The Two Poles Healthy Pastors Must Navigate

With the releasing of the Odyssey movie of late, the concept of Charybdis and Scylla might be quite fresh on your visceral level. Considering how they don't bode well for sailors. Scylla being a six-headed, man-eating monster with 12 dangling feet and a ring of barking dog heads around her waist. She lived in a cliffside cave and snatched sailors off passing ships. Charybdis a massive monster-turned-whirlpool that swallowed and spat out seawater three times a day, capable of destroying an entire ship.

Whereas these two monsters seek to destroy, the transposed option for human flourishing in spiritual leadership is that of Contemplation and Action. Those who are integrated leaders know how to not only tend to both poles, they know how they can be brought together at the same moment.

One of the books I give out regularly at my church is Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God. I was given this book on a summer project with Cru and was indelibly marked by his simple, yet profound, message of communing with God at all points of the day.

Up to that point, I had satisfied myself with having my devotional time with God in the morning to set my day on the right track. I had found, though, by noon the passage that I had read in the morning had gotten buried in a list of doing that needed to be done.

I see the same problems among pastors. They study a text. They seek to understand its meaning and to help his people apply it to their marriages and parenting and vocation. But, he has merely kept the text as an object to be studied and applied mechanically.

This results in a divided life between being in God's presence and out in the world...failing to see his overtures of love and grace in the nitty gritty details of life.

If you want to pursue true health in your pastoring, you have to learn how to hold both of these poles at the same time. Like Brother Lawrence, to be worshiping God in your washing dishes.

I would go further, though. It can be easy to think that you merely need to bounce between the two poles and all is well. Rather, I want to encourage you to discipline yourself to recognize the nearness of God in every moment of your day. To realize that it is not merely Ora et Labora like the Benedictines talk about but Ora est Labora and Labora Est Ora. That is, when you are working you are praying. There is an intentionality to your work so that you are doing it in God's gaze and recognizing that he is the enervating force in which you live and more and have your being.

To pursue genuine health and happiness while you tend to the worries and fears and disappointments of those you pastor, you must learn the habit of presence and being present with God.