The marathon of ministry

“Give him some water,” were the last words I uttered before hitting a tree—arms and legs flailing in spasmodic discord. I ended up in the emergency room of Guam Memorial Hospital, a victim of dehydration and poor training at the finish of the 1974 Guam Marathon. I had been thinking of another runner’s need for water but had powered on to the finish line of the grueling 42.1-kilometer (26.2-mile) course without addressing my own liquid debt. Pain is a great teacher and often a lifesaver. Thankfully, the tree at the finish line ended my course toward possible premature death.

I have found that life and ministry (like a marathon) require pacing, intake, ongoing training, and the skill to process the pain of transitions. A long-distance runner uses interval training to develop endurance and quick recovery time by varying the intensity of a workout. He also runs with others. This is also true in ministry. After 33 years on the field as a church planter, field leader, and clergy care giver, I have learned the wisdom of ongoing training, varied pace, and running with the pack. Below, I describe two transitions that have helped me to develop resilience in ministry.

Terry Walling in his book Stuck! talks about transitions and our need to face the pain that they can bring. Walling teaches that the transition process guides us into intimacy with God and gives us an expanded capacity for receiving more of God’s power. He also shows that it can finally produce in us a capacity to influence others.¹

Transition #1:

From burned-out church planter to thriving field leader (1999–2004)

I had a vision to start a church in Toda, Saitama Prefecture, which only had one church, despite being a growing city of 95,000 people and 15 minutes by train from Ikebukuro. We launched Saikyo Hope Chapel in 1997, with a great church-planting team and a growing nucleus. Then in February 1999, the owner of the bread shop next to our rented church facility committed suicide. We had befriended him, but now he was gone. His death greatly saddened me. A seeker asked me why I had not led him to Christ.

That cold February evening became the beginning of a chilling dark night of my soul. Over the next few years, our nucleus of leaders shrunk as home assignments, job changes, and callings to other churches took people away. I was alone. In 2002, I became the field leader of our mission. I was soon experiencing full-blown burnout as, over time, the demands on my life far exceeded my resources to handle them. Thankfully, I was able to ask a church-planting network to “adopt” our fledging congregation. In 2003, the network provided a Japanese pastor and the “orphan congregation” was now in a healthy family of churches.

With the church in good hands, I began to deal with my issues of weak boundaries and people pleasing. By listening to God, my family, and trusted men who created a safe place for me, I learned to slow my pace. I took the Sonship course, which focuses on gospel-centered living, and later became certified as a ministry coach with Creative Results Management. I found a mentor, read books on how to lead, and invested in our mission leadership team. In addition, I helped missionaries launch new ministries and developed a strategic plan for our mission.

Transition #2:

From isolated missionary-in-residence to connected ministry director (2008–2011)

From 2008 to 2010, I served as a missionary-in-residence at Gordon College on Boston’s north shore. I felt isolated, being away from my usual ministry context. It was like starting all over again in a place I had never lived before, with people I had never met. Furthermore, it was the first time I’d worked with college students.

While at Gordon, I mentored student leaders and took groups on mission trips to Memphis, Tennessee. An extended period of time away from my Japan ministry context, it was a chance to slow down, reflect, and assess the previous term of ministry. I focused more on family and my need to develop healthy boundaries to discover my own identity. Counseling and spiritual direction helped heal my soul and gave me the courage to dream of a preferred future. I took the bold step of starting a doctoral program at Bethel University. It was ten years since I’d finished seminary and studying was hard work. My first class featured a battery of assessment tests and an assignment to take a hard look at my life in ministry. It was painfully insightful as it highlighted my need to verbalize my emotions and helped me look at unhealthy patterns and habits.

We returned to Japan in the summer of 2010, and a year later I launched Three Stream Ministries (TSM) to come alongside pastoral couples to listen together to what God might be saying to them. The desire of TSM was for these couples to be whole, holy, and missional. And its focus was to help ministers of the gospel have healthy souls that integrate the will, mind, and body.² TSM includes practical exercises in self-care, spiritual formation, and leadership development. In launching a new ministry, I was again alone, but not for long: I developed an advisory team and found several mentors and a spiritual director.

The triple disaster of March 2011 took my small vision and greatly expanded it. I had planned to serve two couples a year for two years, but instead in 2011–2012, I worked with CRASH Japan, Churches Helping Churches, and Asian Access to serve 100 pastors and their families. I had greatly underestimated the need for clergy care. My wife and I moved to Sendai in 2013, to be centrally located in Tohoku. I partnered with a Japanese pastor with a similar vision and used my seminary training to help the Disaster Response Church Network (DRCnet) train disaster-response chaplains to provide emotional and spiritual care to disaster survivors and caregivers.

In recent days, God has invited me into the trust-building journey of waiting upon him with hope, instead of plowing ahead with my own schedule of events. I planned three retreats for pastor couples in Tohoku for 2016, but we had to cancel the first two due to a lack of registrants. In place of these, God has given me opportunities to share in denominational settings and to serve in Kumamoto, Kyushu during the summer.

Have you run any more marathons, you ask? I revisited the Guam Marathon in 1980. Better trained and well-hydrated, I not only finished the race, but came in first place. While I run much slower now, I have run the Sendai half-marathon two years in a row.

1. Terry Walling, Stuck! Navigating the Transitions of Life and Leadership (Wheaton, IL: ChurchSmart Resources, 2008), 17.
2. John Ortberg, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), 43.
Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/josiahmackenzie/3414064391