Lessons learned from ministry burn-out

Recently I addressed the issue of ministry burnout which is not uncommon among successful pastors or missionaries in their fifties. One of my cohorts who has experienced this is a founding pastor of a church that now runs around 2,000 people per Sunday.

As he has tried to make sense out of the growing lack of satisfaction in his role as senior leader and has thought through his sweet spot – the things he is good at and those things he is not good at, he offered the following seven observations that are worth considering.

1. We are an amalgamation of body, emotion, and spirit. These parts borrow from one another like good neighbors. But when all are depleted, bankruptcy follows. I kept borrowing and nearly lost the farm. Weariness is God's wake-up call that I am in debt in my life and need to pay down that debt before investing again.

2. I have learned that a good leader first cares for his own life. Sounds selfish, but it isn't if it is motivated properly from a devotion to stewarding God's resource, and a determination to lead long-term. I am advance blocking unstructured hours into my week to assure that I will retain time to do what I determine is most important. My schedule used to determine what was most important.

3. I have been learning what energizes and sustains me and what exhausts and drains me. I need to delegate the exhausting long-term job-related aspects of my life. I used to feel that was what I was paid for. Now I am pushing more down to others without losing sleep.

4. Growth brings good things, but also grief. There is a lot of loss that travels with growth: Loss of connection, Loss of control, Loss of old roles... and the list goes on.

5. Founders have full underwear drawers. We keep ill-fitting stretched out stuff that needs to gets tossed as our 'body' changes. Finding the courage to throw away old expectations and roles that don't any longer fit is essential of life is going to be good.

6. You will disappoint people no matter what. Choose the right people. Your own sense of calling, God and your family, and your closest colleagues are not the right people. I am being very intentional in choosing my priorities wisely, building structures and accountability to avoid disappointing the right people, but I am steeling myself to endure the judgment of those I do disappoint. I have learned that I am not good at 'no', so I am creating structures that can say 'no' for me... and an assistant who understands my priorities and steers appointments to others as needed.

7. Fun is holy. Without it planned into my life, I lose the ability to be renewed and carry joy and hope to others.

My friend also listed symptoms to pay attention to that may well be indications that not all is well and that a rethinking of roles, responsibilities and priorities is needed: I am sure many of us could add to this list.

Symptoms to pay attention to:

1. When you are so immersed in your job that you don’t plan anything fun anymore.
2. When a day off is a zombie-like shuffle through sadness that seems to have no clear source, not a day embraced with enthusiasm.
3. When work seems like it is all that is happening in your life.
4. When resentment over-takes satisfaction.
5. When a day off does not refresh you, and you resent having to go back to work.
6. When you are preaching about contentment, but you are discontented with your sermon. (Not proud of that one.)
7. When you resent people calling you or wanting to meet with you and you wish everyone would just leave you alone.
8. When people talk about the future and you feel numb.
9. When you have stopped laughing, and emotions seem to be just under the surface.
10. When you feel alone even though you are surrounded with people.
11. When you feel used and taken for granted.
12. When you have trouble sleeping at night, and trouble getting up in the morning.
13. When you are mostly irritable instead of mostly affable.
14. When you feel like everyone wants something from you, and you cannot possible meet all of their expectations… but you try anyway.
15. When people tell you. ‘You don’t look so good, you look tired, get some rest’ and you are stunned that they have no idea how tired and worn out you really are… and you wish you knew how to stop your schedule and just figure out your life.

Things that intrigue me

Doors: what is behind them?

Winding roads: where do they lead?

Lighted windows at night: who is home and what are they doing?

Planes taking off: where are they going?

People: what are they thinking?

Good spy stories: how will it end?

The new year: what will it bring?

I love the start of a new year. It is an adventure all over again, for me now 52 times. There is no way to know what will happen, what I will learn, what paths I will walk, what opportunities I will have, what challenges I will face. It is like opening a present little by little over the next twelve months, one piece at a time for 365 days!

Last year most of what I had planned was diverted by God with a long hospital stay. Where was the gift? In seeing God intervene, in being the object of his mercy, in being able to publish a book and finish another one, in more time with my wife than I have had in 20 years. What gifts did you unwrap last year?

One of my greatest gifts was watching it snow and enjoying Christmas with my family - celebrating the gift of life. It is funny how we lose sight of what is really important. God saved my life. That is important. I didn't need any other gifts this Christmas.

In a few days the gift of 2008 is history with all of its ups and downs. And the unfolding of 2009 starts. I see it as an adventure. Life may be good, or hard, certainly unpredictable, but as a Christ follower, just following Him wherever life leads is adventure enough. Every day a new door opens, or we see through a different window or turn another bend in the road. I relish the ride!

