From Burnout to Breakthrough: How Healthy Church Leadership Begins

Now, Psalm 23 is “My cup overflows” or John 10:10, “I have come to give you life and life abundantly,” which then means I actually always try to keep my cup full and only give what overflows. As long as my cup is full, I am in a healthy place. I’m in the abundant place. I’m in what Jesus calls the abundant life; I’m [in] what King David calls the Good Shepherd life; and I try to learn to discern when I’m tapping into my own reservoir that’s meant for me. It’s almost like what Mary says when the angel tells her that she would give birth to Jesus. It says that she pondered it in her heart and she kept it to herself. As a minister, we’ve got to learn what is meant for ourselves and what is meant for others. So, living and leading from a place of overflow dictates my life. 

The third thing is my metric of success has been completely flipped upside down. The metric of success now is my personal health. That’s it. It could sound selfish, but I think as long as my relationship with God and my relationship with my wife is healthy, I am successful. And every other metric is secondary and supplemental to that. Church growth can actually be hazardous to that. Multiplication could even be hazardous to that. And not that I don’t want our church to grow or to multiply our church, but it should never come at the expense of my own soul and/or union and intimacy with God.

How did that change the way that you lead others?

It’s just a completely different ethos in a way of going about ministry. The way that played out in our staff is I think the more compassionate you are toward yourself, the more compassionate you become toward others. The harsher you are on yourself, the harsher you are on others. The people who are harsh on their staff, it’s typically because they are so ruthless with themselves behind closed doors. 

It is cruel to expect out of people what God hasn’t put in people. So I’m just always trying to understand what God has deposited within people and also the limitations of their wiring and their season, and I always try to lead within the boundaries and the limitations of what my staff can hold. I [try not] to overburden our staff and/or stretch them beyond the limitations that God has given us. That’s a huge thing. And I’m always just trying to raise up more leaders to carry the burden together.

I feel like this is something that is really on the hearts of leaders right now, because we’re witnessing people fall off their platforms all the time, because they look to other things to fill holes that they’ve created in themselves. And I really resonate with what you’re saying about success, our metrics of success needing to change.

And I think in the past I led with answers, but now I lead with questions. In the past, I was like, “This is what I feel like God wants us to do, and this is how I think we’re going to do it.” Now I go like, “Hey guys, this is what I think God wants us to do. How are you feeling about that?” I would say stuff like, “Hey guys, we’re at max capacity. I think we should do two services. How do you feel about that?” 

And always it’s like, “No.” [Laughs.] 

Then I go, “OK, if it is a no, how do you guys feel about us reaching more people?” 

And they say, “Absolutely we want to reach more people, but how can we do that in a healthy way?” 

So I’m always leaning in with questions about the capacity and the limitations of my staff. I would rather stunt the growth of our church to care for our staff, to lead and do it well, than to burden them to make sure we accomplish our goals.

It’s a balance and a tension of how to do that well.

You seem to have had a very specific shift in your ministry focus coming out of that 2020 sabbatical. You shut down The Meeting Place and looked toward planting Beloved Church. Tell me about that transition, why you chose that name, and why you felt like it was the time to plant that church.

I think that the journey of church planting has been a long one for me. It started when I was 20. I was reading a book called Church Planter by Darrin Patrick. And I read that book by accident because, mind you, I didn’t grow up in church, so I wasn’t familiar with the church world. I just thought churches always existed. I don’t know why, I just never thought to think about the fact that people started churches. But I used to Google books that youth pastors should read, because I didn’t know anything about being a youth pastor. I never even had a youth pastor, you know. 

I was in New York speaking at a youth conference, but during the off times I was reading that book, and something in my body said, One day you’ll do that. Now, I didn’t know it was gonna take 10 years to get there.

During my sabbatical, I could just hear God so clearly, because I wasn’t serving, I wasn’t doing anything, and I didn’t have any agenda to try to even hear God’s voice. I was just in God’s presence again with no external pressure to perform, pretend or produce. And I just saw in my heart God was saying, It’s time to start a church, and I felt like God was saying it was Beloved, because ministry flows out of who you are, flows out of your beingness. During that time, I was really discovering how much God loved me—and I could almost cry about it whenever I talk about it. I just felt like he loved me. He loved me so much.

That felt so selfish, because I always felt like I’ve just got to serve God. I exist to serve him. But I never realized I existed to be loved by him. And I wanted people to experience the same thing. 

I did a nine-month program [called Soul Care] during my sabbatical [facilitated by] an organization called WellSpring. It just so happened to line up the same month I started my sabbatical. It’s about helping pastors tend to their souls and lead from their souls. It’s all about being God’s beloved. As I was going through that, I just felt like God was saying, You’ve got to teach people that they’re loved by God.

I looked at my wife and I said, “I think we’re supposed to come back and start this church called Beloved.”