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.

Learning To Rest in the Storms of Ministry

For background read the story: Luke 8:22; Matt 8:23; Mark 4:37
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.Often, however, we don’t think about the beneficial aspect of Sabbath keeping. If we know anything about the Sabbath it is usually the negative side of the legalism that so easily surrounds Sabbath. There is a wonderful story of Jesus that highlights one of the beneficial aspects of Sabbath keeping. It is the story of Jesus asleep in a boat in the middle of a storm. Matthew, Luke and Mark all tell the same story. Jesus and the disciples are together, and He is busy teaching and ministering to the crowds. The day ends and they all get into one of the boats and head for the other side of Lake Galilee. Jesus goes to the back of the boat, lies down and goes to sleep. A storm comes, and soon the disciples find themselves desperately trying to keep the boat afloat. They realize that Jesus isn’t helping and so they go to Him and ask for help in this desperate situation. Mark has a statement by the disciples that Matthew and Luke don’t include in their telling of the story. Mark shows us the desperate situation in the eyes of the disciples, when he has them speak to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?"There is one other time that Jesus is asked this same question. This time the story concerns two women, and is told by Luke. There is no immediate danger but there is work and commotion and quiet. Luke tells us of the time that Mary is setting at Jesus’ feet and Martha is busy about many things, caring and burdened in her ministry to Jesus. Then she sees Mary quietly setting at Jesus feet. Martha comes to Jesus, and says, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone?”There are two things that I find instructive for ministry in our modern world in these two stories. One, in the midst of storms, or in the midst of ministry we can become over burdened or in Luke’s term over caring. When that happens we can begin to loose perspective on the important things of life and ministry. Then we can find ourselves in a place that we begin trusting on our own abilities rather than resting in the strength of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. In the case of storms, we can “loose” our faith as the disciples were in danger of doing, as the storm threatened to overwhelm them. In pastoral ministry our faith can be destroyed or threatened when the waves and winds mount up and all our feeble efforts come to nothing. In the case of serving we can think that we ‘need’ all these things for a successful ministry and life and thus be so over concerned with them, that they take on a life of their own. A life that can overwhelm us just as surely as waves and wind.Jesus shows us a different way: A way of confident trust, of faith in a God who is bigger than the storms. He teaches us of one who is content even in the midst of busy ministry for ‘one thing’ that will minister to his needs.We are all familiar with the idea of taking time to sit at the feet of Jesus and be like Mary, although most of us males don’t like to consider that a woman sets a better example of devotion to Jesus than we do! But are we as comfortable sleeping in the back of the boat with Jesus? Can we take time out for ourselves, even in the midst of the storm and sleep?In a great little book, Rest in the Storm, Kirk Byron Jones speaks of our needing to be more like Jesus in savoring the sacred pace of life that he lived. [1]Jones writes, “I think the sacred pace of Jesus is a much-needed contrast to the prevailing ministry style that has us (1) doing too much, (2) doing too much at one time, and (3) doing too much as fast as we can. This three-headed demon is driving many ministers and their spouses to early graves – emotionally and physically. We can be liberated by internalizing the peace, patience, and attentiveness demonstrated by Jesus.” As pastors we need to learn the lesson of Mary, and of Jesus. When the storms of life are raging, when the demands of ministry are pressing, we need to be able to sit and rest or maybe even better be able to sleep in the back of the boat. As we work at ministry, quiet and rest are as important as work and productivity. I need to constantly remind myself that the pressures of ministry, and the pressures of building a successful ministry are not unlike the storms on the Lake of Galilee. They can come at the most unexpected times and then threaten to take us out of ministry. But there is a place of quiet rest in the midst of the storms of ministry. The back of the boat, sleeping with Jesus.
[1] Page 51. Rest in the Storm: Self-Care Strategies for Clergy and Other Caregivers; Kirk Byron Jones, pub Judson Press, Valley Forge, PA, 2001.

