Soul Care Practices for Ministry Leaders : Dan Reiland

Jason Daye | , , , , , , , , ,

Soul Care Practices for Ministry Leaders - Dan Reiland - 50 - FrontStage BackStage with Jason Daye

How can we take action to care for our own souls as we are serving others? In this episode, I’m joined by Dan Reiland. Dan serves as the executive director for leadership expansion at 12 Stones Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia, where he also has served for 20 years as the executive pastor. Previously, Dan spent two decades serving with John Maxwell. First as the executive pastor at Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, and then as vice president for leadership and church development at Maxwell Leadership. Together, Dan and I explore four prominent areas of soul care for pastors and ministry leaders. And then Dan shares experiences from his own life that helped illustrate how we can incorporate soul care into our lives as well.

Looking to dig more deeply into this topic and conversation? Every week we go the extra mile and create a free toolkit so you and your ministry team can dive deeper into the topic that is discussed. Find your Weekly Toolkit below… Love well, Live well, Lead well!

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Audio Links

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Additional Resource Links

www.DanReiland.com – Dan’s website where you can find resources to equip and encourage pastors and ministry leaders, including Dan’s blog, where he publishes insightful and practical articles every week

Books by Dan Reiland – Here you will find Dan’s books, including Amplified Leadership: 5 Practices to Establish Influence, Build People, and Impact Others for a Lifetime, Shoulder to Shoulder: Strengthening Your Church by Supporting Your Pastor, and others

Connect with Dan Reiland – Instagram | Twitter

Connect with PastorServe – LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook 

Feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or just want to talk?  Complimentary Coaching Session for Pastors http://PastorServe.org/freesession

Ministry Leaders Growth Guide

Key Insights and Concepts

  • It’s important to create margin in our lives every day, making time to take a deep breath, do something different, go on a walk, or simply enjoy a quiet moment… a time to refresh our mind and soul before going back to deep work.
  • As ministry leaders, we must be intentional in creating margin, otherwise the margin will never exist
  • We need to save not only time, but also some energy, for the people we love the most.
  • It’s so important to be present in the moment we are living
  • We can’t expect to suddenly solve on a vacation what we are not living out normally in our lives. This is why consistent healthy rhythms are important for the care of our souls.
  • When we are exhausted it is challenging to solve problems or discern next steps in a situation
  • One of the best ways to care for our soul is by doing the things that we know we should do.
  • When we know we’re doing exactly what Jesus wants us to do, that low-grade angst dissipates, and peace fills us.
  • Our responsibility is to lead our emotions rather than letting our emotions lead us.
  • Prolonged disappointment leads to discouragement, prolonged discouragement leads to frustration, and prolonged frustration leads to anger. If we can learn to get on the front side of disappointment, rather than letting it go all the way to frustration or even anger, we are able to lead our emotions rather than being led by them.
  • As pastors and ministry leaders, we all need a safe space with at least one person in our lives that we trust, so we can talk honestly and openly about the way we feel and what we are experiencing
  • Setting aside space and time to just think is an important part of soul care

Questions for Reflection

  • Do I understand the difference between being an insecure person and having an insecure moment? How is this difference helpful to me?
  • How do the pace and pressures of ministry and life affect me? Do I feel a constant pressure to do more? What could help alleviate those pressures?
  • Am I more apt to chase “balance” or develop rhythms in my life? 
  • Do I have any regular rhythms or other ways that I care for my own soul? If so, what are they?
  • How do I act and feel when things don’t go the way I expected? What might this say about me?
  • Would those around me say that I carry my work with me everywhere I go? If so, what changes do I need to make?
  • How would I set aside separate time to just think? How might this be beneficial?
  • Are there times when I feel called to another task, but instead focus completely on something that is currently causing me angst or stress? If so, why do I think I do this?
  • What do I think is the number one emotion that I struggle with the most in ministry? Why might I struggle with this emotion?  How can I address this?
  • Do I have close relationships in my life where I can find a safe space to talk honestly about the way I feel? If not, am I willing to find someone with whom I can talk openly? (Pastors and ministry leaders can receive a complimentary session with a trusted ministry coach at http://PastorServe.org/freesession)
  • If I can find more margin in my life, what would I do with that time?

