Transcription
I'm N, and you're with Pastor Pedia, and we're talking about stamina and burnout. They're two opposites, of course. How do you prevent burnout? How do we have stamina? And I don't mean just human effort; let's get past that. We're talking about working together with Christ, but still loving what we do and doing it with joy and pep. My ministry now toward churches is coaching a lot of pastors, and I see it so much: "I'm just so tired," "I'm so angry," or—uh—they don't use this word, but they're cynical. Everything's a game, and you just get up, and when you're tired, you still have to say the right things on Sunday. And when you're tired, you still have to go visit that guy who's mad at you. How do we keep joy in the ministry, but also stamina in the sense of, "I love what I'm doing"?
Now, I don't know how to use this verse all the time: "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, favor with God and man." But there's a lot of areas of life to take care of, and not one of us is Jesus, so it's going to be hard work. We're going to say that at the beginning, but only I can take care of me, and you make the application in your life. There's this great verse, or set of verses, in Hebrews where the writer—I was almost going to say Paul, but I'm not sure who—but he says, talking about our lives, he said, "Looking unto Jesus, that's our Lord; consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."
There's a great story in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book called *Gulag*, a prison camp, and he trusted Christ as Savior. An older man led him to faith, uh, but all they did was shovel; all he did was shovel in the prison camp. And he started to quit, and he knew that he would get killed for it. He sat down on a makeshift bench, and he felt someone come near him. He thought it was a guard; he had seen it happen—the guard would shovel him, clobber him with a shovel, and kill him. Instead, it was the older man who had led him to faith in Christ. The man reached down in the dust and made the sign of the cross, and I quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "I knew exactly what he—what he meant, and I got up and started shoveling again," looking unto Jesus. But how do you do that on a daily basis, and how do you do it in a personal way? That's what we're going to talk about. Jimmy, you awake? Will you talk about it?
I am. I'm awake. I'm not burned out right now. Um, couple things come to mind for me regarding, uh, dealing with burn—burnout and and stamina. One, I often just, quite frankly, say this to myself, um, regularly: "I can't believe I'm getting paid to tell people about Jesus Christ." Like, I mean, so I have to pull myself away and think, "I would do that regularly," you know, in in my job, and I did whatever that job was prior to be uh vocationally doing it for Christ and as a pastor. But we get paid every day, every week, to tell people about Jesus, and that—that—that's priceless in itself. The other thing, too, I'm pretty intentional about refreshing myself. I'm intentional about, um, taking care of myself physically, spiritually. I'm—I'm intentional about having accountability in my life that's asking me the hard questions, like, "Hey, are you making sure you're—you're refueling yourself?" There is no way I'll ever be all that Christ intended to be—I say it this way—live to my redemptive potential if I'm not filling myself back up with Jesus. If I'm giving on empty, the people are going to see it; there's not going to be the life change that we would want. So I have to be intentional about it. So how do I do that regularly? I—I look at what I eat. I'm an 80/20 kind of guy: 80% of the time I'm eating really healthy; 20% of the time I'm enjoying it. I exercise regularly; um, if I'm not running, um, I'm—I'm doing push-ups and sit-ups. I have a regular routine in my life that exercises. I—I'm daily in God's word. I'm trying every year to read through God's word, the Bible, and another version. I'm—allowing other people to pour into me. I also—um—have my church has allowed me to have a sabbatical, and even all my staff, like every certain number of years, you take off the summer to refuel, to refresh. You must find a way that refuels you. For me, it's out in the wilderness, and I come alive and refuel. If I can sit in the woods, if I can go out and run on a trail. So you have to find ways and be intentional about filling yourself back up with Jesus and his creation so that you don't get dry and can't give back out. Jeff, what do you do? Like, how do you guard against burnout, and what are some of the things that you found to be helpful?
Well, some of the things you talked about about having an attitude of gratitude and rest, uh, are huge. I'll be honest with you, I struggle with this. I—I—I really do. I—I am a, um, a person who goes all-in, and when I am—when I'm doing well, I'm doing great; when I'm exhausted, I'm tired to the bone. And I—I've had to look over the years and, uh, remember that what we do is actually incredibly hard work; uh, what Christ did was incredibly hard work. And so sometimes I have to allow that into my life and say, "Oh, there—there's a reason that I'm tired; there's a reason that I—I—I get—I feel burned out." That awareness has been actually what's kind of kept me in the fight over the years, because I used to think—think when I was tired and exhausted, I used to think that I should have never been a pastor; I don't love Jesus anymore; and I married the wrong woman. Right? I—I used to let it all blow up in my—in my life, and when in reality I was just tired. Resting, pacing, recharging, exercise—I think—I think it's a big—big deal, and I think it's a—it's—it's a discipline that we probably all struggle with sometimes. I feel like in my control sometimes; I don't feel like my—it's in my control at all—the circumstances of ministry press in, and I don't have the opportunity to—to rest or not. So I'm one of those guys that I'll go back and forth; I'll kind of answer you honestly about that, where there's times that I feel like my life is super balanced, and then it tends to swing the other way, and it'll feel super unbalanced. I've never found the pacing; what I have found is the ability to recognize it and bring correction to it, uh, so that I have the right perspective—spiritually, emotionally, even—even physically. So this is something I think about a lot and work on a lot in my life. Let me be a little melancholy: some of the people listening to us right now—if the stats are right—some of them are thinking, "I'm going to quit," or, "I'm not going to quit because I need a job, but I'm not—" What's the first thing you would say to a friend who says, "I am so burned out, or so angry, or so tired"? Where—where should someone start? If someone—I don't want to skip this question.
