
1. Maintain a Vibrant Healthy Relationship with God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit

These aren’t earth shaking new revelations. In fact they have been around for many years, and many pastors and missionaries have been doing them for a long time. But they are a clean list of things we as pastors and missionaries can do to remain emotionally, and spiritually healthy while leading a church or ministry. Some of them are self explanatory and others require a little thinking. They all require us to be intentional about doing them in a positive helpful way.

10. Be a servant leader of leaders in your church

This is the key to leadership in the church. As we have been taught this is the leadership model of Jesus. Some key points to this style of leadership that keeps us healthy is to be a team player with your lay leaders. The emphasis is on the fact that this is ‘our’ ministry not ‘my’ ministry. We also need to learn a healthy use of authority and not shift in to the model of ‘my way or the highway.’ It is too easy to shift into a hard line leadership model instead of encouraging team work and mutual accountability. The last key point in servant leadership is to lead with quietness and strength. The idea is to be a non-anxious leader, letting our authority come from our relationship with God and not out of our own need to be in control.

9. Make People More Important than Programs

A trap that we often get caught in, especially in our American churches is to focus our time and efforts on the programs that we offer and let the people we are serving fall through the cracks. Healthy leaders see that while a program may be beneficial we are really about the people both within and without the church. When we major on people, whether in the church, on staff, our board or the ‘lost’ we keep our focus the same as Jesus’ focus. Remember how he always had time to stop and interact with the people on the way.

8. Have A Best Friend

Ministry is lonely and even if we serve or lead on a big staff we can still be lonely. To whom do we go to share a difficulty, celebrate a joy? Who can hold us accountable for our spiritual, emotional and moral lives? We need to cultivate safe friendships with other pastors or laypeople who can be a true friend. As we develop a community of friends, especially other pastors, we can find ourselves in a natural place of accountability and encouragement. As our friendships develop we can have healthy safe people with whom we can be accountable in all areas of our lives. I am becoming increasingly convinced that all of us who are involved in ministry should have an older pastor as a mentor and we should be mentors to younger pastors around us. Bible colleges and Seminary training while important and valuable can not provide answers or information for all the intricacies of life in the post modern church. A healthy mentor can provide the insight and encouragement and additional training we need to flourish in pastoral ministry.

7. Have A Hobby that you do on a regular basis

While working hard at ministry is important we need to be able to step aside and play. A few years ago Dr. Mark R. McMinn, of Wheaton College published a study entitled “Care For Pastors: Learning From Clergy and Their Spouses” that highlighted various ways that pastors have found to remain emotionally and spiritually healthy. One of those was to have a hobby that they did on a regular basis. We need to step way from the issues of ministry and do something that is outside of our normal patterns. This can be gardening, photography, painting or various other arts, fishing, hiking, golf, stamp collecting or even genealogy, or any of a hundred other activities. Reading is probably not a good choice since pastors read a lot for the profession. But the hobby is less important than doing it. Do you have a hobby? When was the last time you did it?

6. Have a Clear understanding that your Call into ministry is from God

For me one of the key strategies for long term pastoral or missionary ministry is having a clear understanding that I have a call from God. As Dave Hansen writes, “Other than my personal relationship to Jesus Christ, knowing and understanding my call is the next most important thing in my life.” To know that being a pastor or missionary is not a choice or accident but is where God wants me to be is the crux of my ministry health. I remember times in ministry when I was ready to jump ship. Am I really a pastor? Is this what God really wants me to be doing for Him? And then He would remind me of that night the summer before my freshman year in college. The night I first heard His voice through the pages of the Bible saying “Come, follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men.” That was the time, that was the place when I changed my life course and began the first steps of the journey to become a pastor of a local church. That story has never changed and the power of it to refocus my life and ministry is still as powerful today as that first night. It is the key in my life and I believe in the lives of pastors, that anchors us in being a pastor or missionary.

5. Take Time in Spiritual Formation

As crucial as call is this next step is what keeps our call fresh and keeps us filled with God’s power. It is easy in ministry to not be intentional about growing in our spiritual life. We need to take time to practice the spiritual disciplines, to take time to let God work His purpose in our life. We need more than a 10 minute commitment to read our Bibles. We need to soak in God’s word daily, we need time to not only talk with God but to listen as he speaks to us. We need to find fresh ways, probably outside of our own theological background to understand God’s Truth. We must cultivate a healthy desire to grow and not be content with our current knowledge and relationship to God.

4. Remember your self-image is who you are in Christ not what you do;

This is the balance to a deep understanding of our call. We are called to be a pastor, but being a pastor is not our core identity. We need to remember that we are children of God first. We, as pastors/missionaries, are the sheep of God’s hand. We need to separate our core identity, of who I am, from our particular work of being a pastor. We also need to know what our special spiritual giftedness is and how we use those gifts in our daily ministry. Good questions to ask yourself in this area are “When am I not a Pastor?” and, “In what areas or times of my life am I simply a child of God?”

All of these strategies are building to the last three which are the most crucial for a healthy ministry life. Without these there would be no opportunity to do the other seven.


3. Take A Regular Day Off. A Sabbath Day

Do you take a day off? Do you have a Sabbath Day? These are not necessarily the same. We need time off from work to do the normal things of life: taking care of our personal business, house or yard work, time with our spouse and time with our children. But we also need Sabbath time, that special time set apart for not doing creative work, for sitting at the feet of Jesus and just listening to him. We need time for prayer, reading, sleep, rest, feasting, time for our spouses or families, time to Sabbath or Stop what our normal days are and rest. In the church we have neglected Sabbath to our detriment, and we need to recover a healthy Sabbath practice.

2. Maintain A Vibrant Marital Life

Along with taking Sabbath time, which is more on the spiritual side of things, we need to make our spouse a priority in our lives. To often they get put aside so that we can care for our mistress, the church. We need to remember that our marriage comes before our ministry and in many ways is the bedrock of our life and ministry. We need to take time to share, talk with our spouse about the things of our heart: What excites us, what moves us, what are our dreams and visions. We also need to remember to make love with our spouse. This is more than having sex on a regular basis. This is taking time to be romantic, and encouraging to him or her. We must listen to their heart, their dreams, their visions and celebrate that with them. It is important to not talk church or ministry all the time, go out for fun, relax and leave the church at the office. All of this is true for our families, our children or grandchildren as well. Part of finishing well for me is that I have a strong, vibrant, healthy, exciting, growing relationship with my wife and also my children, as much as it depends on me. At the end of our lives we should be more in love with our spouse than the day we walked down the aisle to say our “I do’s.”

1. Maintain A Vibrant Healthy Relationship with God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Here is the absolute key strategy for long term ministry. Our relationship with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the spark of our life and ministry. We need to be in prayer and dialog with him on a regular basis. We need to put time with him into our calendar as the most important part of any day or week. I believe that to finish well in ministry means to end our ministries, and end our life with a strong, vibrant, healthy, exciting, growing, relationship with God that is beyond our wildest imagination. He has promised to form Christ in us and to form us into his image and that should be our daily, weekly, yearly and life long goal. Nothing else compares to this. We should be willing to give up ministry if it interferes with our relationship with God.

There they are in a short fashion. Ten strategies that if practiced in our lives and ministry will help us to stay in ministry for the long haul. They will help us to stay healthy emotionally and spiritually. And if there comes dark times or difficult seasons, they can also help us go through that valley until we find ourselves on the other side lying down in green pastures.