Full-Text Transcript

How can we take action to care for our own souls as we are serving others?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Dan Reiland. Dan serves as the executive director for leadership expansion at 12 Stones Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia, where he also has served for 20 years as the executive pastor. Previously, Dan spent two decades serving with John Maxwell. First as the executive pastor at Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, and then as vice president for leadership and church development at Maxwell Leadership. Together, Dan and I explore four prominent areas of soul care for pastors and ministry leaders. And then Dan shares experiences from his own life that helped illustrate how we can incorporate soul care into our lives as well. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage. I am your host Jason Daye. And every single week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a conversation. And our hope is that this conversation will help you and pastors and ministry leaders like you embrace really a healthy, sustainable rhythm in both your life and ministry. We are proud to be a part of the PastorServe Network. And in addition to this show, we also create a toolkit for every single episode that allows you and the ministry leaders in your local church, to dig more deeply into the topic that we discuss. That toolkit can be found at PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find a lot of resources including a ministry leaders growth guide with questions for reflection, again, that you can work through, maybe in your weekly staff meetings or when you’re working with your ministry volunteers, your ministry leaders, and so we encourage you to take advantage of that resource. Now our team at PastorServe loves blessing pastors, and we would love to offer a complimentary coaching session 20 pastors or ministry leaders, you can get more details on that at PastorServe.org/freesession, give you an opportunity to have a conversation with one of our trusted coaches. So be sure to check that out as well. Now, if you are joining us on YouTube, take time to give us a thumbs up and in the comments below. Just take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church. We’d love to get to know you better. And our team will be praying for you and for your ministry. And whether you are joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe to follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. And today, we do have an excellent conversation. At this time. I’d like to welcome Dan Reiland to FrontStage BackStage Dan, welcome.

Dan Reiland
Hey, welcome. Thank you, Jason. Good to be with you.

Jason Daye
Yeah, such a joy to have you with us today. Dan, thank you for making time to hang out with us. Now, Dan, we both know and all those watching along and listening along, probably know this as well, that serving in ministry it’s not an easy vocation, right? We face many challenges, because the enemy does not want us to be effective in service to Christ, does not want us to be effective with the mission of God. So that is kind of a constant adversary, a constant challenge. But in our lives, in our ministries, there are other pockets of challenges, right? We have our congregation, those people that God has entrusted to us and entrusted into our care. And there can be relational challenges there. Our ministry leaders, whether we have paid staff, whether we have volunteers, there are challenges there, with our teams. We live in a rapidly shifting culture, right? And that brings all sorts of challenges as well. Now we can look out and identify a lot of these challenges. But we also need to look within to identify our personal challenges. And so Dan, as we enter into today’s conversation, I’d love for you to help us kind of process through what does it take for us to not only acknowledge all the stuff out there, but then to really turn inward and begin looking at ourselves?

Dan Reiland
That’s a huge question. You have set us up well, we could we could talk for hours. You know, think about all that you just said is a wonderful introduction. The thing that comes to mind that I think we all face is pace and pressure – and as I think – or sometimes I’ll call it speed and pressure. You know, as the church grows, as any organization grows, but particularly as the church grows, the pace increases and the pressure increases. And if we don’t – and that’s where leaders sometimes tap out, that’s where sometimes leaders can get unhealthy. Sometimes it – the pace and pressure, that sounds fast but sometimes it takes a while to happen. And all of a sudden, we find ourselves in an increased pace, you know, running, moving, going, going, and the pressure rises and rises and rises. And we really haven’t figured out soul care. We haven’t figured out margins, we haven’t figured out rhythms. We haven’t figured out relationships, we haven’t figured out all the components that really ask us to slow down so we actually can go faster and more effective. So I don’t know where you want to start and all that. But I would toss my thoughts into the wringer saying pace and pressure is something that we really have to pay attention to. And how do we counteract that in healthy ways?

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that pace and pressure. That’s really well said, Dan. And it’s interesting, because we know we can get caught up in the, you know, work of the ministry. Right?

Dan Reiland
Right.

