5 Ways for Pastors to Experience Replenishment in the Next 30 Days

Almost every pastor and church leader I talk to these days is exhausted. The last 6 months have brought culture-shaking change at a pace none of us have ever experienced.

The spread of a global pandemic (which significantly altered everyone’s daily experience of life while at the same time severely limiting in-person gatherings like church services) and the once-in-our-lifetime focus on issues of systemic racism has left both church leaders and people in our communities reeling … and yet holding things together on the outside.

You can see the insecurity and uncertainty in the email attacks in your inbox and the social media posts on your feed.

In late March, I shared an article about how the global pandemic has the qualities of a blizzard, a season of winter, and a little ice age. The initial blizzard has passed. We’ve gone through a season of winter. Now, as church leaders plan for the fall and early 2021, we’re entering the little ice age.

You are now leading in a circumstance that you never prepared or trained for. You probably entered local church ministry with training based on a specific model of “doing church.” And now you’re faced with the need to innovate—to develop and implement a new model for how you will do church in your specific context with your specific resource set. Of course you’re exhausted.

I want to offer 5 ways for you to experience replenishment in the next 30 days. If I could, I would give each one of you a miraculous, instantaneous, supernatural injection of energy. Since I can’t do that, all I can do is offer these insights that have refreshed and replenished me over the years. I’m confident that they will serve you well.

[Side note: As you read through the content below, you’ll see that I’ve linked to different tools and courses I’ve been a part of creating over the years. I’m honestly not trying to sell you something. I simply believe in the power of these tools to literally change your day-to-day experience of life and ministry. If I knew of better or free tools out there that accomplished these same things, I’d direct you to those. Providing these tools is the best way I know to serve you well.]

1 - Check Your Rhythms: Because you can’t lead toward what you’re not living from.

Life is all about rhythms. God demonstrated the 6 & 1 rhythm for every week when He created the world. And He didn’t stop there. He gave His people rhythms of celebrating and remembering throughout each year, commanding them to stop their work at pre-planned times to be refreshed as a people. Think about that. He commanded them to live with intentional rhythms.

Do you have intentional rhythms in your life? Daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly rhythms? If you don’t you will never make the shift from exhausted to energized. You can’t continue to operate at a blizzard pace. You need to settle into a pace that will sustain you through the ice age and beyond.

For years, I’ve personally experienced the power of a 90-day rhythm. Each 90 days has a single big objective that I then break down into smaller steps to be done each month and each week. This helps me focus and manage my energy toward what’s most important rather than wasting it on less important, more urgent things.

I believe so strongly in this rhythmic approach to goal-setting that we’ve built it into the Younique life design process. If you’ve never set a 90-day goal or defined intentional rhythms in your life, our Life Planning 101 online course can guide you through that process.

But the most important part of your rhythm is daily—your daily time with God. Don’t skip this rhythm check because it sounds or feels cliche. When Jesus had intense periods of ministry, He invested time in prayer and solitude with His Father. Do not neglect this daily rhythm in your life.

The top secret truth of how to live meaningfully and purposefully is … calendar blocking. Not what you were expecting? Calendar blocking is the tool you can’t live—really live—without. Calendar blocking is when you make appointments with yourself in advance to enact these important rhythms and bolt them into your calendar. Pre-blocking time is how all major changes for the better happen in a person’s behavior—changes that last, that is.

It’s even more important to calendar block in times of crisis and exhaustion. Calendar-block something you look forward to. Calendar-block 30 minutes with a Bible and a journal. If you don’t schedule your time intentionally, something else will fill your time, especially in this season.

To be honest, this is an area where I have slipped a little bit lately. Every couple of weeks for the past few months, I have allowed myself to get caught up in reading or watching the news and that has taken over my replenishment time. And guess what? I was more tired. When I looked back at my schedule to try to figure out what had happened … I discovered that I had let my intentional rhythms slip and dealing with the natural consequences of that.

You can’t lead people into a vibrant, life-giving relationship with God that sustains them through times of crisis if you don’t derive your strength from that relationship yourself.

2 - Remember Your Calling: Because God designed you with a specific purpose in mind.

Remembering is a powerful practice in every area of life. Our memories provide a fertile place for us to visit when we’re tired—to be reminded of the goodness in our lives and how we came to be where we are today. The recollection of your calling can literally be a garden of refreshment—an experience of your own personal Eden.

When I work with church and denominational teams, I often lead them through a process to remember their “founding charism.” What was it that caused your church or denomination to be founded in the first place? Investing the time to remember why you exist as an organization is powerful for energizing your future.

The same is true for us personally. God designed you with a specific purpose in mind. He placed you in a specific context with specific passions and specific abilities. He called you to devote your life to serving His people. What were the events that led you to your understanding of God’s call on your life? How did God confirm for you that this is who He created you to be? Reflecting on those experiences can re-energize and refocus you for the work you are doing today.

Remembering your specific calling has another critical benefit that will replenish your soul: you stop comparing yourself with others and embrace who God has specifically called you to be as a leader.

Many pastors right now are making decisions based on fear and insecurity. “Is the church down the road opening up? Are they having kids ministry? Is the pastor doing a daily devotional on social media?” Fear and insecurity lead to living by comparison, which will sap the life out of your calling.

