The Balanced Pastoral Life
When defining the “inner life” of a person in general and of a pastor in particular, we need to understand there is more to it than just Bible reading and prayer. The inner life disciplines can be understood as all those activities that strengthen us spiritually and prepare us for the work of outward ministry where our energy is spent. The inner life is spiritual input, and the outward life of ministry and work is spiritual output. Although this is something of an oversimplification, it does help us toward working toward keeping our lives as pastors in a healthy balance of input and output.
1. The Elements of the Pastoral Life to be Kept in Balance
Following are typical ministerial activities broken down into outward ministry/spiritual output and inner life/spiritual input categories:
OUTWARD MINISTRY ACTIVITIES:
Public speaking and teaching.
This “prophetic” role includes all preparation for regular preaching and teaching or instruction, such as Bible studies and classes. This also includes preparation for leading worship, for weddings and funerals, and for the vast array of other occasional speaking opportunities.
Pastoral activities.
This “priestly” role includes all one-on-one work, such as mentoring and maintaining relationships with leaders, routine discipling, comforting, and encouraging of Christians, counseling and dealing with particular problems, and evangelism of non-believers.
Leadership activities.
This “kingly role” includes leadership and/or attendance of various regular board, staff, and committee meetings; planning, strategizing, and vision-casting activities; and the inevitable administration and communication to staff leaders.
INNER LIFE ACTIVITIES:
Bible reading.
Includes regular reading as well as Lectio Divina and other forms of meditation on Scripture.
Prayer.
Includes kingdom-centered and intercessory prayer, as well as devotional, adoration, and petitionary prayer.
General study.
This ranges from formal continuing education to reading in the field of ministry (theology, practical ministry books) to general reading for enjoyment or background reading (e.g. biographies or works in a broad field like philosophy or sociology). But this is not the immediate reading and preparation you put into talks, teaching, and preaching.
Relationships with family and friends.
This involves time with spouse, individual children, and family as a whole or time with individual friends and groups of friends. This also includes more intense accountability relationships with peers.
Recreation and rest.
This includes both downtime, in which little or nothing is done (emphasis on physical resting), and activity in an area very unlike your ministry work, such as a hobby, avocation, or recreation.
2. The Balancing “Mobile” of the Pastoral Life
The balances of the pastoral life are within each category and across the categories as well as, in the end, a balance between the two macro-categories. Because of its complexity, I tend to think of it as a balance of balanced balances, or a mobile. Here's what I mean:
BALANCES WITHIN CATEGORIES
It is important to maintain a balance within the individual sub-categories of ministry. For example, in the pastoral activities category, you need to keep a balance between your work with relatively needy people who are “net consumers” of ministry energy, and your engagement with healthier leader types who are net producers of ministry. (Generally speaking, if you are not vigilant, needier people tend to squeeze out the healthy ones.) You also need to balance your ministry to people inside your church and those outside, those needing evangelism. This does not need to be a fifty-fifty balance, but again, church people will tend to squeeze out any time for non-Christians. In the leadership category, you need to keep a balance between proactive leadership (in which you are setting a vision, making plans, thinking strategically, starting new ministries, and training new leaders) and administrative tasks.
In addition, there needs to be a balance within the broad categories of outward ministry and inner life. You need to keep in balance the three sub-categories of preaching, pastoring, and leading. Don't let the pastoral work squeeze out the leadership, or don't let the preaching preparation squeeze out the pastoral work. Keep a close watch on these three categories and try to spend a third of your outward ministry time on each.
You need to keep in balance the five inner life sub-categories as well. Looking at the monthly hours may not be the best way to do this, but what I mean is that you may find that all of your time off is spent in relationships (i.e. with your family) and there is no time for avocation or rest. Or you may find that you never do any general study (see the next section for more detail). There are those of us who have thought that the only thing we needed to recharge our batteries was a lot of Bible reading and prayer. Such a super-spiritual approach, however, fails to admit our bodily, physical, and relational needs.
