You can’t serve well unless you first know who you are (and aren’t).
After receiving my ministry license, I was required to complete four orientation courses, each one a week long, usually in Chicago or Denver. These were not easy for me to pull off at the time, as Soo just had our second child and I didn’t want to leave her on her own for a week, so when I learned that one of the classes was going to be held right here in Southern California, I jumped at the chance and signed up right away.
The timing of the class was lousy, though. It was November 2010 and Christmas– one of the two most hectic seasons for a church staff– was coming up. My workload was intense. I had no free time, and taking a week off to attend a class would make me fall further behind. I came close to canceling my class registration two or three times, but stopped because something inside me told me that I could not afford to miss this class.
I was on the verge of burnout.
And by that, I don’t mean I was ready to throw my hands up in surrender and walk away from ministry, I mean I was teetering on the brink, one bad decision away from my ministry career going down in a flaming, disastrous, spectacular wreck. My ugly side– the side that the Holy Spirit had been working on since my conversion– was clawing its way back to the surface.
Anger. Fear. Resentment.
They were all feeding on a single root.
My identity.
I was the prayer ministry pastor at our church, and my role was primarily pastoral care. I’d also be on standby for any “emergencies” that might arise, and with an average of 2,000 people in our congregation at the time, I never knew what to expect: on any given day, I could be found interviewing people seeking financial assistance, rushing off on a hospital visit, responding to emails about prayer, answering questions from new believers, dealing with troublemakers in the parking lot, praying one-on-one with a coworker, offering physical labor to help set up for an event, or performing deliverance prayers and casting demons out. (Sometimes, all in one day. No joke.)
I saw myself as the go-to guy, a first responder, a spiritual 911, ready for anything, 24/7. I took my responsibilities very seriously, and I prided myself on my availability to the congregation.
The key word is “pride.” I liked being known as a superhero, and this caused me to disrespect my own boundaries.
Not a good thing.
Having a smartphone is a blessing and a curse: while it’s convenient having the ability to email, text, and web surf on your phone, it means that you can never really be away from work. Leaving the office at 5:00pm only means that you’ve physically left– I’d continue to get calls, texts, and emails all hours of the day and night, and because I was SuperStephen, ready to help those in need, I’d answer them, even if I was in the midst of dinner with my family. (This wasn’t fair to my wife and kids, but I justified it by thinking I was laboring for God’s kingdom.)
Due to the nature of pastoral care ministries, where people share and confess their deepest pains, struggles, and sins, I could not talk to anyone about what I was doing, even with the rest of the staff. It was all confidential. I was taught by my mentor to protect at all costs the privacy of everyone who came to me, and this might be why I got so many calls, emails, and texts– I may have been seen as a safe person to talk to.
Meanwhile, we had entered a season of embracing social media. I’d see others in ministry posting what they were up to on Facebook or Twitter: held an event as such-and-such location, x-number of people showed up, some got saved or baptized, it was awesome. I couldn’t do this due to the nature of what I was doing– it’s not like I could post something like “Cast a legion of demons out of so-and-so. You’d never believe what sins they confessed! #brokeallbutonecommandment”
I felt like I was left out of the social media race. Unseen and unappreciated. I felt that my stock as a pastor was plummeting as a result.
Paranoia fed into anger. I was on edge, exhausted, the fuse on my temper burning extremely short. When I heard about the flight attendant who got so fed-up after one flight that he cussed at the passengers, opened an emergency exit, deployed the inflatable slide, and jumped out of the plane in one of the most dramatic “take this job and shove it” moments ever, I started to wonder what the church staff equivalent would be.
However, the fear of God kept me in check. I didn’t want to do anything that would dishonor God, besmirch the Church, cause anyone to stumble, or embarrass my family. I held it all in.
Like a pressure cooker.
Little did I realize that I had become Martha, finding my identity in what I did, laboring for Jesus and holding deep resentment towards Mary for not doing the same (Luke 10:38-42).
In his mercy, God would give me an opportunity to rediscover being Mary. It was through this class that I had to take.
It was called “Vocational Excellence in Ministry,” held at a retreat center near Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains, where Angelenos go skiing in the winter and boating in the summer. It’s as far away as you can get from the palm tree-lined boulevards typical of Southern California without actually leaving the region.
I arrived at the retreat center. Our classroom was a large cabin with a fireplace, a pool table, and large windows offering views of an evergreen-covered hillside. The aroma of pine and firewood, punctuated by the crisp, cool mountain air, refreshed my senses. This was a far cry from the Orange County industrial park where my office was located, inside a converted warehouse.
I soaked it all in for about two minutes. That’s all I thought I could spare: There was work to be done. Notes to be taken. Handouts to read. I found an empty seat near a power outlet, set up my laptop, and started checking Facebook on my smart phone while waiting for the class to begin. About half of my classmates, roughly fifteen total, started doing the same.
