Michael Smith: Finding Balance in Ministry

Music. And we talk about that and we try and resource clergy for that.

It's something that in a lot of things related to our souls, we won't get the lesson of it until we walk through it deeply ourselves. You know, we can go to all the trainings about self-care and and some of it is you can nod your head and realize, yeah, I have to do this or I have to be better about this. Or someone else might give their witness or testimony towards how, you know, they faced burnout and came out of burnout.

But until you kind of go through it, you know, this is something that my words may not be able to help someone in the midst of it. If anything, I can try and say, hey, here's a signpost or a road sign that you're kind of heading this direction. And I understand why you're heading in that direction. And by the way, I went that direction too. But there is an exit ramp if you want. And I can't steer you down that exit ramp. That's something you have to do.

Let me welcome you to Mindful Leader. This is Dennis Shaw, and I am the host of Mindful Leader. I am a retired elder in the United Methodist Church. My home conference is the Mountain Sky Conference. And the purpose of the podcast is to talk to leaders at the local church, both lay and clergy, about little tidbits, little nuggets of things that they might need, might like to have, might have been thinking about, but they'd like to have unpacked a little bit for them.

And today my guest is Michael Smith, who I met about six years ago in Colorado. I'll get to that in a second. And I'll let him introduce himself. But Michael is an elder in the Greater New Jersey Conference. Do I have all the adjectives and nouns in the right order there? Michael, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about who Michael Smith is. Well, thank you, Dennis.

It's a pleasure to have this conversation with you. And I've enjoyed listening to the podcast and getting to get some wisdom from some of the other guests. So it's a privilege to be here again, Michael Smith. I serve in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference. I'm an elder. I've been serving in pastoral ministry for about 20 years. I've also been married about 20 years, or it'll be 20 years. And I have three children, 14, 12, and 10, and a dog and some fish.

And so this is our family continues to grow with pets. But yeah, we're settling in. We just started a new appointment as of July, as in our United Methodist itinerary system, some people might be aware of. Kind of settling into a new church and new routines and new schools and new family rhythms. So it's been an adventure. I was in the United States Army for 23 years. And so the itinerancy system of the United Methodist Church and the United States Army are very similar. Very similar.

Somebody calls you up and makes a suggestion that you might want to go somewhere. And I sort of enjoyed that. I got to see a lot of the world. I met Michael about six years ago in the Mountain Sky Conference. He had a one-year interlude, a one-year appointment in the Mountain Sky Conference where he was in charge of congregational development. Would that be a good phrase of how you saw your role, congregational development?

Yeah, it was congregational and community vitality. So it was very much about, you know, helping to vitalize or revitalize current congregations, as well as starting new communities of faith. Yeah. And he introduced me to a book by one of the Coveys. That's a leadership people out of Utah. And I think the title of it was something like the four disciplines of execution or something like that. And what a great book. And I just, I had never heard of the book and he suggested it to me.

And it sort of is along the lines of the theory behind the book is that essentially you're going to make some changes. You have to budget the time changes. You have to plan to make the changes. You can't let the whirlwind of life dominate everything and all of a sudden look up at the end of the year and realize all I've done is what was in my inbox. And so that was sort of good. I've loved the book. I'll have to come back someday and unpack a little bit more.

It was a tremendous gift. So thank you, Michael, for having done that. I mean, look, anytime we can share resources with one another, it's a benefit. And of course, I didn't write the book, so it's good just to pass along. I was at a meeting the other day where I made a quote. It was a quote out of. This book, what is it? Cloud Cuckoo Land. And the quote is something like, if all I know is what I have read, I know nothing. And it was electric. The 20 people in the room just went, what?

That's a great quote. And I go like, it's not original with me. And they went like, well, you own it now. But yeah. So you own four disciplines of execution, as far as I'm concerned. When I was talking with Michael about what to potentially discuss here. I'm going to call it soul care. We may want to call it something else. He's nodding his head. You guys can't see him. He's nodding his head there. But it's soul care, self-care.

And I thought Michael had some thoughts that were valuable to both clergy and laity on that. And to me, it seemed like this issue of trying to get a good balance of being a father, a pastor, which is his vocation, husband, having some time for himself, that kind of thing. And I just thought it would be excellent for him to potentially share a little bit of how he got to that and how he does that, Michael. So thank you.

Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that there's going to be different rhythms and seasons of life where we're good at this and not so good at it. And certainly coming up on the 20-year mark, I've been doing some reflection. And of course, starting a new appointment, it gives you opportunities to think about how you do what you do. And are there any changes you would like to make? But I remember being a younger clergy person. So right now, I'm 45, about to turn 46 years old.

And so I basically received my call to ministry in college. It was kind of later in the college experience, which I wish it was a little earlier so that I could have adjusted my major, not midway through my junior year. But I finished with a music degree and I knew I wanted to go to seminary right after college. So essentially did seminary right after school and then started in the local church.

And I remember being the only clergy person on the district, let alone maybe a handful in the actual conference in their 20s, let alone thirties or maybe young forties. We were a few of us that were kind of coming up in the annual conference that either knew each other from school or just from other outside things to where we would try to. You know, being a cohort or support each other as sort of young clergy.

And I remember going to the clergy district days of learning or other resourcing type models for clergy. And certainly one of the key themes was self-care and, you know, being young and full of excitement and energy. It was one of those things where I knew, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do that. I take a day off and I do my things. And I, of course, keep up my spiritual disciplines. But I don't know if it really kind of within the first couple of years really registered in the way that it needed to.

And so one of my areas of focus really, as I'm trying to support younger clergy, now that I'm kind of in that middler range, I guess, where I feel like I'm still young enough and have a lot of energy, but I don't qualify for the annual conferences, young clergy initiatives anymore. You know, once you hit that age, you're kicked out of the group.

But, you know, whenever I see a younger clergy, I can see a little bit of myself in them, in the way that, the way I used to talk about church, the way I used to talk about the things I was learning, the things I was reading. I had a conversation yesterday with a seminarian, actually, and we were talking about books and just, you know, little things like that, just some, some, you know, what are you reading? And, and seminarian said, I don't read fiction.

And I said, I remember those days where it was all. And I said, look, you're in seminary, right? I get it. You've got a lot of stuff that you have to read, you know, but eventually let me encourage you to read some things other than seminary textbooks. And obviously going into the local church with a theological background. Seminary doesn't always necessarily give you the training for leadership or management of churches.

So around that time too, it seems one of the most published books was about leadership, church leadership, or a lot of church conferences were pulling in non-church leaders and using their wisdom from the business world. Yeah, good to great Jim Collins. Yeah. Yes. So I was consuming that as a young clergy person.

And so I would be going to, you know, conference or district resourcing days and kind of getting a type of education that I felt wasn't as relevant, only to then realize that if I needed to learn how to do this stuff, I had to do it on my own in the way of I would, I filled my library with management books and leadership books. And eventually his podcast started to come out, consuming podcasts and things like that. And it was all really focused towards that.

And again, some of it was very much like I didn't. I didn't spend as much time in soul care in the way of my identity in soul care. So while I was keeping up with my prayer life and studying scriptures, doing the means of grace in our Wesleyan tradition, doing the things that would feed my soul, a lot of my identity as a clergy person wasn't wrapped up in things other than being a clergy person. And so I found myself having all this information, having all of these books, having all of these.

Items to add to my resume, but I also realized I didn't have any hobbies, and I also didn't have a lot of friends outside of my church network. And I think a combination of that and time and stress kind of led me to the place of self-reflection to say, okay, my church is going well, I'm doing all the things I need to do, but I'm not enjoying this.

Or I think if you talk with clergy and at least the clergy that I talk with that are either around my age or have got a certain amount of years in, it doesn't take long into the conversation to then realize that a lot. Of clergy people are potentially working on exit plans and not like two years from retirement. This is, they've got 15, 20 plus more years before they can retire, but they don't know if they're going to make it to that age.

And they're trying to figure out, is there something else that I can do? And with the level of education that clergy in the United Methodist Church have with a bachelor, required bachelors and required masters for ordination, a lot of those degrees are in fields that serve you well, and what most clergy people think is only church world. And so a lot of folks are starting to see, am I stuck in this vocation? Again, it's not necessarily about their calling or their passion.

