There was a curious article this week about ministerial exhaustion. It appeared in, of all places, the New York Times. The newspaper reported that clergymen now suffer from obesity, hypertension, and depression at rates higher than the general population (no surprise there), and that in the last decade use of antidepressants has increased among the clergy while life expectancy has fallen. “Many would change jobs if they could,” said the Times. The newspaper wondered why so many men and women of God have become “so unhealthy and unhappy.”

Many pastors and staffers are on call 24/7 and are driven by a sense of duty. Cell phones and social media have invaded the pastor’s quiet zones. Workweeks are long, and the weekends are work. Few pastors take Sabbaths or Sabbaticals, and the “personal boundaries” of church workers are constantly being overtaken by the urgency of other people’s needs.

Experts say there is one simple remedy: Take more time off.

The whole article was aimed at suggesting ministers take a day off a week, regular vacations, and occasional getaways.

For once, I agree with the New York Times. I don’t mind working hard, and for years I was a virtual workaholic. Maybe I still am. But I grew up in a family that took its much-anticipated vacation every year, I love to travel, and I get a lot of joy out of planning my trips away. Furthermore, in the last several years I’ve begun to learn how to take most Saturdays “off.”  My “Sabbath” is from sundown of Friday to sundown of Saturday. Katrina and I almost always have an in-house dinner and movie on Friday nights, and on Saturdays I try not to do anything that feels too much like my regular work. Sometimes on preaching or writing trips, I’ll take an extra day for R & R.

This is biblical. It goes all the way back to the creation when God “rested on the seventh day,” and all the way back to Jesus who told His weary disciples, “Come apart and rest awhile.” The word “rest” is an important biblical concept, and the idea of “stillness” is woven into the contemplative life the Lord wants us to enjoy. Green pastures and still waters are still needed, and those of us in ministry will do well to listen to the apostle Paul’s advice to the Ephesians elders: “Take heed to yourself and to all the flock over which God has appointed you as overseers.”

If we don’t take care of ourselves, how will we take care of God’s flock?

Here’s an excerpt from this coming Sunday’s sermon at The Donelson Fellowship in our series Managing Your Time, Managing Your Life.

We have to provide a visual roadmap of our time usage—a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual calendar, putting in the scheduled items over which we have no control, inserting the important items in a deliberate way, and letting everything else take up the remainder. Eugene H. Peterson in his book, The Contemplative Pastor, he wrote a simple sentence I’ve never forgotten. “The appointment calendar is the tool with which to get unbusy.

The way to escape some of the barrenness of busyness is with the judicious use of a personal calendar. “The trick, of course,” wrote Peterson, “is to get to the calendar before anyone else does.” We have to block out time in our calendars in advance for the important, and then let the urgent fill in the gaps. Most people do the opposite, a way of life that’s been dubbed “the tyranny of the urgent.”

What’s important in life? Time for prayer, Bible study, reading, thinking, and soul-refreshment; time with our spouse; time with our children; time to rest; time working on those major projects that will establish our legacy. Each morning as we review our calendar, we simply have to make sure those items are in place before the rush of the day floods our schedule. Block off time for the truly important, and learn to control your schedule instead of letting your schedule control you.

Here’s an excerpt from tomorrow’s sermon at The Donelson Fellowship from 1 Peter 5:

I want to share with you the genius of the Lord when it comes to the organization of the church. There’s no doubt that God wants things to be organized. I’ve just finished studying the book of Numbers in the Old Testament, where the Lord meticulously organized the tribes and army and religious orders of Israel, with leaders and an organizational structure that is detailed and efficient. God isn’t a God of confusion but of order and organization.

As we read the New Testament we find there were two ordained offices in the church. In the early chapters of the book of Acts, the apostles were the natural leaders of the church, but they also chose deacons who helped them (Acts 6).

When the apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians, he addressed the book to the whole church, together with the overseers and deacons.

In writing to Timothy, Paul described the qualifications necessary to be an overseer or elder, and then he described the qualifications necessary to be a deacon.

Here in 1 Peter, we have the apostle Peter referring to the first of these ordained offices and he uses several different words or terms to describe the same person. He begins by saying: To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder….

• Elders

The Greek word is Presbyterous, from which we get our English word “Presbyterian.” It means an elder in the sense of leader. The leaders of ancient Israel were known as elders. It doesn’t have to do with their age as much as with their wisdom and maturity.   But now, notice verse 2

• Shepherd
• Pastor

He tells these elders that they are to shepherd the flock of God that is under their care. And the word “shepherd” has come down to us in English as “pastor.” A pastor is someone who leads the flock into pasture, someone who feeds the flock, someone who provides leadership and nourishment. So the words elder and shepherd and pastor are used here interchangeably. People occasionally ask me, “Does your church have elders?” I say, “Yes, we do; but we generally call them pastors.”

