Pain, Peace, and Thriving in Ministry : Jason Young

Full-Text Transcript

Ministry can be exhausting. So how do our past hurts and our present peace relate to thriving in ministry for the long haul?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Jason Young, keynote speaker, coach, and consultant who works with churches and businesses. Jason is the co-author of several ministry leadership books, including his latest, Don’t Burn Out, Burn Bright. Together, Jason and I uncover some of the often-overlooked realities of exhaustion in ministry, you’re definitely going to want to listen up to what Jason says about how better understanding our past hurts can lead to flourishing in both life and ministry. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host Jason Daye. And every single week, I have the honor, the privilege really, to sit down with a trusted ministry leader and dive into a topic all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you embrace a healthy, sustainable rhythm in both life and ministry. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. And each week along with these episodes, our team creates an entire toolkit for you and your team at your local church to dig more deeply into the topic at hand. You can find that at PastorServe.org/network. There you’ll find additional resources, including a Ministry Leader’s Growth Guide, and I encourage you to avail yourself of that resource that we have for you. And then, at Pastor Serve, we love to walk alongside pastors and ministry leaders. And we have a team of trusted, experienced coaches across the country and we are offering a complimentary coaching session to pastors. And if you’d like to learn more about that you can go to PastorServe.org/freesession. Now, if you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better and we’ll be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re following us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. I am excited to welcome Jason Young to the show. Jason Young, welcome to FrontStage BackStage!

Jason Young
Jason, good to see you, buddy.

Jason Daye
Good to see you, man. Good to have you. Thank you for making time to hang out with us. Now, as we all know, and all those watching along, and all those listening in, we know that ministry leadership is exhausting, right? That’s just the reality. That’s the world in which we live as pastors and ministry leaders. We know this, we feel this, and we experienced this. But, Jason, we do not always take time to really investigate that exhaustion or dig into it, right? Jason, why do you think we often just accept exhaustion as kind of part of the assignment or part of what it means to be in ministry?

Jason Young
Wow, such a huge question. To start off, probably for a few reasons. One is related to the particular leader. So they’ve built a system and that’s how they operate. Could be because the system of the church demands and it expects it. It could be something deep inside, could be an insecurity and so the pastor or staff member shows up in a certain way to offset that. I mean, there are a lot of different reasons. Some show up because they want to prove themselves versus adding value. And you show up differently depending on how you look at things. Maybe it goes back to a statistic that Barna came out with and it says that 57% of pastors, 57%, so we’re over half, say they’re not adequately prepared for the demands of the job. Naturally, we might think demands being maybe sermon prep, maybe, if you’re in a pastoral role in different areas, or maybe the way the budget works. It could be all these different things. But, I think there’s one aspect of it as part of being in the demand of the job. And it’s how you take care of yourself. I will be honest with you, Jason, going through undergrad, going through seminary, and going through a doctoral program. Nobody ever spoke about this. And that’s what they were helping me do. Prepare for the demands. They prepared a sermon, administration, discipleship, and all of these things. But if I’m not in a good spot, then all of those other things they have taught me are not going to be in a good spot. And so I think there’s a little bit of preparation in that our teaching systems are responsible for that, church systems are responsible for that, but leadership systems, individually, are responsible for that. And so it can potentially look like a hot mess. And one could say, gosh, that sounds very depressing, Jason. But you know what? It doesn’t actually have to be that way. There is a better way.

Jason Daye
Yeah. Jason, do you think there’s something with us as pastors, as ministry leaders, that kind of almost holds us back from digging into the exhaustion that we’re experiencing? You know, almost like this is just what it means to be in ministry. Is that something unique for us in ministry?

Jason Young
Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely an element to that, that it’s just part of the territory. Honestly, Jason, some wear it as a badge of honor. In fact, I was in a conversation a couple of weeks ago, in a Ph. D seminar, and a young pastor said something to this effect that when you get to the point of exhaustion it is a sign that you’ve been all in. And I thought to myself, I don’t want that. So it begs the question, can I be all in and not be exhausted or not be burned out? And maybe the terminology, defining the terminology, would help us to understand is one okay, is one not okay? Are there seasons of one and seasons of another? So it may help us to kind of explore that just a little bit to see, is this normal? And if it is normal, should I accept it? Or is there a better way?