Jason Daye
And, In good ways, and that, we’re called to this, right? And so we have a heart for this. And so we’re seeking to honor God in this. But sometimes we can get so caught up in the work of the ministry, that we don’t acknowledge, in some ways, how the way we’re going about it might actually be damaging our own souls. So Dan, can you help us think through what are some ways that we might be able to identify some of those soul stresses in our own lives? In other words, when we’re running, running, running, going, going, going, we may not see it, but then it catches up with us. So how can we begin to recognize, wait a second, I need to slow down here. I need to spend some time on my own soul.

Dan Reiland
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of things, from things as practical as we sleep for the night, but we wake up tired, or we do things with people we love, but the joy is diminished, we lack energy and vitality by the afternoon. There’s a lot of warning signs, I think. When we lose, sometimes, the ability to manage our own emotions. There’s just a lot of things like that, and kind of what’s behind some of those things, not the physical thing necessarily, but another whole factor that’s pretty huge to dig into is our fears and insecurities. Because that’s what’s underneath all of it – our fears and insecurities. We all have them. The thing that – but the good news is, you know in Christ, some of us have a lot of insecurities, some of us have a few insecurities. So we’re all working on lowering them in Christ. But the really good thing to know about insecu… – let’s just start with insecurities, is there’s a huge difference, big, big difference between being an insecure person, an insecure leader, an insecure person, and having an insecure moment. I think we all have insecure moments, because we’re leading people where we’ve never been before. We’re leading them where we have never been together before. So of course, we’re going to have insecurities, of course we’re going to have – it’s a new territory, we’ve not done that before, we’ve not been there before because we’re leading, we’re out front leading. But again, that’s such a huge difference between that insecure moment. We’ll figure it out. We’ll get there. We don’t know what to do in the moment. But we’ll figure it out. And just being an insecure person, because of maybe the lack of margin or all kinds of other things that are underlying. Another thing that’s encouraging to know is that, you know, just because you don’t know what to do in that moment, doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing.

Dan Reiland
And that’s another thing we can absorb that helps us rise above insecurities helps us to rise above the fears, and then move into it sometimes get – I’m trying to connect all these thoughts, because you’ve got my mind racing with thoughts here. You know, when we talked about pace and pressure, and the going and the going and all that stuff, that actually increases our insecurities. That increases our fears, because it pulls us away from what I mentioned earlier, like rhythms and margins and different things, where that produces health, where the going, and the going nonstop actually reduces our health.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s helpful, Dan. So let’s talk a little bit about some of those rhythms in creating that margin. How do we begin to set those healthy rhythms in our lives and what might those look like practically?

Dan Reiland
Well, if we looked at a kind of a bigger picture, I think rhythms are based off of a soul centering. For me my centering for decades, I know, I’m the Ancient One. My rhythms have always been based on prayer and exercise. That may not be yours Jason, it can be something, everybody may be different. But for me there’s a daily rhythm. And I think every one of us has to find that sort of soul deep, quiet walk with God, space that gets us, that brings us back to center on a daily basis. But then there’s weekly rhythms, annual rhythms, and – but what brings us back to center. My favorite analogy or metaphor, whatever is the metronome, I don’t know if you’re into music at all, but you know, the metronome.

Dan Reiland
And so there’s a rhythm to it, there’s a balance. And it’s all about, how do we come back to center. For example, you know, if you think about vacation, right? It’s rhythm, not balance. If you think about vacation, what’s balanced about a vacation? I mean, you swing way out here, you lay on the beach for two weeks and eat whatever you want and do nothing.

Jason Daye
Right.

Dan Reiland
So how is that balance? Well, it’s actually part of a rhythm, where you swung way out for extra rest, long rest, time with family, but you keep coming back. Sometimes maybe over here, you’re writing a book, or you’re doing a capital campaign with the church. But where men and women and ministry get in trouble is when they swing out, and they don’t come back. When they swing out and they don’t know what the center is, they don’t know what that balance is, whether it’s the daily rhythm or the healthy pressure relief valves, versus the unhealthy pressure relief valves. And so when we know what that is, we know how to check ourselves and evaluate ourselves.

Dan Reiland
You know, for me, as I mentioned, daily prayer and exercise. I’m an old jogger, kind of, you know, for decades and decades, every day. And if I miss a day, because I’m traveling, or if I miss a day, because I’m sick, I feel it. Or if I miss a day from prayer, I feel it again. Am I mentally? No, it’s not a mystery. It’s not magic. I know. Ah, that’s, I gotta get back to my rhythm. Does that make sense?

