When Jesus says, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30), he didn’t say the mind is the most important part of a person. Nor the body, nor the soul. Each aspect plays an essential role in making us human.
With burnout on the rise among church leaders, it’s important to care for each part while appreciating the fact they influence and interact with one another. Here are three experts’ thoughts on ways to nurture the mind, body and soul in order for the whole person to thrive.
The Mind: A Pathway Toward Resilience
By Mark Mayfield
Is the ministry you feel called to starting to burn you out? If so, you aren’t alone. Barna research stated that in late 2023, 33% of pastors considered quitting full-time ministry. Other research showed that 26% of pastors polled often feel depressed. And in 2024, Barna reported that nearly 1 in 5 Protestant senior pastors in the U.S. (18%) say they have contemplated self-harm or suicide within the past year.
If I stopped here, this would be a fairly depressing article, but I believe there is and can be hope in this conversation. We need to understand that wholeness isn’t found by attending a retreat, listening to a podcast, or marking off a checklist. The pathway to mental wellness begins with four intentional steps.
1. Develop the right understanding of self in relation to God and others.
We all know the Greatest Commandment text out of Matthew 22:37–40: “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and Prophets.”
I often fail to remember that Scripture wasn’t written with Western Christian thought processes in mind. It was written with a Middle Eastern/Asian framework. What does this mean?
First, this list isn’t linear. Love God? Got it. Love others? Check. Love self? Um, if I get around to it.
Second, it is a reciprocal cycle that relies on the health of each component for stability. Therefore, a better understanding of the verse would be: Healthy Relationship with God + Healthy Relationship with Others + Healthy Relationship with Self = A Wholistic Love of God.
Before you argue that a love of self is selfish, notice I said a “healthy” relationship with self, which selfishness categorically is not.
2. Avoid isolation.
Loneliness is one of the most dangerous traps in ministry. It can be easy to lead others while neglecting your own need for connection, but pastors aren’t designed to be emotional islands.
One solution to this problem is to have at least five safe people speaking into your life. They don’t have to be in your church, or even in ministry. What matters is that they are safe. They need to be people who respect your confidentiality. They shouldn’t be afraid of your emotions, questions or doubts. They will tell you the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. They need to love you, not just your role, and want to help you return to hope, not just offer pity.
3. Create Rhythms of Renewal.
God designed us with a need for sabbath, cycles of work and rest that reflect his own pattern in creation. We serve a Savior who napped in a storm, withdrew from crowds, and honored solitude. If Jesus needed it, so do we.
Rest isn’t something you earn; it is something you steward. Rest isn’t weakness—it is wisdom. It is also worship. When we stop working, we are reminded that the world keeps turning without us, that God is God, and we are not.
Developing healthy rhythms doesn’t mean you take a vacation once a year and call it good. It means
• Scheduling regular days off that are truly off
• Taking time for silence, prayer and non-ministry-related joy
• Disconnecting from work, tech and expectations
• Building in quarterly or seasonal retreats
• Recognizing the early signs of depletion and responding with intentional rest
4. Normalize Professional Help.
You cannot shepherd others toward healing if you are limping quietly through your own pain. Ministry is sacred, but it is also human, done by people with limits, wounds and a nervous system that can only take so much.
Seeking professional mental health help isn’t a failure of faith; it’s an act of stewardship. It is saying, “My calling is too important to ignore the parts of me that are hurting.”
Therapy is for those who want to stay well. It is for the pastor carrying accumulated grief, for the leader processing trauma from betrayal, for the person who needs a space to be known and not just needed.
Here are a few truths that matter deeply:
• You aren’t exempt from suffering. Your role doesn’t disqualify you from anxiety, depression or trauma. If anything, it may increase your exposure to it.
• You are a whole being, mind, body and spirit. If one area is out of alignment, the others will likely follow suit. We cannot compartmentalize our pain and expect resilience to appear.
• Your functioning is affected by attachment wounds, trauma and chronic stress. These are not just “spiritual issues”—they are embedded in your nervous system. Healing often requires trained support to help you process, rewire and rebuild.
• Your need for a counselor isn’t a sign of weakness. It is wise. In fact, it is one of the strongest things you can do to choose growth, clarity and restoration over survival mode.
However, if you are hesitant to pursue mental health help, ask yourself these questions:
• What am I carrying that no one sees?
• Am I confusing strength with silence?
• Where do I need permission to heal?
If you are ready to take the next step:
• Find a licensed mental health professional. Choose one who respects your faith and understands the weight of spiritual leadership.