It might be some burnout. And again, this is not saying that people aren't practicing self-care. It's the true, as you talked about, soul care and identity. Understanding, am I only this person known as pastor? I've done everything in my education, everything in my day-to-day. You know, yeah, I know I'm a parent or I'm a friend or I'm a son or a daughter or whatever ways that we can try and identify ourselves.

But what are the things that I really want to talk with other clergy and younger clergy about to say that you can start to explore to take care of who you are? Where you went there with that, one of the most powerful things I heard in seminary, it's not an original with me, was this passage out of Genesis 3. We understand God to be all-knowing. And the fancy 25-cent word for that, I think, is omniscient. God is omniscient. God's all-knowing.

And then somehow we treat this question that God has in the Garden of Eden back to Adam and Eve, where are you?

As if god is trying to inquire where they might be the question really isn't where are you tell me where you are i i can't see you kind of thing god's omniscient god knows where they are, the question really sometimes it ought to be interpreted is do you know where you are where adam eve where where do you know where you are where are you and to me and then what i heard after that was and the rest of the bible is a commentary helping trying to help you answer that question

so where are you and i was like wow that is so powerful and and going back to your your observation. I would say that sometimes where we are is we get ourselves so task-oriented, so I didn't realize you were a musician. I'm a musician. I'm a lapsed musician. I'm a recovering musician. For those of you that don't know it, musicians historically over-function. We're taught to over-function. Can you imagine a musical performance that is 97% right, 96% right?

You want the standard to be much, much higher than that. So your musicians are shooting for a standard of 100% right, at least as it relates to various elements and maybe not necessarily some of the others, but there's just certain things. And so we over-function. And so I think probably we get into a new position and over-functioning is part of who we are. And maybe at some point, in your case, 20 years in, you're stepping back and going, Michael, where are you? Is that a fair statement?

Oh, I think, yeah, I think spot on for sure. I like the idea of your mentioning of overfunctioning because as a young clergy, that overfunctioning served me well in my vocation. And everything for me was up and to the right on the chart. I was growing my church. I was making new disciples. I was doing everything that, you know, I was sort of fulfilling my calling and my, you know, my thought of it. Right. But also it was making my boss happy of, you know, good reports, good, good numbers.

It's good to see that, you know, you're, you're, you're checking all the boxes. And in some ways that has brought some level of fulfillment, but ultimately not the most level or the deepest soul care level of fulfillment. And part of this is just time. And I think that's where, you know, I don't fault anyone. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to fault myself back then, but when I talk, no guilt zone. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that I, but when I talk with folks now and I'm taught, you know, let's say we go to a clergy breakfast and I see some, the way we talk about our churches. And if the only thing you're saying about your church is based upon the numbers or based upon the growth of the stress of trying to get it to do this or that, there's a part of me that is like, oh yeah, I remember that. I've been there.

But also trying to say, if you keep pushing like this, you're not going to be able to, you're going to be figuring out an exit plan in the next 10 years.

I may do a show on it sometime. I have three core principles of leadership at the local church. And my first one is love your congregation where they are. It doesn't mean you're planning on leaving them there. It's not like that. But so often we come in, and I think the more mature clergy don't do this, but sometimes we come in and we're going to fix them. We're going to move them from where they are because where they are must be bad.

And maybe the district superintendent and the Methodist systems, maybe somebody told us they were bad. They needed to be fixed. And that's one of the worst approaches you can take in a local church. You need to sort of start out with this, to me, Jesus-like thing. I mean, my impression of Jesus with the disciples is that they were the duh disciples on many occasions.

But at the same level, Jesus, most of the time, seemed to love them, care for them, and nurture them into being better, being capable of being sent out, being apostles. And I found that to be part of it. If we walk in and we're going to fix them, I tremble when I hear that, when I hear people saying, I'm here. Rarely do people walk in and say, I'm here to fix you, but they certainly use words that suggest it. And people resent that real quickly.

And Dennis, I tell you, I was a fixer. I was a builder and a fixer. And that's, that was my personality style of leadership, not in the way of, I wouldn't vocally say what's your, your bad and I'm going to make it better. You know, based upon everything I was reading with management and business books, getting better systems, more effective, you know, everything, you know, I could do that stuff.