Jason Daye
Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I love that. And I love the distinction there, Dan, between balance and rhythm, because oftentimes, we hear this idea of balance and and when you’re in the, in the throes of ministry, you’re in a challenging time, you’re like, there’s how the world can I ever get balance, you know, it feels defeating almost. But when you talk about it as rhythm, that there are these periods that may be more challenging, you know. I think of a father of six and there are definitely times, as we were raising our kids, where, man, if we were in the throes of it all, you know, there was not a whole lot of balance, because you know, we’re juggling these six kids. And then there are times where there is, you know, time to refresh and relax. So if we’re looking for balance all the time, we’re going to feel defeated. But if we’re looking for that rhythm, as you mentioned, that time of where we can rest, but in sometimes we’re going to be, you know, working more deeply, harder. But always trying to come back to that center, I think is vital. So thank you for that. What are some of the practices? Dan, I’m curious, what are some of the practices you talked about prayer and physical exercise for yourself? But are there particular practices or ways of going about our lives and our ministries that help us get back to that center?

Dan Reiland
Yeah, so by the way, I gotta say, I connect with you huge. I’m a Papa now. I have grandkids, so much fun.

Jason Daye
Yeah.

Dan Reiland
We have a three year old granddaughter. But my daughter also just had, well, 12 weeks ago, identical twin boys. And so when you talk about the chaos of life, I mean, this isn’t – this is real life, you know?

Jason Daye
Right.

Dan Reiland
And it doesn’t feel balanced. And you’ve got two little infant boys with a three year old says, “I want to play” and how does anybody have anything normal, even rhythms and balance but you actually can. And I watched them do it even though – which is a powerful, powerful commentary on life rhythms. When in the midst of chaos, you still know there’s peace?

Jason Daye
Yes.

Dan Reiland
You feel a sense like, we’re okay. And we know watch them 7/24 on the feeding cycle with tube, you know. But going over to your question, I just had to say that because I think it’s good for us all to be reminded that we’re not walking around in long white robes and life is crazy and the car does break and things don’t always go well. But these things are the things that actually keep us healthy and normal in the midst of all the interruptions of ministry and six children like you have and all that kind of thing. But going back to your question, I think one of the things we can do on the practices is finding where we – how do we find margin? How do you do that in your schedule? What does it look like? What’s it for?

Dan Reiland
I think sometimes we look for margin on the backside. And that’s a dangerous place to find it. Or we try to go get rest on a vacation, and you can’t solve on a vacation – I don’t remember who said this, but it was a brilliant line, “You can’t solve on vacation, what you don’t live out normally.” And you can’t solve and finding margin when you’re exhausted. You have to build the – like you just work and work and work. For now I’m gonna go get some margin, or one of my buddies says all the time, I’m gonna go get my life back. No, you’re not.

Jason Daye
Right, right.

Dan Reiland
You’re just gonna be exhausted for a while, then you’re gonna have to go back to doing it the same way you’ve always been doing. Let me just tell you some practical things that I’ve done over the years, because I’m kind of a former workaholic and learned the hard way how to climb out of these things. And my calendar was always insanely packed and it’s still kind of crazy packed. But, for example, all of my two hour meetings, I made hour and a half meetings, all of my hour and a half minutes are 75 minute meetings, all of my 60 minute meetings are 50 minute meetings. And so I’ve got these literally daily margins, where I can make a phone call, I can do an email, I can just walk outside and get sunshine on my face, I can be quiet for a second, I can walk down the hall and say hi to somebody.

Dan Reiland
That’s a practical way you can do it. One thing that – it was like a true confession. It took a long time to try this. And now I would never not do it. Every, almost every Thursday, for weeks in advance, I’ll have nothing in it, or very little in it. And I used to drive me insane to think how could I possibly allow a big blank thing in my calendar to look at me like that, and I gotta look at that. But when I started having that margin, I can tell you for years and years and years and years and years and years, by the time I get to that Thursday, it’s full. But it was full with things that needed a place to go, someone needed to talk someone, you know, a cool podcast like this, just it needed a place to be found. And it would have never had a place if I allowed every minute to be filled. So that’s a little bit on the practical side.