BALANCES ACROSS CATEGORIES
I alluded above to the fact that inner-life disciplines sometimes feel like output aspects, and there are elements within the outward ministry activities that nourish you like inner-life disciplines. For instance, within the inner-life discipline of Bible reading there is the important but rather demanding practice of reading through the whole Bible at least every two years. Over the centuries, ministers have come to see the wisdom of reading the Bible through in every part on a systematic and regular basis. (The M'Cheyne Bible reading calendar is the most aggressive version of this and takes the reader through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in one year.) But this discipline is rather hard work; it feels more like output than spiritual input and can come to squeeze out Lectio, meditation, and forms of Bible reading that have more spiritual input value.
Within the inner-life discipline of prayer is intercession for the many needs in your church, your friendship circle, and your city. Like disciplined through-the-year Bible reading, intercessory prayer is rather hard work (it feels more like output than input) and can come to squeeze out meditation, contemplation, and repentance prayer that have more spiritual input value.
Within the outward ministry of pastoral work is the work of spiritual direction. This is not counseling people with problems or comforting people in distress or even training people for some tasks. Rather, it is encouraging Christians to grow and helping them to see God at work in their lives. This work has more spiritual input value, in that it is more energizing than the numerous depleting kinds of ministry.
BALANCES BETWEEN THE INNER AND OUTER CATEGORIES
Ultimately, you need to ask the questions, “How long should my work week be?” and “How much time should I give to inner life disciplines each week and month?” It goes without saying that for many reasons there is no formulaic answer to these questions, but a few thoughts are highlighted below:
Differences in church models.
A community-driven or social-concern-driven model may require more time in pastoral work and less time devoted to the preparation and delivery of sermons and talks. And the nature of pastoral work in these models is different. In doctrine-driven or evangelism-driven churches, pastoral work may be more a matter of formal appointments in which people come to the pastor's office. In the community-driven model, though, more pastoral work may be over meals and in homes or even on the street.
Differences in life seasons.
When you are planting a new church, you enter an intense two- or three-year period in which your weekly hours on the job will almost have to be higher than normal, similar to the start-up phase of a new business. Those types of intense hours, however, should diminish over time.
3. The Importance of General Study
General study means reading and studying in areas that are not directly related to a weekly sermon or teaching preparation. While it is true that much general study will end up becoming background study for sermons and lectures and talks, there should be intentional time carved out for general study that is in addition to the study done for regular preaching or teaching preparation. If you don't learn the discipline of continual general study—learning to read broadly and deeply—your public preaching and teaching ministry will become repetitious very quickly, and you will be unlikely to develop an authentic and unique voice in your ministry.
John Stott, in his book on preaching entitled Between Two Worlds, lays out the following formula for general study. He recommends at least:
One hour per day,
One morning or afternoon per week,
One full day per month, and
One full week per year.
I have found that general study tends to go in cycles. For several months I may find a new thinker or preacher or field of study extremely exciting or interesting, and I read a lot in it. During that time, it begins to show up—rather undigested and unprocessed—in my preaching and teaching. Especially in my first ten years in the ministry, there would be a tendency to overdo one particular voice and even begin to imitate it. I had my George Whitefield stage, my D. M. Lloyd-Jones stage, my R. C. Sproul stage, and so on. Later I moved out of reading preachers and moved on to theologians and philosophers. The same thing happened: I would saturate myself with that particular author for a while, then lose a bit of interest and move on to some other thinker. But some of the elements, insights, attitudes, or themes of the former interest would pass permanently into my ministry and preaching. Over time this process produced a distinctive preaching or ministry, and that is how general study helps a minister grow into his own unique calling.