The Elephant of Ministry

There is an interesting phenomenon going on currently in America concerning the health of the church and Christian ministry. Every week there is a new article or news item or blog about the problems facing pastors. My wife, Bev, and I are deeply interested in these issues because we are part of the ‘cottage industry’ of providing care, support and ministry to pastoral couples.
But as we sit in our comfortable mountain valley, in many ways a long distance from these problems, we are reminded of the old story of a group of blind people confronted by an elephant and asked to describe what they find out about this animal. Of course each doesn’t have time to completely study the animal, and their primary means of experiencing it is by touch. So one only feels the trunk, another the ears, and still another the tail. When they report on their individual findings, they are all different and at odds with each other, and yet . . . each accurately describes what they have experienced. Because they don’t know all the facts or all the experiences, their individual conclusions are false. We all can laugh at the silly conclusions that they come to because we have seen a complete elephant and therefore know what they really are like. But often we are caught in the same situation, judging a ministry or a pastor or a pastor’s spouse only on our limited experience with them.
When I read these reports of gloom and doom concerning pastoral ministry I am not sure that I am receiving the complete picture. First off, yes, there are problems in the ministry today. Ministry has never been easy and with the pressures and changes in our society the difficulties have only increased. There are many pastors who leave the ministry for multiple reasons, there are clergy marriages that are falling apart and clergy children who are in trouble spiritually, emotionally, and physically. But that is not the complete story. These truths are only one part of a very large animal that we are trying to describe.
My perception of clergy health and well being is different from the dark statistics that are currently given. In the last 11 years of working directly with pastoral couples, I have counseled some couples who were gong through some very dark waters. Even in my own pastoral ministry of 23 years, I experienced the difficulties and stresses of modern ministry. But I have also met, talked with, laughed with, and prayed with many pastors, who are strong emotionally, physically and spiritually. In short, there are healthy clergy and clergy couples in America today. And that is not an oxymoron. They are leading worship every Sunday, and sometimes Saturday’s. They are building buildings, teaching small groups, impacting lives and families and staying healthy in the process.
Are they tired? Yes. Are they experiencing some burnout? Yes. Have they considered leaving their church ministry? Yes. Have they left? Yes. Have they returned? Yes. Are they going to continue in ministry? Yes.
What Bev and I have seen, in the couples whom we have come to love and admire, is people who, in a sense, have seen the dark side and have decided there is a better way. Some have been presented with the false dichotomy of “burn out or rust out for the Lord,” and have found a middle ground. Some have experienced heart breaking tragedy in their families and ministries and yet have kept going. They have learned the lesson that ministry is not a short term gig but a long term commitment. More like running an ultra marathon than a 40 yard sprint.
Recently I finished reading No Short Cuts to the Top[1], by Ed Viesturs. This is his story about climbing all 14 of the world’s highest peaks without supplemental oxygen. His personal commitment and motto for climbing struck me as important for long term pastoral ministry. His rule is simply stated, “Reaching the summit is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” To accomplish this he carefully plans all his climbs, and then works his plan. He is intentional about taking care of his energy use and the conditions of the mountains. Most important he is willing to stop a climb if he believes that he won’t be able to come down off the mountain. He shows us, who are pastors, a way to be in ministry for the long haul and remain healthy enough to endure all the rigors of pastoral life. Translated his example would be, “doing ministry and leading a church is optional, having a vibrant, spiritually alive, deepening walk with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a vibrant, healthy, loving marriage and as much as it depends upon us with our family is mandatory.” God has given us the spiritual gifts to do ministry. He has gifted us with the personal abilities to do ministry and he expects us to use these gifts wisely. God wants us to not only do ministry and lead a church well, but He wants us to be faithful to Him and His call in our lives until the end, that is mandatory.
From where I sit on the back porch of Genesee Home in beautiful Genesee Valley, CA, ministry is alive, well and flourishing as we begin this new millennium. In our last five years of ministry with pastors, 44.5% of all pastors we have served have been in ministry at least 27 years, another 21% have been in ministry at least 17 years and another 15% have been in ministry for at least 37 years. Among those statistics we have had many pastors who have been at their current church for more than 15 years!
One story can be an example of the health of Christian ministry. Pastor Alan and Beverly Ginn, have served their congregation, Chinese Grace Bible Church of Sacramento, for the last 30 years. While at Chinese Grace Bible they served as the senior pastor as well as the English pastor. Shortly after their retirement from active leading of a congregation, we sat together watching a special video and looking at the scrapbook of a wonderful celebration their church gave them, I noted something about their ministry. On every page Alan or Beverly would say, that young person is in ministry, or that one is pastoring a church, or we mentored them 10 years ago. They also pointed out many other pastors who were mentors and pastors in their lives as well. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I asked, “Alan, through the years how many young people have you mentored that are now in active ministry as pastors or missionaries?” His answer was about 20 people. And Alan has been mentored by 9 different pastors and missionaries.
Then Beverly spoke up and said, “But it is not over – the Lord gave me a verse for the next years of our ministry. Isaiah 43:18, ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing.’ We can glance back with a grateful heart to God for His goodness and faithfulness over the years. But we look to the East, to the sun rising… anticipating that there’s more ahead, new ministries and fruit from a God that does more than we can ever imagine!”
You see the rest of the story of this wonderful pastoral couple is that they are not simply retiring from a local church, they are changing to a new area of ministry: leadership training and development of local church pastors in Asia. So from our limited experience of “the elephant” we would say that there are many clergy and clergy spouses who are healthy, thriving and enjoying ministry in this new millennium, of which the Ginns are one example.
One thing should be added to these ideas. The pastors we have gotten to know in the last 11 years of our ministry who are healthy and thriving in ministry are pastors who are intentional about taking care of themselves. They know their limitations and they make allowances for those limitations. They understand that they don’t work for the church, but that they work for a loving Father and a faithful Savior empowered by the Holy Spirit. They understand that ministry is what God does in the lives of their communities not what they do. They know the value of Sabbath and practice it on regular basis. They not only take time to grow spiritually, they take time for family and for their own physical health.
[1] Viesturs, Ed with Roberts, David. No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World’s 14 Highest Peaks, copyright 2006; Published by Broadway Books; New York, New York.