Dan Reiland
What else could we talk about?

Jason Daye
Yeah, yeah, I love that thought on margin. And I love the fact that margin is something you have to do in advance. Because if you, I mean, it’s the whole idea of margin, right? If you tried to fit margin in when you have time, it never happens. Right? So I love that of those practical points on kind of thinking about margin and making that space. Are there other things that you would say, maybe, kind of behind the scenes, family life, those types of things, your relationships, your family, that really contribute to this idea of caring for your own soul?

Dan Reiland
Wow! Or maybe in caring for the souls of others. You know, one of the things I think it’s important is to save some energy for the people that you love the most. You know, when we come home – because we love our work, we’re called, we’re passionate, we love the people, we love the Church, we love seeing the kingdom advance – but if you come home and you’re exhausted, or if you come home and you’re there, but you’re not present or you’re worried or you know, it’s… – can you save some time for the people that – save some energy, not just time, that’s what I meant – save energy for the people that you love the most, to be able to play, to be able to talk, to have conversations.

Dan Reiland
And my wife laughs at me because I have my, what we call my driveway conversations. Because I’m always on the phone on the way home and the car phone calls are never done. So I sit in my driveway for like ridiculous amounts of time. She goes, you know, “What’s Dad doing?” Well, when the kids are here, I’m an empty nester now. “Well he’s finishing up his phone, his driveway phone calls”, you know, and but when I come in, like, I’m done, it’s done. We’re best, let’s go. And you can tend to the family, you can have dinner together, maybe watch a movie or do whatever you’re going to do. That’s all age range, you know, depends on your family, right?

Dan Reiland
You might be hanging out watch a movie to one season, but another season, it’s bath and diapers and bedtime, and it’s all different wherever we are, but you’re able to just be there. And I think that deep inside, we know that’s what pleases God talking about where you went, in terms of care for our own souls. We don’t live with the angst that we do when we just know better, we just know better. And we do it wrong anyway. And that’s probably one of the things that I talk with pastors about a lot. And that is that there is a – this isn’t a clinical explanation, but I’ve given it the term that works for me – is a low grade angst. It’s not clinical, everybody’s functional, it works fine. But there’s this kind of spot in your gut. And it’s just this low grade angst, that’s always there. It’s the absence of peace.

Dan Reiland
And when you know you’re doing exactly what Jesus wants you to do, that low grade angst dissipates, and peace kind of fills you. And I’ve tried, because I’ve done it the wrong way. And I’ve done it the right way. When you’re playing with your kids, or you’re playing with your grandkids, there’s this – the peace is there and the angst is gone. Do we have a minute to tell you a quick story?

Jason Daye
Oh. Yeah, please.

Dan Reiland
So, it was last week. Yeah, it was last week. And I’m teaching and speaking and doing stuff and traveling quite a bit this spring, might have overdone it a tad. But I’ve got all these talks and all these things I’ve got to get, you know, all the way, this day, this one has to be written and this one has to be written in next all the way up to like almost July.

Dan Reiland
But I’m aware of my kids and my grandkids the other week and how my daughter’s, many days, got all three under three herself and the two twins. And I know their feeding cycle, the boys feeding cycle. And one of them’s at four o’clock, and she’s got to do the clean the nose and do the thing and change the diaper and feed the one but the other ones crying because the other one – you know… And I said, “You know what, this is going to cost.” It’s going to put me behind, I’m just gonna go over there and help. I’m going to feed one of the boys and she can feed one of the boys. And then when she’s got them both and trying to get them for a nap, I’ll take Anza for a walk, come back. And that was like, two hours or more. And I promise you that the angst that I felt, the angst that I felt with the – sorry got a little off there for a second – the angst that I felt in knowing how much I had to write was completely gone when I was playing with the kids.

Jason Daye
Right.

Dan Reiland
And when I went back, I didn’t regret it for a second it was the right thing to do. And that’s kind of a, you’re giving yourself away. But it’s kind of a soul care process. Because you’re you’re doing the thing that you know you should do. And isn’t it funny? I’m gonna give this back to you because I’m talking way too long. Isn’t it funny that sometimes even when we know the thing we should do, we don’t. But then when we do the right thing, we get reminded that was the right thing. And then we go back and do the wrong thing the next day anyway. I mean, why do we do that? I don’t know. So you help us now, you tell us what the probem is.

