One of Leadership‘s advisers confessed to us recently: “When I was young, I was filled with energy and joy, but now I have to work on stimulating them both.” What is it about ministry that sometimes works against spiritual vitality? At this year’s National Pastors Convention, we gathered a panel to explore the mysteries of sustaining spiritual vigor amid ministry.
Vernon Grounds has been in ministry since 1934, for the past 50 years at Denver Seminary as dean, president, and now chancellor. He continues an active counseling ministry.
Erwin McManus is pastor of Mosaic, an innovative and international church in Los Angeles.
Ben Patterson is campus pastor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Previously he planted a Presbyterian church in Irvine, California, and pastored in New Jersey.
Sheila Walsh is a singer and author, a former co-host of the 700 Club and now a speaker with Women of Faith.
Should ministry carry a warning label: Caution, this vocation may be hazardous to your spiritual health?
Ben: It’s easy to have false expectations. Probably the biggest one is the assumption that the closer I get to the center of the church the more cozy, more sweet, more friendly it will be.
But the closer you get to the center, well, you get all that church is. It can be sweet, but it can also be dark. At the center you see people in all the ways they present themselves.
Does your role as an upfront Christian living the faith publicly present a challenge to spiritual vitality?
Sheila: The five years I was co-hosting the 700 Club were probably the five loneliest years of my life. I discovered the ministry is a very, very effective place to hide. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t really want to deal with what’s going on in your own life, if you don’t really want to listen to the distant rumble in your own soul, the more you immerse yourself in helping other people, the easier it is to hide.
Everyone at CBN knew I had an open door policy, and people could come in and tell me anything. And we would cry, laugh, and pray about it together. But I never did that with anyone. There was no one that I reached out to and said, “I’m struggling here” or “I don’t want to do this anymore.” So I kept struggling with this huge inner turmoil, while the audience thought I was the embodiment of godliness. It was a very strange struggle.
But God loves us enough that he doesn’t want us just to survive. He wants us to live.
Erwin: I don’t think I could survive if I had to pretend I was perfect. I try to lead out of the joy and grace of imperfection. Our church took the name Mosaic because we know we’re broken and fragmented people, brought together by the hand of the Master artist to reflect his glory, especially when his light strikes through us.
And so right up front we say, “Look, we’re all a mess. The only reason you’re here is because you’re a mess.” And then you work from that point.
That takes a lot of pressure off. People do not look at you and say, “Well, he leads because he’s different than us,” but rather, “Well, he leads because God is amazing. And if he can use somebody like him, God can work with anyone through Jesus Christ.”
Why do some people, after years in ministry, become worn down, resentful, jaded, and cynical, and others become more tender, shining, discerning, and useful to God? What makes the difference?
Ben: As I think about what has given vitality to my own spiritual life, it’s always been—I hate to say—the really hard things: people or circumstances that made me face my limitations, my mortality, my weakness.
And if a few individuals are there—equally weak and broken—to walk with us, and if we can receive the grace to let that press us closer to God, to be more humble, God seems to delight in raising people like that up.
Yes, there’s still some bitterness in me, to be sure. But it’s hard to be bitter when you’ve been humbled. And if we have the grace to let things drive us to our knees, bitterness just has to go.
Sheila: Our paradigm of what a Christian life is supposed to be hugely affects whether we become bitter or not. So many of the people I work with are dealing with disappointment. Disappointment with themselves—and I sure understand that—disappointment with other people, and disappointment with God because he doesn’t do what we think he’s going to do.
I got one of the most interesting letters at the 700 Club from a young woman in her mid-twenties who had cancer and MS. She said, “Sometimes I watch your program and I’m helped, and sometimes I want to take my shoe off and throw it through the screen.”
I was so fascinated by her honesty, I called her. And we became friends. One day she said, “One of the things I hate about what you do is you always present people whose marriages get better in ten minutes, people who get healed, people who have the nice, packaged answers.” She said, “What about people like me who are dying and still love God? What about people who take very few steps, but every step leaves a big impression in the snow because it cost every ounce of strength they have left?”
She changed my perspective. Christianity is not this nice “everything’s going to work out okay” attitude. When you think of Christ at the tomb of Lazarus, he wept because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had spoken this beautiful world into existence and it was so broken, so messed up. I think one of the greatest gifts we can give is just a dose of reality that life down here is disappointing, that God doesn’t always give us answers, but he does always give us himself.
How do you direct people who are broken and looking for help?
Vernon: If I can, without being judgmental, help them to accept themselves, this may be very significant in enabling them to rise above crises. It’s almost impossible to do it alone. In Gordon MacDonald’s book Rebuilding Your Broken World, he refers to three “angels” who helped rebuild his world. Since I was one of them, I know that what we did was stand by him, accept him, let him vent his bitterness and brokenness, and provide opportunity for him to receive helpful counsel and self-knowledge. Simply having a friend with whom you can unzip your viscera and pour out your venom is imperative.
What about the pastor who is broken?
Vernon: There are a number of agencies or retreat centers that do a splendid job with troubled individuals and couples. [A listing, “Ministerial R&Rx,” can be found at www.leadershipjournal.net.]
Sheila, you had to step away from ministry for a while, hospitalized for severe depression. What did it take for you to come to spiritual health?
Sheila: In 1992 my life hit the wall. One morning I was sitting on national television with my nice suit and my inflatable hairdo and that night I was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. It was the kindest thing God could have done to me.
