Cary Schmidt serves as the Senior Pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newington, Connecticut.
He and his wife, Dana, have been blessed with three children and have enjoyed thirty four years of marriage and ministry together. Cary's passion is to love God, love his family, and point people to Jesus Christ through teaching, preaching, and writing. He hosts the "Leading in the Gospel" podcast to encourage Gospel-shaped leadership, and "Growing in the gospel"—a daily devotional on Youtube.
He has written fifteen books, including <em>Stop Trying, Live Lighter—Love Better, Off Script, Passionate Parenting, Real Christianity</em>, and others. he joins me to talk about his recently released book, <em>Steady Strength: Reversing Ministry's Dangerous Drift Toward Depletion</em>.
Cary Schmidt serves as the Senior Pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newington, Connecticut.
He and his wife, Dana, have been blessed with three children and have enjoyed thirty four years of marriage and ministry together. Cary's passion is to love God, love his family, and point people to Jesus Christ through teaching, preaching, and writing. He hosts the "Leading in the Gospel" podcast to encourage Gospel-shaped leadership, and "Growing in the gospel"—a daily devotional on Youtube.
He has written fifteen books, including <em>Stop Trying, Live Lighter—Love Better, Off Script, Passionate Parenting, Real Christianity</em>, and others. he joins me to talk about his recently released book, <em>Steady Strength: Reversing Ministry's Dangerous Drift Toward Depletion</em>.
You're listening to episode 212 of the Pastor Writer podcast Conversations on Reading, writing and the Christian Life. I'm your host, chase Rep, local. Well, I've got a great conversation for you today with Pastor and author Kerry Schmidt. We talk about ministry depletion, how ministry and the work of ministry can often lead to a personal depletion in our lives and, if we're not careful, can lead us into real moments of crisis. Pastor Kerry explains how he's faced those situations and also how he's learned to develop strength in the midst of ministry, a kind of strength that endures as we continue to serve and find ourselves depleted, a way that our relationship with Christ fills us back up. I think it's an important conversation because anybody serving in ministry for any number of years will immediately resonate with Kerry's story and what he's describing in the book, and I think he grounds ministry in a better view, a better way of practicing. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I hope it gives you some of that strength and endurance for your ministry as well.
Speaker 1:Before we jump into today's conversation, a quick word. If you've listened to the Pastor Writer podcast for very long, you know that I almost never have sponsors. I've never invited somebody on to do a sponsorship, but a few weeks ago Moody Publishers reached out and specifically wanted to sponsor a couple of episodes to draw some attention to Kerry's book, the conversation that we're having today. I had the chance of publishing the five masculine instincts with Moody, and one of the things that really impressed me was how much they care about pastors not only publishing books for pastors, but publishing the kind of books that are going to be not only a help but also an encouragement. That's certainly the case with this book steady strength, reversing ministry's dangerous drift towards depletion. Moody wants to make sure that any pastor that's experiencing burnout, struggling with that work-life balance or just trying to cultivate emotional health in the midst of ministry, has the resources they need to do it, and so I'm really grateful that they would actually sponsor today's episode. And not only are they sponsoring the conversation, they're also offering a special discount for Pastor Writer listeners. Between now and the end of the year, any Pastor Writer listener who goes to MoodyPublisherscom and uses the promo code STRENGTH will get 40% off at checkout. Again, moodypublisherscom uses the promo code STRENGTH and get 40% off at checkout. I know MoodyPublishers cares about helping pastors, and so I hope this discount is an encouragement to you as we move into the holiday season and I hope you take advantage of it. Thanks for their sponsorship. Let's get to our conversation.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm joined on the podcast today by Kerry Schmidt. He serves as senior pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Newington, connecticut. He and his wife, dana, have been blessed with three children and have enjoyed 34 years of marriage and ministry together. Kerry's passion is to love God, his family and point people to Jesus Christ through teaching, preaching and writing. He hosts the Leading in the Gospel podcast to encourage gospel-shaped leadership, as well as growing in the gospel at Daily Devotional on YouTube. He's written 15 books, including Stop Trying Live Lither and Love Better. Offscript, passionate Parenting Real Christianity and a relatively new book that he joins me today to talk about, entitled Steady Strength Reversing Ministries Dangerous Drift Towards Depletion. Well, kerry, it's a privilege and honor to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 2:Oh, Chase, it's great to meet you. I'm glad to be able to talk to you. Thank you for inviting me on.