And to some degree, at great cost, either to congregational life, or even in my own personal life to where people would say, yeah, we're growing, or yes, we went from, you know, X to Y to z and but it's the either the pace of change or not understanding institutional memory or just that feeling of you know i don't want things to be fixed it's fine the way it is and i would see no we can get better at this we can get better and

then yeah some ways that that's what that's what I am still really good at, but it may not be the best. Yeah. And that is all what you and I are doing here is sort of establishing a background, sort of a canvas upon which we're going to put a different picture. Because what struck me in that conversation you and I had a month ago was this balance that you have, and I say trying, my impression is you're working at it.

But it was a balance, and I think if I recall right, it was this combination of your vocational. Needs as a pastor, but it was also your role as a father, your role as a husband, and then also doing things that nurture and feed Michael, sort of these four legs, and maybe there's five or six, but certainly there's at least the four. I was struck with that in our conversation, which is why I wanted to perhaps go here. So how do you go about that, and what are you learning from that process?

Well, I think for sure from a, you know, perspective of a parent picking off what we were talking about with the fixing language, that doesn't necessarily work, does it? And so having, you know, my children grow up and realizing who they are and their unique personalities and identities and, you know, that kind of obviously, you know, that was not my model as a parent. And so I started to realize the way that I'm, you know, truly loving my children, how do I love my congregation?

And like, why am I trying to build and fix the congregation? And but then I'm treating my kids as they're perfect the way that they are. And so that kind of helped me view my congregation a little bit differently. Yeah. From, you know, my spouse being the greatest sort of, you know, accountability partner, you know, I can't get up there on Sunday morning and say, I'm doing this or doing that, you know, because she will be sitting right there saying, no, you're not.

You know or yeah and so there's also one of the phrases we've adopted especially when our kids were very little. So, you know, I would say probably like six, four, and two. The church I was serving had a lot of meetings, a lot of evening meetings, and almost four or five nights a week. It was just a lot. And she came across, I think, I can't remember who originally said it, but at this point, it's kind of become our motto, and it's disappointing the right people.

Yeah so at the end of the day i had to make some decisions along with my partner related to my job that am i disappointing the right people i'm going to be disappointing somebody but for because of that overachiever you know high functioning you know yeah i can do five meet yeah i can five nights a week meetings yeah yeah boom we'll knock this stuff out and i'd be leaving my family in a tough situation of, you know, whether it was a partner with three young children or,

you know, just the stress of that. And at the end of the day, I realized I was disappointing the wrong people and I needed to disappoint the right people. So we had conversations with the leaders of the church that said, look, you know, I need to care for my family a little bit better here. So we got to think of a better way to administrate this church life. And let me encourage all of you, as well as church leaders that you all don't want to be here four or five nights a week either.

Or if we're spending so much time having these meetings, we really try to shift it more towards how do we not administrate and live more as disciples? So how can we free up time for people to be in community and to develop friendships with one another and discipleship from a congregational life perspective versus having another finance meeting or having another administrative-type meeting. And that was, I think, beneficial not only in my family life, but also for church life.

You know, the personal soul care related to saying no. Not just, you know, disappointing the right people, but also saying no to a model or a pattern of behavior that was, you know, one-way focused. As clergy, giving everything that we have to our congregation and letting all of the things that we do kind of run through a funnel towards the pastor.

So if I listen to a song or I play music or I read a poem or I read a, you know, it's becomes easy sermon illustration and finding things in my life that really was taking my energy and attention and time that really wasn't transferable to the pulpit. Now, obviously, you make a lot of good connections with things, but really, this is going to be a thing for me.

This is going to be a book that I read that, honestly, you can't probably find a good sermon illustration about, you know, I'm reading a book about dragons or something like that you know yeah another one was developing a friendship with someone that just didn't care that i was a pastor that that literally never came to the church i'm firing up the branding iron that i have right now that has an h on it and we're gonna we're gonna brand you h for a heretic here.

I'm teasing, of course, but yeah, there's, it's, yeah, you are, you're dead on with that. Well, and I think, you know, being, starting in ministry young, going into a congregation or going into a town, right, that most of the time is not where you came from or where you know, most of the people that you start to get to know are your church members.

And or, you know, you start to develop relationships with people in the community and it quickly becomes your identity, of course, is that you are the pastor of this church in this town. And in some ways, you know, I used to always make the joke how George Costanza from Seinfeld liked to tell people that he was an architect.

