My knee-jerk reaction is family, but at the risk of raising some eyebrows (especially my wife’s), family is not where I landed on this question. The boundary that is truly the most nonnegotiable is one that so often goes overlooked in ministry: your personal relationship with God.
Safety briefings on airplanes can help us understand the core importance of this boundary. On every flight, there is a short safety presentation before takeoff. Most of the instructions are essential, if a little mundane. However, there’s one that never fails to catch my attention. It goes like this: If the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will deploy from the ceiling. Pull your mask over your nose and mouth, and pull the ends to tighten. Here’s the interesting part: If you’re traveling with children, secure your own mask before helping them.
Say what? Helping ourselves before helping others sounds, at first, so backwards. My family’s lives are far more important than my own. Why not risk my life to save theirs? Greater love hath no one… We have to remember that safety is a mutual goal between ourselves and the airlines. From their research and experience, the best chance of achieving this goal is putting our own oxygen masks on first.
In ministry, our oxygen mask is our consistent, vibrant relationship with Jesus. Our ability to minister effectively begins with our own well-being. Henri Nouwen rightly recognized that the core of what we as Christian leaders have to offer is the intimacy of our relationship with Christ (In the Name of Jesus). When we are full, we have much to give. When we are empty, our natural gifts are a poor substitute for our spiritual ones.
Jesus always kept his oxygen mask firmly in place, even in the face of pressing ministry needs. He had disciples to nurture, critics to deal with, and numerous others needing the healing and redemption that only the gospel could provide. He also had limited time.
Sound familiar? Faced with the same scenario, we are tempted to pound a few more coffees, roll up the sleeves, and get back out there. Jesus took a different approach. The gospels include multiple examples of Jesus withdrawing by himself to pray, regardless of circumstances. He did this regularly and unapologetically. It was a nonnegotiable boundary.
Helping others before helping ourselves may do some good, but it is a one-way ticket to burnout. It may take weeks, months, or even years to happen, but disconnection from our source will eventually bring down even the most experienced ministers among us. A mentor of mine once told me, Be careful about ministry because the dangerous thing about it is you can learn how to do it. It’s possible to leave our mask off and still do the right things, say the right things, and produce the right things for a while. We may even look good doing it. A closer look, though, reveals we’re running out of air fast.
Instead of running around disconnected from the source, let us take care of ourselves so we can take care of others. With the oxygen mask of our relationship with Jesus squarely in place, we can give of our best to our families and ministries.
Some things I do to make sure I’m living this way:
Accountability and coaching. We all need help with this. Find someone in whom you can confide who will also tell you the truth. Share with that person how you currently maintain your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. If that comes from within your church community, that’s great. It can also be a special blessing when that voice comes from outside your regular circles.
Practice the fundamentals. Regardless of our ministry education or experience, we are never too far advanced for disciplines like regular prayer, Scripture reading, etc. If anything, our experience should teach us the primacy of those things.
Schedule the time and keep the appointment. Carve out a regular interval in your calendar when the only thing you do is commune with God. Maybe that’s a Monday morning or a Wednesday afternoon. A pastor friend of mine takes a half day every third Thursday of the month. If your schedule requires flexibility, carve out a backup time or two!
*Thanks to Jesse Oakes, the high school pastor at my church, for his collaboration on this post.
This question is an easy one for me. It’s one I can answer in one word.
Sabbath.
In my reading of Scripture, Sabbath is the quintessential time boundary God establishes for all people—yes, including even youth leaders.
I know our days are full. I know the needs of kids and their families never end. Yet, as God modeled by taking a day of rest in the midst of creating the world (yes, I said creating the world), none of us is too busy to take a day off.
I am convinced that the Sabbath is by far the most neglected and disobeyed of the Ten Commandments by leaders today. I am convicted every time I read Exodus 20:8-10a: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work.”
If we stopped reading this blog, and this passage of Exodus, right now, we might be left with guilt as our primary motivator for keeping the Sabbath. The good news is that God told Moses something pretty inspiring about the Sabbath. In Exodus 20:11, God reminds his followers that “the Lord blessed the Sabbath” (emphasis added).
So how can the Sabbath be a blessing? How can it be something we do not out of guilt but out of a sense of gratitude for all God has done for us?