Speaker 1:Well, I'd love to maybe get a little context, tell us a little bit about where you're pastoring today too, and really grateful for putting out great work and podcasts, youtube and writing. I mean, you're really contributing a lot to the conversation. So maybe a little bit about where you're serving today.
Speaker 2:Sure, we've been in ministry 34 years. The last 11 years we were 22 years on the West Coast and then the last 11, 12 years now we have been engaged in a revitalization of a wonderful church in New England, newington, connecticut. It's Emmanuel Baptist Church and we came 11 years almost 12 years ago to 93 people who voted us in, and it was at one time a thriving church in the 70s, early 80s, and it declined and had just a long season of discouragement and setbacks. And the last 11 years God's just written a series of beautiful stories and miracles and we're just rejoicing and thankful for the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Well, as a writer, I'm always interested in. I really want to talk about the book, which we'll get to in a moment, but I'm always interested in asking some writing questions too. When in that pastoral ministry experience did writing begin to emerge as clearly as a part of your calling today, having written as extensively as you have?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an interesting question because going as far back as I can remember, I mean my earliest memories my first experience with reading lit a fire in me and I remember I mean first, second grade timeframe telling my parents I want to write books. So that desire goes way back. But the activity of actually writing and publishing began about 20 years ago. I think I wrote my first book. I was a youth pastor and I wrote a book to teenagers called Discover your Destiny. I just, you know self-published and I figured nobody nobody will read this, but I hope my kids will, and God just kind of gave it a life after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's great to hear and great to see somebody sustaining that work over a number of years too, so I'm grateful for it. The new book you have out it has this idea even in the title of pastoral depletion. Maybe you could give us a little context and thoughts on how you see pastors facing depletion today and what drew you to that particular challenge within ministry Sure.
Speaker 2:Ministry I would classify as a high expenditure vocation, and in the book I talk about a concept called negative flow and I really don't like the poor me syndrome that a lot of pastors and a lot of ministers have, like oh, life is so hard and ministry is so hard. I don't like to think of it that way, but there's a reality to it that there is a there is an expenditure happening all the time and there is a kind of problems, a kind of challenge that are that's coming at us, both on a spiritual plane, because it's spiritual warfare, and then on just a human plane where we're interacting with real lives. It's, it is a negative drain there. I compare it to someone that's in like a first responders work or maybe an emergency room trauma center or a hospice care worker that's seeing a lot of death but but not just medical emergencies or health problems, but just a wide range of spiritual brokenness and human brokenness. We consume a lot of that and I think that needs to be taken into account as we, as we cultivate our health.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. I grew up at home. My dad was a state police officer. My brother actually served in the Marine Corps and we've talked a little bit before about the military.
Speaker 1:Although it has had its challenges in the past, it's aware of the sort of the unique challenges that combat or even just deployments themselves can put on individuals.
Speaker 1:I think first responders are beginning to realize the need for sort of soul or personal care as a part of the things that they face. My dad was a crime scene investigator for years and really would walk into some pretty horrific scenes and then come home for dinner at the end of the day the challenge of processing that and I certainly don't want to compare. I don't walk into a crime scene every day, but as a pastor I have walked into some really destructive places in people's lives. I've walked into really complex situations. I've experienced with people some pretty horrific pain and in a similar way I'm not sure pastors always come home for dinner and just assume that's the day's work and I think this idea you're drawing attention to that there's a sort of personal cost that comes with that that, if we're not aware of, can lead us to this place of depletion and really put us in a kind of perilous place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and your crime scene metaphor, it actually it works in a way because we though it's different, I get it, but the experience of encountering all of the raw things that we encounter as pastors and it could be that we're showing up at the bedside of a person that's about to die or the grief of someone that's lost, someone in a trauma situation. But it could also be just those late day phone calls that, hey, my marriage is blowing up, my kids, my child ran away. So many kinds of problems there, and I think I touch on this in the book, that the kinds of problems that especially those that are senior pastors deal with. There are the problems that others are passing on and they push them up to the pastor. It's like I don't know, I don't want to touch that one, go talk to the pastor.