Time Out

For many of us, the days at the end of the year provide an opportunity to reflect on the past year and plan for the coming year. It is a great time to take a "time out" and think about what we may want to do differently in the coming year to keep our hearts fresh, our lives focused and our influence growing.

The most important question we can ask is "How is my heart?" Proverbs 4:23 reminds us, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." There is no higher priority than ensuring that our hearts are in a good place with God.

A few years ago, I opened the New York Times to see an article about an acquaintance of mine who had been involved in an affair with his supervisor in a major US corporation. The affair spilled over into corporate politics and his life was not only a mess but a public mess.

Many people talked to him in the aftermath, asked him a lot of questions and gave him a piece of their minds. He said that they most helpful question came from a friend who did not condemn or take him to the cleaners but instead asked one gentle question: "How is your heart toward God?" He said that one question, placed the issue into perspective. The issue came down to his heart. He got his heart right and he has his life and marriage back.

For many of us who run too fast, it is the heart question that gets short thrift. As you look back on your year and look forward to a new year, are there ways that you need to refresh, nourish and guard your heart toward God?

How are you doing with your life focus? All of us are called to a specific work and ministry that aligns with our gifting and calling. Over time, however, we accumulate the clutter of obligations, opportunities, or activities that divert or diffuse our focus and therefore diffuse our effectiveness.

This is a great time to evaluate where our focus has been diverted, what activities we should jettison and where we need to refocus our attention for the greatest personal effectiveness. What are the most important things that you need to do in your work and ministry and do you need to refocus in order to do those things well? It is up to us to clear the clutter of life - no one else will do it for us.

Finally, how can you increase your spiritual influence because in the end that is what ought to drive us? Spiritual influence is different than vocational success. Many of us are driven to succeed which is a great thing. But, the eternal impact of our lives, our real legacy comes from spiritual influence with those in our corner of the world.

God has given each of us a circle of influence whether inside or outside of the church. Are we using that opportunity to influence those around us to draw closer to Christ? What can we do this year to increase our spiritual influence?

Reflection is one of the most important things we can do if we desire to live intentionally. Use these days between Christmas and New Years to prayerfully reflect and prayerfully plan. Looking back gives us perspective. Looking forward gives us focus.

Incarnation

There is no more beautiful story than that of the incarnation. We have trivialized the incarnation into a nice holiday season with presents and fancy trees when the reality was stark and harsh.

The Son of God, the one who was present at the creation of the world, the one who mankind rejected to go their own way, the king of the universe, was willingly sent by the Father to become a baby in a squalid town, Bethlehem, to grow up in a working class home making furniture. Think of that, the one who had made the world, the mountains, the seas, the animals and the sky, who put the galaxies in their place is now sawing tables and chairs.

In becoming a man, in taking on our humanity, everything changed in how we could relate to God for in becoming like us and living with us for a season we could touch, hear, learn from and relate to the unapproachable God. The Apostle John put it this way, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Never again could men and women say, “I cannot understand God” for now they had met and can continue to meet the Lord of the universe through the person of Jesus Christ.

When at thirty years old, Jesus started his ministry he was clear about one thing. The only way to the father, the only way to salvation, the only way to know God was through him. He declared, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me” (John 14:6). There are no alternate routes, there are no other spiritual guides, he and he alone is the route to the Father!

This is not politically correct and never has been. If you read the gospels and the life of Paul you discover it was not well accepted in that day either. For the religious officials in Judea, Jesus could not be the awaited Messiah because he came in poverty and died on a cross in shame. For the Greeks and Romans with all their various “new age” type religions including statues to “unknown God’s” (just to stay on the safe side), a savior who died and rose again was nothing less than foolishness on a grand scale.

In our day, Christianity is vilified and marginalized and alternate spiritual routes are explored and embraced no matter that they contradict one another and have no basis for truth. I am intrigued by how quickly people grab on to numerous alternate spiritual routes that have no validation in history and no internal consistency, but only vague and foggy spiritual language but it is believed as truth while Christianity with its historical grounding, Scriptures and internal consistency is rejected as foolishness.

One of the lies of the evil one is that life is about us. There is another lie: that we can choose our path to God – which is a grand lie indeed since it elevates our wisdom above God’s and allows us to create our own God, our own path and our own spirituality. That is a greater lie than the first one because now life is not only about us but we have the ability to determine its destiny.

If Jesus was trying to create a popular religion he failed miserably. God does not appear as a baby, make furniture, live itinerantly without a home, befriend prostitutes and the sick and the poor and sinners. He does not allow himself to be nailed to a cross so that he can bear our sin on his own body, naked, bleeding, diminished and alone. He would not choose twelve followers who would not qualify for anything other than blue collar work and tell them to change the world (which they did). He would not choose ordinary people like us down through the centuries to keep on changing the world – which he does.

