Rest sustains passion
December 22, 2008
After reading the past four weeks, you may be thinking, “people don’t renew my passion. They drain me!” Me too! So, how can embracing people lead to sustaining passion? It happens when immersing yourself in relationships is balanced with another source of passion modeled by Jesus. That source is intentional rest.
Jesus not only modeled being with people, he also modeled getting away from people. Throughout the gospels, Jesus modeled the principle of intentional rest. He went on private retreats, private prayer retreats, and prayer retreats and cruises with his closest friends. He went to parties, celebrations, and worship services. Jesus knew the importance of being alone, of being with friends, and of balancing the demands of ministry with rejuvenation through rest.
Many leaders are deluded by their own importance. They have, to quote a friend, “delusions of adequacy and illusions of indispensability.” Are you like that? If you are, you probably have not developed the discipline of pulling away from your ministry responsibilities and resting. Finding the proper balance between embracing people and retreating regularly from the intensity of those relationships sustains passion. Jesus did it and you can too.
Rest weekly. God laid down the law – work six days, rest one. Following this pattern sustains a person over the long haul. Leaders, because they are typically driven and energetic, often act like they are exempt from this principle. You are not exempt, no matter what!
Why is it so hard for Christian leaders to follow this simple pattern – work six days, rest one? Leaders have unpredictable and uneven work patterns. There is no normal workweek. Leaders are often people-pleasers. This makes them too willing to respond to every request for their time. Most leaders like their work and find it hard not to over commit. Ministry is fulfilling and often fun! On the downside, some leaders have real emotional/psychological needs they try to satisfy through work. These leaders are workaholics and need help to break their addiction.
But for most of us, the answer is to make a disciplined choice to simply say no to working seven days a week. This requires commitment to an intentional plan. For more than twenty years, I have rested one day a week from ministry responsibilities. Making this decision was difficult. I had some workaholic issues and also some other reasons for being so driven. But my wife and church leaders insisted we establish a regular schedule that included one “day off” per week.
How did we do it and how have we maintained it? As a couple, we simply decided and did it. For many years, it was Thursday. Then, as our children got older, we switched to Saturday. Later, when I changed from pastoral ministry to a leadership role that required weekend travel, we changed to Friday. For more than twenty years, we have managed to set aside one day per week to rest, refocus, and reset.
We have not been perfect or legalistic about this practice. We only rest one day per week about 40-45 weeks per year. Like all ministry leaders, sometimes our schedule simply has to accommodate events that conflict with our rest day. Emergencies happen, special events require special scheduling, and travel demands sometimes change schedules unexpectedly. But, look at it another way. For more than 40 weeks every year for more than 20 years we have had one day per week without any phone calls, any sermon preparation, any counseling appointments, any visits, any staff meetings, any cranky people to manage, or any email to answer!
If you have not established this pattern, try these suggestions. Develop an annual ministry calendar and simply block out one day (the same day each week works best) per week. Block it out! No exceptions (although some will inevitably arise as the year unfolds). On that day, turn off your cell phone and do not check your email. Do not “go by the office.” Let an answering machine screen your calls at home. If you have a secretary or staff, tell them not to call you except for real emergencies. And, teach them what a real emergency is! A broken water pipe in the church basement is not an emergency requiring your attention; the death of a church member is. If you live too close to your church, mission, or office, you may need to actually get away from your home for the day.
Don’t be legalistic about what you can or can’t do on your rest day. The only thing you cannot do is work at ministry. We sometimes do nothing, go shopping, go to a movie, eat out for lunch, read all day, work on some crafts, fix up our house, or anything else we enjoy. The purpose of a weekly day of rest is not inactivity, but a change of pace and emotional disengagement from the pressures of work.
Retreat occasionally. Leaders need to occasionally pull away for more than one day. They need a multi-day retreat to really renew themselves. This can take any number of forms, some of which involve work or preparation for future work.
Personal retreats include prayer retreats, going to a conference or meeting alone, marriage retreats (as a couple or with a group), and study retreats. Some leaders go away alone to plan a year of preaching or develop some significant strategy for their church or organization. All of these personal retreats can be restful.
Group retreats might include prayer retreats, staff retreats, attending a conference or meeting with a group of church leaders, or perhaps a camp or cruise with peers who share your responsibility in other churches or organizations.
All these experiences can be significant. Too often leaders measure what they “get out of” these kind of events by how thick the notebook they bring home. Learning new concepts is helpful, but disengaging from the daily grind and getting a fresh perspective is often the more important outcome.
Vacation annually. Henry Ford casually asked potential executives he was interviewing to tell him about their vacation the previous year. The driven answer of “not being able to get away” because of “my commitment to the company” was the wrong answer. He felt anyone who was not able to plan his work so he could accomplish it in 50 weeks each year, rather than 52, was not capable of managing a section of Ford Motor Company. Not taking appropriate vacation was a disqualifying offense!
