S3 Ep77: Why do we resist self-care: Insights from Dr. Chris Adams

Ever found yourself struggling to balance your personal life with your spiritual responsibilities? Dr. Chris Adams and I delve into it in this podcast episode, probing the root cause of our resistance to self-care and the tendency to segregate spirituality. We shed light on the traps of unrealistic expectations and how they unknowingly drag us into an unhealthy lifestyle. Don't miss out as we unfold the importance of self-care in maintaining spiritual stamina and fully embracing God's plan for us.

In the final part of our conversation, we dive deeper into the essence of health for ministry leaders. We reflect on how the pursuit of spiritual growth often comes at the expense of our personhood. Tune in as we discuss the role of the Holy Spirit in leading us toward repentance without self-abuse and the impact of work-life balance on our effectiveness in serving the kingdom of God. In this exploration of sustainability and self-care in ministry, we emphasize kindness towards oneself and listening more attentively to God's guidance. 

Don't miss this insightful discussion aimed at inspiring a more sustainable approach in your ministry. Discover how self-care practices can strengthen your spiritual journey and bring you closer to God's plan for you.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey there, Margie Bryce here bringing you the Krabby Pastor podcast, and I don't think you're going to be too surprised to know that it's too easy today to become the Krabby Pastor. Our time together will give you food for thought to help you be the ministry leader fully surrendered to God's purposes and living into whatever it takes to get you there and keep you there. So we're talking about sustainability in ministry and we are back for another episode of the Krabby Pastor podcast, and I'm advocating here for healthy self-care so that you can go the distance with God and live into everything that God has for you and not miss a moment of the adventure, not having to experience burnout and although God always does take the challenging parts of our lives and make something good happen. But I'm here again with.

Speaker 1: 1:11

Dr Chris Adams here. Reverend Dr Chris Adams, to be specific, and we're going to talk some more about the resistance piece to self-care and I always liken this part to where the Apostle Paul says and this is the bad, reverend Dr Bryce, paraphrase here of that but I don't know why I do that, I don't want to be doing that and I know the things that I should be doing but I'm not doing that, and what is up with all of that? So that's kind of the topic of this episode, chris. So what is your experience with some of that?

Speaker 2: 1:51

to get us started, yeah, such a great question, and one of the benefits of researching clergy well-being and spending as much time as I do with pastors and doing things like this podcast and thank you, Margie, again for the opportunity is to remind myself of some things that I need to remember, because I've bumped up against the resistance in myself and I hear that from pastors all the time too and I think maybe there are layers to that, One of which is maybe just the way that, as human beings and maybe this is our fallenness, our fallen nature we sort of chafe against discipline In general, and so living into a rhythm of spiritual disciplines can be challenging for any of us, just as a believer, as a disciple, and in a lot of ways, what we're talking about is pastors living a disciplined life.

Speaker 2: 2:49

That, maybe, is what we're called to first and foremost With clergy in particular. What we find from a research perspective is that having a really one-dimensional view of what it means to be a person, or a one-dimensional theological anthropology the academic word for that can lead us to compartmentalize spirituality. So let me unpack what I mean by that. If we see spirituality as its own sort of component to life over here in this compartment, we can tend to then say something like okay, well, it doesn't matter how I'm doing physically, how my body's doing, how I'm doing relationally, emotionally, vocationally, financially, because I'm spiritually great, whatever that means.

Speaker 2: 3:42

As if spiritual formation doesn't include the whole person, and I would contend that the biblical picture old and New Testament actually is holistic.

Speaker 2: 3:53

For example here Paul say we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, which is our spiritual act of worship, and Jesus was bodily crucified and bodily resurrected and there are implications to that theologically that we need to think about for all of life. And so if we compartmentalize spirituality, then we will kind of minimize or dismiss a lot of these aspects of self care that we find tend to be issues for clergy. So physical well-being, emotional well-being, as a group of people tend to not be so good, and there are lots of reasons for that that are inherent in the job, but some of those have to do with our own lack of paying attention to the whole self as an act of worship and as something that God wants to transform in all of our lives, in every area.