I would say one of the first things you do, obviously, you go to Jesus and and pray, but I—I would talk to another pastor. Like, I would call someone up and say, "Hey, this is how I'm feeling; um, is this normal? Um, talk to me; help me." I think a phone call is the first thing you should do in that case, and it might be hard for the guy to do that with his wife, or the wife with her husband. I—I don't mean that mean; I just mean, you know, it's hard to be vulnerable sometimes, but it—so who's this pastor he calls? Hopefully he's—has built someone into his life, and if he hasn't, now's the time to do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If—and if you don't—if you don't have that friendship, then you call—you call a Larson; you call someone who coaches pastors. If you're in a network of churches, you call a guy that's maybe at a church—you know them as an acquaintance, but not well, and you call them and get that perspective. I—I—I think—I think I would say you start with perspective, and so for some of us that perspective only comes with rest. I know that I'm that way; um, for—for others it's a conversation; it's a clearing of the head. One of the biggest things that, uh, someone told me, and I don't remember who, but they—it's not my quote; it's theirs, and they said this: "Never go from something; go to something." So when I am thinking about quitting, and—and my thought process is, "If I quit, all my problems go away," that's a lie—lie; that's not going to happen. So that just tells me I'm tired; I've lost my perspective. Once that all comes back in, then sometimes we have to make hard decisions, you know, but make sure that that perspective is there first. I—I—I can tell you there have been times—I can tell you a time in—in my ministry—you—I've been in Goan—this my 19th year—I can remember we were just—we were just by God's grace—God was doing some things, and there was a period in time when there were some people who walked across their stage; it came in for membership, you know, and I—I knew who they were, but I didn't know them, and I—it was 15–20 people, and I left the service that Sunday; I was in deep grief, like, "I don't know these people," and—and it was a really gut check that week where I even considered, "I need to resign; I need to resign from Grace here because I don't feel like I know these people like I really want to know." It bothered me so much, and I remember all week long I brought my wife into this conversation, and the thought of planting a church sounded really good—to get 20 people and know them—um, so I would say—I think the ebb and flow—you deal with that reality regularly, and so what brought me back to center was I came back the next Sunday, and I actually was honest; I sat on the edge of the stage with my people, and I said, "You know what? This week I thought about resigning, and this is why," and I told them because I want to be able to do this; I want to be able to marry you; I want to be able to bury you; I want to be able to know you all, but I can't, but here's what I know: that there's people around you that can do that for you. So I shared my heart; I was very vulnerable in that moment.
Wow. And they called you back for the next Sunday?
Uh, they had a vote; it was like 51%, so I—I stayed.
Yeah. Tell—I turned them down.
Yeah, right. How does your wife help, and good friends, either one or both?
Well, I have an absolutely amazing wife, and she helps a ton. She—she is a sounding board; she is a great set of eyes for me, and she's protective of our home, frankly, and that's a big thing for me. One of—one of my big refreshers is my family. I would—I'm kind of the classic family man; I would rather be with my family than anybody else. So she creates those environments. She also—um—I would plop in front of the television and watch every NFL game ever played. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And—and she's like, "Let's get up; let's move; let's go," and she changes the environment, so she—she's amazing that way by kind of putting energy and pushing me a little bit to—to do things that are healthy for me. And I—I—I—I would agree: if your home can be a refuge of peace. And I would also say this: no one understands how a pastor feels; no one understands how we feel except another pastor. Like, your people in the pews don't; your elder board doesn't, as much as they try, and—and they—they work their hardest; no one understands what we take to bed every night; what we're thinking. So connect with another pastor. Like, that's when—a time when you need to—
You both mentioned the physical, and I—I want to get to the spiritual, too, but there are many pastors who never exercise, or think—I don't know what they think, but repeat it: why—why does it help you to do something physical?
