What sus­tains men and women who serve in pas­toral min­istry? Var­i­ous traits come to mind: a sense of divine call­ing, a pas­sion for Christ and his gospel, a love for peo­ple and a desire to help them flour­ish spir­i­tu­ally, hon­est and healthy rela­tion­ships, a clear set of bound­aries. These and other qual­i­ties all con­tribute to a strong sense of pas­toral vocation.  

I was there­fore taken by sur­prise when, in the mid-​​life of my pas­toral min­istry, I dis­cov­ered that I had became bored. Bored with min­istry. Bored with my life. Bored even with God! As I observed and spoke with fel­low clergy, I dis­cov­ered I was not alone. Bore­dom, in the form of spir­i­tual numb­ness, can descend upon us like a thick fog or a heavy blan­ket. In these moments it is easy and tempt­ing to aban­don the min­istry of lead­ing God’s peo­ple with energy and enthu­si­asm to set­tle instead for a dull, pre­dictable man­age­ment of the sta­tus quo. 

The Eng­lish Bap­tist min­is­ter and the­olo­gian Derek Tid­ball describes how even well-​​intentioned lead­ers can become vic­tims of the rou­tine nature of pas­toral min­istry. He writes: 

There are thou­sands of min­is­ters today who con­tinue to func­tion more or less in a tra­di­tional way and who gain much job sat­is­fac­tion in doing so.… Maybe some of that con­tent­ment is due to the fact that they do not have very great ambi­tions… Some of the sat­is­fied try to bury them­selves in the fran­tic life of the flock. And since they are adored by their flocks they derive warmth from them and a degree of insu­la­tion which pro­tects them from harsh winds of the out­side world. In this way [how­ever] they actu­ally cease to be shep­herds.  Instead of lead­ing the flock to richer pas­tures, they become care­tak­ers, befriended, and pas­tored, by the flock. (Tid­ball, Skil­ful Shep­herds, 314–315).

Man­ag­ing to get by and sur­viv­ing may seem like a less-​​costly alter­na­tive than accept­ing the pain of tak­ing up the reins of spir­i­tual lead­er­ship and the inevitable con­flict that comes with it. When we, how­ever, com­pro­mise our call­ing like this, our hearts shrink and we become luke­warm care­tak­ers of the status-​​quo rather than stew­ards of the gospel. 

Cen­turies ago the Desert Fathers observed a mal­ady com­mon to monks who lived in the desert. They called it ace­dia and described it as “spir­i­tual sun-​​stroke” or the “devil of the noon­day sun”, an afflic­tion that led to a loss of pas­sion, spir­i­tual bore­dom and a list­less wan­der­ing around with no goal in mind. (Holmes, Spir­i­tu­al­ity for Min­istry, 42–3). Ace­dia is a lazi­ness or indif­fer­ence in mat­ters of the spirit which still afflicts many reli­gious lead­ers, man­i­fest­ing as a loss of zeal for min­istry. Nor­man Shaw­chuck and Roger Heuser describe what it feels like:

No longer does the ‘fire burn in the belly.’ With hardly more than a whim­per, such pas­tors set­tle down to get by until a bet­ter appoint­ment or call comes along, or until their pen­sion kicks in. Ace­dia is an old word for an old sin wide­spread. Lead­ers in their mid­dle years are espe­cially vul­ner­a­ble when life has been daily for a long time and promises to be exceed­ingly daily for a long time into the future… A per­son in the grip of ace­dia has drifted so far out of the cur­rent of things that from where he [or she] lies motion­less by the shore he [or she] hardly both­ers to watch life go by. (Shaw­chuck and Heuser, Lead­ing the Con­gre­ga­tion, 20)

C. S. Lewis too dis­cerned the pos­si­bil­ity of los­ing delight in the Lord on account of the work of min­istry. He described this dan­ger to a recently con­verted man who was pon­der­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of study­ing the­ol­ogy in order to become an ordained minister. Lewis wrote: 

