{"id":147551,"date":"2023-05-01T18:05:21","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T23:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/?p=147551"},"modified":"2023-05-01T18:05:21","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T23:05:21","slug":"rhythms-to-be-an-emotionally-healthy-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/equip\/rhythms-to-be-an-emotionally-healthy-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhythms To Be an Emotionally Healthy Leader"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A friend of mine regularly pays money to run 26.2 miles. For fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years ago, she trained for the Pikes Peak Ascent\u2014a half marathon up the 14,115-foot mountain. (That\u2019s over 2.5 miles above sea level. Trees stop growing around 11,500 feet, people.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She described to me the need to scrupulously regulate nutrition and rest even for practice. Otherwise, she\u2019d hit \u201cthe bonk\u201d that made it nearly impossible for her to finish. Her body\u2019s glycogen stores had been ravaged. She could barely rise off a couch, let alone finish a half-marathon at altitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her body required equal compensation for expended energy. From the angle of emotionally healthy leadership, I get this on a very real level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During my family\u2019s work in Africa, the treadmill of daily life and ministry was naturally positioned higher, perhaps more so by efforts to fight poverty and suffering around us. Then there were additional traumas: the time we were robbed. The time my husband got malaria. The time my son was hit by a motorcycle taxi on his bike. The time I was in an accident causing a fatality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My soul felt like it was living in dog years\u2013seven years for every single year lived on the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe your ministry demands, like my family\u2019s loss of power or water, deluge of mosquito bites, or nerve-singeing traffic don\u2019t always feel heroic. But somehow, they demand more than your available emotional or physical or spiritual \u201cglycogen\u201d stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And tanking may feel like a near-constant threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emotionally healthy leadership: Soul rest, this way<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like me, maybe you\u2019ve wondered, How would I even add new rhythms? Have you seen my life?!<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But God\u2019s unique plan for your soul restoration is more than recommended. It\u2019s a calling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is absolutely vital to remember that a pastor\u2019s [or layperson\u2019s] ministry is never just shaped by his knowledge, experience, and skill. It is always also shaped by the true condition of his heart,\u201d Paul David Tripp cautions in Dangerous Calling.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ministry amplifies our relationship with God: the wholehearted, beautiful parts, or hollow service from a withered soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a lifetime of robust, genuine ministry from the inside out, it\u2019s critical you find your unique \u201crest DNA.\u201d Swap rhythms of burnout with rhythms of healing and wholeness\u2013so you can love sincerely (Romans 12:9<\/a>) \u2026 and receive <\/em>love from God, where God asks us to remain (see John 15:9<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Restorative rhythms often involve steps like exercise, healthy sleep, nurturing time with your family, and maybe seeing a counselor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But don\u2019t miss these, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living in authentic community<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Mutual community can be tough in leadership. Maybe what you\u2019re processing inside is confidential. Or you long for a level of understanding your friends can\u2019t offer. But as Tripp continues, anyone in ministry is \u201ca member of the body of Christ who himself desperately needs the ministry of the very body he has been called to train and lead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Corinthians 12:21 reminds us we vitally need community for our humility, transformation, and display of the whole person of Jesus: \u201cThe eye cannot say to the hand, \u2018I have no need of you,\u2019 nor again the head to the feet, \u2018I have no need of you.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emotionally healthy leadership means choosing authenticity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruth Barton notes in Life Together in Christ,<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[The men on the road to Emmaus] were not having a formal quiet time. They were discussing the stuff of their lives\u2013all the things that had happened that were having such an impact on them spiritually and every other way\u2013and something about the nature and quality of their conversation opened up space for Jesus to draw near. And the encounter that took place among them was completely reorienting and life changing \u2026 it becomes a transforming community.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With whom can you regularly, completely unmask emotionally and spiritually? Be known, loved, and mutually nurtured?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solitude, silence, stillness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s more knowing to be had. What God says to some laboring for him, driving out demons: \u201cAway from me. I never knew you\u201d (Matthew 7:21-23<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not relating solitude to salvation. But those who are God\u2019s have something in common: He knows them, and \u201cMy sheep hear my voice\u201d (John 10:27).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hearing that still, small voice takes time. Space. Quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solitude also provides room for discernment, rather than fearful reactions or auto-pilot decision making. (Think of the Gibeonite deception in Joshua 9<\/a>, which kept Israel from taking the whole Promised Land.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being alone with God pulls us from attempts to define our identity by what we do, others\u2019 opinions, or what we possess (be it reputation, control, popularity, or relationships). It\u2019s a fierce temptation: Work or sacrifices or success become gods themselves. Tripp affirms, \u201cIf you are not attaching your identity to the unshakable love of your Savior, you will ask the things in your life to become your savior, and it will never happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, burnout bears down when activity for God surpasses my presence with Him: \u201cAs the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me \u2026 Apart from me you can do nothing\u201d (John 15:4-5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus didn\u2019t model burnout. But He did model turning away from ministry to pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rest and sabbath<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As a young mom, I dreaded Sundays. While everyone rested, I was changing diapers, doling out Goldfish, emptying the dishwasher. I was fried. (And man, was I irritable.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in my scrape-me-off-the-floor fatigue, God gently pointed out I needed rhythms, too. I needed to depend on others, asking for help and care. I needed boundaries, saying \u201cno\u201d to the dishwasher even if it meant Mt. Washmore on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a way to settle into His green pastures and still waters. <\/a>And it wasn\u2019t to mow the grass and swim laps. My insistence on muscling through was a form of rebellion. Self-sustenance. Defiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God associates rhythms of restoration and Sabbath with freedom from slavery to work (and other substitutes for identity and worship): \u201cYou shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day\u201d (Deuteronomy 5:15).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We require rest for more reasons than avoiding physical \u201cbonk.\u201d As Mark Buchanan writes in The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God,<\/em> \u201cMost of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest. Mindset of the man too busy: I am too busy being God to become like God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What could rhythms of rest look like?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For Sabbath:<\/p>\n\n\n\n