In my last blog, I started out by acknowledging that ministry is brutal! Not only is the work itself challenging, and the work-life balance is challenging, but it’s often a place where wounding happens as we sit with broken people who lash out at us in their pain.
I shared with you the first of two myths that I have found at play countless times over my career as a professional counselor. The first is The Myth of Embodied Spirituality. In essence, it’s the belief that as long as you read your Bible and love Jesus, everything is going to work out right. This can be very destructive to ministers and lead to deep battles with shame, as they question why they’re not more spiritually mature or wise enough to navigate life’s challenges.
If you didn’t get the chance to read my first blog, I’d love for you to take a moment and start here.
Here is the second myth I’ve come across repeatedly:
2. The Myth of 100%. The myth of 100% is this idea that, “I’m going to give the ministry 100%. I’m going to give my work 100% if it’s for the Lord.” That sounds really good. But you can try to give it your all, but it’s impossible. You are finite creature. God only gave you so much energy and so much in terms of time and resources. You can’t give anything 100%. There are multiple priorities that God has for your life. If your life is a pie graph in terms of the hours each day that you have and the physical and emotional energy that you have, that has to be sliced up for different priorities in your life. If you give more than is due in any one slice, it comes at the expense of another slice of what is due. If you give more to the ministry than it’s due, you steal from your family and other things that are important to the Lord. So we have to understand the whole is 100%. We can’t give any one slice 100%. Therefore, we have to go before the Lord and ask how much is enough.
In ministry, sometimes self-sacrificing (even time with family) feels like a form of godliness, but the reality is that it’s not biblical. It wasn’t Jesus’ example. It’s not how He did ministry, and it’s a refusal to accept the limits that He designed into our body. Remember, Jesus designed you to need seven to nine hours of sleep. That’s a medical fact because Jesus designed you that way. It was His idea. He didn’t have to. He could have made you need two hours of sleep or no sleep at all. I mean, it’s Jesus’ design. He’s capable of doing it. But He wired your body to need seven to nine hours of sleep a night. He wired your body to need regular movement and exercise to stay healthy and fully functional. This was Jesus’s design.
He wired you to need rest and to need Sabbath in your life and time away. If you ignore the realities of how God made your body by His design, it has a consequence. It inhibits your ability to manage the other slices in the pie. It inhibits your ability to fulfill the ministry you’ve been called to. It inhibits your ability to be present with your wife and engage your relationship as He’s called you to. It inhibits your ability to be a friend, to be a father, to be a mother, to be to your family who it is that He’s called you to be. The pie shrinks when you don’t take care of the slice that is your own self-care.
I want to encourage you to have a prevention mindset. You have seen your colleagues in ministry, people you loved and respected, burn out or blow up in one way or another, and it took you by surprise. It took them by surprise! They didn’t set out for that to be their story, and we’d be foolish to think that it couldn’t happen to us as well, that we’re somehow immune to it. Please be humble. Consider the risk and how you could invite others –whether it be coach or counselor – to help identify your blind spots. How can you invite that into your life in a way that helps safeguard your ministry and family and helps you optimize the slice of the pie called “self-care” so that you can have an expanded capacity to care for others God puts in your path? As somebody who has sat for thousands of hours with pastors, often pastors in crisis, and felt like it didn’t have to come to this, that’s my heart for you.
Pastor, if you’ve read this blog and decided today, “I need help, someone in my corner who can help me work a few things out so I can be truly fit for service,” I’d love for you to connect with me or another counselor. A good counselor will ask the right questions to help you attune to your nervous system, which Jesus designed with alert systems in it to help provide guidance. Your body will tell you what it is that you’re lacking and what you need if you know how to listen to it. And if there’s unresolved mental and emotional trauma, just having someone ask questions will begin to pinpoint areas that need healing and the action steps you can take to release and recover from what you’ve been going through. Feel free to send me an email at josh.spurlock@mycounselor.online or visit www.mycounselor.online. Click on the yellow button “Get Matched,” and one of our intake team will connect and ask some questions so that we can help you get set up with a counselor who is a good fit for you. They’ll meet with you through Zoom on your computer or phone from your home or office or car or sitting out on your back porch, and they will journey with you. Until then, may the Lord lead you to find healing and rhythms of renewal.
This blog was created using content from the webinar Nurturing Mental and Emotional Health In You and Your Team.
