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Ministering to the Minister

Spiritual Formation: Georges Boujakly
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Usually I write to you about ethnic issues. Today I call on your kindness to hear me in an area of ministry that is quickly rising to the top of my priority list. It has to do with the balance between doing the work of ministry and taking care of the minister.

The casualties are not few. Simply ask any nominating committee in any church (if those still exist) about how tough it is to find just the right person for just the right ministry in the local church. Find out how many quit half way through their service. Find out how many pastors who graduate from seminary are no longer in ministry 5-10 years after graduation.

The work of ministry is demanding on families, on health, on emotions, on spirit. If practitioners are not careful ministry may leave them exhausted, washed up, and joyless in serving God. Serving God and joylessness are an oxymoron. We Southern Baptists have invested heavily in doing the work of ministry. Got a need? We got just the program for it! Where we have short-sheeted ourselves is in the area of slowing down enough to pay attention to the one who gifts us with the work of ministry. If you are in ministry force yourself to answer these questions: Is my life generally well-balanced between doing ministry and being in constant connection with God? And another: Do I intentionally slow down enough to pay attention to God, and to listen to my life?

By "doing" I mean running the programs of the church and ministering to other people. Nothing wrong here. All necessary. All probably God-glorifying. By "being" I mean taking care of the one doing. If we are not careful we can spend all our energies running programs and meeting people's needs and in the process be spent. Taking care of the one doing is crucial.

Leaders must model strong desire to serve the Lord as well as strong desire to be spiritually healthy. We can't serve filet mignon to ministry and leftovers to self care. Can you name 5 God-honoring, self edifying, Spirit energizing ways you take care of yourself. I know Christian servants who are energized by doing and hate to slow down. They thrive on stress. They eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. However, sooner or later, self demands its share of attention. Sometime we give in grudgingly through a nervous breakdown, or character meltdown. We become negative. We lose track of the Lover of our souls. We romance busyness but we're not in step with the divine dance. The Holy One retreats while we are charging the beaches of our wasted souls.

Need I remind us how often Jesus left thriving ministries to let his soul thrive in the presence of the Father? Note as you read the Gospels how often he spend time in silence, in solitude, in gratitude, in prayer though the night, in paying attention to his Father. Then these statements from his lips make perfect sense: "I do the work of the One who sent me. I only work where He assigns me. Not my will but Thine." Habitually, our Master took care of his soul.

Picture today's work that you have to do as two stacks on your desk. In one all the things you do for others, the running of the programs, the details of ministry, the preparation for Sunday and other activities during the week. In the other stack are all the opportunities you have intentionally planned to pay attention to the Father. Obviously the ministry stack is bigger. But is the stack of self-care present at all? Is it time to break the cycle of the tyranny of doing with the healing balm of being? Increasing the size of the "being" stack would only improve the quality of the "doing" stack.