Jason Daye
I wish I’d have the answer to that one Dan, but I love what you’re saying there, the idea that it’s almost giving ourselves permission, right Dan? Giving ourselves permission to step back to enter into a time, a place, a period where it’s just good for our soul, right? It’s good for our heart, it’s good for our soul. It’s good for those around us, people that we care about. And that replenishes us, as you said, Dan, you know, I mean, you didn’t come back and be like, oh my goodness, why did I spend two hours, I have so much to do. Instead you’re replenished. And that’s the thing that we tend to forget, we tend to think that we’re, you know, that time is going to be lost. But fortunately, we serve a God who redeems things and so God redeems those times because God knows we need those times of refreshment. Right. I love that.

Jason Daye
I think that’s a great example. So you mentioned something earlier about, a little bit about emotions and how emotions play into, you know, our emotional health plays into not only how effective we are in ministry, right? But also just our you know, the health of our overall life. So can you talk to us a little bit about in leadership, in ministry leadership, some emotions that we need to kind of be on the lookout for, you know, those types of things that might be popping up and we may just think oh, that’s just part of life, but they may actually be flags helping us understand ‘wait a second, there’s something we need to attend to here in our soul’.

Dan Reiland
Absolutely. Because I think our responsibility, it is not easy. I mean, we’re all human. But I think our responsibility is to lead our emotions rather than letting our emotions lead us. Because when we get fatigued, under pressure again, the pace and pressure thing, it’s easy for the emotions to get ahead of us, get out of control kind of run ahead, even get angry or whatever it might be. A discouragement, I think, is probably one of the number one emotions that leaders deal with on a daily basis. I also believe Jason, that it’s actually the enemy’s number one tactic against us. Because typically we, leaders, don’t do these gross things that blow up their life. But it’s that low grade anxiousness that grind over a long period of time, with discouragement, that can really take a leader out. As a matter of fact, let me share something else and we can come right back on to, you know, what can we do about it kind of a thing.

Dan Reiland
But it’s sparked by that idea of discouragement. You know, I think that, in terms of expectations, we have expectations of God, we have expectations of others, the church has expectations of us. And you and I both know, Jason that expectations always lead to either delight or discouragement. Always. That’s just a fact. It’s expectations in marriage, with your kids, in ministry. They lead to delight or disappointment. And we don’t have to talk about delight. We all know what that is. That’s a good thing.

Dan Reiland
Disappointment side on the emotions. Here’s what I’ve learned, that prolonged disappointment leads to discouragement. And prolonged or sustained discouragement leads to frustration. And prolonged frustration leads to anger. And if we can learn to get on the front side of that, on the disappointment piece, rather than letting it go all the way to frustration, or even anger, we’re so far ahead of the game and learning to lead our emotions rather than being led by them. So we can come all the way back to just disappointment. And I don’t mean disappointment, like you went to a restaurant and had a lousy meal. Get over it, go to a different restaurant, you know. But the things that are real disappointments, again, not about in – that’s a place to check our maturity, because we can see our maturity, I can see my maturity really quickly by what disappoints me. What I didn’t get, what didn’t happen. But there are some legitimate real disappointments in life. And at that point when we can learn to take that disappointment to God, or to a friend or a coach or a counselor or a buddy, before it goes to discouragement, before it goes to frustration, before it goes to anger. Wow, have we done something good.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s a really helpful kind of continuum, Dan, that you share there, because it really kind of puts things in place. And it helps us kind of identify, man, if I’m really frustrated about something. That means I’ve let it go to the point where it’s gotten to frustration. Right? Right. So that’s incredibly helpful. Dan, talk to me a little bit about community, and how community relates to caring for our soul as a ministry leader, like the relationships that we have, and the value of those. Because we know Dan, we probably all know that isolation is one of the most dangerous things. That we tend to isolate whenever we find ourselves in that disappointment, discouragement, frustration, you know, downslide or when we’re, you know, feeling that low level angst, or maybe it’s increasing the other level, that angst in our lives. We tend to sometimes isolate, but isolation is very dangerous. So talk to us, Dan, about the idea of community.

