Assimilation is the strategy to incorporate these abandoned adolescents into the church body. The goal of not only the youth ministry but also the church at large is to assimilate authentic disciples into full participation in the life of the community of faith and the church. We want our students by the time they graduate high school to be fully immersed, engaged, and playing an active role in the church family.

However, a youth worker who advocates for assimilation may experience some resistances from others (parents, church staff, and other church members). Why? Some parents don’t want their kids in “their” church service because it is their time with God. This is why the church pays a youth pastor, right? The youth pastor’s job is to keep their kids busy while they attend church.

If you advocate for assimilation, expect to spend many months and years convincing parents they are the primary spiritual leaders of their students and not the youth pastor. Another issue is that other adults (including church senior leadership) may not value and enjoy teenagers as part of their worship services. Some students may be distracting to others adults during Sunday morning worship. I have had elders and deacons tell me directly that they don’t want students in the service because the way they dress distracts them. Don’t let the resistance deter your assimilation strategies.

Bottom line: The sooner a youth ministry can assimilate students to the larger church body, the better off their faith will be. But expect both internal and external battles when advocating for student assimilation.

Small group is the strategic way to facilitate mentor relationships between students and non-parental committed adults. The key words that define mentor relationships are: accountability, safety, warmth, and friendship. The research behind Sticky Faith suggests that students need five adults cheering and supporting them through their adolescent development process. Thus, it is my belief that a small group ministry in a youth ministry can at least provide one or two adults who love, care for, and support a student.

My biggest regret in my youth ministry career was not placing a high value on small groups. I think small group leaders can come alongside students and help them integrate their lives with faith. Small groups should not have more than eight students per one adult. One adult can only handle the spiritual, mental, hormonal, and emotional levels of eight students. Any small group over eight students will not work because the small group leader cannot be attentive to the many spiritual and emotional needs of his or her students. The only difficulty of the small group model is recruiting quality and healthy leaders.

The bottom line is that getting more adults in the lives of students will produce a more sustainable youth ministry. The goal of the small group model is to make the small group leader the superhero, not the youth pastor.

The hardest part about implementing the assimilation strategy and the small group model is making the shift from working with students to adults. The youth pastor now becomes the one who equips and inspires adults to work with the next generation. Remember, it is more about mindset than programming. It is about convincing adults to have a caring and loving attitude toward adolescents in their church communities.

Holding the two realities in balance—the support of families in their unique role with their children and the reality that many aren’t fulfilling this role or capable of it currently—is difficult. My hope would be that we continue to push for parents to be the primary faith incubators in the lives of students and to see ourselves as their partners in this and to also do all we can to disciple adults who will add to the richness of support we place around our students without ever seeking to replace the guardians or parents in their roles.

Create a culture of engagement. One of the things we worked hard to accomplish was to engage as many adults as possible in the lives of students under our care. It was a culture at our church in both youth and children’s ministries to raise up adults to serve with our students. This included every aspect of ministry from Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings to small groups and summer programing. Having adults engaged in both the children and student ministries is something you will have to work together on and know that it will benefit both groups as well as the entire congregation.

Your adult leaders are more than volunteers, people who out of the goodness of their hearts take time to help out in the youth ministry to help you handle the kids you have coming. They are more than small group leaders who help you keep control. They are brothers and sisters in Christ who can reflect Christ to students if they are looking to Christ themselves.

As a leader in your ministry, nurturing and leading adults into a deeper relationship with Christ is the best thing you can do to help your students have positive relationships with adults. As your adults grow in their faith and trust in Christ, as they turn toward him they begin to behold or reflect the image of Christ as they look more and more like him. I think that if we want our students to be more Christlike, we need to invest in adults who will reflect to them Christ’s image.

I started out by saying that I believe that students need healthy adults in their lives, but that will not happen in your youth ministry if you are not a healthy adult yourself. My encouragement to you is to look to Jesus so you can reflect him yourself to parents and to adult leaders. You are the minister in this situation and must not only proclaim the gospel to your students, adults, and parents. You have to display it as well. Anyone can proclaim it and talk about the gospel, but as you display it to those around you with your life, they will see something different in you and want to imitate it. You won’t display it until you are turning toward Christ yourself, digging into his Word, trusting him and him alone, and being the adult you are called to be.