I think there is a great deal to be said for hav­ing one’s deep­est spir­i­tual inter­est dis­tinct from one’s ordi­nary duty as a stu­dent or pro­fes­sional [per­son]. St Paul’s job was tent-​​making. When the two coin­cide I should have thought there was a dan­ger… that what is bor­ing and repel­lent in the job may alien­ate one from the spir­i­tual life.… Some­one has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cau­ter­ized with holy things’; sacred things may become pro­fane by becom­ing mat­ters of the job. You now want spir­i­tual truth for her own sake; how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effec­tive foot­note in your the­sis? (Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, 105–106)

These words from C.S. Lewis and the Desert Fathers warn us that we can become numb to God and his work in our lives. Our hands, and worse, our hearts can become cau­ter­ized by the repeated han­dling of holy things until we become insen­si­tive to God and as use­less to him as luke­warm water and salt that has lost its savour. 

In order to pre­vent this spir­i­tual apa­thy from sneak­ing up on us we need to cul­ti­vate a strong aware­ness of our life in Christ. Knowl­edge of who we are in Christ is made pos­si­ble by hon­est self-​​reflection, allow­ing the deep insights into the hid­den inner world of our thoughts, emo­tions and motives to direct us anew to God. Calvin said it best when he wrote that: 

We can­not ardently desire God before we have begun to be com­pletely dis­sat­is­fied with ourselves. For what per­son does not choose to depend on himself? Who does not rely on him­self so long as (since he does not know him­self) he is happy with his own abil­i­ties and does not see his calamity? That is why each of us is not only prompted to seek God by the knowl­edge of him­self, but also guided and prac­ti­cally led by the hand to find him. On the other hand, it is well known that a per­son never comes to the clear knowl­edge of him­self unless he has first con­tem­plated the face of the Lord and after­ward descended to con­sider him­self. (Calvin, Insti­tutes, 23–24)

In light of Calvin’s state­ment it is no sur­prise that for some of us this process is pro­foundly trou­bling, awk­ward and even painful. We are explor­ing realms that we have con­sciously or uncon­sciously kept hid­den from oth­ers and per­haps even from our­selves. This trek is, how­ever, worth the risk if we want to grow into who Christ calls us to be. Unless we face these truths about our­selves we will be hin­dered from grow­ing in our knowl­edge of God and will be of lit­tle use in serv­ing God’s people. 

How do we under­take this process? I am assum­ing, of course, that per­sons engaged in pas­toral lead­er­ship are avail­ing them­selves of the ordi­nary means of grace such as pray­ing, tak­ing time for wor­ship and Sab­bath rest, reg­u­larly receiv­ing the Lord’s Sup­per and search­ing the Scrip­tures, not just for ser­mon ideas, but to hear the Lord speak­ing to them. In addi­tion to these prac­tices I would like to draw atten­tion to two daily habits that have deep­ened my aware­ness of God’s abid­ing pres­ence and have become espe­cially mean­ing­ful to me.  

I learned the first habit from John Stott, the renowned preacher and author from All Souls Angli­can Church in Lon­don, Eng­land. Stott would begin his day by kneel­ing and say­ing the fol­low­ing prayer the moment he rose from bed every morning:    

Good morn­ing heav­enly Father,
good morn­ing Lord Jesus,
good morn­ing Holy Spirit.
Heav­enly Father, I wor­ship you as the cre­ator and sus­tainer of the uni­verse.
Lord Jesus, I wor­ship you as the Sav­ior and Lord of the world.
Holy Spirit, I wor­ship you as the sanc­ti­fier of the peo­ple of God.
Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit;as it was in the begin­ning, is now and will be for­ever. 
Heav­enly Father, I pray that I may live this day in your pres­ence and please you more and more.
Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and fol­low you.
Holy Spirit, I pray that this day you will fill me with your­self and cause your fruit to ripen in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness and self-​​control.
Holy, blessed and glo­ri­ous Trin­ity, three per­sons in one God, have mercy upon me. Amen. (Steer, Basic Chris­t­ian)

This prayer says it all. It reminds me who I am and whose I am. It puts my life in per­spec­tive and sets the tone for my day. It serves as my spir­i­tual morn­ing cof­fee, get­ting me back in gear around the ulti­mate pri­or­i­ties of my life. It reminds me that my pur­pose is not merely to please peo­ple but to please my heav­enly Father. It calls me to daily give up my rights and shoul­der the cross, fol­low­ing Jesus. When I ask the Spirit to fill me and use me as he sees fit, it brings to mind the kind of char­ac­ter God is form­ing in me. I have mem­o­rized this prayer and try to pray it as soon as I get up (usu­ally while I’m tak­ing a shower or get­ting dressed) to reaf­firm the covenant rela­tion­ship I have with God in Christ. 

