We have all seen people neglect their souls for the sake of "ministry," which usually means building a large church or a successful organization. For most of my life, I believed there was a tension between caring for the demands of ministry versus caring for the needs of the soul. Now I'm not so sure.
A distinction might be helpful here. "Caring for your soul" is not the same thing as having a manageable life, or reducing the demands on you, or creating margins that always leave you feeling comfortable, or making regular trips to the spa/ocean/golf course/Baptist campground/Episcopal retreat center.
A healthy soul will always manifest itself by (among other things) pouring itself out for the sake of others. It is a contradiction in terms to think of a healthy soul being preoccupied with its own ease, comfort, and security, or being unwilling to sacrifice in a world of need.
"The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It's the person you become."—Dallas Willard
Jesus himself was under constant demand and yet lived with richness of soul. Not only that, he called to himself precisely those who found themselves "weary and heavy laden," and he promised that in him they would find an easy yoke and "rest for your souls."
Too often our call to ministry reverses that: "Come to me you who have found rest in Jesus, and you will be given a heavy burden."
It makes no sense to believe that Jesus' plan was to form a movement that would depend on leaders who gave up soul-rest in order to call huge groups of people to give up their self-centered lives in order to find soul-rest in him.
Has anyone ever seen someone who has made enormous contributions to ministry and done so with a well-rested and healthy soul?
Yes. I have.
In my mind, I often go to Box Canyon, California, to a small white-frame house surrounded by an old picket fence where Dallas Willard lived for the better part of fifty years. It was sparsely furnished, mostly with books. But what drew people to that house was that it was the home of an uncluttered soul.
I first went there in the Eighties. I had read a book by Dallas in which his thesis was that authentic transformation is possible if we're willing to do one thing—to arrange our lives around the practices that Jesus engaged in to be constantly at home with and empowered by his Father. Here is someone who seems to know that deep change is really possible, I kept thinking as I read the book. And he knew something about how it happens.
I wanted to meet Dallas to learn about that. I also wanted to meet him because he was an important person, a university professor and an author, and at some level I felt like if I could connect with him, perhaps a little of that importance could spill over on me.
So I wrote him to tell how much his book meant to be. Several decades later, after Dallas died, his daughter Becky sent me a copy of that letter—Dallas had saved it, as he saved innumerable relics that he called "fond old things." I was moved to see it, and embarrassed to realize I'd signed it with "PhD" after my name. Really? Did I think that would matter to Dallas?
I was nervous the first time I knocked on that door, but Dallas was a hard person to remain nervous around.
"Hello Brother John," he said, and I immediately felt invited into the warmth of belonging (what he would call a "circle of sufficiency.") He was the most unhurried person I had ever been around. The phone would ring—this was before cell phones and answering machines—and he just let it ring and keep on talking, as if he had nothing more important to do. I had the odd sensation (which many people who knew Dallas also experienced) of having my own heart rate slow down to match his.
"I wish I lived in his time zone," somebody once said.
I found myself moving from polite questions about the church and ideas to the personal. That little house in Box Canyon began to change from a classroom to a confessional:
—Why is it that I know I want to love my children, but I seem to be driven to be a success—especially in a vocation calling people to die to their need to be successful?
—Why do I get jealous of other people in my same line of work who are more successful than I am?
—Why am I never satisfied? Why do I feel a deep, secret loneliness?
"The main thing God gets out of your life," Dallas said, "is not the achievements you accomplish, it's the person you become. That's also the main thing you get out of your life."
My mind stores thoughts of anger or worry or desire or discontent. Inner clutter. It is not the fault of my job. It is disorder in my soul.
I thought about Jesus' words: "If you abide in me, and I abide in you, you will bear much fruit." Jesus didn't say: "Try to find a balance between abiding and fruit-bearing." He didn't say: "Work hard to produce much kingdom fruit, but try to find a way to make your life sustainable so that you don't end up in a moral ditch."
He said to aim at abiding. The way to being fruitful was precisely abiding; and abiding would never be fruit-less but always result in the creation of kingdom value.
That's what I saw in the house in Box Canyon. Here was someone with remarkable impact: he taught philosophy at a major research university, produced scholarly research, wrote books on spiritual life, spoke at churches and conferences around the world. And yet the profound impact he had on people who met him was not: "I wish I could do what he has done." It was "I wish I could live as he has lived."
