The Pastoral Busyness Syndrome: Doing Things for Christ, or With Him?
This Viewpoint blog is a companion to Season 3, Episode 8 of BJU Seminary’s Theologically Speaking podcast featuring the authors.
Takeaways:
- An ongoing challenge for pastors is to overcome the busyness syndrome. Those close to you will tell you to “stop doing so much.” But how do you know which things to stop doing?
- The issue is often not too many activities, but rather one of priorities, and one in particular: : all Christians but especially pastors need to prioritize our relationship with Christ and keep Him at the center of everything we do. The question: are we busy doing things for Christ, or with Him?
- Two Biblical passages offer insight:
- Luke 10: Martha was busy with hospitality while Mary was busy spending time with Christ, absorbing His teaching.
- Revelation 2:1-7, where the church at Ephesus was saying and doing all the right things but had lost their “first love” for Christ.
- As well as remedies:
- Three “Rs:” Remember, Repent and Return.
- And specifically, care as much about our sanctification as God does, and pursue it through diligent commitment to the common means of grace.
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“That’s Helpful”
Pastors – like so many in these busy days – often hear from those close to them, especially from spouses, “You’re way too busy. You’ve gotta stop!”
The natural response to which is: “That’s very helpful. What specifically should I stop doing?”
It’s a great question. After all, as pastors, you’re living out the ministries, faithfully, responsibly and with integrity, that God is entrusted to you. You’re staying up as late as it takes to ensure you don’t come into the pulpit unprepared. You’re teaching, counseling and discipling. You’re not only showing up at the elders’ and deacons’ meetings, you’re also pouring yourselves into their lives. You’re working with the worship teams. You’re overseeing the office and administration teams. In short, you’re pastoring, and doing so faithfully and with integrity.
But you’re doing more than that. You’re trying to be a good husband, a good dad and maybe even a good grandfather. Yet in the midst of all that busyness sometimes comes an emptiness, a sense that something is missing.
Two Instructive Passages: Martha versus Mary and the Church at Ephesus
And the truth is that all too often, something is missing. The issue is often not one of too many activities, but rather one of priorities, and one in particular: all Christians but especially pastors need to prioritize our relationship with Christ and keep Him at the center of everything we do.
The question: are we busy doing things for Christ, or with Him?
Two Scripture passages are especially instructive on this score. In Luke chapter 10, we often think of Martha being busy serving doing the work of hospitality with no help from Mary. But in fact, Mary was busy as well: she was busy absorbing the teaching and very presence of Jesus. If the King of Creation is in your living room imparting the wisdom of the ages, it may not be time to be in the kitchen. Martha’s busyness per se was not the problem. It was her priorities.
In Revelation 2, Jesus speaks lovingly but sternly through John to the church at Ephesus. They too were busy, and like many pastors, toiling tirelessly, patiently and with great discernment at seemingly all the right things. But they too had lost sight of the most important priority: they had left behind their first love for Jesus. They were so busy doing things, and zealously guarding doctrinal purity, for the Lord that they had forgotten to include Him.
Two Remedies: The Three “Rs” and the Pursuit of Sanctification
The Revelation 2 passage, specifically verse 5, presents straight from the Savior the first of two remedies for the emptiness of busyness. They are Three “Rs” (and here we are indebted to commentators including the classic Pulpit Commentary): “remember” that first love, “repent” – turn back to it – and “return:” “do the works you did at first,” i.e., that burning love for Christ that came when you first believed.
And those “works,” and returning to the central presence of Christ in your life and ministry, is about our sanctification. On that score, Sam recalls a comment by one of his professors years ago: God is far more interested in our sanctification than we are, and we should be very interested and pursue it diligently with Him.
Dr. Michael Riccardi, author of a book on the subject, points out that sanctification is in fact a work of the Spirit: Philippians 2:13 states that “it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” But Paul also encourages us in the previous verse to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, because God is at work within you.”
Peter tells us that God “hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3) but in the next breath urges “giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” So we too have a role.
So how do we as pastors and leaders continue to work out our own salvation, even as we serve the flock, and thereby keep Christ as our priority, working not just for Him but with Him? Per Dr. Riccardi, by taking advantage of another gift from God: the ordinary or common means of grace.
Those means of grace, those spiritual disciplines, are designed to help us know Christ more and to be conformed into His image. When we are reading the written word, it’s meant to help us know the Living Word. When we’re praying, we’re going through our sympathetic High Priest. Dr. Riccardi also points to fellowship, both in sharpening one another and in corporate worship, God’s providence, including trials, and obedience, keeping the commandments, as means the Spirit uses to help us grow. We would add the ordinances – baptism and communion: Sam’s church recently celebrated both on the same Sunday, and he will testify to the sanctifying effect on the Body, and on Him.
Keeping Christ first by pursuing our own sanctification as diligently as we hope our flocks will implies that our works will be sanctified as well. Which should be a giant leap toward sanctification.
Additional Resources:
- Works by Michael Riccardi on Pursuing Sanctification:
- Sanctification: The Christian’s Pursuit of God-Given Holiness (Book)
- Sanctification: The Christian’s Pursuit of God-Given Holiness (Article, Part I)
- The Means of Sanctification (Article, Part II)
- Gospel-Driven Sanctification (Sermon)
- Joanna Weaver, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy With God in the Busyness of Life (book plus workbook)
