OK, so you spend a good portion of your waking hours engaged in activities that will lead you quickly to burnout. That is a given.
Many of your colleagues in ministry leadership have already become statistics. Each one has a story.
Each burnout was totally unnecessary and completely avoidable. Google “stress” and you’ll receive over 600,000,000 hits in a fraction of a second. On the first page of results you’ll discover virtually everything you need to deal with stress.
Leaders don’t burn out for lack of resources. They burn out because the resources aren’t reaching their journey.
Don’t become a statistic this year.
Here are three items to roll with this year:
1. Your walk.
Develop a Life Plan. Break down your life into segments for the purpose of examination/assessment. Segments include spirit, marriage, parenting, finances, physical fitness, vocation and so on. Then rate on a scale from one to 10 your level of satisfaction for each segment. Then start designing a path for the segments that you’re not satisfied with.
2. Your walk with God.
You will not make it without an up-to-date, vibrant, close, intimate walk with Jesus. Period. If you’re reading this post and your walk is not what it should be, drop everything and focus on this one thing first. Everything, as the Apostle Paul wrote, is considered dog sh… (crap). Don’t be lazy here.
3. Your walk with others.
Community is the one need you have in common with the rest of us. You do not lead in a vacuum. You are relational. Don’t like it? Tough. It’s how God wired you and me and the rest of the seven billion people walking the earth. Even if you’re the most introverted and task-oriented person alive, you’re still in need of relationship. And it’s in relationship that you are held accountable. Example, if you think you can fight lust on your own, you’ll be another story of failure made popular in a blog post on Todd Rhoades’ blog. You don’t want that. (By the way, Todd Rhoades constantly highlights some of the best and most interesting stories in the Christian realm.)
Seriously, what is this year going to mean to you? To God? To the world? To the Kingdom?