Jason Daye
Yeah, let’s do that, Jason. Let’s dive into the terminology. How are we defining exhaustion? How are we defining burning out? And what does that look like in the lives of a pastor?

Jason Young
Yeah, so many of you listening or watching, you’re literally feeling right now that you are tired. And tired can go to exhaustion and exhaustion, Think about it this way, if you were to change your calendar, if you were to get somebody to help you with emails, if you were to get some more sleep, if you were to turn the dials of a few things like what are these controlling levers? You could bounce back, right? And that exhaustion could begin to subside. So it’s a little bit more controllable if you can just adjust the levers that would be and again, I’m simplifying it, but that would be kind of in that exhaustion space, it’s easier to bounce back. Burnout is more of a psychological state. It is a heavy stress for an extremely long period of time. And you, in essence, feel like you cannot get out and you are overwhelmed. And then you begin to show up like that, you begin to see others negatively, you see yourself negatively, and no matter what you do, it’s never good enough. So it is literally a psychological state. It’s not, if anybody listening if you’ve gone to counseling, a counselor is going to diagnose you off a DSM, right? This diagnostic manual. Burnout is not a disorder or in that manual. However, even the World Health Organization, and the National Institute of Health, realize that this is a problem. It’s like a syndrome if you will. So even though it’s not a diagnosis, it’s a real problem because we see the effects of it and what it does to organizations, churches, teams, families, and individuals. So where did this book come from? The idea for the book is for you the pastor, the leader, thinking Could I spend effort and energy not even getting to the place of burnout? And the answer is yes. In fact, here’s a little fun fact, Jason, you didn’t ask for. When we submitted this book, the publisher rejected it. And their reason was, there are too many books on burnout already. Because we had written it about how do you recover from it? Hmm, true, the market is saturated. But here’s also an interesting fact. We’re also seeing the highest levels of burnout than we’ve ever seen. So if the market is saturated, and we’re seeing the highest levels of burnout, evidently, the market saturation isn’t answering the problem or meeting the needs. So what could we do? So we kind of backed up when they said, Oh, it’s cute and all but no thanks. And we literally flipped this whole thing and said, Wait a minute. What if you didn’t have to burn out? Because there was this idea that it’s just kind of what happens, right? Comes with the territory. You got to love people and you’re doing this for Jesus. Which is a whole other thing that kind of gets so misconstrued, that taking care of yourself is selfish. That’s what I was told. And when you think about you, you’re not thinking about people, you’re not thinking about Jesus, and we could touch on that. So we flipped the book, we invert it. And we said, You know what, there is a better way and the better way is if you’re going to spend energy and effort on the front end of burnout or on the back end. Why not choose to spend on the front end? To build healthy systems, healthy relationships, mechanisms, etc. that can actually prevent it so that you can burn bright at your church, in your family, and with your friends. That’s the better way.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. It’s saying burnout is not inevitable. That burnout is not the life of the pastor or the ministry leader that it’s not that you’re going to go non-stop until you finally breathe your last and you’ve spent it all, left it on the field. Yeah, that’s your mentality. Which we often hear about, we think about, and we kind of create things around this, and people sit back almost in awe of the sacrifice, right? And there are sacrifices involved, without a doubt. But that does not need to lead to burnout. And I love that approach. Jason. One of the things that you touch on, among many things throughout the book, a fantastic resource. But one of the things that really stuck out to me was you spent some time, you spent a chapter, on the idea of past hurts in ministry. Which I thought was incredibly powerful because all of us have experienced pain in ministry. I mean, if you’re a ministry, if you’re working with people, if you’re serving people, if you’re living and serving in community, guess what? You’re gonna be hurt at some point. And so all of us watching, all of us listening in right now, we all can think of those moments, or those times where people have hurt us. And oftentimes hurt is unintentional. But there are times, and we’ve probably all experienced this at some point in ministry when someone is intentional in what they’re doing and the hurts they’re causing. So, as pastors and ministry leaders, we experience a lot of pain. Because not only are we living in community with others, but we are often making a lot of the decisions that impact the community, right? We’re involved in that, we’re really engaged with a variety of people throughout the community, and we’re in the thick of these relationships. And so that makes us a little more susceptible maybe to some of those hurts and some of that pain. You share, Jason, this pain, these hurts, they can build up over time or add up over time, which can lead us to develop, and I love this conversation that you have in the book about these sensitivities. So it gets talked about. I think this is something, I mean, I’m a pastor and ministry leader myself, working with and talking to pastors and ministry leaders all over the country for years. I think the sensitivities, there’s something to this, right? Like, I’m so glad that you included this chapter. I would love for you to talk to us a little bit about the pain that pastors experience. And then this idea of sensitivities and how we can recognize these sensitivities and, like you said, not allow it to take us down the road toward burnout. Recognize them and thrive and flourish. So talk to us a bit about this pain and these sensitivities.