Speaker 2:So there is just a. There's a spiritual, emotional and psychological, and I don't even know how to cleanly separate those three components, but I just know experientially there's an emotional draw, there's a psychological management of the stress and the impact of that, and of course, there's a spiritual layer to it all. That I think. I think it's. There's an art to understanding it and then biblically sustaining a strength that that is renewing and replenishing from those moments of depletion and processing them appropriately.
Speaker 1:Have you personally, in your pastoral ministry, hit seasons of this kind of depletion where you realize, perhaps, that flow has been all in the negative direction and you found yourself in a sort of difficult place because of it?
Speaker 2:Well, like, how many times do you want me to talk about this? I mean, the answer to your question is yes, and frequently I mean my point is the big point there, too, is that this you're not describing.
Speaker 1:This depletion you're describing is not like I had a crisis moment at one point of the ministry. You're describing a kind of regular experience that pastors are having.
Speaker 2:This is a persistent experience. This is like being required to exhale until your lungs are completely empty and then trying to exhale more. This is a regular rhythmic and I'm not saying it's rhythmic in the sense that it's entirely predictable, but it is a frequently recurring experience in spiritual leadership that, yeah, I think there are times and crisis moments in in people's lives and leaders lives that are maybe exaggerated or extreme, and I think that's what I'm trying to help a leader avoid in the book. That really deep crash, that really self destructive place is is a predictable destination for someone that is not cultivating their souls biblically and their emotions and even their physiology. If we're not managing all this well, we're going to hit that real crisis moment. But even if we manage it well, I think what I'm really addressing in the book is just the the regular recurring experience of whoa. I think I'm. I think I'm running low on resources.
Speaker 1:You write early in the book about the way that often we come to ministry with clear sense of future vision and plans. You know pay, perhaps a five year ministry plan or something and how quickly the experience of pastoring turns into sort of the day, the daily challenges that we face. And that, struck me, is really true. I think what carries most of us into this calling of ministry is the, the, the sort of big ultimate good that we see ourselves contributing to. The lived experience of the pastoral ministry. I think you you write very well is more about trying to deal with what's in front of you today and the way that discrepancy can really lead to a kind of vocational challenge or an identity challenge within a lot of ministers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's this tension between some of our functions. I mean, on one level we are administrating, leading, directing an organization, and you know, you pick up one book that tells you you need a five year plan and a three year strategy and you are, you're looking at planning and execution and kind of executive, kind of leadership. But then the reality, the lived reality, the ministry reality, is you are a Bible teacher, you're a shepherd, you're a caregiver, you're a cultivating people and discipling people. And that's what drew most of us to this calling to this work, is that shepherding passion and desire we have for people to know Jesus and grow up in him.
Speaker 2:And there are times when I look at the administrative side of things and it's a necessary part of it, but I feel a little bit like a like insufficient in that regard and I'm drawn. I want to be. I want to be the guy that wakes up every day and trust Jesus to lead the church well and shepherd well, as I follow him. And there's this daily tension, that just kind of navigating that is complicated. You know, I wake up sometimes. Am I supposed to be a well planned executive or am I supposed to be a following, you know, co shepherd or associate shepherd or whatever however you want to phrase it.
Speaker 1:What are some of the ways that you've seen pastors negatively try to cope with that sense of depletion when they are feeling insufficient, when they're feeling like they don't have anything left in the tank? What are some of the ways that we as pastors tend to handle that that perhaps do lead to greater destruction or greater depletion?
Speaker 2:I think probably the number one way is we just try to bear it. I mean, we and you know there's biblical principles about enduring and having patience and steadfastness, but bearing it in the sense of with a resignation, like, oh well, there's nothing I can really do about this. This is kind of a martyrdom complex, that this is just the price of the call and there's nothing I can do. And what I'm trying to say in the book is there is a reality to we do persist through it. We endure it on one level, but not passively. We are called to endure it, but with active we can address it. We don't just have to endure it, we can address it and we can offset it.