Oh, that it were so for all ministry leaders! Leaders usually have two or more weeks of paid annual vacation, and they leave it on the table. What a waste! Vacation rest is a wonderful privilege and a tremendous opportunity to rest, reconnect with family, and rejuvenate for future work demands.
But do not make the mistake common to American culture. Vacation is often defined as “covering as much ground and spending as much money as possible.” Neither will leave you rested. Some travel can be fun, but conquering ground and going into debt creates stress rather than relieves it.
When our children lived at home, we developed a pattern that worked well for us. We took some vacation around the Christmas holidays and simply stayed home. We turned off the cell phone and email and enjoyed family time. We did traditional Christmas events (like driving around looking at Christmas lights which my children loathed, but did anyway!). We spent very little money and had maximum family time together.
Then, once a year, we took some kind of family trip. These were not always elaborate trips. Some years, depending on resources, they were very simple. The issue was not distance from home, but emotional and intellectual distance from work. This pattern worked well for our family. We traveled some, had neat adventures, and saw some national treasures. We also had extra family time around an important holiday. Now, as our adult children establish their lives, we are developing new models of how we will do vacation rest.
Vacation rest is helpful when it restores you, strengthens your family, and you return ready to get back to work! If you come back, and need a vacation to recover from your vacation, something is probably not working with your plan. Make adjustments and capitalize on the opportunity and privilege of vacation rest to make you a more effective leader.
Sustaining passion for ministry is possible. Embrace people. Deepen your ministry relationships. Abandon yourself emotionally to the people you serve. Ask God to give you fresh eyes to see people for who they really are.
And then, from time to time, pull completely away from everyone and rest. Learn both disciplines – immersion in the lives of people and retreating from ministry relationships - to retool for future ministry. This is not a contradiction; it is a healthy cycle that leads to emotional health, indefatigable commitment, and deep passion that will sustain your ministry over a lifetime.
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Practical steps, part 2
December 15, 2008
Last week, we learned the first two steps toward embracing people and sustaining passion for ministry. The first two steps are to accept people as they are and relate to people on their terms. Now let’s finish the list with steps three and four.
Meet the needs of people. A third way to kindle passion for people is to discover their needs and meet them. Some leaders debate the difference between real needs and felt needs. And, there is a difference – but only to the leader! To the person with the need, the felt need is the real need. Discovering needs is not that difficult. Making the sacrifice to meet them is the difficult part.
A few years ago, I joined the board of a youth sports organization. I really wanted to develop a ministry relationship with the president of the board, so I started being alert to his needs and meeting them. Some of his needs, those related to his responsibilities, were obvious. But I constantly looked for ways to serve him personally.
After two years of trying to build our friendship, his mother died. His wife told me three weeks later, “We almost called you to do a service for her.” That was a missed opportunity. Disappointed but deterred, I kept looking for ways to serve him. Two years later, his father died. This time he called! I officiated a service for his father and further cemented our relationship.
Two more years passed. More needs were met, both personal and related to our board service. Then, a major marriage problem arose. He called and said, “Jeff, today I really need a friend.” Within minutes I was at his house and the door was finally opened for real ministry. For about six years I had been serving him in practical ways, all the time hoping for a breakthrough to a deeper level of ministry. Finally, it happened.
Passion for this man and his family was generated by the investment I made in him. When you put six years of ministry into a person, you will develop strong feelings for him or her.
Serve people with abandon. Finally, sustaining passion comes when you release yourself to really embrace the people you are responsible to lead. Some leaders keep one eye on the horizon, always looking for greener pastures. One pastor seemed to continually be talking to some search committee. The thrill of being pursued apparently met some deep need. I often wondered if that need would have been met more meaningfully if he had closed off all options and really given himself emotionally to the church he was serving? I think it would have.
When we got married, we vowed to never even mention the word divorce. We had some difficult years early in our marriage (who doesn’t?). But the fact we had no other option forced us to learn to live happily with one another. We were driven to solve our conflicts and build our marriage. When you completely commit yourself to a relationship, something deep happens. You find yourself emotionally attached to people at a depth you cannot explain. That is passion you are feeling. Passion grows in the greenhouse of total commitment.
In my first pastorate, we celebrated come-and-go Lord’s Supper services on Christmas Eve. A different deacon served the Supper on the hour from late afternoon through the evening. I would often sit in the back of the dimly lit sanctuary and watch the drama of church members observing the Lord’s Supper with a small group of fellow believers, served by a trusted friend. It was a poignant scene.
Sitting there, the memories of the previous year of ministry would flood my mind. New converts having their first Christian Christmas, families saved through ministries of our church, teenagers newly committed to missions or ministry, recent widows and widowers, and pregnant women expecting their first child all reminded me of how privileged I was to be a pastor. What a wonderful gift from God to be shepherd of part of his flock!
