The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Idolatry Hiding in Your Calendar
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com
Be sure to subscribe to The Healthy Church Staff Podcast wherever you regularly listen to podcasts.
- - - - -
Is Your Church Hiring?
If your church is searching for a new staff member, reach out to Todd for a conversation on how he might be able to help.
Are You Looking for a New Ministry Role?
If you are open to a new church role in the next few months, add your free resume and profile at ChemistryStaffing.com.
When Work Starts Owning You
SPEAKER_00You're responding to texts that you're kids. Again, you skip lunch three times this week because the ministry really needed it. Your spouse asked you if you're coming to bed and you said, in a minute, honey. Here's the thing that you're not saying. You feel guilty when you're not working. Alright, this one kind of hits home for me, and we're gonna talk about it today. Somehow, God's disappointed in you when you rest. I was reading something recently from Chuck Lawless that really stopped me cold. He said, it isn't about time management or about productivity hacks. It's about worship and how we handle our worship with the Heavenly Father. And that's what we're going to talk about today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over ChemistryStaffing.com, and your host right here, obviously,
Golden Calendars And Rest Guilt
SPEAKER_00on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Let's talk about this a little bit because dedication might not be exactly what we think it is. What we're calling dedication might actually be something a little bit darker. Okay, most of us would never intentionally build a golden calf, but we've built golden calendars instead. And here's how you can't not work without feeling anxious. Rest really doesn't feel holy, it feels wasteful. Like I I should be doing something. And man, this has been the story of my life for the last 30 years, probably. I just feel like I constantly have to be moving, like I constantly have to figure out the next task, need to finish that one so I can move on to the next one. I always tell myself, hey, once I get this done, I can take a little bit of a break. It's never happened up until about the last 30 days, when I've really determined that and discovered through my study of scripture that really rest is a part of our worship. Matter of fact, Jesus rested not when things got accomplished, but right in the middle of things. He took time to
A Vacation Without The Laptop
SPEAKER_00rest. Rest doesn't feel holy for a lot of us though, and myself included. And I'm learning that I just took a vacation, just got back from vacation about a week ago, and I was gone. I was on a cruise ship with my wife for seven days. And you know what? I didn't, I took my laptop with me, and I didn't open it once. And it was awesome. It's the first time I probably probably in 10 years that I've gone on vacation and not opened my laptop. And you know what? It felt refreshing and freeing. And it I was totally able to in that week kind of get away from that whole idea that rest doesn't feel holy, it feels wasteful. I was measuring my worth by my productivity. Every week I had a list of things that needed to be done. And deep down, I believe that chemistry staffing, my work at chemistry staffing, just can't survive without me and without me being on game and building stuff and relating to the team. And I determined that's not really dedication, that's almost like playing God. My work is important. It's absolutely important, and God puts great value in my work, but he also wants me to rest. So here's what makes this kind of almost insidious at times. It it starts so innocently, it creeps up on us. You say yes because you love people, you work late, because the mission matters, you skip your Sabbath
When Ministry Becomes Your God
SPEAKER_00one week because it's just a crazy season. If I just get this done, then I can take some extra time off later and it never ever happens. Somewhere along the way, the work, if we're honest about it, stops being for God, and the work starts being your God. You're not serving out of love anymore. You're serving almost out of fear. Fear that if you slow down, something will fall apart. Fear that if you're not indispensable, you're not valuable. I know I've lived that. And the scariest part, everybody's praising you for it. Look how committed he is. Look, he never stops with what he's doing. He's always coming up with new things. He's always producing. Meanwhile, you just feel empty. You feel kind of a little bit burned out, maybe. Your family feels a little bit abandoned. You can't remember the last time you really experienced joy in ministry. And I know your heart is pure. You're not trying to replace God, you're trying to serve him. But here's where we miss. And this is why we desperately, this is why the reset was so important for me in the past month. Idolatry isn't always about wrong things. Sometimes it's about good things that are just in the wrong place. And that busyness that I'm talking about that maybe you're experiencing right now is one of the most socially acceptable idols in the church. So
The Real Day Off Gut Check
SPEAKER_00here's the gut check. What would happen if you took a real day off this week? Not a catch-up on admin day off, not a take those calls from a select group of people, but a real day off. Phone on silent, no ministry talk, actually rest day off. If that question makes you panic, and over 30 days ago, it made me panic, that's your answer. Because God doesn't want you or need you to be exhausted to accomplish his mission. He needs you to be surrendered, and that is a huge difference. Surrendered leaders work hard, but from rest, not for rest. Okay? They give out of fullness, not out of emptiness, and they can trust that God's bigger than their calendar. Here's what Chuck Lawless said that really got to me. He said, Workalis workaholism costs you intimacy with God. It costs you your family, it costs you your health, your joy, your perspective, and eventually it costs you the very ministry that you're trying to prospect. I've seen this so many times. Burned-out leaders don't build healthy churches, they build exhausted
What Your Team Learns From You
SPEAKER_00churches. So, what does this actually look like in practice? If you can't rest, then you're you're not giving your staff permission to rest either. If you're not just modeling the work ethic, you're modeling worship. And right now you might be teaching them to worship the wrong thing. So when you text somebody on your team or a volunteer tonight at 10 p.m., you're saying, hey, this is normal. And if you expect a reply back before 10:30, you're really out of whack. If you skip your day off, you're saying, hey, rest is optional. Your staff's gonna see that. When you brag about being crazy busy, you're making an idol out of exhaustion. And every single thing that you do, your team is watching. And they're learning that God values their output more than their soul. And that's a lie, really, from the pit of hell. And it's destroying churches from the inside out. Here's your bottom line for today. Take some time to think about this. Business. Busyness is not a badge of honor, it's a failure to trust God. So this week, I want you to do something that's almost
Take A Sabbath And Name The Idol
SPEAKER_00gonna feel maybe a little bit rebellious. And it's something that shouldn't feel rebellious. You'd actually do it every single week. This week I want you to do this, okay? You have my permission. Take a full day off. Not a half day. Not I'll just check my email once. Take a real Sabbath day off and pay attention to what you feel. And if you feel guilt or anxiety or fear or any of those things, don't ignore it. Confess that. Because that feeling, that right there is your idol talking. And it's time to start tearing it down. Listen, God didn't call you to run yourself into the ground. He called you to lead from a place of rest and dependence on him. So let's lot, let's stop letting our calendars become our gods. That's it for today. This made a huge difference, I'm telling you, in my life in the past, I would say 30 to 60 days. It's given me uh a much better attitude. It's helped me to schedule my meetings better, it's helped me to take some time off, it's helped me to not constantly be busy and trying to check things off a list. It's helped me to know that God has put me and wired me in a specific way and put me in a specific place that everything that I
Lead From Rest And Close
SPEAKER_00do, even my rest, can be an act of worship to him. That's it for today. My name is Todd, and I hope you'll join me again here on the Healthy Church Death Podcast. Maybe you're brand new, this is your first time you've listened to the podcast. Make sure you subscribe wherever you're listening. And join me here tomorrow. We're here every weekday, Monday through Friday, right here on the Healthy Church Death. Have a great day.
