How do people struggling with burnout start to work on their own heart while continuing to manage their church or ministry at the same time?
When you are dying inside, the last thing you want to do is throw up the white flag and die. Everything in you wants to survive. It’s like a drowning person. If you go under, then what? So you start grasping for anything that helps validate your ministry.
And then we just shame ourselves: God’s people are at stake. People are falling through the cracks. You don’t have time to go take care of yourself—there are lost people. All of which is true. It takes a tremendous amount of faith to say, Agreed, people are falling through the cracks. We haven’t had a baptism in two years, but the best thing I can do to solve the problems or lean into those desired outcomes is actually help myself find rest in God right now.
What could be more counterintuitive? But one of the verses that was so helpful to me—and then harrowing—was Isaiah 30:15. God is speaking to Israel, and he says to them, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.” Again, talk about the upside-down kingdom. I spent a lot of time in that passage. What does it mean to have God as my strength? And if God is strong, and it’s my desire to bring that version of Mindy into solving these various problems, how do I arrange my life so I’m living out of that place of repentance, rest and trust?
That is the essence of those counterintuitive spiritual practices. How does entering into that rest in God actually give strength? At first it feels like a ridiculous leap of faith. Eventually, it becomes your way of life. This is what breathing looks like. This is the person I need to be if I’m moving into this day. I know how much at risk I am without that.
What will it take to create more spiritual depth and attention to soul care in the American church today, and how do we get there?
We have to start thinking about people as souls—not just as people who have a saved soul, but as a soul that is alive and has a quality of life. When we start thinking more broadly about that as individuals and then as systems, we start thinking more about the well-being of souls in addition to the saving of souls. Then that leads us to a decision, which I think is another big part of both individual and systemic change, and it’s a very simple question: What do we want? What story do we want to live into? Do we want a story of smart, hard-working people who burn themselves into the ground for the sake of the kingdom? Or do we want a different story? A story about streams of living water, that the people are electric with the Spirit? It’s not about their behavior being perfect. They make mistakes. They are every bit human, but do we want people alive to God thinking those thoughts and making those plans? What vision of the future do we have of teams of leaders, whole networks of leaders who are functioning out of depth of soul?
I often ask people, “What is true of you when you are most connected with God, when you feel like you know God is with you and for you? What kind of person are you?” And they report there’s confidence, there’s humility, there’s brokenness, there’s boldness, there’s strength, there’s gifting, there’s creativity, there’s clarity, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s generosity, there’s gratitude. The list goes on and on. And you look at that list. Think of one person who’s marked by that more often than not. What would a whole system of people who are marked by those symptoms look like? That’s the dynamics of John 15. And we have to ask ourselves if we really believe that’s possible. If we do, then we have to think about what’s at stake, and if what’s at stake is compelling enough, I think we all would be willing to live into a different story.