Speaker 2:And this is what I see as the pattern in Scripture is that God doesn't require us to be limitless resources. He does provide us limitless resources, but he expects us to live within our finiteness, accept our boundaries, live within his limitations and within the wellspring of his resources, draw from those resources. You know he expects me to rest enough, to sleep enough. He expects me to breathe. And he said come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Speaker 2:But how often do pastors feel guilty resting. So the idea that I think we go wrong in is we just feel like we have to endure it as martyrs instead of or coping with it, instead of addressing it and offsetting it and refueling, renewing what God made renewable in our lives. And then Chase to give a short answer to the question there are lots of really dark and bad ways we try to cope, beyond just enduring, and that would be any kind of numbing mechanism or even bad decisions, and I think, in its worst position, some of the failures we read about some of the self-destructive life events that happen in pastors. I think it's almost like a proactive termination. It's like I don't know that I can sustain this life and so I'm going to disqualify myself, and I talk a little bit about that in the book. But there is a better way to do ministry than simply trying to bury how I'm really doing and just try to endure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the book does a good job of you mentioned the very beginning.
Speaker 1:The goal is not to sort of wallow in this depletion or the reality of how hard ministry is, which perhaps I've already asked more questions than are reflected in the book.
Speaker 1:But you do pretty quickly get to this idea of the key being a gospel core. And I was thinking about whenever we find ourselves spiritually depleted from what is the sort of challenging spiritual work. I think there can be a tendency in us to just retreat from all things spiritual that we just want to turn to. There's always a place for just resting or reading something else but at deeper levels of identity and our cravings and desires that we can actually sort of turn away from the resources we even have of faith, because it's those particular faith, spiritual areas that are feeling depleted. You write at one point early in the section on gospel core this is the essence of pastoring, the essence of all church health and the essence of your soul health. Spiritual ministry is at its God formed core, the overflow of a heart well loved by Jesus. Maybe you could unpack a little bit what you mean by gospel core and how you see that as this key to stabilizing us in the midst of ongoing depletion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so essential. I mean, without that we're just doing a job. It's just a gig, you know. I think that there's got to be a reality to the fact that we are living, following walking, with relating to Jesus in personal ways, not just in ministerial ways, and I'm not sure I can personally like totally separate those two. I mean, my ministry is absolutely the overflow of my personal walk with the Lord. I just know that there's been dozens of times in my life where I hit this moment of depletion and it's I believe it's spiritual, I believe it's emotional and psychological and I believe there's physical and physiological components to it. But the, the beginning point of the, of the emergence or the reemergence out of those places For me has been just getting alone with the Lord and I share a little bit of the times in life where that's happened.
Speaker 2:One of the darkest times of my life, I went through a year battle with cancer. I don't talk much about that in the book, but right after the cancer battle is when God, well, he healed me, which was a blessing, but he brought us to to New England from Southern California and I was part of a church of 5000 in Southern California and on a pastoral team and just a thriving, wonderful opportunity. And suddenly, you know, I find myself in gray, cloudy, rainy, snowy, icy, connecticut. I don't know anybody. I've gone from a church of 5000 to a church of 93. I had a staff team that I worked with of more than 35 people and now I'm working alone essentially, and it was. It was really disorienting and I would. I would wake up in the morning and go to work, but I didn't want to go to work because the church building was falling apart and it was dark and kind of musty and lonely. So I ended up finding discovering Dunkin Donuts coffee, which is still my addiction, and I would go to Dunkin Donuts in the morning to study and drink coffee and just sit there alone and chase.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest with you I I'd spend the first hour just kind of pouting and moping and like complaining to God why am I here and what? Where am I in? Who am I in? What's going on?
Speaker 2:Somewhere about an hour in I would get into the scripture, but I wasn't preparing messages, I was just. I just needed to hear from Jesus, I needed to walk with him, and it would be the gospels or Psalms or other places. And in that next hour, in the second hour, god would begin to reorient my perspective, minister to my heart, remind me of his truth, remind me of his call, give me simple steps of obedience, and by my third hour, I was writing a blog post or or preparing a message. Or, yeah, I was. I was experiencing the good news that we call the gospel and it was moving from my head theory knowledge into my heart and it was renewing me and it was changing me. And forgive the long answer, but that's what I mean by a gospel core and by just immersing ourselves in how loved we are and then letting that love overflow.
