We talk about our priority list as Christians being God, family, job. Yet it is easy for a pastor’s list to be God, job, family because of how closely connected the pastor’s job and God are. Often this is so subtle that no one sees it, or if they do they don’t say anything about it.
I firmly believe there is a calling that comes with being a pastor, but, and please hear this: being a pastor is also a job. A job that will end. A job you will retire from one day.
If we aren’t careful, we start to become unhealthy when our identity is too wrapped up in what we do. This is why we get hurt when someone rejects a sermon, our advice, or the vision of the church. We feel like they are rejecting us because our sermon, that vision, is who we are. It is our identity.
That’s a dangerous spot.
3. Healthy leaders don’t force stuff.
The reason I love this version of these verses are two phrases. The first is, “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” I am like most leaders. We are incredibly driven, we make things happen, and we force it.
How many times have you played a conversation in your head before it happens: You’ll say this, they’ll say this, then you’ll respond, then they’ll respond, and this is how it ends. Then the meeting goes just like that and you think, “That could’ve been an email.”
We also can very easily force our kids and our wife to be something they aren’t.
One of the saddest things to watch is, as a man is pushing his calling and planting his church, his wife is sitting there dying emotionally, physically, spiritually.
Here’s a question for you as a leader: Is your family too much about your calling and goals? Does your wife have space for hers?
4. Healthy leaders don’t carry burdens they aren’t meant to carry.
I’m a perfectionist. In every part of my life, I carry a burden of wanting everything to be perfect. Every experience with my kids and my wife, I build up in my mind, and when it fails to reach that expectation, I get stressed out and angry.
Another struggle for many leaders is they don’t know how to handle the emotional side of ministry. We struggle with our emotions of hurt, depression, loss, anger, and then as those emotions entangle with the emotions of those in our church and we walk with them through divorce, miscarriages, death, suicide, and addictions (just to name a few), we become at a loss of what to do with all the burdens.
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