Enduring Ministry (eBook)

Chapter 1

All Stressed Up and Nowhere (Good) to Go

After getting a peek into:

• Damian’s chaotic church plant
• Pastor Ken’s restless congregation and dry, exhausted soul
• Brother Charles’ overwhelming “megachurch” responsibilities . . .

What else can we say but . . .

Ministry is hard.

This truth shouldn’t surprise any of us. Not if we’ve read the gospels. Have we forgotten how the apostle Paul famously described his life in ministry:

“Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.”

(2 Corinthians 11:24–28, NIV)

Thankfully, most of us don’t have the pressures and problems Paul faced. (Have you gone without food this week? Been shipwrecked lately?)

And yet, we definitely have our share of modern stressors.

I have been a pastor in the same church for almost 20 years now. I’ve faced incredible struggles and had days when I wanted to do ANYTHING but be a pastor.

I vividly remember one Sunday morning hiding in one of the closets in the kid’s area because I heard voices calling my name! Our church was growing and so were the demands on me and even my family I felt neither ready nor worthy for the challenges that were coming my way.

It was in that closet that God whispered some words to my heart. As I sat there, wanting to be ANYWHERE else, I received the encouragement and perspective that my soul needed: “Go on out there. I got this. Just stay out my way and everything will be fine.”

Those words became my answer to everything… “Jack, how are we going to handle this crisis?” I’d respond, “We are going to stay out of God’s way.” Someone would ask, “How did you grow this church into what it is today?” My standard response was, “I just tried to stay out of God’s way.”

In short, I am a fellow pilgrim with you. Needless to say, I have not arrived. I am still on the journey too. We’re in these things together.

As we begin, we should probably define terms. We keep using the word stress.

What exactly is stress?

Stress can be defined as the tension we feel when facing pressure (of any kind). It’s the burden we experience mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually when we’re carrying a heavy load.

Check a thesaurus for synonyms for “stress” and you’ll find words like anxiety, tension, trauma, hassle, and worry. (And all the ministers shouted, “Amen!”)

Someone has quipped: “Cram together the strain of tough situations with all the pressures people and events put on us and the result is stress.”

Makes sense to me: STRain + prESSures = STRESS

But how does it show up in the lives of pastors? I believe ministerial stress is the cumulative weight of trying to . . .

• Accomplish goals
• Meet expectations
• Fulfill duties

. . . even as you:

• Face opposition
• Overcome obstacles
• Solve messy problems

In other words, we’re trying to do good and godly things; but an array of forces and pressures continually come against us to complicate our efforts. No wonder we’re tired!

Stress is real. It isn’t just a modern word used by weak people to whine about their lives. And it’s more, way more, than a mere feeling. It’s actually physical. When money is tight . . . when people start leaving the church . . . when two of your elders get into a verbal brawl right before your eyes . . . your body literally goes on high alert. Here’s how doctors describe it:

“When you feel threatened, a chemical reaction occurs in your body that allows you to act in a way to prevent injury. This reaction is known as ‘fight-or-flight,’ or the stress response. During a stress response, your heart rate increases, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, and blood pressure rises. You’ve gotten ready to act. It is how you protect yourself.”1

That powerful chemical your body releases—adrenalin—is exactly what you need for sudden, short-term emergencies. This stress response is a self-protection mechanism. But when you stay in a stressed-out, high alert state for long periods—running all day every day on adrenalin—it’s only a matter of time until you crash. Your body can’t keep that up. Neither can your soul.

The kinds of stressors

We don’t need the stories of Damian, Pastor Ken, and Brother Charles to tell us that stress can be generated by lots of different things. But their situations are a good reminder. Stressors come at us constantly from every direction.

Ever see or complete the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory? It’s a checklist (you can find it online) that assigns a “stress number” to 43 common life events.

So, for example, Holmes and Rahe say a divorce generates about 73 stress points, being fired counts for 47, an outstanding personal achievement comes to 28 (yes, even good things can be stressful), and a change in sleep habits measures 16 points.

Most people take issue with the points assigned in the Holmes-Rahe scale. They argue that the points awarded to the various events are off—too high in some cases, too low in others. Perhaps. But that misses the point of the inventory.

The idea is to read through the list, see how many tumultuous events you’ve experienced over the previous year, and take stock. As far as the test makers are concerned, if you’ve accumulated fewer than 150 points, you are considered low risk for any sort of stress-induced health breakdown. But heaven help you if you’ve racked up more than 300 points. You need relief, and quickly!

Later in this book, we’ll show a similar “stress” inventory for pastors (minus the points).

For now, let’s just point out that stress is quite varied. It can be both:

• Chronic and Acute. Chronic stressors are low-grade. They’re not loud and dramatic, just persistent. They nag you. They poke at you. For a church plant like Damian’s that doesn’t yet have a home, “Where are we meeting?” will be a chronic stress, at least until they find a facility. (Then they’ll have chronic stress about something else—like the HVAC system that keeps going out.) For a lot of pastors, preaching is a chronic stress (because Sunday has this funny way of rolling around every single week).

Acute stressors are different. They’re sudden. They come out of left field unexpectedly, screaming for attention. They don’t poke you in an irritating way; they punch you in the face! An acute stress could be anything from your facility being vandalized, to a key staff member abruptly quitting.

• Short-term and Long-term. Short-term stressors last only for a season. Your associate is taking a much-deserved sabbatical this summer and you have to pick up some of his duties. It’ll be extra work, but at least it’s only till mid-August.

Long-term stressors unpack their bags and stick around. They’re the pressures we face constantly because we live in a fallen world. You will always have a few critical church members. That’s not going to change until Jesus comes back. (And some of those grumblers will likely complain even then about the Lord’s timing!)

• Avoidable and unavoidable. Avoidable stressors are unnecessary pressures we bring on ourselves. Like the staff member who continually causes drama. News flash—he could be let go. Or like the pastor who is frantic every Saturday night (or every Sunday morning before sunrise!) trying to pull a sermon together at the last minute. It doesn’t have to be this way. That pastor could change his schedule and enjoy peaceful Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.

Unavoidable stressors are all the things over which we have no control: beloved church members dying. Valuable leaders getting transferred and moving. Pandemics putting your people out of work. There’s nothing to do in such cases but trust God.

• Positive and Negative. We know all about negative stress. But positive stress? Is that a typo? No. Some stress is actually beneficial. It was endocrinologist Hans Selye who affixed the Greek prefix eu- (meaning “good”) to the word stress, to coin the word eustress,...