And so whenever we'd go to the business, you know, meeting or chamber of commerce or just, you know, meeting someone at a coffee shop and they'd say inevitably, oh, what do you do? I would sometimes literally say, I'm an architect. Because the second they found out, oh, you're a pastor? Oh, did I just curse? Did I just, you know, I'd be talking with someone and they'd say a few interesting words. And then eventually it would come up that, oh yeah, yeah, Michael's a pastor.

And then the person would say, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Yeah. So some of that was after years and years and years of having this, who am I other than just this role that I serve to the community? I am more than my vocation. Yes. And as much as I think we talk about that and we try and resource clergy for that, it's something that in a lot of things related to our souls, we won't get the lesson of it until we walk through it deeply ourselves.

You know, we can go to all the trainings about self-care and, and some of it is you, you can nod your head and realize, yeah, I have to do this or I have to be better about this. Or someone else might give their witness or testimony towards how, you know, they faced burnout and came out of burnout. But until you kind of go through it, you know, this is something that my words may not be able to help someone in the midst of it.

If anything, I can try and say, hey, here's a signpost or a road sign that you're kind of heading this direction. And I understand why you're heading in that direction. And by the way, I went in that direction, too. But there is an exit ramp if you want. And I can't steer you down that exit ramp.

That's something you have to do. But here's a couple of ways that whenever I start to get too focused on this or I'm not taking care of my soul, here are a couple of things that I do that help me, whether that is with hobbies or not just physical exercise, but physical exercise that you enjoy doing. If you can combine that. One of the things I started doing this past year was pickleball.

Yeah. and not only is that fun exercise but it's also i like playing it but even i got that extra bonus feature to where when i show up i'm just michael yeah you know and it's not like i gotta be the chaplain of the pickleball league yeah i can just be there now do people find out that i am a clergy person? Yes. You know, is there that awkward moment where they're like, oh, did I curse in the middle of a game? Yes, you did. And you know what? I don't care. You know what? I might have too.

You know, let's just be honest. There's been a few words that can only be communicated effectively with a curse word sometimes.

You know, so it's, it's finding things like that, that I would encourage people to look after. Going back to part of what you were driving that, though. I mean, part of the self-care I've done over the last six months has been trying to exercise more discipline with myself over what I eat, how much I exercise, those kinds of things. And one of the quotes that I've gotten is we build our habits, then our habits build us.

And I have, I didn't hear you use the word habits, but I wonder, like, for example, pickleball, you have to do that with somebody. My guess is you, you build it into a schedule. Is that like on Thursday morning at nine o'clock where I'm going to meet on the pickleball? I mean, I'm sort of asking a question. Is that sort of how you're doing it is by trying to build some habits into your life?

Is that for sure? For sure. And things like that to where, you know, it isn't just I'm going to go play because you need other people to play. There's certain, you know, leagues and it's all free and there's apps, whether it's meetup or team reach or basically it's, you know, it's a very fast growing sport. So whatever town you're in, there probably is some kind of a nearby league where it's just people that want to play and they figure out we play at these certain times.

And the reason they schedule it is because, depending on how many courts there are, you want to cap the number. You know, there might be like 36 because of the number of courts. And then anything above 36 people, you have to be on a wait list. But either way, you know, you need at least to play doubles. You need four people. So you can look at the different time slots for signups. And if there's, you know, two people signed up, you know, you need to find two

more in order to get a game. Or, you know, if there's, you know, 28 people signed up, you're going to be constantly playing with a lot of different folks. And so it is a very communal and you see it too, within a lot of good practices of community. I mean, these little pickleball groups are, they're doing fundraisers for town stuff or kids with cancer. They're doing like, you know, local animal shelter, like fundraisers.

It's for them it's not just friendship but in some ways it's very missional living yeah. For what they're passionate about. And they said, hey, I get to play pickleball and I give 10 bucks to play. And that goes to help a animal shelter that fills up faster than anything else. Yeah. And so, yeah, there is within my daily or excuse me, weekly routine, certain days that I know I can go play. So I, and, and I don't touch it.

