I know that every person who is in ministry feels like they work all the time. Serving in a ministry entails a lot of energy and personal investment. Along with all the personal, hands on ministry and teaching that everyone sees, there are countless hours of hard thankless administrative and preparatory work. If you aren’t careful, you can easily burn out and become emotionally and physically drained.
A couple of years ago I had a friend who introduced me to the idea of implementing finish lines. A finish line is a moment that you designate as quitting time. When you cross the finish line it is a moment of personal Sabbath. You cease from working, thinking about work and talking about work. It can be a time of day every week, or a once a week finish line, but it is important to define when your finish line exists. It is even more important to keep your finish lines every time.
In my life, I have an off day (Friday) that I don’t keep and technically Saturday is not a work day, but I usually find something work related to do on both those days. Usually I am working on a message or some important task, and even though I should honor Friday as a day off, its really hard not to get sucked into work.
But, my finish line is Sunday after Lunch. We often go to lunch with people from Church so that technically still is work because I am still in Pastor mode, but after lunch on Sundays I am done. I can completely rest. I stop thinking about church, I stop thinking about work and I just rest. I can hang out with Tabitha and Bailey and enjoy life.
I encourage you to pick a finish line. Its not an easy thing to do but it is very worth it. Even God took a Sabbath after creating the world. Its a great example of how valuable rest can be. I hope that you too can choose a time and a day where you say, my work is done. Now I can focus on family, fun and God.
December 16th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Being in full-time ministry is difficult because the work doesn’t seem to stop. As we are told to Study continually and meditate day and night:
Joshua 1:8 (New Living Translation)
Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.
But as you said, even God took time to rest, just as Nehemiah did before beginning his work on the walls of Jerusalem.
Nehemiah 2:11-12 (New Living Translation)
So I arrived in Jerusalem. Three days later, I slipped out during the night, taking only a few others with me…
As I am only in ministry part-time I have a definite distinction between my ‘day-job’, which I must do to make a living, and my spiritual life which I do by choice. Even so, within my spiritual life the lines between reading for pleasure and personal study, what I do for my own spiritual growth and my work with the praise band and audio ministry at church become blurred and it can feel like I’m never ‘off-duty.’ Gordon Macdonald was a great encouragement to me with his writings for Leadership (or maybe it was Christianity Today) a few years back when he would talk about quitting. He would talk about doing just one more Sunday and then telling them he was quitting. For about a year I took one week at a time and did ‘just one more Sunday’ until at some point God’s grace came upon me and took the stress away.
Also, Paul talked about the difficulty of being married:
1 Corinthians 7:33 (English Standard Version)
But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife,
But it was clearly God’s intent for us not to be alone but to be joined in marriage:
Genesis 2:18 (English Standard Version)
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Mark 10:6 (English Standard Version)
But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’
So when a man and his wife spend time as a family it is doing God’s will and we should enjoy that time as God intended. So the message is that we shouldn’t feel guilty when we take time away from what we think of as God’s work because it was not God’s intent for us to work continually.
Proverbs 19:23 (English Standard Version)
The fear of the LORD leads to life,
and whoever has it rests satisfied;
he will not be visited by harm.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Mike,
Good post man. Finding rest is one of the biggest challenges for me. It seems I always have something going on. I think your post points out that we have to some down time. Good thoughts!
Tony
December 19th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Mike,
I often wonder why I am feeling worn out all the time. I guess it’s because I seldom rest. I think I will take your advice and just chill for at least a whole afternoon or day. Take care…Chris