Speaker 1: 4:51

But do you think that pastors, like all people because this is what some of what my doctoral research found unsurprisingly that when it comes to wanting to be an authentic representation of Jesus, when it comes to wanting to be known as my identity is as a servant of Christ you still have to go through this participation phase where the rubber really meets the road to get to the authentic representation. You have to be a little tried and tested and pastors resist that. Just like everybody else, I don't want to do the hard homework. I just want to sit here with my book and my Bible and my theology books and I'll spend this time in prayer and basically we, like everybody else on the planet, we like to hang where we are the most comfortable.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Yeah, yeah For sure. Well said, and some of that too, maybe. I love the line from one of Eugene Peterson's books and I'm forgetting which book it is but he talks about, you know, having all this seminary education and all these years of study as a pastor and believe the phrase he uses I traffic and unlived truth. In other words, he knows a lot more in his head than he actually can fully implement in his life in any given moment. And so there's this knowledge action gap that I think all of us in ministry leadership have to some extent, and what we do with that gap makes all the difference. So what we can do is have unrealistically high expectations for ourselves because we want to sort of justify to ourselves or congregation or to God this calling that is on our lives.

Speaker 2: 6:45

It is mysterious after all, I mean it's you know. Most pastors would say I don't know how I ended up getting called to this. There's mystery in that. I'm living into that mystery. But we can sort of try to justify our paycheck or justify the calling by trying to live up to some ideal that we have for ourselves that may not actually be something that's God breathed or got informed, or biblical.

Speaker 2: 7:13

It's more pressure we're putting on ourselves and certainly there's no shortage of expectations from other people on how we should be doing our lives and our jobs. But the expectations pastors have on themselves are often the most difficult to get in with.

Speaker 2: 7:28

They can really fuel that living out of an unhealthy place that would resist conversations about pace, about Sabbath, about sustainability, about a healthy theology of suffering, a healthy theology of risk, if you will, in ministry, and it really, in my mind, comes back to a stewardship kind of conversation. How are you stewarding resources, including yourself? That greatest thing God's given you for ministry is who you are, and we want to last be as effective in ministry for as long as possible. It's easy just to lose perspective on that.

Speaker 1: 8:12

It's easy to hang around with a lot of our commentaries and theology books, but, like you just pointed out, though, that we live with, you take in all this information, and it doesn't get lived out because we take in a lot of information. And so that kind of just says to me we don't have to be disciplined there.

Speaker 2: 8:37

Yes and have our own goals for our own formation and well-being that were accountable to somewhere. And I was also thinking, margie, that some of the research I'm in a part of where pastors and how they responded to our surveys and their medical information and so forth. Basically they were saying to us I physically and healthily have what's called metabolic syndrome, which is common among clergy. It's high blood pressure, high blood sugar, low good cholesterol, high blood pressure, those kinds of things. And I'm clinically depressed the way we would diagnose clinical depression which is probably at least as high among clergy as the general population, if not higher. And yet my spiritual vitality is high and none of that really impacts my ministry at all.

Speaker 2: 9:29

It was basically what they were saying to us, which is a major disconnect, right, I mean, how is that even possible that that's not impacting your leadership or the effectiveness or quality of your ministry? But what pastors wrestle with so often is it feels selfish or self-indulgent to engage in self-care in some way. When I'm going to suggest to you, I mean not only do we see that to your listeners and not only do we see that modeled in the life of Jesus, but we also know from research on work that there's a point of diminishing returns with work. So we get to a certain point after 40, 50, 60 hour week where we can push through and keep going, but our effectiveness, our creativity, our productivity actually diminishes exponentially after a certain point. And if we instead took a break and went and rested, played, did things that were restorative, renewing, recreational, that's holy spirit.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Anytime you're talking about creation, you bet recreation that there's a holy spirit connection there exactly right and and God designed us for those periods of rest and renewal, even in the Genesis narrative. There there is work going on before the fall in the Genesis narrative, if you read carefully.

Speaker 2: 10:57

And yet God still Calling us to rhythms of of work and rest, action and contemplation and Christian spirituality, and if we do that, we actually come back to that same work with a much more creativity, much more productivity, much more effectiveness. So Taking care of ourselves is actually doing something for everybody else in our lives Our spouse our children our grandchildren, our friends, our congregation. It isn't a spiritual discipline, it's an active worship.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Absolutely, and I'm thinking about even, like sermon construction and my background, because I was second career to ministry, I was heavily writing based. I did a lot of marketing communications work, would write feature stories and this kind of thing, and and even good writing coaches will tell you, if you get to the place where you know it's not flowing anymore, go take a walk. Yeah, that's right set it aside for the next date and not always, you know, and that was a podcast is how to avoid the Saturday night sermon shuffle.

Speaker 1: 12:05

That's right too many do. It's kind of like don't do that, because what you produce isn't gonna be yes, really good quality.

