Yesterday, I was asked a question about staying healthy in ministry over the long-haul. Basically the question was, 'what have been the keys to dealing with stress and sustaining personal health in ministry over the past 20+ years of your life?'
There are two sources of stress:
EXTERNAL STRESSORS - some of these things can can attempt to control - our schedule, our pace, our priorities. Some of these things we cannot control - our circumstances, the response of the people around us, the impact of events and happenings in our world. There are some keys to managing external stressors:
- Learning good time management skills.
- Scheduling in a date nite, exercise, family time.
- Keeping a sabbath (a day set aside unto God every week).
- Developing a consistent devotional habit.
- Learning what and how to delegate & how to manage people and systems.
INTERNAL STRESSORS - my sense is that it is the internals not the externals that stress us out the most -
- What we believe about ourselves and about God
- How we process criticism, failure, perceived rejection
- Learning how to choose joy in the midst of trials
- Giving ourselves time to grieve when loss happens in our life
- Being able to forgive ourselves when we fail and access God's forgiveness
- Maintaining purity and accountability so that we are not unnecessarily weighed down by guilt and sin
The first ten years of my ministry I worked primarily on trying to master the management of the EXTERNALS - but I never really worked through some of the stress on the inside. Several years back after the stress in my life caused boughts with migraines - I took the time and did the work to deal with the INTERNAL sources of my stress.
Both are necessary. But I think my choice to rigorously deal with what was going on - on the inside has produced in me a greater degree of peace and the capacity for sustainability over the long-haul. I say that with an awareness that this is something that you can never stop paying attention to and must continually depend on God for his sustaining grace.
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Posted by: Buy Protandim | February 02, 2013 at 01:58 AM