If you want deeper passion for people, commit yourself to them and serve them with reckless abandon. Stop watching the clock and counting the cost! Emotionally, give yourself to them entirely. Stop holding back and looking around for a better deal! Spiritually, sacrifice your future dreams on the altar of your present responsibility. Commit yourself to be fully engaged with those you are responsible to lead. When you do, passion will well up from deep within.
As you consider these strategies for embracing the people you lead and developing sustaining passion for ministry, an acrostic emerges.
Accept people as they are
Relate to people on their terms
Meet the needs of people
Serve people with abandon
Put your ARMS around people. Embrace them. Let them get into your heart. Develop an emotional attachment to your followers. Christian leadership is not primarily a professional responsibility. It is a professional
relationship.
You may be wondering, but doesn’t embracing people drain us more than sustain us? Good question! We will answer it next week.
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Practical steps to passion, part 1
December 8, 2008
Now that we have laid out a foundation for passionate ministry based on Jesus’ model, let’s consider some practical steps to sustaining your passion for ministry. Connecting with people and seeing them as they really are is essential for sustaining passion. When you meet a radical feminist protestor, do you see a political zealot or an angry, possibly abused woman with deep emotional needs? When you see a businessman neglecting his family to pursue wealth, do you think “how dumb can he be?” or do you think “what makes him so insecure?” When a tattooed or pierced teenager passes you on the street, do you feel scorn for wasted potential or pain for someone desperately looking for acceptance and community?
Listing persons in these categories doesn’t imply all their motives are impure or their actions are wrong. The point isn’t to create rigid categories but to challenge your impressions. Do you automatically judge people who are different than you and assume the worst? If you do, you are draining passion from your ministry. Seeing people who are different than you as Jesus might see them infuses you with passion for them.
Changing how you see people is vital for sustaining passion for ministry. Here is a model for changing your perspective, for changing the way you perceive the crowd around you. Here is some help for seeing people as Jesus sees them.
Accept people as they are. This is a basic, yet often neglected, discipline for leaders. We often expect people to be more than they are and become angry when they disappoint us. We relate to people as we wish them to be, not as they really are. We expect too much from people. When you do this, you will always be disappointed.
Christian leaders are people developers. We want people to grow, improve, and change. And they do! But that does not change the fact they have baggage. They grow in fits and spurts, not in a smooth way you can chart and measure. We also sometimes become frustrated when people act out their sinfulness. We forget that people really are sinners and will naturally act like it.
People have different levels of intelligence, giftedness, commitment, and potential. In spite of our “brilliant” leadership, every follower will not excel in every area of life. If you think they will, you are living in a dream world! Prepare to be disappointed and disillusioned. Your perspective on Christians prior to failure will largely determine how you respond to them when they fail. Did you have them on a pedestal, or did you more realistically see them as saved, yet still flawed sinners?
One teenage girl attended a youth retreat about sexual purity. For two days, she learned about moral purity and how to resist sexual pressure and temptation. She returned home after making a serious, well-intentioned commitment to maintain her moral values.
A few months later she became pregnant. She was devastated. When she told me about the pregnancy, she apologized for “letting me down.” It would have been easy to allow my disappointment to become the issue. She had ignored my instruction, embarrassed our church, and created problems in our youth ministry. She had lost so much – her virginity, her future plans, the respect of her parents, her relationships with her friends, and the high school experiences she would miss. My emotional response, however, was not the issue. The real problem was her pregnancy and helping her move forward the best way possible. Her behavior did not determine my pastoral effectiveness. It was important to keep that in perspective.
This principle will also give you sustaining passion for evangelizing people. For years, my hobby has been umpiring baseball. My umpire friends have been my primary community for evangelism and ministry. What is your impression when you see an umpire? A legalist? A hard-nosed, argumentative boor? A control freak? All of the above? Some umpires fit this stereotype (thankfully, most don’t!). Those that do are the men and women I most like to befriend.
It’s easy to be put off by the profane language, arrogance, and bravado. But I am not easily distracted by the smoke screen. I see my umpire friends for who they really are. I see through the tough-guy façade to the brokenness. I see the damaged marriages, drinking problems, chain-smoking to relieve stress, and bawdy jokes to mask their fear of intimate relationships. I see them for who they really are which invigorates passion for reaching them with the gospel. I am not disappointed when they act out their sinfulness. I expect it and accept them as they are.
Don’t expect discipled behavior from the unconverted. Develop the spiritual and emotional discipline of accepting people as they are. Accept the good in people, but expect the bad to occasionally emerge. Most people are doing life as well as they can. No one wakes up and asks, “How can I be stupid today? What can I do to wreck my life?” Accept people as they are, not as you wish them to be or hope they will become.
