Wandering with Reckless Abandon

Reading through Monday Morning Insight today I read this about Mad Church Disease.

As I read through the post, I could not help but identify with what it was saying about the similarities between Mad Cow Disease and burnout in the ministry world. While I am excited by the fact that someone is finally researching this, I have to admit that I was heartbroken by the survey itself.

Questions about personal disciplines and the lack there of.
Questions about heart conditions (not the medical kind), physical and emotional consequences of ministry, and thought lives.

As I read through this survey and reflected on my own ministry experience my heart was shredded for those that are burned out and beaten up… and don’t even know it.

Those of us who have lived life in the ministry arena have all met someone that has been there, or is there. Many of us have seen our friends go down through these experiences. Many of us have been there too.

So, now that I have stretched the gray cloud of gloom and doom throughout this post, I ask how do we combat this?

Or maybe a better question is how do we keep this from ever happening in the first place?

I think that there are a few things that we need to look at, but I think that one of the first things that needs to be addressed are expectations. What are the expectations that are placed on Pastors, and how do they determine how we minister?

Over my eight years in ministry I have seen many different people in many different situations, and one theme seems to stand out.

Those of us in ministry who have a healthy understanding of what is expected of them fare better than those that do not.
Those that define what is expected of them, and operate within those expectations fare far better than those who allow expectations to be defined for them.
Those that allow the masses to determine what their job is never succeed.

So, what is it that is expected of those of us in professional ministry?

What is expected of pastors is the same thing that is expected of everyone… The relentless pursuit of who God has made us to be. (I stole that from Rob Bell, I hope he is ok with that)

That is what our creator expects of us.
That is what our God expects of us.
That is what our Father expects of us.

It may not be what a board member expects.
It may not be what that one irritable parent expects (and it normally isnt).
It most definitely is not what the building committee expects.

It is what we are called to…

I like the expanded statement that Rob Bell uses:

“Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”
(Velvet Elvis, page 114)

Read that again.
And again.
One more time.

What would the church in this country look like if it began to embrace that?
What would it look like if we, as leaders, began to sort through our daily lists of expectations and eliminated those things that prevented us from pursuing who we are made to be?

I can see this causing a good bit of strife, since the American idea of a pastor includes a good bit of baggage that has him or her (oh crap! I went there) doing everything from visiting the sick to developing budgets to creating websites to making sure that the sanctuary is clean to finding out what happened to knife set that was donated to the church kitchen by someone who passed away 17 years ago. This can cause a little bit of an uproar at first, but imagine the result… a spiritually healthy leader, actively modeling what we are called to be to the body…

For a great while I have found myself praying for my brothers and sisters that I know, and don’t know, that they be in a place where they are nurtured while they lead. I believe that my prayer is going to be tweaked a little bit from here on out… I pray that those currently, formerly, or soon to be in ministry will have the courage to pursue relentlessly who God has called them to be, and to call that which prevents them from doing so sin.