Done With Clergy Life Balance

by Mark Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

It’s just never worked very well for me. Sure, as a clergy coach and trainer I’ve delivered numerous workshops on Life Balance for clergy and church staff. I’ve written articles and shared Pinnacle’s Life Balance Wheel. But all along, there’s been this nagging thought in the back of my mind… Is pursuing a well-balanced, perfectly proportioned life, what we are about? The Life Balance concept has a contribution to make to a well-formed life, yet it’s not a compelling goal to pursue, in my experience.

Looking back, many of the peak experiences in ministry can’t be described as “balanced.” Serving as the pastor for a week of youth camp, starting a new church, renewing a declining church, walking with families during a crisis, a sermon burning in your bones, genuinely engaging Holy Week with committed disciples of Jesus… none of these include much life balance. Sometimes, it’s the most unbalanced experiences wherein we do our best ministry and experience the deepest vocational satisfaction. Imagining the twelve disciples who roamed the countryside, villages, and cities with Jesus… I wonder what they would have thought when their leadership coach suggested greater life balance.

Even more, practically speaking, how many of our weeks during a given year would we describe as “balanced?” Perhaps we can make it happen two weeks, maybe three or four per year.

At this point in life, I’m not buying into the assumption that life balance is what equips us to thrive as human beings and more specifically as clergy and church staff persons. Those seasons in life where I’ve had a good run of life balance, I’ve not found the balance to be overly helpful. I suspect life balance is a helpful concept and approach…in the service of something larger.

So, here’s another approach and mindset I find far more attractive... Clergy Life Thriving.

Thriving as people, as disciples of Jesus, and as clergy and church staff… this is a life worth pursuing. Life balance may happen at times, but an overly strong commitment to life balance my derail our thriving at times. Thriving people have the sense they are living into their best selves, growing in love, grace, and contribution to God’s mission. Thriving people sense they are in sync with God’s energy flowing through them and this world. Sometimes they find themselves enjoying sabbath, times of exceptional rest and renewal. Other times they are stretched beyond what they believed possible, discovering the sustaining power of God. Over a lifetime perhaps their lives are balanced, but rarely so season to season. Even more, thriving is a subset, an outcome if you will, of another larger pursuit… living in the Way of Jesus (saving that for another article).

So, live a balanced life if it serves you well, leading to the best possible expression of yourself as clergy or church staff person. Others of us are not there anymore, wanting to thrive as people and ministers.

NOTE – Next week’s article is Four Indicators You Are Thriving In Ministry .