It Is Not Well With My Soul
by Lance Witt
“What’s missing in the church today?”
That question was posed to a well-known megachurch pastor. His one-word
answer was “vision.” I couldn’t disagree more!
We are intoxicated with vision and
obsessed with leadership. There’s more big talk, more big ideas, more
big dreams than ever before. “Bigger and more” has been the rallying cry
of the church in the last generation.
Over the last twenty-five years, vision
and leadership and growth have become the topics of choice for pastors.
In some ministry circles, CEOs and business entrepreneurs are quoted as
frequently as the writers of Scripture. Enormous energy and resources
have been thrown at helping us become more effective leaders … and for
good reason.
A generation ago, pastors were equipped
to exegete scripture, understand church history, and craft sermons, but
were ill-equipped to provide organizational leadership to the churches
they were called to pastor. As churches grew and the culture changed,
pastors had to learn about the world of creating budgets, managing
staff, casting vision, constructing buildings, raising money, worship
programming, and managing change.
So the inundation of leadership and
church growth resources met a definite need. The focus on leadership and
vision filled a massive void, and we have all been the beneficiaries.
But not all of the impact has been
positive. We have pushed the priority of a pastor’s interior life to the
fringes. As we have sought to fill the gap with leadership resources we
have inadvertently marginalized the soul-side of leadership. The result
is a crisis, a crisis of spiritual health among pastors. The statistics
these days on pastors are troubling and paint a bleak picture.
Pastors are leaving the ministry in
record numbers. Discouragement and disillusionment are epidemic among
those who lead in ministry. And many are choosing to fire themselves
rather than fight any longer.
A New York Times article presented a dismal report card on the state of pastors:
“Members of the clergy now suffer from
obesity, hypertension, and depression at rates higher than most
Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen,
while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they
could.”
It doesn’t sound like we are doing a very
good job of modeling how to live well. We may sing “it is well with our
soul”, but there isn’t much evidence to confirm it.
Burnout, scandal, depression, immorality, loneliness – they are all words commonly associated with people in ministry.
Many of my pastor friends and your pastor
friends stand up Sunday after Sunday and faithfully preach the truth.
They unselfishly minister to others and do the very best they can to
lead their church. They feel incredible pressure to inspire their
congregation, grow their churches, and impact their communities.
I have pastor friends who are constantly
looking for the “secret sauce” of church growth. They are
better-than-average leaders and communicators, but their churches
haven’t experienced much growth. They struggle with feelings of
inadequacy and live with this nagging doubt that they are failures as
leaders.
They are secretly dying a slow death and many want to give up.
After decades in ministry I do understand how people get to this point.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a better way forward.
We don’t need to abandon our discussion
of leadership in the kingdom, but we do need to include a question that
doesn’t get enough airtime. What does “spiritual” leadership look like?
What does healthy leadership look like? What does a healthy team look
like?
We have neglected the fact that a
pastor’s greatest leadership tool is a healthy soul. Our concentration
on skill and technique and strategy has not served us well. The outcome
is an increasing number of men and women leading our churches who are
emotionally empty and spiritually dry.
Parker Palmer said, “A leader is a person
who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside of
himself or herself … lest the act of leadership create more harm than
good.”
Let those words soak in. They are
especially profound when you realize they were written a generation ago.
We have ample evidence of Palmer’s insight. When leaders neglect their
interior life they run the risk of prostituting the sacred gift of
leadership. And they run the risk of being destructive instead of
productive.
As pastors we regularly preach that the
Christian life is “inside out”. It starts with the heart. The root
determines the fruit. Life flows from the vine (internal) to the
branches (external). The same is true for our ministries. True, lasting,
Christ-honoring fruit starts by paying attention to our interior life.
What ballast is to a boat, a healthy soul is to a leader.