I meet too many pastors who have never invested the time and energy to understand and articulate their unique calling from God. I honestly don’t know how you can lead effectively without knowing how God has designed you. You can download the Clarity Spiral book for free, which will walk you through the first part of a process for knowing and naming your calling. Or, check out the free Starter Kit course that includes a powerful life mapping tool that will enable you to track God’s hand at work throughout your life.

Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Don’t make decisions based on what others are doing. Leave insecurity behind and remember your specific calling … and make decisions based on that.

3 - Welcome the Moment: Because you only hurt yourself when you beat your head against the wall.

Working to restart the model of the past is draining the life out of pastors, staff members, and church leaders everywhere I turn. The amount of additional effort it is taking right now to reopen church buildings for weekend worship is staggering. Much of this effort, I would argue, is being expended to resuscitate a model from the past—a model where the church building and the weekend worship programs are the single driving force behind everything that happens.

I’ve heard lots of pastors saying that these last few months have been a great reminder that we don’t “go to church,” but “we are the church.” And while you’ve said that and preached it (for years!), your model and your decisions have been based on getting back to creating a place for people to “go to church” as quickly as possible.

You can’t fight against the moment and the changes that are becoming reality in our culture and in our churches. You may not like the moment. You may not be extensively trained for the moment. But banging your head against the wall of your current reality is not going to change the wall at all—you’ll only end up dazed and confused from a concussion.

One of the most important aspects of welcoming the moment is to be able to recognize and reject nostalgia—in yourself and others. Nostalgia is a longing to recreate an idealized version of the past. Getting drawn into nostalgia will diminish your energy for today by focusing your attention on yesterday. God often invites His people to remember (to remember His faithfulness, His power, His presence with them), but that practice of remembrance was not meant to push them back into the past, it was meant to provide fuel for their future.

The leaders who are going to experience replenishment in the middle of this intense ministry season will be the ones who welcome this moment as an opportunity to innovate and build something new.

If you’re looking for help in how to embrace this moment, check out the free download of my Innovating Discipleship book. It provides a framework for how to think through reshaping your approach to making disciples.

4 - Prioritize Unity: Because [=1] is always greater than [+1].

In my next book, Future Church, which will release on December 1, 2020, I urge church leaders to reconsider their scorecard—how they measure success. We’ve all struggled with defining and measuring success for years, because the easiest and most consistent way to do it is through attendance and giving. I call this the [+1] success model.

In the [+1] model, success is actually easy to define—it’s more. More people in the worship service. More people in small groups. More people serving in church ministries. More money in the offering. But the [+1] model has a dark side that we’re all aware of but we don’t like to talk about. We can be successful in the [+1] model of church ministry and not actually make disciples of Jesus.

What if we could redefine success using an [=1] model? In the [=1] model, success is defined by unity. The [=1] approach mirrors the mysterious math of the Trinity (1 + 1 + 1 = 1) and is rooted in Jesus’ prayer for an ever-expanding oneness that begins with His relationship with His Father and extends to everyone who comes to believe in Him.

How could you reshape your efforts and your energies to be focused on increasing unity within the people of your church? What could that look like?

In my estimation, there is one incredibly important area where the church could focus on unity right now, and that’s in the area of systemic racism. What if your church could experience increasing unity through learning together, giving and receiving forgiveness, and working together for the cause of Black people and people of color in your community?

The oneness at the heart of the [=1] model culminates with the picture we’re given in Revelation 7 of “a multitude that no one can count, from every tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and the Lamb.”

This move toward [=1] in the area of racial injustice isn’t one you have to make alone. There are great resources from organizations like Be The Bridge and Undivided (which was developed by Crossroads Church in Cincinnati).

Unity aligns the energy of your church and harnesses the power of shared focus. When you see and experience growing unity, your soul is replenished.

You can pre-order the Future Church book from Amazon here.

5 - Cultivate New Hope: Because the opportunity is greater than ever to reflect God’s love and enjoy eternal perspective.

I don’t know of anything more draining to the human spirit than hopelessness. When we have no hope—no hope for a better future, no hope for relationships to be restored, no hope for communities to be healed—our strength is gone. Hope is essential for the move from exhausted to energized.

As much as my frustration has grown in the past years because of the seeming ineffectiveness of what I call the “Program Church” model in America, I am filled with more hope for our future than I have ever been before.

I believe God is going to use what was intended for evil and redeem it for good. In the past 20 years, almost every pastor I know has become increasingly aware of the core problem we face: the church in North America has been dramatically over-programmed and under-discipled.

In order for us to overcome the program pandemic in our churches, we must rethink our model from the ground up. But most pastors, board members, staff members, and key leaders would never be willing to embrace the kind of fundamental shift we need without significant pressure.

God is working all these things together for our good—for the good of us as leaders, for the good of the people we serve, and for the good of those who desperately need to be invited into the new life that is only found in Jesus.

The future of the church depends on a paradigm shift—away from Program Church and toward a new model of disciple-making that is personal, contextual, and reproducible. I’m not suggesting we should abandon our programs completely or never return to weekend worship services.

What I am suggesting is that we have a profound opportunity to reshape the future of the church, moving toward a more effective and more complete model that is built on disciple-making and defined by unity.

What would it look like for you to cultivate a new sense of hope in your heart? What could you do on a regular basis to get a glimpse of the potential future God is calling us to co-create with Him?

My prayer is that this underlying drumbeat of hope will grow inside your heart because you were called to lead God’s people with clarity and boldness in your specific context at this specific moment in history.

And that will refresh and replenish your heart.