The Gospel Coalition

Topic: “Hard Day’s Night”

How can a pastor effectively manage the pressures of ministry? What are the warning signs for burnout? What do you see pastors doing today that is most detrimental to their marriage and children? What about pastors who are unmarried? What single action is most healing to your emotional health in ministry—and what action is most damaging? How does the care of your own soul affect the relationships that matter most?

Speakers: Wayne Cordeiro and James MacDonald, moderated by Mark Driscoll

Disclaimer: This is merely a summary of my notes, taken down live during the event. They may not be word-for-word and will need to be seen on video in order for their context to be fully understood. I will be updating this post every few minutes as the session goes on.

Driscoll: Wayne, you wrote Leading On Empty. You got burned out in Hawaii?

MacDonald: That’s where you go when you get burned out! Where does he go?

Driscoll: You sing publicly. How did you get burned out? You’re happy and pleasant.

Cordeiro: It doesn’t matter if you’re in a small or big church, everyone of us is susceptible to being burned out.

Driscoll: What was the moment? Was it gradual?

Cordeiro: You catch warnings on the way. You’re anxious about something. I’m sick and tired of people’s problems.

Driscoll: That’s a warning sign?

MacDonald: Oh no!

Cordeiro: I was jogging before a conference and I found myself on the curb crying uncontrollably. I said, “What’s happening?” Something had broken on the inside. When you’re in ministry, you can’t stop the train. You put on the mask, you grit your teeth, you dig deep, you ask for help, and you make it through. The problem is that what fuels you on the inside will also destroy you. A pastor’s life is bookended with sermons every weekend. I kept grinding it out. I had anxiety attacks. You can’t clear your lungs. You can’t breathe. You can be healthy, but it’s an emotional thing on the inside. Your seritonin levels get depleted, because you need to take a rest.

Driscoll: If you don’t take a sabbatical, you get a forced sabbatical.

Cordeiro: It used to be priority on God, spouse, family, and ministry. It’s now God, self, spouse, family, and ministry. Work on yourself, and you will have beneficiaries. I always thought I had to put myself last and always go forward with whatever wedding or appointment would come up. I thought my capability was equal to my calling. Wrong. I thought my capacity was equal to my commission. Wrong. A lot of people sin on the bottom side, where they don’t obey. I sinned on the top side, where I do things God hasn’t asked me to do. I go beyond what God has asked me to do. The devil doesn’t care what side of the boat you go off, as long as you go off.

Driscoll: Difference between calling and compulsion. It’s not just managing time, but energy in fulfilling your calling. What does that look like to be aware of it and to make the changes organizationally and with family to carve out that space and be healthy?

Cordeiro: I felt like Schindler. I could’ve saved one more marriage. I could’ve led one more person to Christ. There are always needs everywhere. I have to find out what God has asked me to do. I’m just learning that. The burnout took five years of my life. You think you’re Superman at first because you link four or five successes together and you think you’re bulletproof. We don’t forget that we’re pastors; we forget that we’re human. You don’t understand your humanity here. You sleep with your Superman suit on. You can’t be human anymore. When you’re leading on empty, you think people need a hero – to look up to someone following Christ. But then you think, I’m hurting, and that wouldn’t be a hero, would it? And then you die to yourself, because that sounds religious, and you start to fry. The road to success and the road to a mental breakdown becomes the same road.

Driscoll: We’ve all felt that to some capacity.

Cordeiro: I still preach, but the joy is gone. Psalm 51 – Restore unto me my joy. The devil can’t steal my marriage, but he can steal the joy of being married. He can’t steal my ministry, so he steals the joy of ministry and I drop out myself. He can’t do it, but he can push you to the edge and cause you to jump. When depression hit me, there were times that I thought the only way I can get out of ministry is die.

Driscoll: Other guys step on a moral landmine.

MacDonald: Because he wanted to blow himself up. Sometimes you feel trapped, and you feel a prisoner to your own fruitfulness.

Cordeiro: I remember counting down to retirement. I’m out of the forest now, but I can still feel the bark of the trees on my back.

MacDonald: I’ve been through two periods of time when I thought I would quit the ministry. The first time was 1998. The church was full, we had multiple services, we took time away. I was going to figure out a new plan. The Lord gave me some spiritual insights. I had neglected my soul. I had neglected my walk with the Lord. I was able to dial up my relationship with the Lord. But then I went back to a different place in 2009. I came to see that my way of relating to my church and elders was unhealthy. I tended to bear the weight of everyone else’s failed performance. I had to come to the place and look at the leadership team and say, this whole way of relating needs to be torn down. Some good men got around me and said, “we’re going to make this healthy. We’re going to distribute responsibility differently.” I had to make myself accountable to a group of people who could tell me, “You’re not going there. You’re not doing that.”

Cordeiro: When you’re going through this, you have to ask for help. The eye cannot see the eye. If there’s something wrong with your eye, you need someone else to help you. When the levels start to drop, you need help. Pride has to be dashed. Your ego has to be depleted. Humility is huge. What you learn when you’re at the bottom is what you need to remember at the top. I wish Jesus would lift me over the valleys and trenches. But what I’ve found is that Jesus takes your hand and drags you right through them. But here’s the thing – He will never let go of your hand. If we crash, it’s because we’ve let go of His hand. He will bring us through, and then we can turn around and strengthen our brothers.

