“I never allowed myself just to enjoy ministry. And at some point I encountered a dear friend…who taught me this principle that Jesus always intended for us to do ministry from him and not for him.”
“Grace seemed to be…too good to be true in a sense. And so I still felt like I needed to help Jesus help me. So I just brought that [mindset] right into pastoring. I brought that right into ministry.”
“I didn’t Sabbath. You know, I preached on Sabbath. I talked about Sabbath. I talked about how I believe it was important, but I didn’t do it personally because I had this mindset that God didn’t intend for his servants to be able to rest.”
“If I had one area that I think pastors across the board, large church, small church, any denomination, the area that’s just wiping us out is we do not take care of our temple [our bodies], and I was very guilty of that.”
“I got to a place where I was so broken that I reached out for help and went for counseling and just sat on the couch and talked about things.”
“You’ve got to have somebody in your life that can help point out your blind spots or else you’ll just keep functioning with them and not know they’re there, and everybody else can see them.”
“I think one of the things that really hurts us as small church pastors is that we don’t build a team.”
“Many pastors defined their life by being a pastor…that’s unhealthy and it’ll wipe you out eventually.”
“You’ve got to recognize and be honest about where you are.”
“We’re not supposed to sacrifice living to do ministry. We’re supposed to model it.
“You need to work yourself out of a job. And I don’t mean you don’t have a vocational job, but you need to work yourself out of doing everything to releasing people to do ministry.”
“Pain will make you make the move you need to make. If you are not willing to listen to the podcast or listen to Ed or learn from someone, then at some point the pain becomes so great that it’s going to motivate you.”
“I think it’s very important that if you’re in an unhealthy place, if you need to take a break, get you a job at Home Depot for a while because the calling is not going to go away. If you are called into ministry…that calling won’t go away.”