The sec­ond prac­tice I found to be immensely lib­er­at­ing is the dis­ci­pline of daily prayer, or as it is called in var­i­ous tra­di­tions, the ‘daily or divine office’ or ‘liturgy of the hours.’ Daily prayer is rooted in the Jew­ish tra­di­tion of pray­ing at reg­u­lar times every morn­ing, evening and night. Count­less Chris­tians have, through the cen­turies, fol­lowed some vari­a­tion on this basic pat­tern. The prac­tice con­tin­ues today, although regret­tably it has been largely lost among evan­gel­i­cal Protestants.  

Daily prayer is set in the larger con­text of the church year, recall­ing the great events of our sal­va­tion in Christ: his advent and birth, his min­istry and death, his res­ur­rec­tion and ascen­sion. The offices con­sist of an invi­ta­tion to prayer, numer­ous read­ings from Scrip­ture, par­tic­u­larly the Psalms and a focused time to ded­i­cate the com­ing day to the Lord. They con­clude with the Lord’s Prayer and a benediction. 

I find these daily prac­tices so com­pelling partly because they put some order and struc­ture into the chaos of my daily life! They reawaken me to God’s pres­ence at fixed times through­out the day and give me a struc­tured way to ful­fill the apostle’s admo­ni­tion to “pray with­out ceas­ing” (1 Thes. 5:17). Spir­i­tual rou­tines like these even­tu­ally become sec­ond nature and their value comes back to us at the most sur­pris­ing moments. I love the way my Tyn­dale col­league Arthur Boers explains it in his help­ful book The Rhythm of God’s Grace:

Fixed hour prayer keeps call­ing and invit­ing me to praise God: here, now, always, and every­where … [The Psalms] con­firm that we can know God’s pres­ence at all times only if we set aside cer­tain times for prayer. The Jews did not buy into a more cur­rent notion that since God is present every­where and in all times we can pray when­ever we feel like it. Rather, they believed that pray­ing reg­u­larly at set and spe­cific times helps focus and reori­ent one to God at all other times. (Boers, The Rhythm of God’s Grace, 33)

The pres­sures of min­istry often leave me feel­ing hec­tic and frag­mented, as if I am caught in a cen­trifuge, with my energy being scat­tered in all direc­tions! These daily dis­ci­plines recon­nect me to God and sus­tain me for the long obe­di­ence that is required for faith­ful pas­toral work. I com­mend them to you.

Bib­li­og­ra­phy

• Boers, Arthur. The Rhythm of God’s Grace: Uncov­er­ing Morn­ing and Evening Hours. Brew­ster, Mass.: Par­a­clete Press, 2003.
• Calvin, John. Insti­tutes of the Chris­t­ian Reli­gion: 1541 French Edi­tion. Trans­lated by Elsie McKee.Grand Rapids: Eerd­mans, 2009.
• Holmes, Urban. Spir­i­tu­al­ity for Min­istry. New York: Seabury, 1982.
• Shaw­chuck, Nor­man and Roger Heuser. Lead­ing the Con­gre­ga­tion. Nashville: Abing­don, 1993.
• Steer, Roger. Basic Chris­t­ian: The Inside Story of John Stott. Downer’s Grove: Inter­Var­sity Press, 2010.
• Tid­ball, Derek. Skil­ful Shep­herds: An Intro­duc­tion to Pas­toral The­ol­ogy. Grand Rapids: Zon­der­van, 1986.
• Vanauken, Shel­don. A Severe Mercy. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.