Dan Reiland
Yeah, you know, our Senior Pastor Kevin Myers, he’s often said something that first time I ever heard it, you know, 20 years ago. I thought, wow, that was a bold statement kind of thing. But he said “We’re only as sick as our secrets.” And that connects with your isolation. I think humility is the resolve to a lot of things because I think that conversation be authentic, just conversation stalls 51% of all the issues we deal with, and we can just get it out, talk about it in a safe environment, in a trusted environment, where we realize “Yep, I’m pretty much the same as all the others in the room.” And everybody else goes “Yep, we’re in it together”, we help each other get strength, you know, and so I talked about it with the leaders I coach in terms of their inner circle, and who are the peoples that they should have in their inner circle. Some people would have, some would just have a much larger one. Some have a smaller one, but that doesn’t matter. That’s just personality, that just wiring, that’s just size of your personality, you know. But there are some components, you know, whether it’s a coach or a prayer partner or a spiritual adviser, or you know, who is in your inner circle and who are those people that you have complete honesty and transparency with. And it’s a high level of trust. And for me, I always say this, you know that they need to be smart and strong. Because if they’re not strong enough you’re just going to push them over, and they’ve got to be able to just be able to speak wisdom, and so that inner circle is so, so important – that community. And I really think we have to give ourselves permission to choose that group.

Dan Reiland
We’re called in ministry to love everybody, and we should. And we should treat everybody with high respect, and we should. But, there’s some points where you need to choose who that inner group is so you can be refreshed and restored to pour your life into people that you barely even know. But you know, you need to love them and care for them. And it’s interesting, sometimes, I think leaders choose – this is crazy to say – but they choose that group by obligation, or by guilt, or by pressure. And I want to say, give yourself freedom to choose people that you really enjoy being with, who have wisdom, and they’re strong. And make sure those people are in your life with transparency. And you guys talk, you just talk.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. That’s really helpful. And that idea of having a safe space for pastors and ministry leaders, that can be a real challenge because oftentimes, we feel that we have to look like we’re the ones who’ve got it together, we’re the ones who have the answers, right? We feel that pressure. And so, to let down our guard, and to be, you know, just honest with areas in which we might be struggling or, you know, challenges that we’re facing. That’s not always easy to do. Dan, how would you encourage a pastor to kind of embrace that idea of a safe space, because again, it’s not something that comes natural, especially if you’ve been in ministry a long time and have felt the pressure to kind of, you know, make it look like everything’s working for you. Right?

Dan Reiland
So Jason when you asked that question, are you saying that in context of a pastor or a leader, perhaps who isn’t in a safe place like that, or doesn’t have a super transparency?

Jason Daye
Yeah, exactly. That has not yet found that safe space, right.

Dan Reiland
Great question. Start with one person. It starts by taking a risk, you cannot avoid the risk. So find that one person, you go, “You know what, I’m going to take a risk.” And I would say step one, choose the person carefully. Who’s strong, who’s wise, who would you be willing to take that risk with? And then literally carve out a couple of hours. And take a risk and tell your stories. Like, tell your whole story, not like the 10 minute, I mean, tell your story. And what I promise is that you’re not going to shock them, and they’re not going to shock you. And you’re going to “Oh my gosh, we’re both pretty normal.” And now “You’re a little weirder than I am” and “No, I’m actually a little weirder than you are.” But there’s this lifting that, you know, when light replaces dark, when hope replaces fear, when there’s just a bond in the community. If you take that one step, it’s so refresing, you go, “I think I need to add another one in this circle and another one and another one”. That’s how it starts. And that’s how it grows.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s really helpful. Dan. As we’re kind of winding down here, we’ve talked a lot about soul care for ministry leader, we’ve talked about emotions, we’ve talked about community and relationships, we’ve talked about margin. Is there anything else, Dan, that – as you have the eyes and ears of brothers and sisters who are faithfully serving in terms of, you know, because we talk there’s a great need for soul care for ministry leaders, like we need to pay attention to this because we can just push so hard and we’ve seen, you know, unfortunately, you know, tragic results of ministry leaders who have not tended to their own souls. So as we’re winding down, I just want to, you know, turn it over to you, Dan, as you’re just speaking to brothers and sisters, is there anything else in this regard of soul care that you’d like to share?