Speaker 1:That answer can feel so expected that perhaps we we sort of miss it. But I think anybody who's been pastoring long enough that if they really stop and we're honest, I'm shocked about how easy it is to sort of be in all things gospels throughout the week, preaching it, teaching it, you know, walking, giving the advice to people and situations, and yet at the very same time to be losing that sense of Christ's love in our own heart, that gospel core in us. How is it in in, in your opinion, that we lose that, that in the midst of these things, these good news of Christ, that we can lose hold of that good news in our own soul?
Speaker 2:You're asking really good questions and they're deep questions. They're hard to answer quickly, but I think this is really deep in our lives. I think we are chasing after achievement and identity that we think will come with performance, with strategy, with ministry hacks and program solutions. I'm not against all that. We want to implement right solutions at our church and we want to have effective programs that make disciples. The whole first part of this book is about our motivational and aspirational center of our being, our core.
Speaker 2:I think we go wrong when we make outcomes and results what we're most after, instead of Jesus and following Him and obeying Him. I talk about in the book. What is success? How do we define success? If success is a certain size of church or certain metric materially, or a metric numerically, then I'm either setting myself up for self-congratulatory pride or discouraging, depressed disappointment with God, on one of two extremes. If I get what I want, I'm going to be like man. Jesus is lucky to have me, look how great a job I'm doing. If I don't get what I want, I'm going to feel like a failure.
Speaker 2:The fact of the matter is we're just operating with a wrong definition of success. We think that when we get that definition of success, we're going to feel better about ourselves. We're going to have the identity that we're looking for. In reality, if we could change the definition of success into being obedience, nothing more, nothing less obedience, then I can find great delight every single day Personally. I'll just tell you, chase, for me personally, this is like a new crucifixion of my flesh. Every single day I have to die to achievement and to metrics that I want to see, and I have to wake up every day and say, lord, I want to find my deepest joy in obeying you today.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that obedience is ministering to someone that just lost a loved one. Sometimes that obedience is preparing a message. Sometimes that obedience is picking up my five-year-old grandson from school and taking him to 7-Eleven to get a slurpee. Sometimes that obedience is getting eight hours of sleep. But there's great delight and there is immeasurable flourishing, identity in Christ, alone in Christ, and knowing Him and walking with Him and obeying Him and then delighting in whatever he does. That would give me joy as a pastor, whether I pastor 90 or 900 or 9,000. I can be joyful in simple obedience. But I think the identity quest haunts us all and the achievement quest haunts us all. Some of us have even been taught in seminary and Bible college or whatever. That. That's the way to measure our success, and I think it's deadly.
Speaker 1:I think you addressed this a little bit in describing your own approach to these seasons. But for a pastor who's listening, who may be saying I'm in one of those seasons right now, I feel depleted and I realize perhaps I'm not being replenished through Christ, through His love, that's something that that gospel core has maybe begun to drift on me. Do you have some advice on how you reclaim that, how you begin to sense that love of Christ, that good news, again in your own soul?
Speaker 2:Yeah, first thing I would say to that pastor is don't trust your emotions but don't ignore your emotions. In other words, if we put too much trust in our emotions and how we feel in the moment, then we'll all end up quitting at some point. But if we ignore our emotions then we won't really be looking at what's going on in our lives. What changed my perspective on this entirely and I would say this really took a whole new level of effectiveness in my life during COVID. I've been teaching my daily devotional through the Psalms with our church family since COVID began and I was just trying to encourage people. Covid caused us all to really go to doubtful questioning place emotionally and what I discovered is that the Psalms are our followers of God, taking us to the inside of their own narrative and it's sort of like the inside out view, the psychological, emotional, spiritual view, of all of the other narratives of Scripture. In other words, if you take all the other narratives of Scripture and ask yourself what are these followers of God feeling and experiencing through these times, you find all that in the Psalms. What are they thinking?