Nothing touches that. I was a marathoner at one time and I was also a musician and what they did. And I am a musician. What those have in common is that you have to build the habit of practice into your routine of your life. You just don't decide to go run the Boston Marathon. You just don't decide to play a Brahms clarinet sonata. And you have to work at that. You have to practice it and have to build in the habits so that you will be capable of doing that at the right point in time.

And part of the building of those habits is you have to learn when to say yes, and you have to learn when to say no. You talked about your wife and disappointing people. I want to say it's Linsky and Heifetz in adaptive leadership, but I could be wrong. But part of leadership is about disappointing people at a rate which they can absorb. That may be a paraphrase of something they've said. But I would think saying no to people at a rate at which they can absorb is part of it.

So I would think part of what you've had to learn how to do here is to differentiate yes and no. And I mean, one of the great quotes I've heard is, no is a complete sentence. And unfortunately... In the clergy world, because we sometimes fancy, we don't see ourselves as this, but others watching us see us this. We become quivering masses of availability. And so we're perfectly willing to get to a yes, even though we may start off with no. And so we want people to talk us into a yes.

But sometimes no means no. No is a complete sentence. No. And my guess is in the 20-year mark, You've sort of learned how to do that in a way that doesn't annoy the person who's having to listen to that. Is that fair? Right. That is, by the way, let me just say the quivering mass of availability. That is the gold gem of our conversation right now. What a phrase. It's not original with me. I didn't come up with it. I know, but I've never heard it before, and that's going to stick with me.

The quivering mass of availability. I thought you and I used that a month ago when we talked. Maybe, maybe, but it's resonating big time today for me. So thank you. Maybe I'll use that in my little teaser at the beginning. Yeah, I think part of it is, it's also, right, there's no judgment or shame for this. But yeah, there are moments where because I've done it wrong, I have that experience to be able to say, hey, that doesn't,

I've tried that. it doesn't work that well for me anymore. I got to try something different. Yeah. I want to go back to when you talked about, did you do the Boston marathon? I did. I did. Okay. So, so when you ran the Boston marathon and you, you told people that you ran the Boston marathon, yeah. Did people ask if you want it? No. But, but no, the expectation, right. When you ran it was not to, to win it. It was to finish it, right? It was to qualify for it and to finish it. That's right.

It's a qualifying marathon, which means you, at certain age levels, have to run certain times. You can't just simply decide to run the Boston Marathon. You decide, but you also have to have a qualifying threshold. To be an elder in the United Methodist Church, you have to have a master's in something. Generally, it's divinity. Right. So to qualify for the Boston Marathon, I had to run a 3.10 or less marathon at my age, which is about a 7.05, 7.06 pace, 26 miles.

Right. The soul care, it's about finishing. Yeah. And so much of what we think about within our clergy world is winning.

And and but nobody nobody's ever going to ask you know hey i just ran a marathon and they're going to say did you win it yeah but that's the way we think that's good truth you know as for clergy people soul cares about finishing and as much as you're wired to say i'm going to win this thing you really you really you're in this for the long haul you're not in there for your first sunday to preach the world's best sermon and then to drop the mic and

then leave you're gonna be about improving you're gonna be about caring for people where they are and as you grow with them and the truth is you need to grow yeah and that's good the person that i am as we get ready to celebrate our you know 20th wedding anniversary this summer that i'm different and you know my spouse partner will tell you that, that, you know, not only am I older, but, but we changed together.

And, and I think that's the important thing is to realize that you're going to go through changes. So as much as I can say to like a younger clergy person, this, where you are right now may not be the end all be all that. Yeah. You're, you're sprinting right now and you're, You're the rabbit right now, but the rabbit doesn't win the race, right? So find the things. Even as much as it feels detrimental to your job right now, find the things that are for you.

Because I remember when people would say, you need to say no, or you need to do this, or you need to do that. And I just remember thinking, how can I do that? I can't do that and be an effective pastor. And what I think we've talked about today is to say, you can't be an effective pastor in the long term without these things. Yeah. I don't necessarily, you can take this word that I'm about to use and you can make it a sinful thing.

But there can be a virtue and a little bit of selfishness. We talk so much about selfless service, and I'm into selfless service. I mean, I spent almost 30 years associated with the military, 20 years in the clergy role.