Dan Reiland
I would, and this kind of actually takes us in a little bit different direction. Because I feel like the right answer is Jesus, you know, the right answer, you know, isn’t always Jesus. The right answer is prayer. Which we know it’s true. And I have this, like a personal sanctuary, little prayer room in the basement. And it’s just a powerful thing. I think it really does all go there. But I want to, I think, take advantage of your offer and go to a slightly different place that I think is an untalked about arena of soul care. And that’s time to think. When I asked leaders, “When do you think?” “I think all the time” No, you don’t. We don’t. We’re on autopilot. And if you don’t carve out time to think, time to be quiet, time to get ahead of stuff, what happens is you actually erode the margin you try so hard to get. You erode the peace you try so hard to get, you elevate the anxiety because one of the leaders most important functions, obligation and responsibility to those leaders is think time. And if you don’t have it, you’re eroding all the things we’ve been talking about in this conversation.

Dan Reiland
When I get to work with younger leaders, actually not necessarily just younger leaders, and we talked about think time and they ask, “When am I going to put that in?” “Well try two hours one night and two hours one morning, and that’s it for the week.” “That’s it?” “That’s it.” Or if you’re not a big block person, then maybe it’s 30 minutes in a day, whatever ithat works for you. But I had one young guy who was so cool. He said, “Well I’m going to try it. I’m going to put think time in my calendar.” And he came back, and I said the next session, “How’d you do?” He goes, “Well, not so good.” I said “Why?” And he said, “I didn’t know what to think about.” We laughed. I said, “You’re serious?” He said, “I’m serious.” I said, “Okay, let’s start here. Do you think when you write a talk?” he said, “Yeah,” Well, that’s one kind, but let me tell you the primary way that a leader engages thought, and that’s problem solving. That’s the primary arena in which we all live in thinking. And so I said, “What’s your number one problem you’re working on right now?” Bla, bla, bla. And so this week, go take a couple of blocks of time and just put think time into solving that problem, talk about, you know, write stuff down. So I think even though that doesn’t sound like the right answer, I think putting space and time into just think, whether it’s writing a talk or solving a problem, is actually part of soul care. So that you actually can benefit from all the things from prayer to margin to rhythm that we’ve been talking about, by actually advancing ministry strategically through think time.

Dan Reiland
Yeah.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. Dan, I think it’s a great answer. Because, again, as we talk, you know, we’re involved in so many different things in ministry. And there’s so many plates that are spinning and then you know, we want to be a good, you know, a good spouse or a good parent, and we want to be a good friend, and we want you know, we want to do all these things, that if we do not take that time, to just think through those things, those bigger, you know, those bigger rocks that are in our lives, then we just find ourselves glossing over it, right? And we find ourselves, you know, trying to climb over it or work around it, as opposed to tackling it head on. And I think that for myself, I know, whenever we process through something like that, man, that’s life giving. Right, Dan? I mean, you feel like, okay, we’re getting somewhere, we’re not just spinning the plates, you know, we’re making progress. So I think that’s excellent, brother.

Jason Daye
Dan, you’ve contributed so much to the church, the capital C church in so many ways. You’ve provided a ton of insights and resources and I’m very, personally, very grateful for how you just give of yourself to the Church. For those who are watching listening in, if they wanted to avail themselves of some of those resources, you do a ton of variety. Where can they find those resources? How can they connect with you and things that you have going on?

Dan Reiland
Thank you. I think the easiest is just go to DanReiland.com. And my blog site is there. There’s, I don’t know, we don’t keep them all there. But I think there’s almost 500 articles there. You know, we keep dumping the older ones. And some of my books are there. And some of the things I can offer are there. But DanReiland.com is the simple way to go.

Jason Daye
Perfect. I love that. And man, Dan, thank you so much for making time. I’m glad that you keep some space in your Thursdays so that you and I could hang out and have an awesome conversation. I know it’s gonna be meaningful for our audience. So God bless you, brother, thank you so much for being with us. And I want to let our listeners know that I will have links to the things that Dan mentioned at PastorServe.org/network in the toolkit for this episode for our conversation that we’ve shared here together, so be sure to check that out. Dan, God bless you, my friend. Thank you so much.

Dan Reiland
Thanks, Jason!

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.

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