• Explore spiritual direction or trauma-informed care.
• Don’t wait until you are at the edge. Healing is most effective when it is proactive.
The call to ministry is high, but it shouldn’t crush you. You aren’t called to martyr yourself in the service of others.
The truth is you can be resilient, but only if you are also real about your needs and limits. You don’t have to be fully healed to lead, but you do need to be healing.
Mark Mayfield is an assistant professor of clinical mental health counseling at Colorado Christian University and partners with the American Association of Christian Counselors as the director of practice and ministry development. He served as editor for The Mental Health Handbook for Ministry (Baker).
The Body: The Spiritual Gymnasium
By Justin Whitmel Earley
When I joined my gym, I was in the kind of shape you might expect for someone who sat in an office and typed 10 hours a day (and then coped with the anxiety by eating). So even in the middle of exercise classes, I often would get overwhelmed and just quit. Then I had a day that honestly changed my life.
The scheduled workout was lifting a barbell over my head again and again. A few minutes in, I hit a wall. I looked at the clock—eight minutes left. An eternity.
I was staring at the bar when my coach Ryan stood in front of me and told me to pick it up.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve hit the wall.”
He smiled. “Yes, you can.”
Out of sheer peer pressure, I picked the bar up. He kept standing there, and I realized he wasn’t going to leave. Even though I felt like I was dying, I made it to the end. Lying on the ground afterward, my mind raced around the kernel of a realization that the wall was not the wall.
This wouldn’t be all that life-changing, except the next day my son knocked his sippy cup off his high chair tray. I picked it up, handed it to him, and turned to go back to the kitchen when he spiked it down again.
I whipped around to snap at him when I heard a voice in my head say, Pick it up.
This was not my coach, of course, but the Holy Spirit.
I understood that my physical realization the day before had a spiritual corollary: The wall is not the wall. Grace means that at the end of my patience, God gives more patience. Whether pushing through the pain of a workout or the impatience that comes with parenting a toddler, the reality is that good things happen on the other side of surrendering myself.
This was the first time I saw that exercise could be something that might train the soul, not just the body. Ever since, I have been obsessed with exercise as a spiritual gymnasium where the body teaches the soul.
Anti-Fragility and the Way of Jesus
If someone told you to take a pill that would make your heart race, your muscles hurt, and your whole body sweat, you would almost certainly think it unhealthy. But if anyone could invent a pill to give us all that exercise does, it would instantly be the most successful drug on the market. This is because our bodies are anti-fragile. The right stress is exactly what we need to become healthy. In a physical sense, the way down is the way up.
Philippians 2 tells us a similar thing about the spiritual life of following Christ. Paul writes that Christ “made himself nothing,” humbling himself and taking the path of the cross, for which God “exalted him” and “gave him the name that is above every name.” In other words, in the Christian life as well, the way down is the way up.
My claim is not just that there is a spiritual reality being born out in our physical bodies (though that is worth dwelling on, because God made us on purpose, after all). The bigger point is that in the whole of life, we learn with more than just our heads.
The Body-Soul Connection
Of course, exercise has multiple benefits including more energy and better sleep patterns, two things that can be quite difficult for those in full-time ministry to achieve. This is because exercise is what psychologists call a “keystone habit,” one change that triggers a lot of other changes in discipline, productivity and healthy eating. Exercise is the flywheel of life that needs a big initial push, but then powers everything else.
That said, I think the most significant aspect is that in regular exercise, we train ourselves in the embodied truths of sanctification. While we are familiar with the claim that God uses suffering in our life to sanctify us and make us more humble, holy and loving, usually we limit that suffering to big events like cancer or deaths in the family. But the reality is that it is the day-to-day dying to ourselves where we actually live out lives of love for others.
A life of regular exercise is one way we train our bodies and minds in the routine of humility. In a mind familiar with anti-fragility, we start to expect hard physical things to make us stronger and, likewise, hard moments with children, marriages, community and colleagues to make us holier.
The reality is that most of us think about exercise mostly in terms of body image, but the reality is that regular exercise can train us in body as an image bearer of God. We become more concerned with lives that are full of love for others as we lay down our lives in small and daily ways.
Get Started.
First, I suggest that you look for some rhythm that is both possible and difficult. Possible, because if you’ve not been exercising, then all that might be possible right now is a walk a few times a week. (It bears noting that walking is correlated with longevity, so that’s a perfectly good place to start and stay if that’s what works.) But it also should be difficult, because it is supposed to challenge you.