4. The Discipline of Rest
I would be remiss if I did not mention the practice of rest as part of a balanced pastoral life. If we are to grow in character and resist ministry burnout, we must keep the Sabbath. A regular Sabbath practice requires the following elements:
A NEW SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR WHOLE LIFE
Hebrews 4 provides a remarkable analogy between the gospel of free grace and the Sabbath. The writer says, “there remains, then, a rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work just as God rested from his” (Hebrews 4:9). When we find salvation through Christ alone, we rest from the most debilitating work of all, the work of earning our own salvation. The Sabbath, then, represents the antidote for the deep spiritual “work” of our souls that incites unrequited weariness. Vacations won’t cure spiritual weariness! If you don’t have the “REM of the soul”—deep rest from your good works—all other work will be crushing. You won’t be able to relax, even when you are supposed to be resting. You won’t ever be able to ”walk away from your nets,” even for an evening.
Without the deep rest of Christ’s finished work, you simply can’t ever rest. The classic example is the Olympic sprinter in the film Chariots of Fire, who runs to prove his worth (“I have sixty seconds to justify my existence”), while his competitor, a Christian man, has such a deep rest in Christ that he takes Sundays off, even if it means missing a gold medal. The former has to have the gold medal; it represents his worth and significance, and therefore cannot get rest from the work of proving himself.
“Without the deep rest of Christ’s finished work, you simply can’t ever rest.”
Jesus said that he alone can give rest (Matthew 11:28-30). All other yokes and burdens make us “heavy laden.” The gospel is a yoke, of course, in that we are yoked to Christ and cannot go our own way. Jesus implies that there is no “yoke-less” life; something will command our wills or require us to “justify our existence.” But only Jesus will not crush us, because he offers us a finished work in which to rest. In fact, the very definition of a Christian is not someone who admires Jesus, emulates Jesus, or obeys him. A Christian is someone who rests in the finished work of Jesus.
A NEW EMOTIONAL ATTITUDE TOWARD YOUR WORK
Ceasing from exertion is, of course, directly beneficial simply as a respite and time of rejuvenation. But to practice the Sabbath means to regularly get internal, spiritual peace and freedom from the stress of work. The only way to do that is to discover the deeper meaning of the Sabbath. According to the Bible, the Sabbath is:
An act of liberation.
God appointed the Sabbath to remind the emancipated Israelites they were no longer slaves. Slaves can’t take a day off! Don’t you see how this is relevant to us today? We should be able to take our Sabbath with a note of triumph, “I am not a slave, not to my culture’s expectations, my family’s hopes, my company’s exploitations, or even my own insecurities. I will not be defined by my job.” Sabbath is indeed an act of liberation.
An act of trust.
God appointed the Sabbath to remind us that he is the one who is working, that he alone is in charge of all things. Practicing the Sabbath is a disciplined way to remember that you are not the one who is keeping the world running! It is not really you who has provided for the needs of your family. It is not you keeping your ministry going. Jesus’ famous discourse on worry involves our working and striving: the plants of the field are cared for even though “they do not labor or spin,” and we are not to “run after all these [material] things” through work (Matthew 6:25-34). In short, you are not practicing Sabbath (or remembering that you are not God!) if you worry during your time off. Sabbath is a time to meditate on passages like Matthew 6 until Sabbath rest begins to grip you.
A declaration of satisfaction.
God rested when his work was finished. This seems extremely difficult for us, because there seems to be no end to our work. Practicing the Sabbath reminds us that because of the gospel, there is nothing left for us to accomplish in the spiritual realm of things. At the physical, everyday level, practicing the Sabbath provides the opportunity to look back at the things we have accomplished. It has gotten easier for me to rest the older I get because I have learned to use my days off to look back and consider the many things that have gotten done and to take pride in past accomplishments. Reflecting on finished work reminds me that things do get done and to realize that my works in progress will eventually get done. Looking at the past also reminds me of how little I have rested in the past and how I don’t want to keep sinning like that.
In light of the above, we can begin to see that failure to rest is due to our sins of slavery, worry, and self-reliance. Not practicing Sabbath means you are not trusting God or acknowledging what he has already done for you.
INJECTING SABBATH REST INTO YOUR WORK WEEK
Associated with the Sabbath laws were the “gleaning laws,” in which the owners of fields were not allowed to harvest out to the edges of their fields but were required to leave a percentage of grain in the field for the poor to glean. In this way, the Sabbath practice includes the deliberate limitation of productivity as a way to trust God and to declare freedom from slavery. In my case, this has meant deliberately setting fewer goals for myself in a given week or day as a way of not “harvesting out to the edges” of my energy, time, and commitments.