The instructors welcomed us to the class and kicked things off by informing us of the “no technology” rule: no checking emails or texts until free time in the evenings. No using anything but a pen and paper for taking notes. We were asked to put our laptops, iPads, and cell phones away.
This was a shock. A huge portion of my work involved emails and texts, and any pockets of down time I had while standing in lines or waiting for something were spent swiping through apps or surfing the web on my smart phone. I didn’t know how I’d manage the rest of the week.
We put our devices away. The instructors gave us a quick overview: the goal of this class was to teach us how to be more intentional about self-care. They gave us a questionnaire to gauge our level of risk for burnout.
I was stunned by my own results.
That week, I’d learn that pastors often feel that self-care is selfish because we’ve been called to selflessly take care of others. We get caught up in putting out fires and helping others in need but neglect our own spiritual, emotional, and physical health, which are all related. Being tired, angry, or lonely can impair our judgment and lead to bad, destructive decisions.
Tired? Check.
Angry? Check.
Lonely? Check.
I had no idea how much trouble I was in.
One part of the class involved meeting with a spiritual director. I had never met with one before and didn’t know what to expect. She told me to relax and share what I was going through, assuring me that everything would remain confidential, and after that, we’d pray about what spiritual discipline I should try.
Over the next forty minutes, I released to her the struggles, frustrations, and resentments that had led me up to this point. I vented that I felt like a spiritual janitor– someone who isn’t considered part of the team, but is kept around to clean up the mess.
The spiritual director offered some words of wisdom that helped me see that the root of my troubles was my own pride. I had seen myself as a spiritual first-responder, almost a superhero, who felt a need to always be on call, ready to tackle the next emergency. She reminded me that God is the true rescuer, and I am simply His child.
She then came up with an exercise to help me. “I want you to sit quietly, close your eyes, and just breathe for five minutes.”
I thought I heard her wrong. Breathe for five minutes? “Should I reflect on a Psalm or something?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. “Just breathe and don’t think about anything other than God. See yourself at His feet, and if you start getting distracted by thoughts, release those thoughts to Him.”
I was skeptical. Being a Tai Chi instructor, I knew how many different kinds of breathing techniques and meditations exist out there, many of them spiritually questionable. In a quick, silent prayer, I surrendered the next five minutes to Jesus and asked Him to forgive me if any of this was too New-Agey.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled deeply, fighting to ignore my own skepticism and wrangle my thoughts under control.
As I struggled to stay focused on God, I thought about Mary and Martha. I realized how difficult it can be to be Mary, simply sitting still at the feet of Jesus to listen to Him. It’s much easier to be Martha, keeping busy and fooling ourselves into thinking that Jesus will like us more because of it. I recognized that I was like Martha even in the way I prayed: I’d keep busy praying for other people but neglected my own personal prayer life and quiet time with the Lord. My prayer life was akin to me calling up my father for a one-sided conversation, asking him a lot but hanging up the phone before giving him a chance to ever say a single word to me.
About a minute into it, it hit me that in over four years of ministry, I hadn’t once made an attempt to sit quietly before the Lord and seek Him without an agenda or a list of prayer requests. My title was “prayer ministry pastor,” but as I stilled myself in the awesome presence of God, I had to confess the deficiency of my own prayer life.
Words of Scripture spoke to me in a gentle whisper that convicted me nevertheless:
Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain (Psalm 127:1)… I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5 NIV).
God used this time to put me in my place: He reminded me that He is the Almighty– the Creator, the One who saves, the One who heals– and I am just one of His children, tagging along with my Father as He goes about His business. This led to a breakthrough in my approach to ministry: I learned to only do what I see the Father doing (John 5:19) instead of doing what I think needs to be done and asking God to bless what I do.
These were some of the most profound five minutes of my life.
In fact, the entire week was life-giving and life-changing. On the last day of class, we were all asked to share our thoughts on how it went for us.
When it was my turn, I said, “I feel human again.”
It wasn’t just the spiritual breakthroughs that blessed me: the ban on technology forced me to be fully present in the moment, fully aware of the world around us. Without a smart phone or laptop to bury my face in, I couldn’t help but take in the beauty of God’s creation, feeling the brisk mountain air nipping my face, hearing birds chirping in the evergreen treetops; instead of sending texts or emails to a phone number or email address, I had face-to-face conversations with flesh-and-blood people, commiserating with them, laughing with them, crying with them.
At the end of the class, we were given an assignment and asked, “Now that you’ve learned to quiet yourself before God, what do you discern Him saying to you?”
My response included the words “seminary,” “go overseas,” “Asia,” and “missions.”
Little did I know…
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