How To Survive The Ministry

In my previous blog, I borrowed some statistical information, from Mark Driscoll, which points to some of the tragedies associated with people serving in pastoral ministry. Today, I want to provide some of Mark's recommendations for surviving the ministry. If you're like me, you'll see a lot of opportunities to grow and to enrich your personal life.

• Fill your plate — Each person needs to first find the size of their plate and then fill it only with those things that are of highest priority. Before adding any additional things to our full plate, we must take something else off to leave space for the new duty.
• Exercise — Sadly, most pastors and Christian leaders are woefully out of shape. Experts say the best time to exercise is in the morning and those who work out early in the day are most likely to remain on an exercise regimen.
• Do not allow technology to be your Lord — Fortune magazine had an insightful article stating that the average American worker is interrupted once every eleven minutes and takes twenty-five minutes to refocus on their original task. The problem is that the alarms and bells of our technology deceive us into reacting to them even when the matter they call us to is neither urgent or important. So, turning off the chime and vibrate on your phone, only checking your voicemail and email on certain days at certain times, and turning the notification off on your email will itself go a long way toward your healing.
• Sabbath — This includes taking five minutes off every hour to catch your breath, go for a walk, stand up at your desk, etc. It includes taking thirty to sixty minutes off a day to nap, go for a walk, read, garden, or whatever else releases your pressure and helps you to relax. This also means taking one day off a week to Sabbath, including a date night if you are in a serious relationship or married. This also includes a day or two off a month for silence and solitude and a few weeks a year for an actual vacation that does not leave you more tired than before it began.
• Pick a release valve — Because ministry causes pressure, any leader without an acceptable release valve will either burn out from stress or blow up from sin. So, the key to releasing pressure is to find and use an acceptable release valve. This may include exercise, gardening, a hobby, journaling, or heading into the mountains for a day of adventure to find new lakes to swim in.
• Work on your life, not just in it — Time needs to be regularly taken to pull back and look at your life so that you can work on it rather than just run in it. This also means taking time to read books on the issue of time management and burnout and biographies of great leaders to learn from their lives, and possibly even taking time to meet with a Biblical counselor to get insight on your own life and tendencies.
• Leave margin — When we push our bodies, schedules, minds, and budgets to the point where there is no margin, all that it takes to destroy us is one unforeseen expense, one small emergency, or one small cold. This means leaving extra money in the bank, leaving extra time between appointments, and preparing to arrive at places early so that if there is traffic you will still be on time and not stressed.
• Spend most of your time training leaders — While thousands of people came to see Jesus, only a handful really knew Him, and only three knew Him intimately. This is because Jesus spent his time training leaders to do ministry and without doing the same we will die from our work and sadly see it die with us as well.
• Work from conviction, not guilt — Conviction comes from God and guilt comes from people. The key to being both fruitful and healthy is to do what God wants and not always say yes to or let yourself be pushed around by people who are demanding and have perfected the art of making you feel guilty if you do not do what they demand.