Burnout, Church, and Trust

As a young pastor/visionary, I was awakened to this reality when a godly Christian layman in my first congregation came to see me.  I think I had plans for him to attend several meetings- two or three committee activities, and a planning effort or two- all in one week.  I mean, whatever else could be more important than my vision to build the church into an impressive lighthouse for the gospel?

Seriously and respectfully he said to me, "Pastor, I need you to understand something.  When I leave here on Sunday, I often go back home and then work on Monday and do other things I have to do and don't even think about the church or you for two or three days."

I was shocked.  I thought about church all the time.  I assumed everyone was caught up in my vision for a larger church, a more diversified staff, a more aggressive program.  And he's telling me that he might not think about it?  For two or three days at a time?  Astonishing!

Then he pointed out that he was not living for the church.  He was living to lead and raise his family in a godly way, living to make his job a place where his quality of work and his character reflected the Spirit of Jesus, living in a world that he wished to enjoy and in which he might experience the glory of God.  And he was also working to add value in the name of Christ to people who weren't as blessed as he was.

The church, he said, could help him do that by pastoring him.  Ot it could thwart him from doing that by overwhelming him with the insatiably ambitious demands of its vision.

Gordon MacDonald, "Blind Spot" Leadership, (Summer 2000), 33.

Perspective.  It is so easy to lose it!  This life is so busy, so great, so painful, so lonely.  Perspective on what is really important can easily be washed away with our day to day issues.

I love the opening quote in this post.  I have made it my mission to design and promote ministries that do not overload anyone in the church.  I think life is stressful enough without having to add the guilt and drive of "ministry" to the mix.  I know we have to have meetings, we need to plan, and our ministries must take place.  Yet, too many meetings, too much planning, and too much practice can ruin a ministry, and they definitely can ruin an individual.

Why?

The purpose of this life is to grow in our trust and dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ.  

We do so by growing in repentance and faith.  All of our ministry, all of our church work, and all of our discipleship should grow us in this understanding and point us toward deeper dependence by faith.

Such faith must go somewhere.  It is not merely an internal feeling of some sort.  It has legs!  It must and will express itself in love (Galatians 5: 6).  The beauty of this work is that it happens in all of our lives, not just the church part!  In fact, if our faith is only expressed in church, then we do not understand the gospel and the glory of knowing Jesus.

The Church is here to help us grow in our understanding of the gospel, and its call should be for us to love and serve in our families, our work, and in all of our life.  Without this constant reminder and the encouragement of the Church, believers will walk away from living and believing the gospel.  I have met way too many believers who have grown strange in their faith and practice because they believed the church was not needed.  

In other words, the church is vitally important!  Yet, it is not everything in a believer's life.  We are called to have a life in this world.  We are called to love our spouses, to raise our children, to work our jobs while fulfilling our occupation, and to be salt and light in a dark and lost world.  We have these responsibilities and privileges.  The church is a fellowship of believers who are to train and encourage us in these tasks.  Together we are stronger witnesses to the light than we ever would be separately!

Several observations now can be made.  In this post I only have space for one.  So here it is:

As individuals, we must guard our hearts from overwork in any area of life.  

If something leads us away from growing in dependent faith 

we must limit our exposure to this toxic poison.  

Such a toxin could even be seemingly good things.  Family is important. Biblically we have no higher calling than to love and take care of our families.  Yet, if we value and honor our families more than our walk with God, we have made family into an idol.  

Past generations seem to understand this danger better than we do.  They would guard honoring God above anything else.  All too often, we make family fun and comfort our highest priority, and neglect or relegate honoring God under our family's plans.  I do wonder if the past thirty years of parents have a higher or lower rate of passing on their faith to their children than previous generations?

The same difficulties that are found in making the biblical good of family into an idol, can also be found in our attitude toward working in the church.  Working, ministering, and serving are wonderful!  I know I find them a great joy.  Yet, when people do them to extremes or a church demands too much labor from its servant leaders, burnout and discouragement will result.

We all have different levels of ability, and we all have different places where service goes from joy to drudgery.  How do we know if we are approaching burnout?

Are you growing in dependent faith?  