If we envision our ministry exclusively toward young people and therefore focus an overwhelming amount of time only with them, then we are part of the problem. If we find ourselves with many young friends but rarely socialize with adults our own age or older, then we are part of the problem. Perhaps we find our own professional value, or even our own self-worth, tied into how many friends or likes we have on Facebook. If so, then we are part of the problem.

When we become aware that we are the most referenced adults in the testimony of young people’s faith lives, then we are part of the problem. Likewise, if most of our young people would also nominate us for such high school-ish honors as “coolest,” “funniest,” or “most spiritual,” then we are definitely part of the problem.

The National Study for Youth and Religion indicates that adults’ influence (including and beyond parents) does make a difference in the faith trajectories of young people. And we know this is true from our very own lives. We join Sir Issac Newton in recognizing that “If (we) have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

It is the privilege and responsibility of a youth ministry leader to seek, empower, encourage, and love the many giants into the lives of young people. We cannot be comfortable being part of the problem of isolating young people. We must be the change, as Mahatma Gandhi is often credited with saying, that we want to see in the world.

Our job descriptions must change. I once heard Kenda Dean remind us of the story of Moses in the book of Numbers, chapter 11. The Israelites have become discontent with their lives in the exodus from Egypt. They complain bitterly to Moses, and he passes it along to the Lord. “Why do you treat your servant so badly?” Moses asks the Lord, “Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people?

Moses is so done with the situation that he is basically asking God to kill him now. Have you had those sorts of days in your ministry?

The Lord’s solution is to have Moses assemble seventy elders in a tent and then to share the spirit that God has placed in Moses with them. “That they may share the burden of the people with you.” The Lord’s generosity is so great that it even flows to Eldad and Medad, who have remained in camp and do not attend the tent meeting. They begin to prophesy in the camp. Moses’s response is not out of jealousy but to reflect wistfully, “If only all the people of the Lord were prophets!”

There must be both a quantity and a quality of time that we spend with adults who share in ministry with young people. We can no longer be satisfied with small, exclusive, core groups of seven or seventeen. Seventy adults has become my new magic number of those involved in the ministry. And if that number seems rather small to you or you are from a significantly large faith community, then 490.

And, with a sense of shared spirit, we find ourselves freed, being in the game of youth ministry to win over young people. We now are activating the community to claim young people as their own. The community, not our own egos, will become transformed by the friends or likes of the young people.

We find ourselves empowering others to welcome young people into our gatherings so we might find ourselves personally supporting the adults who come through our doors to assist as well as those many adults whose shadows only frequent our parking lots in drop-off and pick-up mode. And we can celebrate those adults as well. These are the cool, funny, spiritual adults who are willing to share their spirit with young people. They very well might become the giants mentioned in the lives and testimony of young people’s faith lives.

There has been many a day when I share in Moses’s hope: “If only all the people of the Lord were prophets!” The solution to our role in young people’s isolation is to start working with adults toward that very purpose.

on the other side of that is a great mentor of mine in youth ministry who, every spring break, essentially invited the youth ministry to travel with his family on their spring break vacation. Obviously there are great ways to engage your youth ministry and your family, and there are some bad ways too.

My opinion is that it’s healthy when it’s done right. This last year we hosted dinners at our house every other week for our senior class. It was my way of engaging them as they went through a difficult season of college applications and anxiety. My family was always there. My daughter used to ask me on Sundays if it was an “other” Sunday. For her, it was always a highlight of the week to have the big kids come over.

I think Paul models this kind of ministry in 2 Thessalonians when he talks about “sharing his life” with the community. The only way I know how to do ministry is the same way. The families many of our students are growing up in aren’t healthy. They are busy, disengaged, and frantic. Often Dad (or Mom) works long hours and is unavailable to them. What I’m trying to do with students in my youth ministry is show them my real life and expose them to how I actually am and not just the way I want them to think I am. So I show them how I interact with my wife and how I parent my kids. I think it’s one of my greatest offerings to them as they see what it means to be a Christian and a husband and father.

To my younger friends in youth ministries, I simply ask the question: What are you modeling to students? Many of you are close in age and are more like peers to the students. Your life shows them one side of being a Christian in the world but not a full picture. You will likely eventually have kids and have to make these types of decisions. One way you can be strategic now is by inviting parents of students to come on trips and have them model what you can’t.