Selfless service is part of who i who i who i was or who i am but at the same time you have to also have a certain element of selfishness at least appropriate selfishness that is that is about taking care of michael taking care of dennis taking care of yourself so that you don't you don't you, balance is i think the way we started the conversation and i think we're going to sort to semi wrap up today anyway with it but i i think balance is an important element

of that and also within that balance it's what works for michael what works for michael may not work for dennis what works for dennis may not make work for michael what works for michael and or dennis may not work for suzy you have to figure out what a little to me part of this is figuring out what works for you. And that's with intentional overtones of David Foster Wallace and This Is Water, which I'll come back to another day. I'll put a link in the show notes about it.

But sometimes the world we swim in, we don't even recognize what it is. That's his point. This is water. People don't recognize they're in water. That's his whole point in the essay. This has been good. This has been real good thank you yeah it's been good for me too I, I'm going to invite you back. Is that, is that, is that, I'm getting a head nod, people. So Michael says it is, this is good. Now, I promise people that I won't use anything from this, from the video without their perspective.

Michael is dressed real casual. Let me, let me emphasize to you. He's real casual. I promise I won't use this picture and the, and the run up and the, and the little box for the, this, this one, but you look, look real casual. Michael, is there anything I didn't ask or we did talk about that you want to put a little cherry on the top of the whipped cream that will help us out a little bit there? I just want to leave us with a reminder of no shame, no guilt, no judgment.

If you find yourself in a place of, you know, burnout or you're finding your place of just you're burning the candle at both ends, this isn't to judge or to shame.

This is a way of trying to say, hey, let's take care of ourselves and let's take care of one another. And so as much as I could say, hey, here's some of my experience. I don't want to judge other people or make them feel shame or guilt about that stuff. So, cause again, part of the soul work is you need to do it in your way and in your own time.

So balance is a hard thing. So the truth is if something's on, on fire that you need to go put out, you may not have that time to meditate and pray when there's a fire right next to you that you got to put out.

We get that or as the scripture would say that you know we're not supposed to work on the sabbath but if the ox is in the ditch you you pull the ox from the ditch and so that's part of it is to say hey make sure you're taking your sabbath but we also know that if the ox is in the ditch that's what you got to do yeah let's just not you know there's no perfect way to be balanced it's going to be an ebb and flow and so whether you're ebbing or you're flowing grace to you because

it's a journey and no judgment or shame on this but find find something that helps you understand who you are and something you love to do yeah and if it helps you become a better pastor great but more so it should help you become just a better person we'll come back to this another day michael i'm out to you, you came to me as a God moment.

I was looking around, thinking about who I could talk to, and I said, you know, you haven't talked to Michael in three or four years since he went back to New Jersey. Reach out to Michael. I bet he's got some things that he could say. And lo and behold, in our first conversation about a month ago, I came away, yep, there's things Michael has got to say to us. So thank you very much. Well, thank you, Dennis. It's always a treat and joy to talk with you. Appreciate you.

This has been Mindful Leader. I hope that if you found something in this particular podcast that was of value to you potentially, you would forward this on. You would share it with someone else at your local church. This podcast is available, of course, on its main platform of Podbean, which is where it will be stored initially. But it's also available on Apple. It's also available on Spotify and a lot of other platforms out there.

Just typing in the words mindful leader dennis shaw it should pop up and i haven't found one yet that it doesn't it doesn't come up on eventually so don't hesitate to share it with other people and and if you're over on apple and you say i'd like to give dennis four stars or three stars don't don't please don't do that but if you want to give me five stars wow i appreciate that a great deal. But one to grow on with four or three. Pretend I didn't ask you to give me any starts. Michael, again,

so thank you very much for having said yes. I look forward to coming back to you again sometime this particular year. Are you a Philly fan or a Mets fan? Philly, all the way. Philly. Okay. Sigh. Super Bowl champ. I'm a Braves fan. And friends don't let friends work through for the Phillies, but we'll see.

It'll be a good season. for sure. It's going to be good for all two, for those of you that are not baseball fans, the number two, three, and four ranked teams in the power rating before the season starts with no injuries are the Phillies at number two, the Braves at number three, and the Mets at number four. Those three teams play each other all season long. So, yeah. And we both don't like the Mets, And we both don't like the mess.

Again, thank you very much for having listened to Mindful Leader and look forward to sharing with you another day. God's blessings with you. Bye-bye. Music.