My second suggestion is to consider a way the spiritual disciplines could be a part of your exercise routine. This might be listening to a theology book while rowing, following an encouraging podcast while running, saying the Lord’s Prayer 50 times while swimming 50 laps, or repeating a memory verse while lifting.
This, of course, isn’t necessary. Honoring God by pursuing the health of your body needs no spiritual topping to be holy. It already is. But I find that in a world bent on separating the spiritual and the physical, incorporating some spiritual disciplines is a helpful way to remind yourself that the body can teach the soul and vice versa.
Justin Whitmel Earley is a lawyer, author and speaker. His latest book is The Body Teaches the Soul (Zondervan).
The Soul: Cultivating Intimacy With God
By Mark Neal
I have always loved being around water. There’s something about the stillness of a lake or the vastness of the ocean that brings me peace. But I also learned something important about water one summer at Lake James.
We had taken our boat out to the middle of the lake and jumped in the water to swim. After a while, we looked up and realized the boat was about to crash into the shore. Without even noticing, the current had carried it far away from where we started.
A friend finally told us, “If you will look up at the horizon every so often and pull the boat back, you can resist the drift.”
That picture has stayed with me because it’s exactly how ministry works. Drift is natural. It’s slow, subtle and often unnoticed. And ministry leaders are not exempt. In fact, I believe one of the greatest dangers facing pastors today is the drift factor—moving from intimacy with God to the busyness of ministry without even realizing it.
Yes, meetings, schedules and budgets are important. However, the most important gift you can give your church isn’t your sermons or your leadership. It is your soul, anchored in Christ.
Soul Care
God didn’t call you first to ministry; he called you to himself. Ministry was never meant to replace your personal walk with Christ. Caring for your soul means keeping that relationship with the Lord at the center. It means looking up at the horizon regularly, just like we had to with that drifting boat, to make sure you’re still tethered to him.
God called you to intimacy. Out of the overflow of that intimacy, he will lead you into the right ministry. The moment you drift from this intimacy, you risk settling for good things instead of God’s best.
If drift is natural, then anchoring must be intentional. The habits that anchor a leader’s soul to God aren’t flashy, but they are essential:
• Daily time in Scripture and prayer. Set aside time not for sermon prep, but for soul prep. We need God’s Word to read us before we preach it to others.
• Honest community. Develop a group of people who know your problems and can ask the hard questions. Isolation accelerates drift; community holds us steady.
• The Sabbath. You are not God, and your worth isn’t found in your output. Rest is a spiritual declaration of trust.
• Grounded identity. Before you are a pastor, you are a child of God. That truth is what will keep you rooted when everything else feels shaky.
Once when I planted a fast-growing church, everything looked healthy on the outside, but inside, I was withering. I buried pain under more work, thought busyness equaled faithfulness, and ignored the emptiness in my soul. The result was exhaustion, despair and even thoughts of walking away from it all.
Drifting away from intimacy with God always leads somewhere. When we neglect our soul, we slowly trade intimacy for activity, obedience for performance. Over time, that drift leads to brokenness and sometimes even moral failure. This is why burnout rarely surprises others—the cracks were visible long before the collapse.
Here are three signs that you are drifting away from God:
• You’re not being honest with yourself. You’ve got a polished “2 p.m. version” of yourself that everyone sees, but your “2 a.m. version”—the secret fears, addictions and doubts—goes unaddressed.
• You live in chaos more than in peace. Ministry becomes constant tension, and true rest feels impossible. If moments of reprieve are the best you can find, your soul is starving.
• You justify unhealthy patterns. Instead of interrupting sinful or destructive behaviors, you excuse them. And as I have learned, what you justify will only grow stronger. You cannot talk your way out of what you behaved your way into.
A Return to Center
The good news is no matter how far you have gone away from him, God’s grace invites you back. Just as my friends and I had to swim together and pull our boat back toward the middle of the lake, pastors can return to that place of intimacy with Jesus.
For me, that meant confessing (James 5:16), learning to abide in Christ again (John 15:5), and trusting that he really is a good shepherd (John 10:10). It wasn’t about quitting ministry but remembering that ministry flows out of my relationship with him—not the other way around.
Every pastor faces the drift factor, and that separation from God will hurt your soul. The question isn’t if drift will happen—the question is whether you’ll notice and fight it.
Don’t ignore it. Get back to the center of the lake where peace, presence and intimacy with Jesus hold you steady, and drop your anchor.
Mark Neal is the founder of the Clarity Leadership Collective, helping ministry leaders embrace sustainable rhythms and lead from a place of wholeness.