Speaker 2: 12:14

That's right, and and the importance of play, to do something that You'd enjoy doing just for this year. Enjoyment of the activity, like literally like a child at play, where you can lose yourself in the activity Because it's fun and it takes your full attention to do it, meaning you can't also be mentally working writing a sermon, creating that board meeting agenda in your head, crafting an email in your head, which we can tend to do while we're supposedly Practicing Sabbath. We're actually mentally working.

Speaker 2: 12:48

But if you do something, to take your full attention, then you can't also be mentally working and you also take a mental break as well as a physical break from industry work and to do that on a regular basis, at least 20 minutes to half hour a week, whatever that thing is that. For me, one of one of those things is playing tennis or pickleball, as it takes my full attention to do it. I'm getting exercise, I'm doing it with someone else and I just feel like a different person afterward and it helps me.

Speaker 2: 13:17

Detach. There's a holy detachment that is so important. That actually enables us to be much more effective when we are one of those hours we are working.

Speaker 1: 13:28

Right, I used to make fun of people who had craft rooms. I really did. I didn't get it until my last pastoral thing and I had developed this interest in glass, and so there was a store called all that glass. So I Toddled in there just to see what that was about and there was actually a stained glass class and I'm thinking I've never done anything like this.

Speaker 1: 13:55

I should do this. Well, you know, eight years later and I have the beast of a workshop space with glass saws and Fantastic. You know, it's like a, it's a whole thing and I sell it, you know, here and there, and but, you know, think about what, what I you know when I'm cutting glass, when I am. You know it's. My youngest son came in one day and said you know your handle on glass there. I'm like well, yeah, but you know, I know what I'm doing with.

Speaker 1: 14:27

Yeah, but I found, I found that the restful part was that I Could only think about what I was doing. Yes, I could not think about anything else, and that is a type of rest for your brain but and it's creative it's using your hands.

Speaker 2: 14:45

You can see what you finished when you're done. There are all kinds of inherently sort of therapeutic things about that and that kind of thing. Whatever that is for your listeners, they need to Identify that or remember that and just practice that on a regular basis. It's just incredibly important.

Speaker 1: 15:06

So you're saying the resistance piece comes into the fact that we really don't Want to be disciplined people.

Speaker 2: 15:15

I think that's part of it. I mean, maybe that just Is preaching to myself, but yeah, there's something in us that kind of resists that even the work discipline has a lot of negative connotations. So some people like to talk about spiritual practices. Maybe that has a little more positive connotation or something. But what? What are the things that we can do? And and the research.

Speaker 2: 15:39

The encouraging part of the research is you don't have to all of a sudden become, you know, john Wesley and get up at three in the morning and pray for three hours and you know, do massive, radical Practices like that, starting small but being frequent and consistent, really does make a difference. So, for example, just five minutes of silence a day in the middle of the day, if you're not practicing any kind of silence it's done every day, day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out Actually makes a significant difference over time. There's a positive accumulation, the same way we talked about in our previous episode about burnout accumulating. Positive things can also accumulate, and so it's the frequent, consistent, small practices done throughout the day that over time really do make a big difference. They add up.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Mm-hmm. For sure, and I like to quote author James clear, who talks a lot about building and sustaining habits and he said just a little bit with a 1% increase Over time yields big results, but if you actually end up doing nothing, you, you start losing ground.

Speaker 2: 16:58

That's exactly right. So doing doing nothing is making a choice.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Well, it's a choice to go backwards. Really, I mean, as scary as that is, I mean I wish I could tell my 40-year-old self you need to be doing like some yoga, pilates and other kinds of things besides getting on your bike and riding like a fiend you know To try to sew good stuff into yourself. What would you say is the biggest resistance to self-care?

Speaker 2: 17:32

Yeah, I think it's a maybe what I might call a false guilt. That can you know again, not having thought all the way through a really robust theology of suffering and sacrifice right On some level living out some sort of self-imposed martyrdom kind of complex, either because of underdeveloped theology or also psychological reasons. I was listening to a lecture not too long ago by a church historian on the first century church in martyrdom and he made this really interesting point.

Speaker 2: 18:13

He was interesting to me, I think, relevant to this conversation, that in the first century you sort of became Christian famous in the ancient world if you were martyred, because a lot of people were martyred, right, the persecution of the Christian faith by the Roman Empire and so forth, and even as we do this podcast, there are places in the world where people's lives are demanded of them because of their faith in Christ, and so that is a real thing. However, the church had this problem where people were sort of seeking after martyrdom in ways that were more pseudo-martyrdom than the authentic thing. So they had to put criteria in place for what was a true martyr and what was not, and the first criteria was that the person was not seeking to become a martyr.

