Gospel.com Blog

Burnout—if you’ve not experienced it, chances are you’ve skirted its edges once or twice. It’s a phenomenon alarmingly common in ministry professions (although it’s certainly not restricted to them); visit online forums frequented by pastors or your ministers and you’ll bump into regular requests for help with burnout, despair, and frustration.

So how to cope with burnout when you feel it crouching at your door? Legacy Youth Ministry Resources has a good article about detecting and coping with burnout. Here are their suggestions for someone feeling overwhelmed:

1. Take a break and get some rest. Understand your physical limitations and accept them. God probably has much less expectations of you than you have of yourself.
2. Change the habits in your life that are unhealthy – whether eating, sleeping, exercise, etc.
3. Write out a clear statement of your specific calling in ministry. Share this with a close friend. Make a commitment to not accept any offers that do not fit clearly into this calling and ask this friend to help you make decisions accordingly.
4. Make a list of everything you do in a week. Draw a line through anything that doesn’t help you accomplish God’s calling in your life. Next, underline the things that you do that could be done by someone else. Write the name of that person next to this thing. Delegate! What are left with should be the things that ONLY you can do. If these things are really God?s will, you have enough time to accomplish them without burning out. If not, you still need to draw some lines through more things.
5. Designate one day a month for solitude. Find a place with no distractions (including your mobile phone) and spend the most part of one day there.
6. Make a list of all the people that you spend time with on a regular basis. Next to each name, determine if they are drainers, average, teachable or fillers. If you find that you are not spending most of your times with the latter two, make the necessary changes.
7. Review your vision statement and the goals that you have set to accomplish this. If you have not yet written these things on a piece of paper, do this during your day of solitude at the monastery.

Read the full article at Legacy Youth Ministry Resources.

Those are easier said than done; of course. For further help with burnout, see also Say No to Burnout by Elizabeth Skoglund of the Psychology for Living ministry.

Have you lived through the nightmare of personal or professional burnout? How did you make it through, and what would you say to somebody who feels burnout coming on?

What do you think?

Today is Friday the 13th. Does that make you nervous? Did you glance anxiously over your shoulder on your way in to work this morning? Carefully avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks or walking under ladders?

Probably not. I’ve never met anyone who took Friday the 13th, or any of those thousands of other little superstitions, seriously (although it’s interesting how long they’ve stuck around, given that few people give them any credence). Americans, and Christians in particular, aren’t a superstitious lot… or are they?

This morning, I took stock of my life to see if anything I did could be called “superstitious.” And I was surprised to realize that in fact, I often act on what you might call “Christian superstitions.”

By “Christian superstitions,” I mean spiritual activities performed not because they contribute to my life as a Christian, but out of fear, routine, or a sense of obligation. When I do “Christian activities” mindlessly, out of guilt, or “just because I’m supposed to,” those activities become little more than dumb superstitions. Here are a few examples from my life:

How often have I mumbled the same old prayer before meals without giving any thought to what I was saying? Surely, a prayer in which I am not even paying attention to the words has no value at all.

How often have I gone to church on Sunday morning out of a sense of “Christian obligation” rather than a desire to worship? If I’ve just spent an hour sitting in the church pew daydreaming about the latest Batman movie or worrying about work, I’ve just wasted an hour of my life on a pointless activity.

How often have I dropped money in the offering plate at church because I’m expected to, and not because I want to gratefully give back to God? I may be helping the Kingdom of God financially, but the activity is robbed of any of the spiritual import it’s meant to have. If I give of my time or money for no other reason than “that’s what Christians are supposed to do” or out of a vague sense of guilt, that’s just empty superstition.

As you can see, I can be quite good at taking praiseworthy spiritual activities and turning them into meaningless religious routine. I don’t think that’s much more useful than avoiding black cats on Friday the 13th.

What about you? Every Christian must struggle at some point with the challenge of keeping our daily and weekly spiritual activities from becoming empty routine. How do you stay on guard against this tendency toward superstition?

[Photo by flickr user rachdian; used under a Creative Commons license.]

What do you think?

What do you make of the famous third commandment?