Do you find yourself growing in your understanding of the gospel

 because you are growing in repentance and faith, 

which leads to heart transformation and joy?  

There will be some seasons of life where we find ourselves working too much, serving too much, doing too much.  We need to make sure it is a brief season, if we wish to run the race of faith for a lifetime.  Burnout is not a badge of spiritual achievement, but a cheap token of misplaced loyalty and trust.  Come back to the source of the power for ministry, which is reliance on the Holy Spirit through dependent faith!  

How?  Take a break.  Renew yourself in the gospel.  Find others to walk with you.  Confess the danger your approaching burnout is placing upon your soul.  Most importantly, allow the church to refresh you instead of use you.  Take responsibility to guard your soul and to begin to refresh it.

May each of us find refreshing and renewal in the gospel!

The Gospel and the Church

The Church is the congregation of saints, 

in which the Gospel is rightly taught 

and the Sacraments are rightly administered.

Augsburg Confession Article 7.1

There is much solid theological weight in this short sentence.  The Augsburg Confession was written by Philip Melanchthon in 1530, but it was approved by and contained the thought of Martin Luther and the early Protestant Reformation.  Luther spent much of this time and effort attempting to understand and articulate the meaning of the gospel.  His understanding of the gospel includes the full-orbed explanations that is shared in this blog.  In other words, the gospel can not be distilled down to the bare minimum that "will get you into heaven," but it is marked by a life of active repentance and faith.  Such a life impacts every dimension of a believer, and it propels the believer to trust in Christ alone for all of life.  

What does a true Church believe and teach about the gospel?

A true church will teach, preach, and hold dearly to Christ alone as the source and securer of our salvation.

It will cling to salvation by grace alone, and it will emphasize faith alone as the means of living in right relationship with God.

It will also cling to the proper understanding of scripture alone as the revelation of God's will for faith and practice.  I say proper understanding because it will emphasize that one must interpret scripture within and from its proper historical, grammatical, and lexical context while keeping the whole of biblical revelation in mind as one interprets each passage.  Such an interpretation takes thoughtful exegesis and careful application.

Finally, a true church will also be committed and involved in spreading the gospel to all.  It will not just talk about reaching out, but it will challenge both believers and unbelievers to live a life of repentance and faith.  The result of this challenge will be changed lives and conversions.  The true church is never a club for religious insiders, but instead she is an outpost for mission to a lost and hurting world!

I would gladly travel 45 miles on a Sunday to attend such a church.  I probably would even go further!

Why?  Because I desperately need to be reminded of the gospel.  

I think all of us do.  We so quickly forget that life is not all about us and our concerns.  We forget the beauty and grace of Christ, and instead we run to our feelings, thoughts, and efforts as our justification and life.  Friends, we do so to our own peril.

We need a community where were are reminded of the gospel.  We need a church marked by these traits.  I hope and pray that the Lord is developing us at Christ Community to be that type of place.  The Kingdom grows through the True Church, and I want to see the Kingdom grow.

What are the practical implication of this understanding of the gospel 

and the true Church?

First, if you are looking for a church, do not settle for one that has "great youth programs" or anything programmatic.  The most important element of a church is not that the music makes you feel great.  First and foremost look for a church where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered!  Upon these two factors we should judge the suitability of a church.

Second, if you are part of a church that holds some of these traits but not all of them be very careful!  Try to help the church repent and change.  Yet realize that a system like a church is very hard to change once it becomes set in its ways.  This is particularly true if you are not a leader of the church!  If you cannot move the system back to gospel- and grace-centered, it might well be time to leave.

Why?

The true church needs your help.  Gospel- and grace-centered churches have always been the minority of churches in the land.  Their witness needs to expand.  Join with them and be part of what God is doing!

Envy's Deadly Pull

"It has been said that Envy is the one deadly sin to which no one readily confesses.  It seems to be the nastiest, the most grim, the meanest.  Sneering, sly, vicious.  The face of Envy is never lovely.  It is never even faintly pleasant.  Its expression crosses our faces in a split second.  'Few are able to suppress in themselves a secret satisfaction at the misfortune of their friends,' said La Rochefoucauld, and few of us are able to suppress a secret envy at someone else's good fortune, or even at someone else's good joke.  If we confessed each day how often we had been envious during it, we would be on our knees longer than for any other sin.