Speaker 1: 19:01

So why would people seek to do that?

Speaker 2: 19:05

I think, because it was notoriety, it was fame, or it was seen as the ultimate expression of my faith in Christ or something, when what I think we see in scripture is that, as we talked about in our last episode, jesus already died for the church. And so if we really believe what God accomplished in the cross and resurrection of Christ was sufficient, we don't need to add ourselves to that martyrdom list and we want to be as effective as long as possible so that for the sake of the gospel, the sake of the church and God's kingdom in the world and if it comes to it and our life is demanded of us, then that may happen. And yet I don't see disciples seeking that. They're trying to stay alive as long as possible and be strategic even in that, and yet also not deny the gospel or not minimize their faith if it comes to that moment of decisiveness where their life is demanded of them. But we don't see them going around seeking that either.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Well, in some cases, ministry leaders sacrifice their personhood and just so into the spiritual. You know, I'm praying, I'm reading my Bible, I'm doing all, I'm sewing to my soul heavily, but I'm ignoring that I have a physical body that needs attention and an emotional state that needs attention. Why?

Speaker 2: 20:43

do we do that.

Speaker 2: 20:45

Well, I love what Pete Scazero says. We're familiar with emotionally healthy spirituality, emotionally healthy discipleship, that we can find ourselves doing more for God than our being with God can sustain. And so we're busy doing the work of God and forget about our relationship with the Lord of the work in a holistic sense. And so the truth is, if we don't pay attention holistically at some point, we aren't effective to anybody because our physical health is so impaired, our emotional health, our relational health, is so impaired, because it's been neglected, that we're actually not effective anymore for the kingdom One of the things. My grandfather, who had a heart attack young and then later died young of a heart attack. But he said to my dad laying in the hospital I don't feel like I'm any good to the kingdom laying flat on my back like this, and I really he was thinking about what could I have done differently to pace myself, to care for myself, to avoid this, so that he could have continued longer in pastoral ministry.

Speaker 1: 21:57

I like what you said earlier about it being a stewardship issue, and it's a stewardship of yourself. But you have to then recognize that there is a spiritual peace and there is a bodily peace.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Yes.

Speaker 1: 22:12

I spelt P-I-E-C-E in case somebody's thinking the other way but to be attended to and to be a steward of.

Speaker 2: 22:24

Yes, absolutely, and the spiritual formation includes all of that, including our bodies.

Speaker 1: 22:35

For sure, for sure. Well, any parting thoughts that you'd like to add in?

Speaker 2: 22:42

I think maybe, as a word of encouragement, the thing I might say to your listeners is no-transcript, to also be be gentle with yourself, even as you listen to a podcast like this and Might feel the Holy Spirit nudging you and convicting you, and the conviction of the Holy Spirit is always a gentle, redemptive conviction. It's not a let me beat myself up even more for not doing this the way I was supposed to. That's certainly not well. I think you or I would want for people listening to this, but it's. Let me Confess what I need to confess. I'll allow God to to shape and form and mold, but it's it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance and and so we don't need to be stuck in a place of shame or self-abuse which Can often be a pattern for leaders, because we were just so hard on ourselves and to practice self-compassion In self-acceptance. I think are really important pieces of what I would consider is a biblical version of self-esteem. It's not being self-centered or selfish, is it's being?

Speaker 1: 23:56

and that's PE, a CE this time.

Speaker 2: 24:00

That's right being in a place of, of, of knowing ourselves well and really receiving God's grace and love at a deep level.

Speaker 1: 24:11

Which sets us free. Absolutely and my call to Offer, you know, a better and deeper look at self-care has more to do with not wanting to lump another thing or more things on to people, but maybe to say to them Maybe some of your time could be Donated to this.

Speaker 2: 24:39

That's right.

Speaker 1: 24:40

What could you, you know, give to helping to nurture your body? Sustain, I mean our, but we're finite. Yes we are finite, there are limits to what we can do and, yeah, there's some seasons where you're a little more pedal to the metal than others. I mean certainly maybe during Christmas and Easter and all the more reasons that you know you need to make sure that you are Taking care of yourself in some fashion.