Jakes: I’m awed by the eloquence with which this issue is addressed. Sometimes we focus so much on who we are and what we have and what we think and believe, that we lose sight that we are brothers. Last night, we find that we are similar in ways that are important (dealing with stress, etc.). The problem exists because we put the oxygen mask on the passenger and feel guilty about putting it on ourselves. The tragedy is that it is a silent scream. When the leader goes down, he never says a word. It’s the silent scream of a tormented soul so fixed on a hero-complex that we cannot think of ourselves as Lois Lane.

MacDonald: Or Clark Kent, you mean!

Jakes: Pardon the gender issue. We have not been taught to scream. We are not given permission to scream. Whatever we go through, when we go under, all the sharks come out to eat the new victim. And the whole church comes around to watch the lynching. I think we’re seeing it happen more and more because our world is getting faster. It used to be a calendar for a year. Things are changing every thirty days. The pressure is mounting.

Driscoll: Steven, in light of the internet, additional pressure comes on you. How does it factor in?

Steven: My wife said “get off Twitter.” I said, “I want to, but there’s so much good stuff. I hate to leave it behind.” We heard so much good stuff about what God was doing. But the one negative would punch a hole. I would get into an approval trap quickly. I’m personally in an unhealthy place, and this is good in that it exposes vulnerabilities and when I’m angry at one person. I’m taking notes from this. I need to drop a registration fee because this is so helpful for me. I’m praying the Lord will help me keep the joy in ministry. Don’t let the devil take your joy, your moment. Don’t do the ministry but miss the moment.

Cordeiro: Everyone of us has to get somebody permission to speak into your life. If you can’t name a person, get them!

MacDonald: Everyone needs someone who can look them in the face and say, “You are neglecting your wife.” But giving permission is not enough, because it takes courage. You have to keep assuring people that everything will be good even if they tell you the truth.

Jakes: At the end of the day, in addition to having someone with whom you can be transparent, we have to practice on telling the truth – we who herald the truth often do not often tell the truth beyond the truth we herald. We hide behind the truth we herald because it’s safe. We can preach about Jeremiah and John because you can avoid seeing yourself. It’s like the Wizard of Oz. What is going on behind the curtain? Broaching the subject today helps pastors ask, “Do I have a person? Can I come out from behind the curtain?” You cannot critique what you do not see.

Cordeiro: You don’t know if you can trust people that deeply. One betrayal or one person bilking you – it’s like a cat on a hot stove. It won’t sit on any stove.

Jakes: I like to have a plethora of relationships that do not compete with me, but complete me. You have to broaden your scope and your thinking, and you have a sounding board with someone who doesn’t echo your truth. Everything you say is right when you’re in the Grand Canyon.

Question: What is the most helpful thing a wife can do to prevent her husband’s burnout?

Graham: In ministry 40 years. Married 40 years.

Driscoll: Big year for you.

Cordeiro: Married to the ministry?

Graham: A wife needs to allow her husband to be himself at home. My wife has never let me get away with being something that I am not. Honesty and transparency is critical. Accountability. Your wife should be your #1 accountability person. But that can be a problem because our wives are not really equipped to handle all the pressure of ministry. Dumping that pressure at home constantly can create tension in the marriage. Deb has been fantastic all these years in keeping it real at the house and keeping our kids real at the house. What happens with ministers’ homes is that the wife and kids see someone different at home than they do in church. You want your kids later on to say that Dad was the same guy. This is a God-moment for a lot of people who are watching. It’s liberating. When I went through a burn-out period, driven by prostate cancer, I thought I was the only one, that I was weak. When you’re in a burned out condition, you dread the day. When I went through that, Deb was so great. But at the same time, she told me to talk to somebody. Talk about humbling. Me, the pastor, talk to someone about what I’m going through? It was one of the best things I ever did. Don’t be so proud to get the help you need.

Cordeiro: Some notable figures in the Bible went through that. Elijah in 1 Kings 19. He was depleted. He wanted to die. Moses in Numbers 20. We get tired and I want to beat on some people, but you can’t so you shove it inside and beat on yourself.

Driscoll: I asked Grace to ask me how I’m doing rather than what I’m doing. That changed the direction of the conversation when I’d get home during the day.

Question: How often should a pastor take a sabbatical?

Loritts: In ministry over 40 years. There’s not an easy answer. I think someone of us who mentor younger leaders are partly complicit in this trajectory. Everyone focuses on conferences about leadership development, when we need to focus more time on leader development. We need godly brokenness and a focus on our forever need for the Lord. That’s been my salvation. My identity is not my ministry. There needs to be a profound simplicity in terms of how we approach these things. God hasn’t been using me because I know how to plan and strategize. Stop looking in the mirror and singing, “How Great Thou Art!” God has been using crooked sticks for years. Younger leaders get on a treadmill of performance, when the truth of the matter is, God breathed on us. Gifts are oversold. It’s what He uses. They are not our value. They’re like Moses’ staff. Stop separating your relationship with God from what you do. Lead with that instead, and that’s when the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts and helps us listen.

Driscoll: Closing with a request to Wayne Cordeiro to pray.