Last summer was busy. It started out with a five-day, guys-only houseboat trip. Then in July we did an eight-day high school trip to Seattle and followed that with a thirteen-day trip to Israel. I took my boys (ages eleven and eight) on the houseboat trip. They had a great time hanging out with the older boys. My oldest learned how to play poker (maybe I’m not a good parent), and he told me he loved listening to the talks each evening. I was busy running the trip and also being a dad. It wasn’t ideal in that there were times I couldn’t engage with the youth group kids, but I still think it was great. But I had a bunch of leaders on the trip, so I wasn’t the focal point.

The reality, though, is that I was gone three out of four weeks in July. This is typically the busiest month in my youth ministry world. But, as a dad who loves his family, and as someone who has seen the negative side of youth ministry when parents are always gone from their own kids, I say involve your kids in everything you can. I’m pretty sure Doug Fields wrote somewhere at some point that there has to be some sort of benefit for your kids when their parent is a youth worker. I embrace that statement and the belief behind it.

My kids will always be involved because I think it models health to students. It is healthy for me, and it shows that youth ministry doesn’t operate in a vacuum that is only accessible to twenty-year-olds without kids.

As we attempt to steward the gifts God has given us in our children, showing them what humility and service looks like is important. Having your child watch you be obedient as you move chairs, orchestrate midweek service, patiently listen to others, and encourage young folks is the best teaching tool you could have in your bag of tricks. You gain credibility with them as you encourage them to serve others with their lives, and respect as someone who makes humility cool.

Explaining what youth workers do is often difficult, so involving your children in ministry when they are young is important because it allows them to see it. When they see you in action, it helps them understand better what we really do. If for nothing else, knowing what we do for work can help justify why we are gone and not with them.

It is also important for them to see you working so you can model responsibility for them. Seeing that doing your job is more than planning games or going to breakfast with someone else’s kid; it is part of you following through on commitments and being responsible for leadership in a ministry of the church.

Volunteers who serve alongside most of you are young themselves. They are often looking for models who demonstrate godly parenting. If they are single, they look for examples of what to be looking for in a spouse, and how you engage with your children could be one of the most positive peeks into marriage and parenting they get. We often overlook our discipleship of volunteers, but you are discipling them whether you know it or not, and showing them how to parent is a wonderful tool of Christian discipleship.

Lastly, if your students are like me or many young people I know today, they have poor examples of faithful, consistent Christian parenting at home. You might be the best example of what good parenting looks like. As young people develop their own identities and determine trajectories for their own lives, seeing positive parenting in action can help them set the bar high for who they want to become and whom they want to parent with when that time comes. This is especially critical for you men who serve as youth workers.

We all have great examples of women who can parent their butts off, but unfortunately these shining lights are often lacking when it comes to dads. If you’re a guy, I strongly encourage you to think about your example to your students; not just how you interact with them but how you model a loving and faithful commitment to your own children. In fact, your parenting and marriage might be the most important lessons you share with your youth group while they are under your influence.

Now, having said all of this, I have to caution you to use common sense when involving our own children when they are young. Keep your child safe. Don’t ever assume that teens know how to handle, hold, or interact with young children. I wouldn’t trust most teens to be alone with my children. Don’t use your kids like puppies. Puppies are cute and cuddly and can bring a lot of attention to the owner. Your child is not a student magnet. If your child is going to interfere with or distract you from teaching God’s Word, leave the tyke at home.

Lastly, if you’re feeling guilty about not spending enough time with your kids and are involving them in ministry to kill two birds with one stone, learn to set some boundaries and say no more often. If you need help prioritizing between your children and the children of others in your ministry, your children are more important.

Then, as she grew older, it became more difficult. As soon as my daughter was old enough to observe, repeat words, and mimic certain behaviors, my wife and I had to have a conversation again about whether it was wise to allow our children to be part of our youth ministry events. We mutually decided we would still make sure our children could be part of our youth ministry as much as was feasible. We concluded it was important for the following reasons.

We thought it was important that our children had a healthy view of me, as their father. My father was a pastor, and aside from his Sunday morning sermon, seldom did I see him in action, so to speak. Every time I heard my mom and him discussing a church-related issue or subject, I could only imagine my father as a pastor. All I knew of my father was what he was like in our home. I would have loved to see my father live out his calling as a pastor as well as my father. My wife and I thought it was important for our children to see their dad outside the home to give them a bigger view of life and a holistic view of my life.