Relate to people on their terms. A second part of embracing people is relating to them on their terms, on their turf. Jesus modeled this by going to homes, synagogues, and other public places. Leaders who want to develop passion for people must take the plunge! Leave the ivory tower of isolated Christian leadership and get out with people. No leader can effectively lead people from their office, no matter how technologically advanced it is. Turn off your computer and get with people!
One pastor schedules two hours of pastoral or evangelistic visitation every Saturday morning to get his heart right about the people he will preach to on Sunday. Going into homes and seeing how people really live, listening to them, and observing their families does something remarkable for him. It reminds him how people are really living, not how he imagines or wishes they were.
But home visitation is not the only way to do this. Several years ago I was the guest speaker at a women’s Bible study at a country club. This interdenominational group had been together for about a year. They had been working through the book of Acts and had a list of questions they wanted to ask. A woman from my church who was part of the group arranged for me to meet with them. The questions were technical, challenging, and sent me back to my commentaries!
Over time, this relationship developed into a once-a-month question-and-answer session. When Christmas came, they invited me to their party that included their husbands. Most of these men were not Christians. They were driven businessmen with little evident spiritual interest. The ladies were concerned I might be offended because their husbands would be drinking at the party.
What would you do? For me, it was an easy decision. I went to the party. I met the men on their turf, on their terms. Meeting them, getting to know them, and discerning the issues keeping them from committing themselves to Jesus kindled my passion for these men. Within a few months, the first of them became a Christian.
What would have happened if a leader had not been willing to meet them on their terms, on their turf? Eternal consequences! Until I met these men, they were anonymous. After I met them, they became people I cared deeply about. I was compelled to reach them for Jesus. Passion is generated and sustained by getting out where people are, getting to know them, and experiencing life from their perspective.
Next week – steps three and four!
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The Best Model
December 1, 2008
We are in the second week of considering the issue of passion for ministry. As we learned last week, the biblical idea of “compassion” closely approximates our contemporary understanding of passion. Jesus is the best model for compassion, or sustaining passion, for ministry. Matthew 9:35-36 records Jesus, “felt compassion for them.” This phrase is tucked within a summary statement of Jesus’ recent ministry. That summary helps us understand what it takes to sustain passion for ministry
Jesus connected with people. Matthew writes, “(Jesus) went to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness.” In short, Jesus spent a lot of time with people.
The Bible often has summary statements that can be read quickly but encompass days, weeks, or even months of ministry. Jesus “went to all the towns and villages.” Have you ever considered how much time was involved? Jesus walked, or rode a slowly walking animal, everywhere he went. His available modes of transportation didn’t allow Jesus to rush through the towns and villages. He went slowly. He connected with people. He identified with them where they lived, worked, and worshipped. He was among them and really
with them.
Jesus spent time teaching and preaching. Those two activities take time. Jesus also spent time healing. With rare exception, Jesus touched people he healed. Traveling to them also took time. Jesus connected with people. He took time with people. Jesus knew people and ministered to them personally and individually.
Jesus saw people as they really are. Matthew continues, “When He (Jesus) saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them because they were weary and worn out, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus saw people as they really were, not as they appeared to be or as they may have tried to be. Jesus saw more than faceless crowds. He saw individuals who were weary and worn out, helpless and hurting.
The stories in the chapter preceding this summary passage record Jesus ministering to individuals. Jesus healed a paralytic, called a disciple, confronted the Pharisees and John’s disciples, healed a woman, resuscitated a young girl, restored sight to blind man, and cast a demon out of man. Jesus saw the crowd as a collection of individuals with specific needs requiring personal ministry. Jesus could have said, “Everybody is cured, confronted, or delivered” and it would have been done. But he didn’t. He worked with people personally.
Jesus has the uncanny ability to see people as they really are. Sustaining passion in ministry is rooted in this spiritual discipline. When you see people for who they really are, it changes your perspective. My oldest son, as a younger teenager, taught me this lesson with a profound statement. We were discussing the morality of nude dancing. Casey had some reasons, borrowed from his buddies, why viewing nude dancers was acceptable.
After listening to his flawed reasoning, I was ready to shoot down all his arguments. There are many reasons voyeurism is harmful. But a check in my spirit stopped me from turning our conversation into a point-by-point debate. Instead, I lowered my voice and said, “Casey, we can’t watch nude dancers because each women is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. They aren’t objects of lust, they’re real people.” Casey thought about it a few seconds and replied, “You’re right dad.
Everything changes when you see people for who they really are.”
Exactly! When you see people as a mass of sinners, a crowd who exists to drain you, needy people who will never amount to anything, or church members who exist to support you, you will not treat them compassionately or have sustaining passion to serve them. But, when you see people as they really are, passion stirs deep within you. How can you, indwelled by the Spirit of Jesus, respond any other way?
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