Jason Young
Yeah, if you’re human, somebody’s hurt you before. If you’re human, you’ve hurt somebody before. The reality is, we’re human, and we’re broken people. You know that. You preach these messages all the time. What happens in the relationship between pain and your past and exhaustion and burnout, the relationship is this. If you have pain, if you have wounds, if you have maybe things people have said to you, or maybe things, you know, the joke in therapy is, oh, we’re going to talk about my childhood. And the reality is, here’s a question that I often ask leaders when we’re in the room. In fact, I just did it this past week with a group of leaders. What is something from your childhood that shows up in your work? What’s something from your childhood that shows up in your work? And when you kind of pause to think about it, there are a lot of things that we do as adults in our work, that somehow somewhere in our childhood come up. But it’s not only that, it could have been in your teen years, it could have been in your young adult 20 years, maybe in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or whatever it might be. And what happens is we allow past hurts to pollute today. And it doesn’t have to. And some people sweep these things under the rug, or they downplay, right? They minimize them. They kind of have this tough mentality where you just get over it, it is what it is. But unfortunately, the mind and the body don’t work like that. In fact, many of you listening and watching right now have on some level, you’ve experienced a trauma. Now not everything is a trauma. And I think sometimes we self-diagnose that it’s a trauma. But then we take away, we kind of steal, the value of traumas, right? So you’ve got these big T traumas and, and small T traumas, usually the big T’s kind of get all the attention, PTSD, things of that nature versus smaller T traumas that happen in our churches all the time. I’ve had this numerous times, my greatest woundings have not come from non-Christians. They’ve come from Christians, and worse, church staff, period. And when I think about people who are watching and listening, that could be you. And so what happens is that past hurt can pollute today. When it pollutes today, it could look like higher irritability, I’m more demanding, or I’m shorter with you. I tend not to like you, I don’t like people as much as I used to, and I don’t care about my work like I used to. I’m collecting a paycheck. You’ve got all of these things. And it increases your sensitivity. So as soon as somebody says something that is remotely related, or maybe not even related, but you’re already on edge as it is. And again, you may not know this, that’s why it’s a really powerful question, ask people What’s it like to be on the other side of you, right? And allow people to chime in. Hey, well, let me tell you what it’s like to be on the other side of you, I walk on eggshells every day. Or I never know when you’re going to blow up, or you’re going to speak down, or you’re going to avoid confrontation and conflict when we really need to talk through it. So a long answer to say is when past hurts are never dealt with, and this happens, Jason, all the time. This is actually more normal than not. Here’s what happens when you have relationships, every relationship has a rupture, and every relationship loves to have a repair, it needs it. But when you have a rupture, rupture, rupture, rupture, and you have 10 ruptures, and you have two repairs, you’re way off kilter. And so you’re carrying around way more ruptures that were never repaired or resolved and the hurts are deep. And the idea when you get hurt is well, you just move on. You don’t. I don’t care how tough you are, the body keeps the score and you don’t just move on. You can move forward. But how you choose to move forward will determine how healthy you are as you move forward. So it’s realizing, do I have hurts? Well, if you’re breathing, yes. How are the hurts showing up, right? And for some, they’re more apparent than others. They’re deeper than others. But as we begin to think about these, you know, the best illustration, and I’ll say this briefly. When I think about the life of Joseph in the Old Testament, here’s a guy who has every right to be angry and to be retaliatory. But yet, when you look at the life of Joseph over 13 chapters, 13 years of his life, that’s not what he does, right? And so he didn’t allow past hurts to pollute his living in the moment. That is hard. I’m not saying it’s easy. But what I am saying is that it is possible and that’s the better way.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I like, Jason. So let’s dig in a little bit more. It’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. So then how do we begin to do that work in our lives when it comes to those sensitivities and when it comes to those past hurts? That will help us to flourish and thrive as opposed to leading us down through the painful road that could lead to burnout.