We thought it was important that our children had a healthy view of relationships and how people interact with one another. We wanted our kids to see the two of us related not only to teens but to the parents of teens and to other youth workers. Not all the interactions my kids have seen me participate in have been positive. One thing is certain, however. The interactions were real, and our kids have seen me in a more holistic way.

We thought it was important that our children have a healthy view of the church. I desire for my kids to love the church. I long for them to discover what took me more than two decades to learn, and that is that the church is not a building; it is a people. Our youth ministry events were a microcosm of the church in action—that is, the people of God actively engaging God’s mission to restore the world to its intended wholeness. I’m sure that through all the years of participating in the mission of God with teens, parents, and volunteers, they have at the very least a glimpse of the holistic nature of God and God’s people.

We thought it was important that our children have a healthy view of our calling. My wife and I are both called, in a general sense, to be growing disciples. Our intent was that our kids would see us actively live into our calling to serve others and that to be a growing disciple, one must love others as much as one loves God.

We thought that it was important that our children have a healthy view of formation. My wife and I wanted our kids to see a holistic view of spiritual formation and dimensions of formation, such as the disciplines and practices. Both my wife and I grew up in churches where formation was viewed as a program, not a process, and we desired that our children see both of us being formed spiritually through life with others.

Now that I have answered the question, let me make this statement. Whatever you decide to do about your children or any others participating in youth ministry events and activities, know that it is even wiser to find ways to let your kids know that the ministry is never more important than them and that your love for and calling to them as a dad or mom far exceeds your calling as a youth minister.

Fixate on him. This is my default response to discouragement. I keep thinking about the symptoms of the problem and how it affects me in adverse ways. This road leads me to create stories about how this problem came to be and how someone is intentionally dissin’ me or devaluing all that I have to offer. This response can become an all-consuming exertion of emotional energy, which always leads to frustration or another response I typically lean on, avoidance.

I have become a pro at avoiding things. Discouragement is often painful, and because I love my flesh so much, I usually try to protect it from any discomfort at all, including feeling bummed out. I let the discouragement set in and just leave it there and attempt to ignore that it exists by immersing myself in anything that will distract from the truth of what is really going on. Work and media are my two favorite places to hide from the roots of discouragement because they redirect my attention to things that make me feel good or just numb my senses from the pain that always seems to accompany discouragement.

One element of the cultural norms in Minnesota is passive aggression. Responding to discouragement with a sucker punch from the side becomes one of the ways I like to stay true to my Minnesota roots. So, after I have made up some incredible stories about the root of the discouragement, I try to get at those roots by taking cheap shots at them (always other people, never my own crap). And in true Scandinavian fashion, those shots look more like shadow boxing and not a real fight because they only occur in my head or in the presence of people who are not the intended target of the swing. This cognitive confrontation is soothing to my flesh and keeps it safe from counter punches at the same time; it’s wonderful.

Each of these methods leads to the same place: greater discouragement and greater sin. Each method is me choosing to believe some form of lie from Satan, “the father of lies” (John 8:44) and not the truth that will set me free (John 8:31-32) from discouragement. I am sinning in that I am leaning on my own strength and abilities to try to move away from my ol’ pal Idaknow.

Only recently have I been able to confront the roots of discouragement the way I should, and I hope you can too. Every discouraging thought is rooted in a lie of some type. Every lie is from Satan, and God’s Word is truth. If I am going to battle the root cause of discouragement (lies), I have to expose that lie to the truth in God’s Word.

When discouragement comes, pause and think about the root. What is the root intended to do? You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44 ESV)

John 10:10 tells us that Satan’s purpose is to kill us and destroy us. Is the discouragement helping to do that in any way? If it is, then my guess is that it is from Satan and rooted in some sort of lie.

Expose the lie. We can’t just do this with our intellect because “our flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63). Understanding lies is a spiritual exercise (2 Corinthians 10:3-6), and we must depend on the Spirit exposing lies through the truth in God’s Word. When I read the Bible, there is something supernatural that happens because the Spirit and God’s living and active Word work together in me, shining light in darkness and bringing life to me. The more I reading the Word, the more I am able to discern the truth from the lies I hear.