Jesus did not come as a religious guru, or to found a popular religion. He came as the Lord of the Universe, took on our bones and flesh and with truth and grace pointed us to himself as the one who could save us from our sin, give hope to the hopeless, heal the sick and lead us into a relationship with the father – through him. And Jesus and the message of the gospel have been transforming individual lives, one at a time ever since. Not in religion but in relationship.

Anyone who is serious about a relationship with Jesus Christ must confront the claim he made that he is the only way to the father. There are no alternate routes. If he is wrong on that he was not God. If he is right on that he is the only God.

Missions Nice and Missions Strategic

A major and necessary shift is taking place today in the world of missions. It is being driven by the high cost of having missionaries deployed globally and by a realization that nice cannot substitute for strategic. I remember talking to a staff member some years ago whose ministry had limited effectiveness. When I talked about the need to be results oriented in our mission activity he said, "what matters is faithfulness!" Now faithful ministry is important but so is strategic ministry.

Consider three issues. First, it takes about $100,000 to keep a mission family on the field on average. One can only justify that cost if there is a well thought out plan for how they do ministry.

Second, the world is growing at a rate of 78,000,000 people per year. At a world population of 6.5 billion people, the most people who have ever lived in human history it requires us to think strategically if we are going to make even a small dent for the gospel.

Third, we never hire people in our churches in the United States to do "nice." Our resources are limited too. We hire staff who can do strategic and results oriented ministry. It baffles me that we have such different standards for international mission work where the requirements to do well are often higher than they are in the United States.

In ReachGlobal we have taken a number of steps to move us toward greater ministry productivity. First we have moved all of our personnel into teams so that there is synergy, greater creativity, greater care between members and the strength of various gifting rather than missionaries out on their own.

Second, we have place a much higher emphasis on good leaders leading at each level of the mission - something downplayed in many mission organizations where historically decisions - large or mundane were made by a committee of the whole group. Thus we have moved from cumbersome to efficient.

Third, each of our staff has a set of Key Result Areas for the Year along with an annual ministry plan. Before the year begins they know exactly what their plan is and then they can focus their efforts on the plan. In addition, there is a monthly coaching/mentoring with their supervisor to ensure that they are on target and to remove barriers they are facing.

Fourth, through the concept of the Sandbox we have moved decision making down to the leaders and teams that are best designed to make decisions in their context. We still have huge alignment because our alignment is around the mission, guiding principles, central ministry focus and culture of health as defined by the sandbox that everyone is required to play in.

Finally we are committed to multiplication through the developing, empowering and releasing of healthy national leaders for the planting of indigenous, interdependent, self supporting, healthy and reproducing churches. This breakthrough in our thinking means that we no long plant and pastor churches ourselves but raise up indigenous leaders from the very beginning, becoming developers, coaches and mentors. We call this moving from multiplication to addition.

In all of this we have been intentionally moving from a culture of nice to a culture of strategic international missions. We are also seeing significant ministry results from our shift. This also has implications for the missionaries your church supports: are they doing nice things or are they engaged in strategic ministry?

Staffing differently

I read an interesting email today from a church that recently replaced a full time outreach pastor with a volunteer team of four retired individuals who together have brought more creativity, motivation, teamwork and results to outreach than the church has ever had. And their new staff cost nothing!


I found the email fascinating because I have long thought that we have professionalized ministry, hiring professionals to do what in many cases God's people could be doing and at a high cost to the ministry. The cost of staff and benefits continues to rise, leaving us with few resources for ministry initiatives in our community or world.


For all of us who wish we had more resources. For all of us who wish more of our competent congregants were in the game. For all of us who want to release God's people in meaningful ministry, this is an idea to be considered.
It almost sounds like how God designed the church to operate!

God still Heals

One year ago I spent 32 days in the Intensive Care Unit and 42 days in the hospital, 18 days of which were in an induced coma on a ventilator. I came into the hospital with MRSA pneumonia which led to many complications: acute respritory distress syndrome, congestive heart failure, a torn mitral valve in the heart, fevers of 103.8, a heart rate of 240 and septic shock. By all human reasoning I should not have survived.

But: God raised up an army of people praying from around the world and God did the impossible, even healing the failed mitral valve after a day of intense prayer and fasting. To this day my doctors cannot get their hands around my healing. They know there was outside intervention.

I have learned many lessons from my hospital stay. I have learned to pray boldly knowing that God can do the impossible. I have learned that every day is an undeserved gift of grace to be used for his purposes. I have learned that life can change almost instantly so I don't want to squander the time God has given. I have learned of God's great goodness, mercy and love.

Shortly after leaving the hospital I wrote these words in my journal. More than ever I am aware that every day is an undeserved gift from God. That I owe him my life and that He has graciously granted me additional life to server Him. I don't deserve it but that is the nature of grace.

I am reminded of that grace every single morning. And I thank Him for it. God is good - all the time.