Jason Young
Yeah, you know, some people listening right now, you’re suffering in silence. Some of you think about your past hurts all the time, but you feel inadequate to deal with them. For some of you, your past hurts are so overwhelming, because they’re related to your family, that if you say anything, you know that the family is gonna get fractured even more. And so what do you do? And all of a sudden, you feel stuck, and then it impacts you. And it kind of has got this tentacle of reach that, whether you like it or not, does find its’ way in and through your ministry. So what do you do? Well, massive question. We could spend the whole time on this one. I would say this, it’s kind of like going to a theme park. And if I’m trying to get to a particular location, I need to figure out where am I right now. So maybe the best place to start is to kind of do a little check of where are you. What is a past hurt? Do you still think about it? How does it still show up? And maybe you cannot do this by yourself. Because here’s what the enemy would love for you to do. The enemy would love for you to try to suffer alone, think you’re the only person in the world who has this problem, and not talk to anybody because if you say something, it may expose that you’re weak. So just keep it to yourself. And what I would invite you to do, challenge you to do, is to invite a trusted voice into your life. Could be a spouse, a best friend, maybe a therapist, and just to begin to kind of get the lay of the land of where are you? What is a past hurt or hurts? How is it showing up and impacting you? What does a strategy look like for you not to get stuck or to get unstuck, so that you can begin not to move on, but to move forward, while you’re in the process of healing? So that is an extremely high level, but it’s a little bit of kind of a roadmap. And here’s the thing about it, give yourself some permission, some grace, it takes time. You’re not going to have this figured out in three days. And if you do, you probably didn’t do it the right way. It’s just going to take time. And here’s the other thing. A lot of times the power is in the process, and the power is in the time. So allow the process to work, allow the time to work, and just begin to see what happens. But you’re going to have to be intentional about that. And intentionality is rarely convenient.

Jason Daye
Yeah, no, that’s good. That’s really helpful. And that’s one of those areas, I think in ministry, that against kind of like exhaustion, we just accept it as part and parcel of ministry, right? Hurt, yep, we’re going to be hurt. It’s kind of part of what we have going here. And we don’t take the time to dig in a little bit and be a little more intentional. What are some other areas, you touch on several, but what are some other areas in our time that we have left together that you think are our particularly pointed right now, for pastors, where we may want to investigate a little more deeply before we veer off the path too far.