Speaker 2:And the Psalms are brutal and beautiful and they're raw. They're just so brutally raw and honest in so many ways, and there's lots of Psalms that are just celebratory and worshipful and I understand that, but I'm talking about the personal ones, where someone's crying out to God how long, lord, or why have you cast me away? Or why have you forsaken me? And it hit me. These people don't really believe that God cast them away. They don't really believe he's forsaken them because they're talking to Him and they're writing songs to Him. So what they're really saying is it feels like I've been cast away. It feels like this is happening to me, but I know it hasn't.
Speaker 2:And so what I began to see is that the ancient followers of God, they figured out how to differentiate their feelings from truth, and then they would drag their feelings, kicking and screaming, into the presence of God and lay them out, and then God would begin to do surgery with His truth on those feelings. And I talk a little bit about this in the book. But my advice to that pastor would be understand that your emotions are telling you something, but your emotions are not giving you an overarching or a comprehensive sense of truth. They're just trying to get your attention and you need to take those emotions and put them under the surgical spotlight of Scripture, which is going to be a gospel view, and then you need to let God reframe and reshape those emotions, renew your strength and that's going to lead you to a spiritual, emotional, psychological and physiological or physical cultivation. And we talk about all three layers of that in the book as well.
Speaker 1:Well, towards the middle of the book you get into some of the more practical approaches as well, and I thought one of the ones that was interesting that rarely gets brought up is the idea of caring for your body and your brain. It's Lewis or it's Chesterton, I'm probably well covered by naming both of those. One of those two wrote about when we get to heaven and the biology is perfected for the people that we know, the hormones are all straightened out and the disease is gone. We may actually be surprised by their personalities, and I think what they're getting at is the bodies that we're in the strain on, our hormones, the sickness that we may, even without knowing, carry around has an impact, and so you recognize that a part of this steadiness, this strength for the long term, is taking seriously, as a minister, your body and your mind.
Speaker 2:Huge way more significant than I ever imagined it would be. And I'll tell you what really hit me on this. But first of all, going through cancer, that was its own discovery of how you can be spiritually in a good place but mentally, emotionally, psychologically and physically in a bad place. And we like to draw straight lines from the problem to the spiritual epicenter. And then we want to say prayer and Bible reading fixes everything. And I'm not saying that it doesn't. I'm saying that prayer and Bible reading is going to lead you to obedience, of cultivating your brain and body in some ways that are really really important.
Speaker 2:But moving to Connecticut, so for my first two winters I'd never really spent much time in a winter environment. I mean, we had like three days of winter in Southern California. So suddenly the clouds are low gray, the days are really short and dark. A lot of days there was no sun at all. We would go days or weeks without seeing the sun. The snow, the cold temperature wasn't the problem and the snow wasn't the problem. What was the problem was the long gray days and what I thought was like an optimistic person.
Speaker 2:Suddenly I'm depressed, and it was my second winter that I actually looked at my wife one day and I said I cannot pull out of this funk, this brain fog. What is wrong with me? And Dana has this way of just? God just used her so many times in my life. She looked at me and she said I think it's the weather. And when she said that, like every light bulb in my head lit up and it was like God just gave me a breakthrough and I said, oh, my goodness, you're right.
Speaker 2:And I began to study seasonal affective disorder and began to realize that I wasn't depressed I mean not spiritually, I was just missing sunshine.
Speaker 2:And then I began to realize there's a whole school of thought and study on how to compensate for hormonal chemical balances and other extraneous factors like weather or sleeplessness, or even events that are going on in your life that are just like slow burning, low burning or low grade fevers, you know, but on a psychological or emotional level they're just like a strength leak in your mind and you don't even realize it's happening until you just feel cruddy and you don't have any energy for people and you don't, you know, suddenly you find yourself not even wanting to serve the people you love, and that's just not even.
Speaker 2:You know that's not spiritual. You're thinking, am I just a bad Christian? What's going on here? And in my world that's just become like the warning light on the dashboard saying you don't have got to replenish, you've got to make sure you get some sunshine, vitamin D, exercise, whatever. There's a whole world of studying how to cultivate these things in your brain and body, but for me, I had neglected that aspect of this for a long time and God really gave a breakthrough.
