Tips for When You Feel Depleted
Ministry has its seasons. Like spring and summer, autumn and winter, ministry brings times of thriving and beauty, but also seasons when the soul feels dead, depleted, and sapped. Some ministry stretches exhilarate the soul; others deplete it. Spending yourself emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically during intense periods of church ministry, mission, and growth can leave the pastor empty. It’s odd, isn’t it? You’ve reached a mountain peak and gazed at the expansive loveliness, only to descend in a slump, worn out from the climb, exhausted from the energy spent. How do you rekindle and recharge to press on in faithful pastoral ministry? Let me offer four phases for rekindling and recharging for ministry.
PAUSE
Pastoral ministry has a built-in accelerator that often never relaxes in ministry drive. Just as a car is not made to always be in drive with the accelerator pushed to the floor, neither are pastors. We must learn rhythms of pausing during the day, the week, and the year. The weekly sabbath for the ancient Jews worked a pause-rhythm into their thinking and practice. Sundays are never a pause for pastors. It’s hit the accelerator time! But we must learn to pause. Here’s a pattern to consider when you sense your energies depleting.
Rest
You need to get off the ministry treadmill for a few days. Jesus instructed the disciples, after a ministry treadmill run, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). That’s good instruction for pastors.
Be willing to let others handle key ministry objectives.
This helps you to see that ministry doesn’t depend on you but on the Lord.
This gives you a chance to train others for ministry.
This highlights the need for elder plurality.
Plan ahead for someone to fill the pulpit to give you time to rest.
Remember
Pause to think about the great mercies of the Lord shown to you.
Write them down in a journal.
Look at them and give praise to the Lord.
Talk with your wife about the things you’re remembering.
Pause to humbly think about your growth as a pastor.
Sometimes we have difficulty seeing our growth because we fail to pause and remember. Consider how some of your past sermons are fit only for the shredder but now, by God’s grace, you’re faithfully feeding the flock. That’s growth.
But with that, if you see areas of self-centeredness, lording over the flock, arrogance, and pride, then confess and repent, and by God’s grace, move ahead in dependence upon the Spirit’s enabling.
Pause to remember that the church doesn’t belong to you but to the one who bought it at great price.
Renew your commitment to be a servant and not a lord.
Think about how Jesus said he would build his church (Matthew 16).
Pause to think about God’s sovereign work in your life and ministry.
Paul Tripp, in Lead (Crossway, 2020), reminds us of how our ministry complaints are ultimately against God. “God is sovereign, and he writes your story, and because he does, he is in control of where you have been positioned in ministry and all the things you are tasked with there. Your complaint about schedule is never just about schedule, your complaint about exhaustion is never just about how tired you are, and your complaint that you never seem to get the break you think you need is never just about time. All horizontal complaints have a vertical component” (135–36).
Pause to take time to do soul and relational repairs just as a farmer pauses from planting crops to use the winter season to gather resources and repair equipment for the spring.
CONCENTRATE
The busy seasons of ministry occupy your mind so intensely that you fail to concentrate on some areas that need intentional consideration. Pastoral ministry may distract us from concentrating on our spiritual life. While we constantly deal with spiritual matters, that doesn’t mean we’re focusing on our walk with Christ. To rekindle and recharge, it’s time to concentrate on the following.
Soul Care
Unless we give attention to our souls, no one else will. Andrew Fuller wrote, “Our want [lack] of usefulness is often to be ascribed to our want [lack] of spirituality, much oftener than to our want [lack] of talents. God has frequently been known to succeed men of inferior abilities, when they have been eminent for holiness, while he has blasted others of much superior talents, when that quality has been wanting. Hundreds of ministers, who, on account of their gifts, have promised to be shining characters, have proved the reverse; and all owing to such things as pride, unwatchfulness, carnality, and levity [Andrew Fuller, The Qualifications and Encouragement of a Faithful Minister Illustrated by the Character and Success of Barnabas (Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, I:143), cited by Michael Haykin & Brian Croft, Being a Pastor: A Conversation with Andrew Fuller (Durham, UK: Evangelical Press Books, 2019), 217].
Dive Deep Devotionally
Do you slow down daily to spend time in the Word and prayer? While sermon work should be turned into devotion, it cannot replace the daily undistracted concentration upon the condition of the soul. Sermon work has a focus in readying for Sunday. Devotion time focuses on the soul today and its condition for the months and years ahead.
If your devotion time is stale, change your pattern, maybe even the place you have it.
Use a different Bible translation or reading plan. Have a Bible reading plan that covers every genre, and preferably journeys through the whole Bible in a year. Some find a chronological Bible to be helpful.
Do a prayer journal.
Sit outside or on a porch instead of the familiar place you’ve always used.
Use a good devotional aid (Spurgeon, Carson, Sibbes, Packer, Tripp, etc.).