Believe the truth. I can choose to believe the truth. I can read a bunch and know Scripture, but if I don’t believe the truth there, I will continue to be held captive to the slavery of discouragement caused by believing lies. Ask for help of the Holy Sprit to give you faith to believe his truth and not the lies that have you bound in discouragement.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6 ESV)

When the feeling is subjective, learn to be objective. Discouragement is an “and” and “therefore” emotion. There are usually other feelings and thoughts associated with it. I use a journal to identify the emotions and work through them like below. It might feel a little silly, but just a couple attempts at this has really helped me!

I’m disappointed, sad, and angry that student made that choice, so I wonder if it’s worth it, and therefore feel discouraged.

I feel lonely, unrecognized, and discouraged in my work. I give it everything I’ve got, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

Use your emotional vocabulary to identify the specific emotions and triggers. Assess each one objectively and reframe the feeling. For example:

I’m disappointed, sad, and angry that student made that choice, but other students have made positive choices. I can prepare my students, pray, and support them, but their choices are not my responsibility. And their choices don’t reflect my influence or the value of my work.

We are a product of what we think, so replacing subjective thoughts with objective and realistic ones is a key way to combat unhealthy thinking when we’re discouraged.

Combat weaknesses with strengths. Often we can feel super discouraged with our failures, perceived failures, and struggles. If you’re getting discouraged because of the tasks around you, ask yourself the question: Am I operating out of my natural strengths? We’ve all been in situations where we had to work in areas that are not our natural gifts, and we don’t feel up to the challenge. Database management, anyone? It’s easy to end up with a to-do list that’s uninspiring, people on your back wanting administrative deadlines met, and then feel unmotivated and discouraged. Thoughts like, This isn’t what I signed up for! start to swirl. Here’s the hard truth: Everyone has stuff they have to do but don’t want to do (usually because it’s a weakness, not a strength); it’s part of being a grown-up. So step up to the plate and use these simple guidelines to stop getting trapped in a downward spiral that leads to discouragement.

Get it done as soon as you can. Procrastination is like a beetroot stain. If you put it off once, you’ll put it off again and again and set yourself up to get beaten up. Also, if others are relying on you, you’ll prevent yourself feeling like you’ve let people down if you get on it ASAP. To achieve it, try using the guideline below.

Follow the 80/20 rule. Try as much as you can to spend 80% of your activity time (work, exercise, hobbies, family) doing what you’re good at, and give 20% of your time to the stuff you have to do. Try doing your 20% first so you finish your day in a positive frame of mind. That way your students, your bosses, your family, and your friends get to deal with the energized person working in his or her strengths.

Be honest with expectations on yourself and the expectations others have. If you really struggle with administration, deadlines, details, or creativity, it’s important to be honest with yourself and those around you. It doesn’t have to be negative. We’ll always be more productive in our natural strengths, and we need to debunk the myth of superhero, can-do-it-all youth workers!

I feel far more confident mentoring and training my youth volunteers than being the leader up front at every youth meeting, so I’d like to work with some of our young people to develop their skills in that area, and I’ll be more focused and effective if I’m not stressed about leading a meeting every week.

I find it takes me twice as long to update the database and email out the programme updates each week, so I’d like to ask one of our volunteers who’s really good with detail to do the updates and give me a summary each week.

I love being a youth leader, but I’m just not confident about leading a teaching night. I’d much rather make sure that everyone has a ride, that there’s enough supper, and make note of anyone who didn’t turn up this week. I prefer talking to students one on one or in small groups than preparing a 15-minute talk to present.

Accept that being fully human, fully alive, is to experience it all. Hopefully these strategies read like how to work through or address discouragement, not how to avoid it altogether. There is a subtle difference! It’s important for our own personal development but also for our students, volunteers, and bosses to see us dealing with discouragement in a healthy way. The key is to not let it get such a hold on you that it starts to chart the course of your life and ministry. Sometimes discouragement is a perfectly valid emotion to experience. But it’s a momentary response that needs to propel you into one or all of the following: self-discovery and development (what you can learn); change to environment (removing obstacles or unproductive habits); professional development (identifying skills to learn or acquire).

King David knew that our souls need quieting. Psalm 131 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture, and I remember it when I’ve wandered from the well of rest that God offers to us all.

…I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me…

For me, practical ways to find solitude and rest need to be planned out long term, short term, and daily.