Speaker 1:The third part of the book, you talk more about the actual work of ministry itself. One of the points you make is that this stability in a pastor's life matters because a pastor's soul has an impact on the whole community. I think that's a sobering reminder that my spiritual life actually plays out in the spiritual life of the church as well too. Maybe you could remind us of that sobering truth and the importance of a pastor's soul to the actual work of ministry itself.
Speaker 2:This is I don't think this can be overstated and I didn't have enough time in the book to develop it as much as I hoped to this is huge. I call it culture. What I try to say in the book is that culture is the environment and the relational world in which we live and minister. We are cultivating it, we're leading it, we're shaping it, but we're also participating in it. We are to compare it to breath, we are breathing into it and we're breathing from it. We are contributing to it and we're consuming it at the same time.
Speaker 2:Unavoidably, what I bring into ministry in terms of my attitude, my spirit, my emotional and psychological state of being, my energy level, that is going to unavoidably shape a culture, because I'm the leader. If I'm always negative, always grumpy, always complaining, always murmuring everything stinks, then pretty soon my culture is going to be surrounded, it's going to be filled with grumpy, complaining, frustrated, agitated people who also believe that everything stinks and life is miserable. And then, as a pastor, I'm going to start. I'm going to have another thing to complain about and that is my culture and these people and these people that I work with, this church family. They're all so negative and I really need to look in the mirror, because I get what I am, not what I want, and the equal opposite is true. I just like to say pastors are contagious. We bring a contagion into the room, for good or bad. And if we are cultivating personal health, if we are joyful, if we are walking with Jesus, if we are good news people as the gospel is and tells us we are, then we're going to be able to breathe life. We're going to be life-giving people and just our attitude, just our joy and spirit and health becomes a contagion, if you will, a good contagion. It becomes a good culture that is life-giving to other people, magnetic for other people.
Speaker 2:By the way, people want to bring people to those kinds of environments. It's hard to keep that kind of environment or church from growing because it's healthy. It's like a healthy greenhouse and the return is that I get to breathe life from that culture as well. So it's wonderful and life-giving. It's kind of like a gardener that's cultivating a healthy greenhouse that then gets to enjoy the fruit of the greenhouse too, or a good shepherd that cultivates his sheep to green pastures and still waters and the sheep become healthy and because they're healthy they give back to the shepherd, and the shepherd can be healthy, so we just need to see. My main point on this in the book is don't discount the importance or the impact of your culture both that you have on it. So that's why you should take care of yourself and the impact the culture has then back on you in terms of helping to fuel and renew and sustain your strength.
Speaker 1:We talked at the beginning of our conversation about the tendency of ministry to shift into sort of day by day, the work in front of me, the challenge today. You also recognize there's an importance to a long view of ministry and I think perhaps when we think long view of ministry we think about the church itself and, as we described it, long-term planning or a vision we're trying to achieve. But to look at our own lives and this gospel core, the sort of stability, of strength in my own life, and to begin recognizing the disciplines and the lifestyle that produces that longevity and ministry as the minister, how do you go about that kind of a long view, the kind of long view that looks at your own life and your own stability within the work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that the pace, the sustainable pace concept is just huge and I think the idea that James brings out of you know, if the Lord will, I love. I'm a planner and I mean I've done every kind of time management book and seminar and system and software that I can find. But open-handed planning, surrendered planning, you know, a holy ambition. Some have called it a passion to press forward, press toward the mark, strive together for the faith of the gospel, but in a way that is what I call in the book drafting, or flying in the slipstream of Jesus. So I think the key is I got to make sure I'm staying behind him and not trying to get ahead of him and saying, hey, jesus follow me. And a lot of times at least in my life, my planning has kind of morphed into this is really good and Jesus is good. You know, jesus follow me and I'm going to get this done for you. And real biblical perspective is wait, I'm going to make a plan, but Jesus might rewrite this plan, he might reroute this plan, he might magnify this plan, he might totally shred this plan. Either way, I got to wake up today and follow him. So I think one way I look at it and this may work for some.