“You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. — Exodus 20:7

How do you understand this command? Is it talking about profanity and swearing? Can you misuse God’s name without saying anything at all?

Share your thoughts!

Has God ever turned a “worthless” job or event in your life into something amazing?

In an article at Student Leadership Journal, Alex Kirk describes a phenomenon he calls “tent duty,” based on a story in the book of Exodus: when God puts you in a seemingly boring or pointless situation, only to later reveal that He had a definite purpose in mind for placing you there. God might redeem that “wasted” time in a spectacular, obvious way or He might never make it clear why He put you there; but regardless, Christians should learn to appreciate the experience of being on dull, boring “tent duty” from time to time.

Kirk cites an amazing example of tent duty in action in the life of his grandfather, a missionary to Brazil. One summer, disillusioned by his failure to get into a missionary program, he took a seemingly pointless job at a cigarette-making plant and chalked up the entire summer as a complete waste. But years later, in Brazil, God suddenly revealed the purpose behind that wasted summer in the cigarette factory:

Several years into their ministry, a government came into power that was skeptical of foreign missionaries. It cracked down on their operations, restricting them from access to the paper needed to produce Bibles in Portuguese. My grandfather’s experience at the cigarette plant provided this invaluable insight: cigarette paper was the same weight as the paper they were running through their press. The printing presses that the government had tried to shut down were cranked back up and they produced hundreds of Bibles on cigarette paper. As the Bibles were distributed throughout the country, a seemingly wasted summer was wasted no more.

We’ve all found ourselves on “tent duty” at some point. Maybe for you, it was a boring stint behind a keyboard in a cubicle farm, far from your dreams of an exciting career. Or maybe you settled into a low-paying, unglamorous job after your post-graduation hopes fell through. Something that made you think “Surely God could be using me more effectively somewhere else.”

Looking back at that experience, do you see any hints of God’s plan? Did you learn or experience something that redeemed that “wasted” time? Or do you struggle to see a purpose behind it? If you’ve ever been stuck on tent duty, share your experiences below!

Take a moment to think about the blogs, editorials, and websites you read today. Does the word “civil” describe the discourse that takes place there? Now think about the content you write—in emails, on your blog, on your Facebook profile. Would you describe those interactions as civil?

At the Addenda & Errata blog, Dan Reid talks about a book arguing for Christian civility in an uncivil world. The gist of the book is that Christians are called to be civil in all of their interactions, no matter how vicious or uncivil the rest of the world is:

Civility is not enough in some situations. But I must repeat: its basic requirements are never canceled. Christians never have a right simply to cast aside kindness and gentleness. We are never justified in engaging in a no-holds-barred crusade against our opponents. Going beyond mere civility does not mean that we can become less than civil.

Sounds like a fascinating book. And a challenging one; I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we must admit that a lot of online Christian discourse these days, particularly in the political and theological realms, is less than civil. Christians are only human—when we’re provoked by people on the other side of a debate, it’s natural to want to snap back with the same sarcasm or name-calling that our opponents use. But the Bible tells us that just isn’t acceptable.

But it’s still a tricky question. For instance, where do we draw the line between being direct and being uncivil? When is humor an acceptable part of our interaction, and when does it become uncivil mockery?

I’ll confess that my own inability to answer those questions has led me in recent years to drastically cut back my own participation in political and theological debates online; I just can’t trust myself to keep within the bounds of civility, and I’d rather say nothing at all than cross that line.

But what about you? How do you keep your words civil and Christlike while still contending earnestly for the faith?

ThinkChristian.net is talking about thinness, and how it relates to our spiritual lives:

It’s easy to let your appetite become a god to you, but it’s also easy to let weight loss or self improvement to become an idol….

As I’m sure many of you know, weight is a life-long struggle for some and not a problem for others. Genetics, culture and economics play an important role. In fact, weight and health (or fitness) are not always as linked as we think they are. I would hate for this trend to imply that thin people are better Christians than fat people. In my experience, body fat and love for Jesus do not correlate.

On the other hand, I do think that we should seek God’s council and put God first in anything we do, including cooking, eating and working out. I think exercise is a great way to glorify God, who gave us amazing bodies that can lift heavy weights, run marathons, and hold yoga poses. I think eating well is a great way to glorify God for the amazing variety of plants and animals he has given us to eat.