Jason Young
You were saying something earlier that reminded me, I think that we are so good at talking about God’s compassion, and the kindness of the Lord. We preach it, we do it, and guess what? We are terrible at receiving it. And so here’s the reality. You can’t give truly, deeply, long term, what you don’t receive. And so in ministry, we’re so good at talking about giving compassion, love, and all of this stuff. I think one of the reasons that we find ourselves exhausted, is we spend so much effort distributing it. And we spent so little time sitting in and receiving it. And to accompany that, I think some church leaders struggle to believe it. So it’s part of their job to help other people believe it. But I think that they struggle with believing it for themselves. And this is a deep part, this is where you have to do the inner work of Do I actually believe that his kindness is for me? And if I do, how does it show up? How do I demonstrate that belief? So that’s one thing you were talking about. If I were to pick something else, the temptation is to talk about spiritual depth. Let me just say this to you, church leader. I’m not going to say anything about spiritual depth, we already know what to do, we just need to do it. In fact, in this book, there was a joke, I said to the publisher, hey, there’s a chapter on spiritual depth. I want to write a couple of words and that’s it. And they said, A couple of words? I said, Yeah, the content of the chapter is going to say this, You know what to do. And they’re like, well, we might need to add a little bit. So we stretched out the chapter. It’s not very long, but we stretched out to the chapter. But I’m going to sum it up for you. We know what to do spiritually. So I’m not even going to navigate down that. What I will say is this, I wonder, and this is just one of the options. I wonder if it’s about peace. I find a lot of leaders are not peaceful leaders, and I don’t mean peace like they’re instigating craziness. But I’m saying that they don’t feel at peace. That shalom, that wholeness, that completeness. Part of the reason is that I don’t know that they know what it looks like. Two, I think we’re addicted to motion. Three, I could be fired from all church-world conversations by saying this. I think sometimes we read too many books and we listen to too many podcasts. We’re on a podcast. We watch too many videos in an effort to deepen our knowledge. And I think sometimes that makes us feel good like we are learning and knowing more. But actually, what it could possibly do to you is create unrest because you get paralyzed, and you don’t know a decision to make. Let me give you a very brief story. And church leaders listen to this. You may resonate with this. I was at a conference recently, I was speaking, and I was in the room just kind of going over the stuff in my head. And I noticed there was a person walking outside the door, kind of popping their head in and I’m like, Hey, what’s up? They’re like, Um, can I talk to you? I’m like, yeah, come on. So we got to talking and they were trying to make a decision. And they said something to the effect of, you know, I’m reading this, and I’m planning on reading this, and I’m listening. And I don’t normally say stuff like this, but I said, stop, stop. They’re like what I said, stop. I said, I suspect that you keep reading the next book, the next article, the next podcast or video, the next sermon by somebody you admire, in hopes that you can make a better decision. And sometimes that is helpful. But what I think is that potentially, we are so over-saturated with information, and it makes us feel good. I think sometimes that can actually disrupt the peace in our lives. Also, I think sometimes we let too much of the news in our world, or politics in our world, or whatever it might be. It’s not just books and podcasts. One way to get some peace back in your life is to figure out what you don’t need in your life. And I think we make so much room for information. And we make less room for the presence of Christ. And I wonder if we could reshape that just a little bit. Because there are a lot of pieces that are around you. And I suspect those of you listening and watching right now, there are fractured pieces all around you. And maybe even some of those fractured pieces are inside of you. And the temptation is to read, listen, watch whatever it may be, and maybe it’s helpful. But sometimes I wonder what if I need less, in order that the presence of God could be made more. And by making that decision, that’s where the peace, that shalom, that complete wholeness actually begins to show up and it brings calm in my life. It doesn’t mean things are calm, but because there’s peace in my life, it brings calm in the midst of all of the pieces that might be fractured or broken around me.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. Jason, that’s awesome, brother. Love that. This has been a phenomenal conversation. I love your heart in the midst of all of this and just your heart, obviously, for pastors and ministry leaders. If those watching along or listening would like to connect with you or learn more about Don’t Burn Out, Burn Bright, your book, your ministry, or different things that you’re engaged in, how can they connect with you?

Jason Young
Yeah, let’s keep it simple. So to connect with me personally and everything comes straight to me, I love the relationship piece, drjasonyoung.com. It’s got a lot of stuff on there. But you can get in touch with me there. If you’re interested, you’re like, Man, I’d love to know kind of like what things might I be susceptible to on the burnout side of things. If you go to dontburnoutburnbright.com, there’s a free leadership assessment. It will take you through I think it’s 35 questions, it will literally spit out one result. And it will say this is the likely thing that is going to lead you to a place of burnout or this is the likely thing that got you to your place of burnout. And then it connects it back to the book as to like, Alright, what do I do about it?

Jason Daye
That’s awesome. That’s very, very cool. For those of you watching or listening along, we’ll have the links to Jason’s website, to the book, and to that assessment, that free assessment, which we love that tool. And you can find that in the toolkit for this episode, which you can find at PastorServe.org/network. So awesome, brother. Again, thank you for making time. Before we leave, though, Jason, I want to give you an opportunity. You have the eyes and ears of brothers and sisters serving on the front lines of ministry. What final words of encouragement would you like to share with them?

Jason Young
You don’t have to buy into the fact that burnout is inevitable. You said that earlier, Jason. And there is a better way. It’s going to take work. But there is a better way. And so if you’re a pastor of a team, do this for you, and do this for your team. If you attend a church, help build an environment that supports the staff so that they can stay and thrive in ministry for the long haul. You were designed to thrive. We just have to get you some tools. And you have to put in the hard work in order to make that happen. But thriving is absolutely possible and that’s what you were designed to do.

Jason Daye
Love it, brother. Great word. It’s been so good to have you with us, Jason, on FrontStage BackStage. Thank you for making the time to hang out with us.

Jason Young
Thank you, Jason.

Jason Daye
All right. God bless you.

Jason Young
You too, my friend.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.