Spend good time meditating on what you’re reading.
Memorize some texts that grab your soul.
Take longer devotion time than normal while you’re working on rekindling.
Extended Prayer
Pray about details in your spiritual life.
Pray Scripture (see Don Whitney’s Praying the Bible).
Pray through the church membership.
Pray for local pastors and international missionaries.
DIVERT
You’ve thought so much on ministry for weeks on end. You can’t detach your mind from the X’s and O’s of sermons, planning, leadership, liturgy, mission, and meetings. All those things are good and useful for your mental energies, but when you’re depleted, you need a diversion for a season. A diversion for one may not work for another, and vice versa. You will need to experiment on what helps you to unwind the tightened spring of pastoral work. Here are some ideas.
You’ve likely steeped yourself in reading heavy commentaries and theology works. Take a pause from them and pick up a good biography or even an interesting novel.
I read through Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy each year for such a pause. I’ll also do some C.S. Lewis and other novelists from time to time to help me unwind.
I also read World War II and colonial era history as an ongoing diversion and point of interest.
I occasionally read travel books or books on other countries’ history that open different cultures to me. These books also stir mission prayer and possibilities.
Take some long walks. If you’re a jogger or bicycler, then jog or bike. Find some new trails. Take along your wife and children. Lose yourself in the outdoors and the closeness of family. Think about what you’re seeing. Soak up the beauty and wonder of creation. Enjoy fun conversation with family.
Go for a day trip or a long drive with your wife and kids. Or if the kids are at school, you and your wife can head out of town for a few hours. Grab lunch at a local diner or take a picnic lunch and sit by a lake or river.
Scrape off the grill and get it fired up for a fun cookout with your family, maybe even some friends. Don’t talk pastoral ministry. Let your mind get diverted on other things.
Get in good family time. Play games, go to a ballgame or concert, go out for pizza, or whatever your family enjoys. Take your wife on a date. Focus on your family.
RECALIBRATE
When a thermostat controlling the heating and air conditioning unit gets out of balance, a technician must recalibrate it to make sure you get the proper heating and cooling. Recalibrating is what you’ve been doing by pausing, concentrating, and diverting. Now that you’ve gone through those disciplines for rekindling, it’s time to recalibrate for the next phase of ministry. How do you know when you’ve paused, concentrated, and diverted long enough? You know it when you’re ready to get back into the saddle of pastoral work. Here are a few things to consider when moving into the recalibrating and returning phase.
Think About the Long Game, Not Just the Next Play.
By that I mean Sunday is coming so you must get ready to preach. But think beyond Sunday. This pause in your rhythm and schedule is to help you to look ahead, to think about what it will take you spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically to minister in your church for the next five, ten, twenty, or thirty years.
Recheck and Refocus on Your Spiritual Disciplines.
Your pause has given opportunity to refocus on devotion time and deepening prayer. How will you shift your schedule and focus to keep up these disciplines? Give thought to how your previous schedule has crowded out much needed soul care. Make the necessary changes.
Develop Healthy Rhythms of Rest, Eating Habits, Exercise, and Work.
You’re not invincible. Admit it. Admit your weaknesses and the need to avail yourself of the normal (divinely ordained) patterns of life that will keep your body and mind in good condition. You’re a steward of the temple of the Holy Spirit, so be a faithful steward.
Are there some new rhythms of sleep/rest, eating, and exercise that you need to fold into your life? If you don’t get enough sleep (that will vary from person to person), you will lack energy and concentration power. If you don’t have a healthy diet, health decline will catch up with you. If you don’t exercise (you need not be an exercise fanatic), your body will not handle well the stress of ministry.
Above All, Fix Your Hope on Christ.
When the seventy-two (or seventy) returned from intense ministry, they were elated by their success. Even the demons were subject to them in Jesus’ name. Jesus acknowledged that he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Yet he didn’t keep their focus on ministry success. Instead, Jesus said, “Do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:17–20).
If you return to the work of ministry without recalibrating the mind and heart to live in the hope that is yours in Christ, then you’ve wasted the lessons the Lord has been teaching you post-depletion. Find your joy and satisfaction in Christ, not in ministry, not in the next sermon, not in the next big event. Glory in Jesus. Rejoice that your name is written in heaven. Live in the hope bound up in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I’d suggest that you’ll probably need a number of rekindling times through the years of pastoral ministry. That’s normal, brothers. Follow the pattern (or develop your own) so that you have a process to follow when you sense ministry depletion. You could even use this pattern as part of a church-granted sabbatical. Be conscious of your limits so that you avoid the “burn-out” stage where you’re ready to quit and lack the energy or emotion to continue pastoring, or worse, experience a physical or emotional breakdown. Read your body and mind well. Know when it’s time to pause, concentrate, divert, and recalibrate so that by the grace of God, you might serve as an undershepherd for decades.