Life gives us seasons of rest, and we can expect lulls where we can come up for air. However, if we don’t plan, we may find ourselves caught in the riptide of life and unable to swim in to shore for a much-needed breath of air and replenishing of our strength.

Here’s what I try to do:

Plan long-term rest. My husband and I plan at least two weeks a year to go somewhere to completely unplug. It doesn’t have to be pricy; it can be anywhere at all, as long as we are somewhere away from phones, email, networking, and multi-tasking. We’ve found that planning to vacation in areas where there is no cell phone reception keeps us accountable, and we are truly able to get to a point of healthy detachment from the busy lives we lead. Underneath, we find our essence, the very thing that keeps us going, the heart of Christ becomes clearer in us, joy returns. It’s a wonderful place, and I look forward to this time during the busy seasons. Knowing I’ll get this vacation keeps me focused and hopeful when I begin to feel drained.

Plan short-term rest. I plan a day or a half day every week for this. I do something outside, avoid tweeting, updating, or talking too much. Tell your co-workers when this time is scheduled for you and ask them to honor it. Rest can mean focused prayer. Rest can mean a great nap. Rest can mean some much-needed time with your spouse. Something I always loved about Mike Yaconelli at National Youth Workers Convention was when he would say, “Some of you, instead of attending another seminar, need to lock yourselves in your rooms and don’t come out until Sunday.” He couldn’t have been more right. While there were probably quite a few NYWC babies that resulted from that approach, the other byproduct was rested and content youth workers who are able to lead out of strength, not out of emptiness.

Plan daily withdrawal. Every day. Exit the grind a couple of times a day. Withdraw to recharge. Pray. Play basketball at lunch. Take a walk around your building. Drive to get a snow cone. Change it up and find rest for your soul. When you exercise, you can’t have a conversation with more than one person, you can’t dial a phone, you can’t answer one (technically you can, but you shouldn’t unless you want that iPhone to be a cracked phone). Find a few ten-minute periods when you can read Scripture, be in nature, move around, and listen to the Spirit of God moving in your life.

I don’t have this figured out, but what I do know is that rest and solitude are essential. My life has never been busier, and I’ve never had more opportunity for emotional and physical breakdown. However, this one thing has helped me to recover and recover well.

You can read some other blogs I’ve written on the same subject.

Rest: We all need it.
The Best Four-Lettered Word for Your Ministry.

The questions are: Why aren’t you resting? ● What’s keeping you from it? ● Where is solitude found in your life? ● In the car, on a retreat, in focused prayer?

Wherever you find rest and solitude, go there often. You’ll be so glad you did.

Four years ago, a good ministry friend had just returned from a six-month retreat after retiring from eighteen years in ministry at our church. She offered me her unneeded block of time at a Christian retreat center. She apparently thought (and my wife concurred) that I would benefit from being silent for a few days, alone, by myself. Not wanting to seem like a scaredy cat, I took her up on the offer.

I checked in, I ate dinner, lay down at 7pm, passed out, and woke up fourteen hours later. I didn’t even know I was tired. After a day there, alone in a cabin, just me and God, I knew that I was going to need more than the two nights and stayed for three. This was honestly one of the most challenging things I have ever done. No schedule, no agenda, no something to have to get to next, no phone, computer, and then no watch. Just me and all my thoughts.

I read a lot, walked outside in the woods, sat in a sweet rocking chair, answered some questions from my friend Carma like, What is your relationship with yourself?, wrote some thoughts, read my Bible, walked some more. I discovered that my busyness was convenient in helping me avoid deep life stuff, that it supported the perception that I was in control, and that stopping required me to trust—trust I could handle silence, would catch fresh air as I dug deeper than ever before, and that God would want to hold me in his arms smelling the way I did spiritually.

I have been back every December since then. Intentional silence in solitude has become my rest, even if just once a year. I crave it, long for it, am filled by it, and see the amazing fruit from it for the rest of the year. I have coughed up spiritual hairballs, found out I was rebellious because of insecurity (which also explained why I got fired from my youth ministry job), forgave my mom, overcame the lies that made me fear being a father to my son, finally discovered that I have never really feared God, and have seen him give me that fear and awe I asked for.

After my five-day, four-night stay this last year, I received a love of God’s Word that has continued in me, making me hungry for it like never before. After forty-one years on this earth, God’s Word is working in me and changing my heart and making me want him like never before. My time away is not a perfect lifestyle of rest and solitude, but it is working for me and giving me the heart change to seek after rest more and push me further away from my dependence on my busy rhythm to sin and angling my leaning in to the one who requires my trust, fear, and dependence.