As you grow in the inner-life disciplines, you will probably be able to find creative ways to take time off that really restores you. People’s lives vary so much today that practical examples have only limited usefulness. Still, here are some things to keep in mind.
HOW TO GAUGE THE IDEAL AMOUNT OF TIME OFF FROM WORK
If your workday and commute take up every weekday almost completely, but you have a full Saturday and Sunday off with normal Sunday commitments, then that is sufficient Sabbath. If you are a church staff member who cannot count Sundays for rest, then you need to take off one full day a week and be sure to be off at least three weeknights. This still allows quite a lot of hours for work during the week.
MAKE TIME FOR INACTIVITY
Almost everyone needs some time every week that is unplanned and unstructured in order to engage in spontaneously restful activities. If your Sabbath time is simply a very busy time filled with scheduled activities of recreation and ministry, it will not suffice. There must be some cessation from exertion. (This is analogous to Israel’s Sabbath-year practice of letting a field lie fallow to produce whatever happens to come up.) Specifically, you need to take time for:
Contemplative rest.
Prayer and worship are a critical part of the Sabbath from any perspective. It is not only the basis for the inner rest, but it also takes time away from the more exhausting exertions of life.
Recreational rest.
The Puritans and others were rightly skeptical of recreations that required one to spend a great deal of money, time, and exertion. Be careful that recreation really refreshes and doesn’t deplete you in any way.
Aesthetic rest.
You need to expose yourselves to works of God’s creation that refresh and energize you and that you find beautiful. This may mean being out in nature, or it may mean enjoying the beauty of music, art, or drama.
TAKE SOME AVOCATIONAL ACTIVITY TIME
An avocation is something that is a sheer pleasure to you but that takes some exertion and time and usually is something that others do for a living. When planning avocational time, consider whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. Introverts are people who tend to spend energy when out with people and recharge their batteries by being alone. Extroverts are people who tend to spend energy in personal work and recharge their batteries by getting out with people. Don’t try to imitate an introvert’s Sabbath rhythms if you are an extrovert.
Be realistic as to how family time affects you. When families are young and children are high-maintenance, it may not be realistic to count all family time as Sabbath restoration. Parents of young families have to be sure they don’t let all of their regular Sabbath time be taken up with parental responsibilities. (Introverts especially will need time away from their young children.) Unfortunately, when family relationships are strained, family time is important but it also may not count as Sabbath time.
Honor both macro and micro rhythms and seasons in your rest. Israel’s Sabbath cycles of rest and work included not only Sabbath days but also Sabbath years and even a Jubilee (the seventh Sabbath year). This is a helpful paradigm for modern-day employees and employers. It is possible to engage in cycles of long hours or seasons of heavy workloads. If, for example, you are studying medicine and plan to be a doctor, your years of residency will require long hours and much exertion. Some careers in finance, government, and law demand the same sort of initial career-launch phase of a heavy work week. Starting a new business or undertaking a major project, such as a film, requires similar demands. Christians can, I think, enter a season like this with the following caveats: the period should not last longer than two or three years; and it should be marked with regular times of prayer, Bible study, worship, as well as creative ways to find rest.
The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to engage in more production. Nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, engage in recreation, reflect on what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and revel in the freedom you have in the gospel. I have come to see that if you develop the foundation and practice of the Sabbath, you will become not only more disciplined about taking time off but also less frantic and driven in the rest of your work.
Achieving balance in your life will always be complicated and given to trial and error. Nonetheless, I encourage you to not only strive for balance in your own patterns of work and rest, but also to exhort others in these important spiritual disciplines.
About the Author
Timothy Keller was the Chairman of Redeemer City to City and the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which he started in 1989 with his wife, Kathy, and three young sons. For over twenty-five years, he led a diverse congregation of urban professionals that grew to a weekly attendance of over 5,000.