Balance and Alignment: Pastors need this too!

Balance and Alignment are essential preventive maintenance for our cars. It is clear that potholes and bumps in the roads knock our cars out of alignment and wear out our tires quickly if we don’t correct the misalignment.

Lesson: if you don’t do the maintenance, you find out the meaning of the famous FRAM oil filter commercial, “You can pay me now, or pay me later!”

Pastors and ministers speeding through the bumpy roads of ministry find plenty of dead ends, hazards, bumps and potholes that can knock them out of balance and alignment. We take our cars to mechanics for regular maintenance.  But I ask, “What is a pastor to do when his life and ministry are out of balance and alignment?” How do you keep yourselves out of Clergatory?

As a new grad student at Biola’s extension campus in Chiang Mai, Thailand our professor, Tom Steffen, opened our class with the statement, “I’m not here to give you the answers. I am here to teach you how to ask the right questions.” 

My first two questions:  (i.e. I’m not gonna give you answers—just questions)

Which pastors or ministers out there have a solution that works for you? 

What’s your story with balance and alignment (that you are willing to share)?