Satan does a good job at convincing us that what we hear about moving is truth i) I will get it later. ii) I don’t need rest. iii) If I rest, I won’t do what I need to do. iv) People will think I don’t care, am selfish, or am not a team player.

But it turns out they are lies. Mark 2:27 says that God created Sabbath and rest for us; that slowing down was modeled for us in creation (Genesis 2:1-3). Think about it: Did God really need to rest? Yet he commands us to stop and rest. Jesus modeled it as he felt the energy drain from him as he spent time with people (Mark 5:27-30). Just an FYI: Ministry is tiring. Mark 1:32-37 tells us that he left some healing undone to go and find rest and be still in the presence of his Father.

He couldn’t serve us unless he refueled daily with his Father. Couldn’t find direction until listening to God’s voice and will (John 8:28-29). And couldn’t serve us if he didn’t remain obedient to his Father by being still and knowing who was God.

The psalmist tells us: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Notice the order? Stillness followed by the knowledge that he is God. We often fear what we will discover in the silence. God says that he is there if we only submit and rest in him.

Isaiah 58:9-14. He wants us to cry out for him so he can answer.

I’ve started to think about it like training. It begins with understanding how solitude and rest help me be more productive and healthier, even when it seems to be an interruption to the schedule. Learning to have a long-term view of what’s going on with my work, my body, my mind, my spirit, and my community as well as a sense of self-awareness around how I function best and fine-tuning my recovery as well as I fine-tune my workouts. This way, I make solitude and rest a priority, and eventually I see the benefits in my output and attitude toward life!

First, identify the challenges to good solitude and rest:

Being an extrovert. I’ve learned that in order to be truly focused and productive with my time, I need people, even when I’m resting. Sometimes my best moments of rest and solitude have happened in a busy coffee shop, with my journal open or a good book.

Watching the clock. When my to-do list gets out of control, the last thing it feels like I should do is take time out. But my stress hormones and mind start to treadmill too fast for me to keep up and send me to panic mode if I don’t take space to breathe and form a plan to attack that mounting pressure.

Expectations need to be managed. The people pleaser in me rushes to the surface when an unrealistic deadline or expectation is placed on me. (Trust me, I never create unrealistic expectations for myself ;-), right?) We have to learn to practically address what robs us of rest and healthy functioning. In the first year of my internship, I was asked to do 6-10 hours but did nearly 20 hours every week to meet the unspoken expectations. Setting a healthy pace for myself also results in a healthy pace for my ministry, my volunteers, and my students.

Then, I need to make the most of the rest breaks. I find my creativity is at a high in the morning as much as I like to reflect on the day before as sleep brings perspective and insight. First I like to clear the decks, making lists of all the compartments, any practical solutions or actions I need to take to problem solve or move a project forward. Once my head is clear, then taking a walk. Either leaving the phone behind or turning it off helps. Energizing my creativity benefits my whole day.

Like I said, often the biggest obstacle I face is myself. Learning not to feel guilty about not taking a call or not booking a last-minute meeting in time I’ve set aside. I use daily ritual to measure my time. I start the day in a local café, I hit the gym at a certain time each afternoon. I guard those times fervently because they are valuable headspace.

I’ve learned I sometimes suffer from FOMO: fear of missing out. However, like most fears, it just needs to be faced. Missing the odd social outing actually isn’t the end of the world! The benefit is learning that I actually quite enjoy my own company at times. Sometimes a struggle with solitude is that we don’t really know the person we’re spending all that time with. We know ourselves at work, at church, with family, and with friends, but learning how to spend time with yourself is like any relationship. Quality time is the only way to get through that awkward stage! Think about it like taking yourself on first, second, and third date. By the time you get to double digits, you’ll have a much better idea what’s going on.

As a single person, I’ve sometimes felt the time demands and pressure double. While other ministers have families and commitments that keep them at home, sometimes people feel your time doesn’t have as many restraints. Push back gently on this. I don’t go home to share the burdens of my day with anyone; that part’s all on me!

I’ve often said that good structure allows for spontaneity. The truth is, keeping small and regular breaks for solitude and rest in my days and weeks means that I’m rarely at a deficit now.