How possible is it that you assume you are automatically OK spiritually because ministry is your job? If you realize you need to attend to your own spiritual life, how well are you doing at that? When it comes to our spiritual well-being, there are several detrimental places we can head spiritually or because we are spiritually depleted.
Confusing Working for God and Walking With God – We sometimes equate doing church things with spirituality and assume we will automatically grow and be nourished. However, ministry involves pouring out, while spending time with the Lord allows Him to fill us, grow us, and renew us.
Limiting Time in the Word to Preaching and Teaching Preparation – Some approaches to preaching and teaching preparation nourish our souls, but it is all too easy to work up a teaching outline or sermon without letting the Word search, stretch, refine, nourish, and grow us.
Losing our Biblical Moorings – In several ways and for several reasons, we may begin teaching things, believing things, and promoting ways of life and church that contradict God’s Word. However, the Bible and its truths must remain our source of guidance for faith and practice.
Allowing Organizational Goals to Replace Kingdom Passion – In certain places and at certain times, it can be easier and seem more expedient to maintain or grow an organization than to advance Christ’s Kingdom. Thus, we may begin to exchange our heart to advance the reign of Jesus in and through our church for a simple desire to take care of the organization that is our church.
Relying Solely on Human Innovation and Ability – In the face of pressure to perform and a possible sense that God’s way isn’t adequate, we may forsake the spiritual and supernatural realities of Jesus growing His church, choosing to rely exclusively on business innovations and forgetting Jesus’ picture of the Vine and branches in John 15.
Becoming Hard Toward God’s People or Even God – Discouragement, disappointments, betrayals, and isolation may lead us to put up walls in our heart and have an uncaring or sinful attitude toward our people. Similarly, if you have seen times when God did not seem to move in ways you hoped, you can even begin to distrust God and lower your expectations of Him, allowing frustration with Him to grow in your heart.
Failing to Demonstrate the Fruit of the Spirit – How do you treat people and respond to situations, and what frame of mind are you in? It is a spiritual issue when our lives do not exhibit the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit.
Straying Into Sin – There are far too many stories of fallen pastors losing their ministries and harming the Kingdom work and people. These outward sins are results of inward problems, and there are inward sins that also are destructive even if they do not lead to flagrant failures. Any number of heart sins are spiritual problems that need to be addressed.
Which of these issues (or what others) have you noticed in yourself or other ministers? Do you realize many of these are both cause and symptom of spiritual depletion in our lives? Let me make some suggestions for how we can care for our spiritual well-being.
Be Aware of Potential Issues and Guard Against Them – I will not walk through each of the preceding issues here concerning prevention, but look back through them with a view to how you would notice each beginning to crop up and how you would guard against each.
Reflect on Your Spirituality – I think it would be helpful for some of us to spend some time reflecting on the fact that we are spiritual beings in need of a strong connection to Jesus, our Source, not just those who facilitate the connection of others to Christ or who maintain the functions of ministry and church. We must be nourished and poured into in order to be strong and able to pour into others.
Develop Self-Awareness and Practice Evaluation – Cultivate the practice of evaluation and a sense of self-awareness. It may also be helpful to have one or more people in your life to hold you accountable, ask you difficult questions, or in some other way help you avoid blind spots and maintain spiritual health.
Cultivate Christian Community – It may or may not be able to happen within the church you serve, but we need Christian community with whom we worship, serve, and grow in ways that simple church leadership may not accomplish. We need a context for being fed and doing Christian fellowship and the other aspects of Body life in which we do not have to stand apart but can function fully.
Practice Spiritual Disciplines – If you serve in Baptist life, the practice of spiritual disciplines may be somewhat new to you. These help us be more grounded in the Lord and help nourish us spiritually. They include things like study, contemplation, prayer, fasting, solitude, journaling, and others. I cannot provide a full list and description here, but I have found devotional and contemplative reading of Scripture, journaling, praying (including praying Scripture), fasting, and solitude helpful. I intend to write more concerning some of these disciplines, but allow me to suggest some further reading on the subject. Three helpful sources are The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard, Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, and Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald Whitney. Of the three, Whitney’s book is probably the easiest to digest, but all are good sources on the subject.
Our own spiritual nature and call to Christian growth, the demands of our work, and the spiritual and supernatural aspects of Kingdom advancement call us to be spiritually healthy ministers. This spiritual well-being requires intentionality and discipline to maintain the vital connection to Christ that we need and that the recipients of our ministry need us to have.