In the midst of my studies about the Sabbath, I’ve been able to answer both those questions, thanks to Eugene Peterson’s description of a Sabbath. He describes it as a time to pray and play.
It is a time of prayer, or specific focus on God.
It is a time of play, or a chance to do that which we would not do on other days of the week.
Now that I’m a volunteer in our youth ministry, Sunday actually can be a Sabbath for me. So on those days, I try to spend more time in solitude and prayer. I also try my hardest not to check my work e-mail on Sundays. I usually take a nap. I try to enjoy special fun with my husband and kids. During the fall, I love watching football (go Chargers!). Sometimes we have friends over for a low-key dinner.
Sometimes there are projects that have to be done, in which case my Sabbath is a half day, or even one third of a day. But even when that is the case, I still love my Sabbath.
While I said it’s easier for me to come up with an answer to this question, it’s not always easy for me to live out that answer. In fact, it’s actually pretty challenging. I would be lying if I told you I kept the Sabbath every single week. I did keep it yesterday. I’m hoping to keep it next week. But sometimes deadlines or needs emerge that disrupt my plans.
But wouldn’t it be great if one of the habits teenagers picked up from us was our keeping of the Sabbath? In the midst of a culture that is ever pressuring teenagers, that is one of the greatest gifts we can model and teach our students.
The creators of Slant 33 have a particular genius, it seems to me, for posting wise but fiendishly difficult questions; questions easy to relate to but difficult to answer.
As I muse and type, I’m thinking of one particular church I nearly worked for, but at the interview, we agreed to disagree on boundaries and requirements.
The church leadership was very clear that each work week should be the normal work week (45 hours, in their book) plus matching the best of their volunteers, at that time a 20-hour commitment. I decided that a church that set the minimum requirement at 65 hours was a dangerous place to be, for my spiritual health and for my family.
The above experience illustrates the difficulty of answering the question. I don’t have a problem with doing a 65-hour week when needed; it is not a clear nonnegotiable. At the same time, a church that expects and demands that every week is nonnegotiable.
The role of youth pastor, it seems to me, exists at an intersection of two contradictory sets of boundary expectations.
First, as a professional role, there exists a set of practice and contractual boundaries as there would with any employed role. Secondly, though, it is a ministry role, where there is a sense of going beyond a job and “serving wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people” (Ephesians 6).
It’s difficult, therefore (and maybe impossible), to adhere to rigidly defined time and expectation boundaries that a normal job could predict, frame, and manage. This is, however, unhelpful and potentially destructive for the church ourselves and the congregation. An un-boundaried role is open to clashes of expectations and practice, hence the importance of the question and some resultant boundary thinking.
At the same time, some permeability of boundary is essential (especially in working with the varied timetables, needs, and opportunities essential for engaging with teenagers). But what are the nonnegotiables in terms of time and expectation, and is it possible to be that black and white? Maybe the more reasonable question is how do we have permeability that still allows strong boundary principles?
You’ve guessed it! I’ve not worked it out and have not come up with definitive list of nonnegotiable time and expectation boundaries (apart from some silly ones, like being asked to look after the senior pastor’s pet alligator for two weeks or being required to clean the entire church sanctuary with a toothbrush). I’m going instead with some principles that my musing has led to thus far.
Any requirements that cross a line from “other duties as required” to consistent and abusive use of your time and energy are a no-go. I also reckon that ongoing expectations or requirements that are detrimental to health, faith (spiritual health), or family are where boundary discussions need to take place urgently. Not that this makes it any easier, since defining abusive treatment or where expectations of role and time commitment become a danger to health, faith, and family is going to be tricky and will vary.
Ideally, we’d have the attitude to serve, and the whole church would have an attitude to support, allowing a permeability of boundary where required whilst the time, space, and reality of expectation where needed at others. But in a less than ideal world and in an imperfect church (made up of imperfect people like me/us), I’m going for the nonnegotiables in terms of the not doing or embracing as consistent expectations or requirements that are detrimental to health, faith, or family.
On the positive side, I’m going to commit to these nonnegotiables: having the time and space to reflect, muse, and pray; having the space to play, to be creative, and to build friendships and family.
This, for me, is a nonnegotiable. Without these, where, how, and whom am I ministering from?
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is looking for. Nice thoughts her Al.