I learned from Dallas that what clutters the soul does not mainly come from the outside but the inside. Time-management and right rhythms of work and rest are important. But—at least for me—it's internal ego and not external demands that place the greatest stress on my life.
The soul is at-rest when the soul is with-God
I had to learn—not to withdraw from ministry so I can be with God—but how to make my primary aim learning to be with God all the time so that ministry as well as withdrawal becomes a primary means of the with-God life.
Ministry is inherently messy. A friend of mine likes to quote Proverbs 14:4—"Where there are no oxen, the stable stays clean." People in congregations rarely check in with us ahead of time to schedule their crises or their divorces or their runaway children or their elder-arguments. They never bring those to us in a way that's convenient with our workload. How do I find a life-giving way of life in an unmanageable crisis-driven world?
I learned from Box Canyon that it's not mostly about finding an escape outside the mess but discovering a hidden oasis inside it.
One day I'd had a difficult staff meeting, and I was driving off campus to a meeting that would have to be rushed, and I was grousing in my spirit about having too much to do and not enough time to do it.
Then this thought came to me: "John, let's look at the next two hours. You will go through those two hours of your life with me or without me. You can feel stressed, pressured, angry, sorry for yourself, impatient, and be a pain-in-the-neck to the people around you. Or you can do those two hours with Me. You can be glad you're alive. You can be joyful in your work. You can stop trying to be Atlas, take the world off your shoulders, and let me run the universe. I was actually doing pretty well with it before you were born, and I'll probably manage whether or not you think you can do my job through your to-do list this afternoon. What's it going to be—two hours with Me, or without Me?"
If my main goal is to be present with God each moment, the rest of my life can work. If the main goal is anything else in my life, then the rest of my life oppresses me.
I forget this all the time.
But whenever I remember, it's like getting a do-over.
The uncluttered soul has a well-trained mind
There is a little passage in Dallas's book The Divine Conspiracy that I just noticed for the first time. He is describing the Lord's Prayer as a reality that can orient us for life: what does it mean to address God as "Our Father," what does it mean to want his name to be "hallowed" (may your character be cherished), what does it mean to locate God in the heavens ("closer than the air we breathe"). Then he wrote this:
"When I began to 'live' in the prayer this way—for that is the only way I can describe it—there were many nights when I would awaken about two o'clock and spend an hour of delight before God just dwelling in one or more phrases from it."
These are not just words he was writing. When he would quote the Lord's Prayer, often people listening to him would notice a faraway look in his eye and a little tremble in his voice, and it was apparent that his mind was entering familiar and wonderful territory that easily transcended the particular circumstances of the moment.
I have reached an age where I often wake up during the night. Here are the things I most often think about:
—I reflect on some problem at work and worry about finding the right solution. Or imagine an outcome that I don't want to occur.
—I delight in some event that went well for me personally—a sermon that I think people liked or an attendance spike at church.
—I am concerned over one of my children.
When I try to spend an hour in the middle of the night delighting in the Lord's Prayer before the Lord, I realize how far away I am from the life that I want.
My mind is cluttered with thoughts of anger or worry or desire or discontent. It is not outer clutter but inner clutter. It is not the fault of my job. It is disorder in my soul.
The uncluttered soul requires examination
I grew up playing tennis, a pale-skinned Scandinavian spending the summer months getting sun-burned. So I have to see a dermatologist annually. One year as we talked about a number of small mole-ish islands populating my skin, he told me that most of them were not dangerous, but I should expect them to increase in number.
"They come with age," he said. "I call them 'barnacles of life.' Try to think of them as your friends." Yes, I have a dermatologist with a good sense of humor.
It's ironic that we often spend more time and money examining our bodies—which will eventually wear out anyway—than we do our souls, which we will take with us into eternity.
I learned from Dallas the importance of "soul-examination"—what folks in AA speak of as doing a fearless moral inventory.
This past summer I began using a format for this developed centuries ago by Ignatius Loyola, to daily practice what he called the "particular examination of conscience"—that is, to look for the particular sin or flaw that most keeps me from living the with-God life.