• Overseers
• Bishops

But that’s not all. Peter goes on to say: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers. This is the Greek word Episkopos, from which we get our English word “Episcopal,” and it is sometimes translated as “Bishop.”

So here you have five different terms to describe the same person in his various roles: Elder, Pastor, Shepherd, Overseer, and Bishop. This is the first of the two ordained offices in the church; and the other is the deacon.

The deacons help the pastor just like the Levites helped the priests, as in the book of Numbers. Together they represent the pulpit and the pew, the clergy and the laity. And when they are working together, hand in hand, that church is blessed.

Now, here’s the genius of God. There is no rigid system in the New Testament in which these two offices have to function. God didn’t give us a set of detailed charts telling us how to implement this system. So the basic organization can work in a underground church or in a megachurch. It can work in a church in the African bush or in an American urban center. It can work in a liturgical church or in a Pentecostal congregation. The Bible gives us the basic offices and the foundational structure, but it provides enough flexibility so that we really should never argue too much about church government. The Baptists do it one way and the Methodists do it another and the Presbyterians another. A small church does it one way and a large church does it differently. The important thing is for every church to have elders and deacons who will provide good, Spirit-filled leadership for the church.

Last Sunday was a special day for Katrina and me as we thanked God for the honor of serving The Donelson Fellowship for 30 years.  I had the opportunity of speaking briefly about my philosophy of pulpit ministry.

Nehemiah 8:8 is my working definition of preaching.  It says Ezra read from the book of the Law distinctly, gave the sense, and caused the people to understand the reading.

As a ministerial student years ago, I was trained to preach expositional sermons.  I was told there’s no power within me or within my personality to change lives.  The power is in the living and active Word of God. 

I was told it’s not what I say about the Word of God that changes lives; it’s the Word of God itself.  It’s not my personal opinions; it’s His revealed truth.

I was told to devote my mornings to the study of Scripture. 

I was told I shouldn’t go into the Bible to find sermons but to meet the Sermon-Giver.  And I was told that as He fed my mind with His Word, my sermons would be overflow.

It’s tempting to preach a lot of how-to, positive–thinking, shallow, sentimental, entertaining, trendy, story-heavy, need-based sermons.  And certainly our messages should be relevant, practical, well-illustrated, need-sensitive, and engaging.

But we don’t preach to entertain an audience; we preach to edify a church.  And only the consistent exposition of Scripture, rightly divided, given in its naturally unfolding context, will do that. 

In the providence of God, in the very year I began pastoring The Donelson Fellowship, Dr. W. A. Criswell published a book called Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors.  That red-jacketed book had a formative effect on me and my work.  Chapter 3 was entitled “The Pastor in His Study.”  Here’s the way it began:

There is a theme in my life that I refer to again and again.  Like the motif in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony that is sounded over and over and heard in a dozen different parts and variations, so the basic, underlying persuasion of my own pastoral work is this:  Keep your mornings for God….

I keep my mornings for God and I have my study at home.  There is a telephone on my desk, but it does not ring.  At night in the quietness of the shining stars and of the soft gloom of the evening, I can work and study and prepare.  In my morning I can walk into my workshop and there slave at my desk to my heart’s content.

I can pray and I can prepare my sermons.  I can write books.  I can think through the problems that confront us. I can live the life of a king in a castle in my study with its thousands of theological books and with its afforded opportunity to escape from the pressure of the world.  Nobody there but God, and He is waiting for my arrival whenever I come.

When I leave the study, I try to be the servant of the church and of the world.  I visit. I answer letters.  I go to meetings.  I preach.  I hold funerals and weddings.  I administer the affairs of the congregation.  I try to help with my denomination.  I do a thousand other things.  But the time I spend in my study is mine and God’s.  That has extended my ministry and has blessed my life; it is the secret of the enormous amount of work I am able to do….

If I had one thing to tell a young preacher, it would be this:  “Keep the mornings for God.  Shut out the whole world and shut up yourself to the Lord with a Bible in your hand, with your knees bended in the presence of the holiness of the great Almighty.”

W. A. Criswell, Criswell’s Guidebook for Pastors (Nashville:  Broadman Press, 1980), 59-60.

  When I was starting out in pastoral work, I looked up to Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, as a model.  Criswell was in a class by himself.  He’d been the leading pastor among Southern Baptists for over fifty years, and he was known for his exposition of Scripture.  He once preached a 17-year sermon series through the whole Bible. 

I met him on one occasion.  Morris Proctor and I attended the First Baptist Church in Dallas in the early 1980s.  We got there early, sat on the front row, and took it all in.  Afterward at a reception for visitors we met the inimitable Criswell. 

“Dr. Criswell,” I asked, “in all your years of ministry, have you ever gotten discouraged.” 

He leaned back and smiled and boomed: “World without end!” 

“Well, what do you do about it?” I asked. 