Although all the deadly sins are morbid and self-destroying, Angus Wilson has said, most of the others provide at least some gratification in their early stages.  But there in no gratification for Envy, nothing it can ever enjoy.  Its appetite never ceases, yet its only satisfaction is endless self-torment.  'It has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own feet in its efforts to escape.'"

Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins for Today, 61.

Envy is our cultural marker.  It marks the West.  It marks most of us.

The great irony is that we don't even see it in ourselves.  We have the ugliness "of a trapped rat that has gnawed it own feet in its efforts to escape" yet we don't see our true condition.  We want more.  We want what we deserve.  We want it now.  We know we would have everything we want if others just got out of our way and recognized us for our true wonderful selves.

This is even true in the Church.

Rarely are we really happy for the success of others.  Instead, we want the gifts, talents, and blessings that others enjoy.  Somehow we just know that others don't really deserve their blessings and we know that deserve more than we got.  At the very least, it would great if God helped us have a little less struggle and heartache!

I know most of us would deny that we live this way.  Yet, I think on this Easter week that a real and deep analysis of our life would illustrate the heart of our prayers to God and our complaints about our lives.  We want more!  We want the peace, love, blessings, and talents of others.

"Envy's appetite never ceases, 

yet its only satisfaction is endless self-torment."

The only way off this carousel of sin is repentance and faith.  

We were created to have our satisfaction and joy from our relationship with Jesus.  Ask the Spirit to point out where envy rules in your life and in the church.  Ask for grace to repent and find satisfaction in Jesus' love for you.  Meet with other gospel-centered believers for encouragement as you seek to lessen the rule of envy in your life.  Most importantly, when the Spirit points out your envy for other's blessings of love, peace, power, things or talents, repent and believe the gospel!

Unite my Heart, O Lord

Teach me your way, O Lord, 

that I may walk in your truth;

unite my heart to fear your name forever.
Ps. 86:11

It has been a delightfully busy couple of weeks.  There has been many ups and downs.  There has been plenty of opportunities to veer off the path of walking with God in newness of life.

Can you relate?

I think this verse from Psalm 86 speaks into the busyness of our lives.  It is a prayer for wholeness in the midst of a chaos that can fragment our lives.  The psalmist cries out, "Unite my heart to fear your name forever!"

Unite my heart.  

What does this mean?  Why do we need it?

The very real human condition is most often marked by self-reliance.  We seek to create our own reality by imposing our will on nature, others, and ourselves.  We strive to create order in our surrounding chaos.

The problem is that without a framework of understanding the universe and our place in it, we can easily build on the wrong foundations and in the wrong place.  We can strive to impose our will, or try to impose our will, in ways that go against who we were created to be.  This means that we actually work against our interests by working for our own self-interests.

This is not a good irony.  I have found that building a life without regard to where we build or consideration of the foundations upon which we build upon leads to disappointment.  It also leads to anxiety, fear, depression, control issues, self-reliance, self-righteousness, and pride.

Unite my heart, O Lord.  

How?

Unite it so we build upon the foundation of a direct and real relationship with the true God.  No more pretending and half-measures.  Instead, we live a life marked by active repentance and faith.  This is what the Psalmist called for with the prayer "teach me your way, O Lord."

Unite it so we build our life in the right place with the right priorities.  This means that we discover and then hold unto being the person God made us to be.  In our fallen world, we get so confused and befuddled.  Our world system, our upbringing, our own envy of the life of others can easily pull us toward living a false life build in the wrong place.  If we have build in the wrong place, we need to confess and seek God's guidance.  This is that the Psalmist called for with the prayer, "that I may walk in your truth."

I am so thankful that it is never too late if we wake up and find that we built a life on the wrong foundation or in the wrong place.  The first step to a united heart is to cry out to God for mercy and grace.  Such crying out is also the starting place for every subsequent time we need to have God unite our heart.  Ask Him to establish or re-establish you on the right foundation.  Ask Him to guide you into building the right place.  Such humble prayers the Lord always answers.