The very first day in the hospital, the psychiatrist asked me “Who are you?”
“I’m the co-host of the 700 Club.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
“Well, I’m a writer. I’m a singer.”
“That’s not what I meant. Who are you?”
“I don’t have a clue,” I said, and he replied, “Now that’s right, and that’s why you’re here.”
And the greatest thing I discovered there is sometimes some of God’s most precious gifts come in packets that make your hand bleed when you open them, but inside that’s what you’ve been longing for all your life—to be fully known and fully loved.
I measured myself by what other people thought of me. That was slowly killing me.
Before I entered the hospital, some of the 700 Club staff said to me, “Don’t do this. You will never regain any kind of platform. If people know you were in a mental institution and on medication, it’s over.”
I said, “You know what? It’s over anyway. So I can’t think about that.”
I really thought I had lost everything. My house. My salary. My job. Everything. But I found my life.
I discovered at the lowest moment of my life that everything that was true about me, God knew. After I’d been there about three weeks, I remember asking the doctor if I could go to a church service. Two nurses went with me, and I sat at the back of this little Episcopal church in Washington D.C. God spoke to me through a priest I’d never met before, hymns I’d never sung before, passages I don’t remember reading before. But the words of that old hymn described me perfectly: Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling.
Jesus knew the worst, and He loved me. What a relief to know the worst about yourself and at the same moment to be embraced by God. It’s so liberating to reach the end of yourself.
What does spiritual vitality look like? What are some of the marks of a healthy, vital spirit?
Erwin: I was in a psychiatrist’s chair when I was 12 years old, and I knew that wasn’t normal. So I know God can fix messed up and broken pieces.
While going through some pretty hard times in ministry, for six months I had a twitch in my right eye that I didn’t know would ever go away. Yet, in the midst of all that, I had to ask, “Can I enjoy God and enjoy the world around me in the midst of the worst times in my life? Am I experiencing even now the pleasure God has for me?”
So one of the ways I evaluate my own vitality is what is bringing me pleasure. Can I find something in life to enjoy?
That perhaps is what’s driven me to be an aesthetic. I love life and beauty. I struggle with disciplines, with structure. I don’t do anything twice in the same way. What I do know is that I can enjoy God every minute of my life no matter what comes.
Ben: A sense of humor is a sign of a healthy spirit. Not the bitter, hard-edged stuff. But rooted in the huge gap between what I am now and what I will be in Christ.
When I stop laughing, I’m in trouble. And I tend not to trust people who won’t laugh, because I think there’s no hope there.
Erwin: The other key word is passion. I measure my spiritual vitality by the intensity of my passions for God and the things of God. And when my heart is broken for the things that are on God’s heart, I know that I’m tracking. I love that verse in Jeremiah (20:9): “If I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” When I am connected to God and I am moving with God, there is a fire inside of me that I cannot put out.
Vernon: I listen to Erwin, and I think, Thank God for him. I wish I had maybe a couple of ounces of that. But our temperaments are put together differently.
I’m not a passionate person, but I’m a happy, contented individual. If anyone were to ask me “What’s characteristic about your life?” and I hope this isn’t just sluggishness (laughter), I would point to spiritual contentment. This is not to eliminate the need for concern and burden. But let’s admit that we’re put together differently. Recognize the differences and say, God, help me. I accept myself, and yet keep pressing on.
So spiritual vitality takes different forms. In whatever form, what’s the price you pay for spiritual health?
Ben: Less is more. I think almost without exception that if I want to go deeper with God, be more spiritually alive, I probably need to do less of something. For so many years I saw being more spiritually alive was throwing one more duty on top of the pile.
I spoke to a class last semester on vocation and work. I told the students, “One of the most radical things you might do as a student here is start keeping the Sabbath.” Not only did they not get it, but some were actually angry that I suggested that they should do something as irresponsible as stopping for a day a week.
But maybe the quickest route to health is to just stop doing some things.
Vernon: At the age of forty, after having neglected myself physically, I actually embarked deliberately on a program of physical exercise. I found that doing this, making myself go to the gym three times a week, had quite an effect on how I felt and how I was able to carry on my ministry.
Ben: And make sure you get to play. Everyone has their own way of defining how they enjoy their life. But find ways to enjoy the life that God’s given you.
What is the place of creativity in keeping yourself spiritually vital?
Erwin: There are always new things to learn about who you are in Jesus Christ. There are things hidden away inside of you that only God knows. I mean, we’re not even aware of all of our own sinfulness, but we’re also not aware of all of our potential and capacity in the image of Christ.
At Mosaic, I’ve had people say, “Look, not everyone is creative.” I say, “I disagree.” Not everyone is, perhaps, artistic, but everyone is created by the creative God, and a creative juice is placed in each one of us. We all have a capacity to dream.
In fact, the whole movement of the church was young visionaries and old dreamers exploding on the face of this planet and shaping history by the power of Jesus Christ. A person will shrivel if he or she believes there’s nothing else to discover, nothing else to become.
As long as you wake up in the morning and go, “God, I know you have more to do with me, more to bring out, more to develop,” you can face that day with anticipation and vitality.
Holiness is not about just getting rid of sin. If it’s about just getting rid of sin, you’re simply going back to the zero point. Adam and Eve had no sin in the Garden. Did God have anything more planned for their future?
Holiness is getting back to what God intended when he created us in his image and going on the journey with him from that point forward.
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