He said something to this effect:  “I always find that the discouragement is something that is in me.  It’s not in the circumstances; they’re under God’s control.  It’s not in the Lord; He’s never discouraged.  So it’s just an unhelpful emotion that gets inside of me; and so I just have to give myself a little tme to push it back out, and I keep on going.”

That was all he had time to say, but it was enough.

Thank you, Dr. C!

(Preaching) may be slow work; it often is; it is a long-term policy.  But my whole contention is that it works, that it pays, and that it is honoured, and must be, because it is God’s own method.  This is the thing to which He calls us, it is the thing into which He thrusts us forth, and therefore He will honour it.  He has always honoured it, and still honours it in the modern world, and after you have tried these others methods and schemes, and found that they will come to nothing, you will be driven back to this ultimately.  This is the method by which churches have always come into being.  You see it in the New Testament, and you see it in the subsequent history of the Church, and you can see it in this modern world.

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in Preaching & Preachers (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1971), 51-52.

The other day I pulled a book off the shelf of my library that I hadn’t opened for over 35 years.  When I’d first read it as a college student, it’d made a big impression on me.  Now, over three decades later, I find it no less insightful.  It’s Preaching & Preachers by the Welsh expositor, Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

I’ve been re-reading it in the evenings.  As usual, the good doctor has a few peculiar ideas sprinkled among the rest.  But I love his high view of preaching.  Here are some excerpts:

The preaching of the Gospel from the pulpit, applied by the Holy Spirit to the individuals who are listening, has been the means of dealing with personal problems of which I as the preacher knew nothing…

It is quite astonishing to find that in expounding the Scriptures you are able to deal with a variety of differing conditions all together in one service…. It saves the pastor a lot of time.  If he had to see all these people one by one his life would be impossible, he could not do it; but in one sermon he can cover quite a number of problems at one and the same time.

It is preaching that lays down the essential principles by which alone personal help can be given…. I maintain that ultimately the only true basis for personal work, unless it is to degenerate into purely psychological treatment, is the true and sound preaching of the Gospel.

From Preaching & Preachers by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), quotes from pages 37-40.

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about Broadway actors trying to learn their lines, especially when scripts are rewritten and changes are made to the dialogue.  Many actors insist a prompter sit on the front row or behind the curtain to whisper out forgotten lines.

Last season, one of my favorite legends, Angela Lansbury, used an earpiece during a Broadway play “It’s not something you ever want to do, but if we’re going to play important roles at our age, where our names are above the title on the marquee, we’re going to ask for some support if we need it,” said Ms. Lansbury, who is 84.

She went on to say, “In the early days of theater, there was a ‘prompt corner’ with a person ready to throw the line to any actor.  In the electronic age, some 80-year-old performers wear earpieces.  And all of us lose ourselves in a play at moments.  Laurence Olivier did at the height of his career.  This is part of theater.”

But another noted actress, Mary Martin, ran into problems with her earpiece.  It kept picking up taxi signals.  Must have made for some interesting dialogue!

Well, I prefer preaching with a minimum of notes, and so far, I’ve resisted having a prompter.  If I wear an earpiece, it’s only for sound checks, not sermon prompts.  I do hope I have an internal earpiece connected to the Holy Spirit, who is pretty good at prompting us as to what to say.  But, still, an effective sermon depends on good mental preparation.

I do often pencil little prompts or codewords in the margin of my Bible,  If I have extended quotes or passages, I’ll tack them onto the page with a little bit of scotch tape.  But for the most part, I minimize notes.

I have a lot to say about this, as preaching noteless sermons has been a lifelong study of mine; but the most basic fact to consider is this – the Scriptural text itself represents the sermon notes we need.  That’s the genius of expository preaching.  If one’s message unfolds naturally from the text in expositional fashion, the inspired paragraph itself provides the prompts.  One just works his way through the paragraph, coming to ideas as presented in the Bible in logical, sequential order.

When preaching from Philippians 4:4-7, for example, the outline is right there in the text itself.  Nothing to memorize.  Nothing to remember.

• Verse 4 tells us to rejoice.
• Verse 5 says be gentle.
• Verse 6 commands us to prayerful instead of anxious.
• Verse 7 promises that if we do those things the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds.

So you have four verses, four points (or three commandments and a corresponding promise), and nothing to remember:  Be joyful, be gentle, be prayerful, be peaceful.  It’s all right there on the page ready to be unfolded.  The purpose of the sermon is found in the point that runs through the paragraph, and the major headings of the sermon unfold as one works one’s way through the passage in expositional fashion.

(I have a lot more to say on this subject, but I’ll have to consult my notes and get back with you later).

I’m already looking forward to next year (2010), when I am going on writing-hiatus for awhile.  A person can’t minister from the overflow if his spigot is bigger than his reservoir.  We can’t say, “My cup runs over” if the input lines are reduced and there’s a hole in the mug.  Gauges get low.  Batteries die down.  Brownouts occur.

All of which is to remind us of the old adage: 

If you’re output exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.