Tonight I did the unthinkable....I left a high school event early. We're at the point in our ministry where we're now staffed where it makes that possible and also where my ministry responsibilities make it necessary. Our senior pastor's wife asked me today if I felt like I'm burning the candle at both ends. Honestly, my pace lately has been unsustainable. It's usually been my goal to be out with church stuff no more than a couple nights a week. That part hasn't been too bad. But, school's also been keeping a decent amount of pressure on me. Friday night was my first night just completely at home with Nicole since the previous Tuesday (not the "three days before" Tuesday, but the "ten days before" Tuesday).

Anyways, back to my original thought....I'm not scared of leaving an event early because it'll fall apart. I trust Jon to totally take care of stuff. He's proven himself to be totally capable. I think I'm more scared because I have some sort of self-pressure to be there (and probably to feel needed).

So, I'm working on all this still. I know that I have total people-pleasing tendencies. I know that I tend to take on too much. I know that I'm very driven to "succeed" and don't want to settle for second best.

Reality - at this point in our ministry if I don't release ministry and let some stuff go, we'll bottleneck and I'll burn out. My friend Josh has blogged about the whole burn-out thing that he's been experiencing.....reality is I'm probably just a couple steps away from there if I don't make some changes.

Labels: youth ministry

This entry was posted by Mike Lovato, on Sunday, October 08, 2006. You can leave your response.