Bethany brings up a few wonderful points. First, one’s weight isn’t always a matter of whether or not you gorged on cookies; it’s tied to genetics, culture and economics as well. Second, we’ve all met people who are so focused on dieting and exercise we have to wonder if they have an unhealthy obsession with health. I’m sure you can find people on either end of the health spectrum whose relationship with food has become physically abusive.

The Bible does give us some guidance on the issue; Jesus clearly tells us to rely on God when it comes to food. In fact, he makes it a line item in the Lord’s Prayer: we are to ask God for our daily bread. He later teaches that there’s much more to life than worrying about food and clothes. In the Old Testament, God provides manna for the Israelites during their meandering journey through the desert.

All of these Biblical references to food seem to add up to an admonition to enjoy what God gives us in moderation and with respect.

What other Bible passages discuss food? While we all know that gluttony is expressly prohibited by the Bible, the line between enjoying food and pigging out isn’t always crystal clear. Where do you personally draw the line? Do you even think about it?

Last week, Chris posted about Setting Captives Free, a ministry devoted to helping people find victory over habitual sin. This week they’ve unveiled a complete website redesign! The site has a new look, is easier to use, and has all of the old site’s excellent content. Stop by and take a look!

What are your spiritual gifts… and how are you using them? The newest issue of Uplook Magazine is out and available for download (PDF), and it’s all about the idea of spiritual gifts—God-given talents we’re all given and charged with using in Christ’s service.

Writers like Sam Thorpe, Robert McClurkin, and W.H. Burnett all chime in with essays on different aspects of spiritual gifts. Thorpe’s essay challenges us to consider the way in which we use our spiritual gifts, and Burnett asks an interesting question I hadn’t considered before: is it possible to acquire a temporary spiritual gift, a spiritual talent meant to be used for a specific time and purpose?

It’s an interesting topic that applies to all Christians, whether or not you consider yourself “gifted,” so read through the issue and see what you think. And if you’d like to explore your spiritual gifts further, you might also check out this series of essays about spiritual gifts, which include a spiritual gifts inventory to help you discern where your own gifts lie; as well as two articles by Blaine Smith which discuss understanding your gifts and discerning where you can best use them.

Is anger a sin? The standard Christian answer is that there are two types of anger: “good” anger, which is used for positive purposes, and “bad” anger, which is sinful. But in his latest Nehemiah Notes article, Blaine Smith argues that this isn’t necessarily a Biblical way to understand anger:

Scripture, though, never makes this distinction, which ignores the nature of human motivation. Pride and hurt feelings can run as deeply in righteous indignation as in any other type of anger. Anger is the same emotion, whether evoked by a righteous concern or a dishonorable one. I frankly wish we would throw the term righteous indignation out of our Christian vocabulary; far too much self-righteousness is encouraged by it.

So what does the Bible say about anger—is it a sin or not? Read the full article to learn Smith’s perspective.

One can draw great satisfaction from a busy life. It’s comforting being able to go to sleep every night knowing that you spent your day doing lots of stuff. But what happens when that busyness transitions into something unhealthy? What happens when working diligently turns into workaholism?

What happens when you stop taking time to love people because that would take too much time from your work?

An article by Acts-International titled Beware of the Barrenness of a Busy Life explores why people flock to busyness, and what affect that mindset can have on our spiritual and emotional lives:

Whatever the cause, if the over-active person sits still for long, his or her inner pain of not feeling okay begins to rise to consciousness. He or she then feels empty, bored, lonely, tired, depressed, or restless. To quieten this pain, he or she just keeps busy, busy, busy.

One escapes his or her pain by becoming an alcoholic. Another, a workaholic. In God’s sight there’s no difference.

One of the most important lessons in life for every individual to learn and teach his or her children is this: One’s worth as a person is never dependent on his or her performance—good or bad. Every person is worthwhile because he or she has been created by God in his image, and loved fully and unconditionally by him.

The rest of the article is at the ACTS International site.

[photo by flickr user freebird4]