In my case, it's the flaw of trying to be too helpful around the house and robbing my wife of opportunities to serve. Also of lying a lot.
Actually, it took very little time to recognize the particular sin I most battle with is the wrong form of self-love. As I began regularly to reflect on each day hour-by-hour, it was humbling to realize how often self-love would create pettiness and deceit and manipulation in me.
We had bought a new rug, and my wife (who was out of town) asked how it looked. "The colors don't work with our dining room," I told her.
"Okay," she said. "Why don't you roll it up and put it in the garage."
But that would take two or three minutes when I wanted to do other things. I didn't want to roll up the rug right then. I didn't want to be honest about it either. So I said, "Why don't I leave it here until you get home so you can have a chance to form your own opinion?"
I was too lazy to move it and too deceitful to admit it. And all this happened without my ever intentionally forming the thought: "Now I'll be lazy and deceitful." And I did this to the person I have taken the most solemn vow to love.
Am I the only one who does stuff like this?
I cannot make myself stop having such thoughts and actions by willpower. But the practice of regular soul-examination—by the grace of God—allows me to see these patterns, so that I can become more aware of them closer to real-time, so that I can begin to be liberated from them. Unlike barnacles of life, barnacles of the soul actually can be removed.
The uncluttered soul requires an FDF
One of the great soul-dangers in ministry—at least in my case—is the capacity for hiddenness. Most people at our church see me just once a week, for a half hour or so, when I am in control of what it is I'm going to say. Even if I'm being "vulnerable" or "authentic," I am doing so intentionally, I have planned it ahead of time, and I can't simply turn off the switch inside me that is reflexively doing impression management.
So I need a few good friends. To whom I tell everything—my most embarrassing sins and most troubling temptations and ugly thoughts.
Folks who do research around pastoral ministry say that having a "fully-disclosing friend" (FDF) may be the single greatest predictor of whether or not someone is able to remain in church ministry for the long haul.
I only have two people in my life that I know and trust well enough to do this with. It actually requires some preparation ahead of time. I've actually scheduled one day a month when I can have a period of time alone to look at my thoughts and my patterns and my habits and my temptations over the past month. Then I have a conversation with my FDF.
Here's the strange dynamic at play: although I know how much I need this, it never ceases to be embarrassing. It's like diving into a pool—I know that ultimately it will be refreshing, but the first sting of coldness always makes me want to not jump in.
I had one of those times of aloneness and then confession this past Friday. I wrote down a list of soul-barnacles I needed to talk about. But I still had to force myself to actually name them. And then my FDF said: "You know, none of this surprises me. You say these things as though someone who knew you well would have no idea these are your struggles. And this doesn't make me pull away from you. I feel closer to you in these moments than any others."
I remember—I can only be loved to the extent that I'm known. As long as I hide, even if someone says they love me, my soul will whisper, "But you would not love if you knew … "
I can only be loved to the extent that I'm known. I can only be fully loved if I am fully known.
The uncluttered soul is never out of One Thing
"Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God … "
The soul, Dallas used to say, is what integrates and enlivens and connects all the parts of you, and connects your life with God. It is deeper than you can imagine, so deep that often in the Bible we see writers addressing it as if it were a person. This never occurs with other dimensions of us—with our hearts or our minds, only the soul.
And the soul cannot live apart from vibrant expectation of a God-soaked future—Put your hope in God, the psalmist tells his soul.
Nothing kills a ministry or disheartens a pastor like loss of hope. We can endure many losses, but not that one. The clutter that chokes a pastor's soul is the clutter that obstructs the moment-to-moment availability of unforced hope.
"Heaven," an ultimate expression of death-transcending hope, is a word many of us have learned to think differently about over the years. I used to think of it as a pleasure-factory where anyone would be happy to end up. N. T. Wright has reminded us that heaven is not primarily about God taking us someplace else, but about God redeeming the creation that we love. Eternity, Dallas used to say, is already in session. You can join right in if you want to.
When I was a boy, and I heard the word heaven, I would often think of big mansions on gold-paved streets in cloud-fleeced skies.
Now, I most often find myself thinking of an old wooden house, behind a crooked picket fence, in a place called Box Canyon.
John Ortberg is pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California.
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