With All Your Strength

Great Christian leaders manage their energy to lead for the long haul

When a scribe approached Jesus and asked Him which commandment was the greatest, Jesus — without hesitation — answered by saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength [emphasis added].”

The physical element of this commandment, linked with the mental and spiritual, demonstrates Jesus’ understanding of this often-overlooked component. A leader’s integrity is not defined by issues of moral character alone, but also by his or her ability to practice self-leadership — a major component of which is physical care and pacing for the long haul.

In the following article, Jack Groppel — whose company, The Human Performance Institute, is dedicated to helping leaders manage their energy (not necessarily their time) — explores the concept of stress and recovery and how this notion’s roots are not only scientific, but biblical.

Sitting at dinner one evening with a group of executives from a Fortune 100 company, I made mention that I had been studying and working with a number of pastors and church leaders. When I explained to them that church leaders were under an incredible amount of stress, they seemed to get it intellectually but it didn’t really connect. They said, “Wait a minute. These church leaders are people of God! Aren’t they supposed to have this ‘life thing’ all together, all the time?”

I explained that after Sunday services, these pastors had Monday de-briefings, counseling sessions, worship team rehearsals, children’s ministry meetings, youth ministry meetings, small group matters, meetings with the elders, and message preparation. I also brought up the fact that a church leader could be on call 24/7. Church leaders can become so “others-focused” that their own self-care is put on the back burner.

It was then that these executives realized in their hearts that a pastor and church leader could actually be under more stress than a Fortune 500 executive! And, it’s possible that concepts like stress and recovery are more foreign to them than ever.

Managing Your Account

Can you be on time for a meeting, get into the meeting, and then not be in the meeting mentally or emotionally? Of course! It happens to all of us. We need to learn how to recapture our energy throughout each day and, as you will see later, it is scriptural that you should do so.

Energy management is probably best explained this way: Every day of your life you write checks against your energy bank account. You give and you give and you give. How are you at depositing energy back into your energy bank account? Usually, people aren’t very good at depositing back into their account. In fact, if you ran your finances the way you run your energy, what kind of shape would you find yourself in financially? Most say they would be bankrupt. So, the recapture of energy makes sense but what do we really know about this concept called “recovery?”

Recovery Mission

Physiologists have studied recovery for years. Everything about life has rhythms or oscillations, as we call them. EKGs from the heart, EEGs from the brain, EMGs from the muscles, sleep cycles, as well as glucose levels all oscillate up and down. Nothing in life is linear except how we start living our lives. We become linear in how we face life’s trials every day.

Each morning we wake up and we just go! Meeting after meeting, phone call after phone call, session after session; it just goes all day long. We walk into our homes at night and we are fried. We get into our favorite comfy chair, grab the remote and just click away. We don’t care what is actually on the TV; we only care what else might be on. We might even fall asleep in the chair. Our family might “give up on us” figuratively and just go to bed. We wake up in the middle of the night with a sore neck because of the chair, go to bed, wake up and start this same cycle tomorrow.

In the physical realm, we have long known that, if we exercise a muscle today, we must give that muscle recovery and should not stress it again for at least 48 hours. The muscle needs the recovery time for growth to occur. My business partner, Jim Loehr (whose life work has been dedicated to this model of energy management), brought this to life in an overall practical way in the 1980s. He studied the in-between point time of the world’s best tennis players.

At the world class level of tennis, the athletes’ heart rates can get anywhere from 170 to more than 200 beats per minute. They have 25 seconds to recover in between the points. Additionally, studies have determined that during an entire tennis match, a player actually “plays” tennis 35 percent of the time. That means that 65 percent of the time the player is not hitting tennis balls, but resting. However, the issue is this: How are they using the “recovery” time in a “productive” way? Jim found that after every point ended, the great performers went through four stages: A positive physical response (to image the correction of an error); a relaxation/recovery phase; a preparation phase; and a stage of pre-performance rituals. Jim discovered something that is truly a paradigm shift in today’s world: Down time is not wasted time, but can actually improve your productivity.

How does this relate to you? Scientifically, we know that stress is the stimulus for growth and that recovery is when you grow. If you have no recovery, you have no growth. And, that is why most people are getting weaker by the day! They are not recapturing energy and, if they do, it is an attitude of trying to fit it in. “I’ll sleep when I can, eat when I can, exercise when I can, connect with my friends when I can, take up a hobby someday, and get more involved in my community when I can.” The cycle just goes on and on. It’s like the person who says, “My life will improve when I win the lottery.” Obviously, this won’t work, so let’s look at a model of performance that is beyond reproach.

Stressed Into Shape

In basic training in the military, new recruits are put under incredible stress. Upon arrival at basic training, they are immediately told to stand at attention, they march every day, they exercise every day and their drill instructor often gets in their face. This creates great physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual stress. But, from the scientific perspective of stress and recovery, none of those things toughens them yet! The stress is just the stimulus for growth. Recovery is when growth occurs. These military recruits are put on an enforced schedule of trained recovery. They are told when to go to sleep, when to wake up, and they eat breakfast everyday.

When was the last time you had a structured time of going to sleep, waking up, and ensuring that you ate breakfast and other meals regularly? The military figured it out. They put new recruits under incredible world class stress and then train them in rituals of recovery. They are not allowed to say, “But, sergeant, I’m right in the middle of my new book” when going to sleep, or that they sleep in while at home, or that both parents were church leaders and they never had time for breakfast.

As a church leader, in all likelihood,you already have world class stress in your life. How are you doing with recovery? Do you have the structure to recapture energy or do you just recover energy when you can?

I worked with a pastor not too long ago who described his life as “non-stop and go, go, go.” He even got to the point where he said to me, “I am in ministry to serve God. My wife knew what she was getting into. My kids know my job and the pressure I’m under. My life is about sacrifice and dying to self.” I agree with him but, I do not believe that God wants him to die in his ministry!

The Bible Tells Me So

J. Oswald Sanders wrote about a Scottish minister named Robert Murray McCheyne who died at the early age of 29. He was a workaholic who neglected his health and completely burned himself out doing ministry. On his deathbed, McCheyne uttered these words: “The Lord gave me a horse to ride and a message to deliver. Alas, I have killed the horse and I cannot deliver the message.”

Is it scriptural that you should take care yourself? In Exodus 18, Jethro approaches his son-in-law, Moses, about how Moses is working. Bear in mind that Jethro is concerned about how his daughter is holding up under the pressure of Moses’ ministry.

The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?”

Moses answered him, “Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and laws.”

Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Exodus 18: 13-18

And, what of the life of Jesus? Often in the gospels, Jesus stopped what He was doing to go off by Himself and pray. Usually, this was either before a big event or immediately after a big event, like feeding the 5,000. Even in the Great Commandment, Jesus tells us to “… love your neighbor as yourself ...” (Mark 12:31). Have you been showing love to yourself and those closest to you by just pushing the envelope every day and not taking care of yourself?

I’ve also worked with those who will say, “I have no choice. It is what it is. And, this is how I have to live my life.” In Romans 12:2, the Apostle Paul tells us, “Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by a renewing of your mind ...” The pattern you might be in can stop right now! The items in the sidebar on this page can provide you with a quick reference in some of the things you can begin to do immediately.

In summary, God did not design us to work ourselves to death! He designed us to grow in Him, and to “… fan into flame the gift of God …” (2 Timothy 1:6). To live this life to its fullest, we must pay attention to His teachings in this area and to what scientists have discovered about how to manage your energy. Church leaders have an incredible responsibility and mandate to shepherd God’s people. This can only be done if they first learn to take care of themselves.

My prayers are with you on your very important mission!