Speaker 2:I look at my planning as not planning on how do I get the job done for God, but my plans are more about how do I get out of God's way. In other words, this is a way a pastor might really look at this, not how can I grow by 50 more people, how can we grow by 100 more people. That's not how I look at it. How I look at it is what if God wanted to bring 50 more people to this church? Would we be ready for them? And if we're not ready for them, then number one why would God bring them? But number two why aren't we getting ready for them?
Speaker 2:So the planning then is not how to get 50 more. The planning is how would we care for 50 more if he brought them? So the outcome is totally left up to him. But the plan becomes let's get out of his way, let's not. In case he wants to bring 50 more people, let's not hinder him. And I've found that that's a really healthy way to look at planning. That way, I trust God and I rejoice over whatever the outcomes or whatever the results are, but at the same time, I'm looking for ways that I can follow him more cleanly and carefully and not inhibit him.
Speaker 1:Well, the book we've been talking about is steady strength, reversing ministry's dangerous drift towards depletion. Carrie, I'm particularly appreciative of your 34 years of doing this, the wisdom that comes from having served so long faithfully. I think I've got about 12 years of ministry under my belt, so I'm always grateful to be able to talk with somebody who's just done it faithfully for many more years than I have. I'm curious as well, too. In addition to the ongoing work you're doing with podcasts and YouTube, anything you're working on that's still upcoming.
Speaker 2:You know I have. I mean, I've got a lot of things I want to write about and it's kind of like one project at a time, and especially in relation to Moody, I'm so thankful for the door that got opened with them, and so there's nothing yet in the works, but there's a list of ideas that I really want to develop. I wrote a book about 15 years ago, a little book called Done, and the subtitle is what Most Religions Don't Tell you About the Bible. It's only 100 pages, it's a little mini book and it's just written to be a resource for people who want to share the Gospel.
Speaker 2:And I just did a second edition of that book that I'm going to re-release just on my own, and God's really given that little book a long and far-reaching life, and I'm praying that He'll give the second edition kind of a second wind. Every week I get an email from somebody that's read Done that tells me they trusted Christ because they read the book. It's the kind of book that people can pick up for two or three bucks and give to friends. So God's used it and I'm thankful. So that's really my next thing. I hope that God will use steady strength as this just released recently and that He'll continue to use Done to get the Gospel to people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it sounds great. I look forward to checking it out. And for people, if they want to be able to follow you the work you're doing, is there a place to go to be able to find?
Speaker 2:of course, I'll have links in the show now, but if they want to follow up on the podcast, the YouTube channel or other books, Sure, I have a blog that kind of is the hub of all these links and that's just CariSchmidtcom, and there they can find Bible teaching and my books and other things. And then lately I've really enjoyed this growing in the Gospel YouTube channel, and what I'm doing on that channel is the daily devotion through the Psalms. We're on like our 105th Psalm over the last three years. We're just slow walking through Psalms. It's two or three verses a day and then I'm releasing sermon series from our church on the YouTube channel. As we're recording this, we're starting Revelation 3 this week. So just a variety of Bible teaching that I'm trying to just make available online and I'm finding people are finding it around the world and God's giving it the life he wants it to have. So but the blog and the YouTube channel are probably the two easiest places to find me.
Speaker 1:I'll definitely have links to those in the show note. And again just wanted to say thanks again for a great book. Really enjoyed it. I think it's an important one for so many pastors to pick up and be able to continue learning from. And thanks for the way you've lived it as well too, both given us in writing, but also just in your ministry itself.
Speaker 2:It's a joy and a chase. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope the listeners are encouraged.
Speaker 1:As always, you can find show notes for today's episode by going to pastorridercom. I've got information there about Kerry, as well as his books Steady Strength, and I've also got information on the page about that special promotion that Moody is offering Pastor Rider listeners. You can go to MoodyPublisherscom and, between now and the end of the year, use the special discount code STRENGTH to receive 40% off. A special thanks to Moody for that generosity as well. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did. I'm looking forward to the end of the year being close and a review of my favorite books from the year that's still to come, one of my favorite episodes. So if you haven't already subscribed, make sure you're subscribed to the show, and I look forward to talking again Until next time.
Speaker 2:Bye, bye, bye.