Well, be quite frank, I—I took a college class at Grace years ago, and I—I was one of those dumb freshmen who actually remembered something, but it was a—it was a healthy lifestyle class, and my—Professor Johnson said, "Your heart is a muscle; the same way you can exercise your biceps with weights and build it, make it strong, you can make your heart muscle strong, so it beats less, and when it beats less, it lasts longer." And so you can make it last longer, and I remember it was like almost a lightbulb went off, and it was like, "Wow!" So if I exercise my heart, I'm going to be stronger for the long run. And so it's just been a passion of mine, and plus—here, be quite frank—um, we house the Holy Spirit of God; he lives in us, and the God of the universe lives in us; we should give him the best house to live in.
Now, that's clear. I'm a little different than you guys. You—you two love running or playing basketball.
I'll beat you so bad—he would beat me so bad—he still got a good J—77, 78, or whatever he is.
Exercise—what—what are you, 81? I can't remember.
I'm 37 and have dyslexia. My—um—for me, exercise is a discipline, so I don't long to go for a run or long to go for a bike ride; I long to sit and watch a movie, and—and I love doing those kind of things. So for me, it—it's a part—it's almost like a professionalism or a spiritual conviction now. What I have to also remind myself is I perk up, so when I'm like depressed or down, I'll perk up, so I—I do go for runs; I do go for bike rides; I have a lot of walking meetings. So when I need to spend an hour, especially if it's like a personal, uh, just checkup time with one of my staff, we'll just go for a walk.
That's a great idea, by the way, Jeff.
And do those kind of things because it's like the midafternoon—you—you perk right up. You do it in the building, so if anybody needs you—right?
Yeah, no, but I do nap in the building, and they can wake me up. Okay? Uh, nothing wrong with whatever you like—whatever they like to get their mind off the church, that may be. And it's your wife who—my wife who said to me two times when we're driving—
What did I just say?
Yeah, 'cause she knows I'm thinking about the church, and my—my answer, you know, was not adequate.
What again?
The physical, or family, or a movie, or whatever it is—get—we need a Sabbath, a break.
Absolutely. I—I guard it; I—I guard my—well, my wife guards my Monday, too, and I look forward to it. I—uh—I, you know, there's always going to be work to do. I mean, if—if you think, "Well, I need to work 7 days a week, 58 hours every—in a 24-hour period and double time," you know, just do the math—you need to guard that day, and—and when you do, I look forward to it; it's like—it's a day of refreshment. I block out phone calls; I, you know, unless it's a screaming emergency—um—I guard it, um, vigilantly; I really do. And—and I do the same; I take all of my vacation; I try to sleep; I take comp time if—if I have just got hammered in a—in a—a crazy week, like we all have, I'll take another half a day off, because I've learned—um—when I don't exercise and when I don't rest, I get cynical; I get burned out; I want to quit, and it's not really what I want; I'm just out of gas. So what I find—I find whatever I need to do to put gas back in that tank, and 24 hours—your perspective changes night and day. You—there's a Psalm that says, "God, the Lord, grants sleep to those he loves," and—uh—it's an interesting—just flesh that out sometime—you get some time—there's a lot there—he gives to his beloved sleep, and it's okay to know what you need and take it.
And not—
Absolutely. I used to mow my lawn with my tie on so people would think I just came from work. No, I never did. But—but it's easy for us to think we got to look the part at certain times.
That's funny. How we can't just move on.
That's funny. I could see you doing that. One more—cynicism and professionalism—I tie together as twins. How do you avoid that? I mean, we got to get up on Sundays and say good stuff, and you don't always feel like it, or people have been rugged on you, or—or you've—talk about that cynicism that we just go through the motions. How do you get back with Christ, our Lord?
Uh, a right heart will lead to a professional execution. So cynicism is all the heart, right? It's—it's harboring bitterness; it's all that kind of stuff. And so if I—if we all have done it—we've gone to prepare a message or go to something, and we're all pent up about something—releasing that, letting it go, praying it through—I ask the Lord—I have to ask the Lord for joy. I'm—I'm tend to be a little bit of a cynical person, so I'll ask the Lord for joy, and when my heart's right, a professionalism comes out of me, right? And—and I am the person, the leader that I—that I need to be. I would say I think of the word, uh, courage; the word courage—you put in—in front of it—encourage. So if I'm giving that to my people, I'm literally shooting courage into them. And so I think about my words—words breathe life or death—and—uh—so I'm constantly saying, "Lord, help me to breathe courage, not discourage, but encourage." And so I—I think it's something we really need to think about—our words, our choice of words.
Well, I hope these things make you think, and Pastor Pedia, this time about stamina and about doing stuff that—that re—replenishes, refuels, so we can love people—uh, first our Lord more and better than ever, and uh love our people with joy. What a great privilege. Jeff Bogue, Jim Brown, New Larson, for Pastor Pedia; we're so glad to be with you. Our notes may help e.