Speaker 2: 25:12

Yes, the other piece I might add to that is I. I find myself In some ways wrestling with the language of self-care, because that can unintentionally imply that all that needs to happen is Pastors need to take better care of themselves and in most cases most of us do in some area. But I've seen that sort of weaponized against pastors in a way where really it's the.

Speaker 2: 25:39

It's the congregational system, or even there's a nominational system that needs some attention and intervention. It's the environment that's being created for a pastor to live and serve in that also needs to pay attention to certain things what what kind of environments being created for a person to Flourish or not within that as a leader, and it really is both.

Speaker 2: 26:02

It's. It's the system, as well as our own Pace and care of ourselves, and so we're just starting to research more. What does that look like when that's healthy? What are the factors and conditions and in a best practices for congregations to to make the life of the leader as sustainable as possible? Mm-hmm. Enjoy filled as possible.

Speaker 1: 26:27

And I have some inklings then that if you start talking with Millennials and younger, they have much more intentional work-life balance mindset that they are bringing with them into the church environment and speaking up. And I mean, I was second career to ministry, so I would go into a situation, you know, if I was the associate and I did this in one instance where I said so to the senior pastor okay, what day is your Sabbath day?

Speaker 1: 27:08

And he just like laughed and I thought, what Are we not living this, are we not? And so you watch that and you see pastors not taking vacations and somehow feeling like they get a spiritual badge of courage or something. And I try, boy, I can't offer my best to God that way. I have to go at, like you said, pace, and I talk in workshops about pace and load. But I also started a workshop with one thing what is one thing that you're going to ask to be attentive to? That God is going to show you.

Speaker 2: 27:49

Why don't you?

Speaker 1: 27:50

just work on this a little bit. Yep so if you're going to, you know, look at exercise. Nobody's saying you have to do a marathon. I mean, I do have friends that do that. I think that's crazy, but good for them.

Speaker 2: 28:02

Right.

Speaker 1: 28:03

No, if you're doing not much, then maybe getting out for a 20 minute walk not even at a brisk pace, but just getting out and moving is something. So what is one thing that God is asking you to pay attention to?

Speaker 2: 28:17

And start there. Start small, do it consistently frequently and go from there To put a fine point on it.

Speaker 2: 28:25

I was speaking at a denominational gathering of a sister denomination to the church of Nazarene and one of the key leaders stood up and said it was several thousand of their pastors stood up and said to neglect that kind of things. We're talking about, margie, is a form of clergy misconduct. It's a really strong statement coming from a leader and yet you know, when you look at the story after story of pastors engaging in some form of misconduct or having to leave ministry career prematurely and you do sort of the after the fact autopsy, if you will, on the what led to that?

Speaker 2: 29:06

in every single case, it's neglecting the kinds of things we're talking about.

Speaker 1: 29:10

Sure, sure, and my cousin is a Greek Orthodox priest. I have a very spiritual heritage. And he was just saying I said something about dessert and he said, you know, I was looking at my overall health and I thought what is one thing, one thing I can do? And he said I decided I was giving up sweets. I kind of thought that was all over the top, but hey, I'm a heat, that's what I can do, this. So what is that? Is the challenge? That's right, one thing you could start to we knit in, and then maybe in another six months or whatever, what is something else that you can, and start to just knit that into your way of being.

Speaker 1: 29:54

So again that you can go the distance with whatever God has for you.

Speaker 2: 30:00

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:01

Amen, amen. Well, I think I'm going to leave that there, and thanks again so much, chris, for coming by, for sharing some really great wisdom with us. I really appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 30:14

I'm honored to do it my pleasure. Thanks, Margie.

Speaker 1: 30:17

Okay, the Krabby Pastor podcast is brought to you by Bryce Coaching and I connect with ministry leaders and help them when they are stuck, help them when they need to know what their next steps are, and just a journey with them, which is a type of self care, actually. But this podcast is also brought to you by Bryce Glass Art. You can find that on Facebook. So when I am doing this podcast, it is paid for and sponsored by the Glass articles that I make and sell and the coaching that I do, and it is my privilege to call you to radical self care so that you can go the distance with God.

Speaker 1: 31:08

Hey, thanks for listening. It is my deep desire and passion to champion issues of sustainability in ministry and for your life, so I am here to help. I stepped back from pastoral ministry and I feel called to help ministry leaders create and cultivate sustainability in their lives so that they can go the distance with God and whatever plans that God has for you. I would love to help, I would consider it an honor and, in all things, make sure you connect to these sustainability practices so that you don't become the Krabby pastor.