3 LEARNING HABITS OF SPIRITUALLY HEALTHY PASTORS

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young,” Henry Ford is claimed to have said. “The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”

The great automobile maker is right. Learning keeps us interested and interesting. If we stop learning, we can become stale and self-absorbed, significantly hampering our effectiveness. 

Just as worship habits contribute to our spiritual health, so do our learning habits. Here are three learning habits for spiritually healthy pastors. 

HABIT #1—MAKE TIME FOR SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES DAILY. 

The quality of our spiritual lives will never grow beyond our devotional habits. For years, I’ve used the M’Cheyne reading plan for my devotions. Reading through the Bible in sections highlights the interconnected themes in all of Scripture. 

Bible reading, study, Scripture memorization, prayer, journaling, fasting, meditating on God’s Word are commendable disciplines with manifold value. These disciplines are critical for our personal growth. 

Too many pastors and church leaders who’ve failed morally or ethically can trace their failures to a barren devotional life. May we build habits that lead us to God’s Word and prayer. 

HABIT #2— PARTICIPATE IN A GROUP WEEKLY. 

In our church’s mission strategy, we fulfill the learning step in Sunday school classes and discipleship groups. For some pastors who have multiple Sunday services, attending a Sunday morning small group is impractical or even impossible. 

However, pastors must not neglect the habit of participating in the ministry of a group. A weekly discipleship group designed to encourage regular Bible reading, accountability, and prayer is spiritually healthy. 

Even though we’re the under-shepherd of the church, we’re still sheep. We need others. We need their encouragement and accountability. 

You’ll be blessed by the spiritual growth you witness when you make a weekly habit of growing with other believers in a group.  

Just this morning, I met with my discipleship group. I was encouraged by the spiritual development of others, motivated by their insights, and challenged by their faith. We need each other. Pastors, don’t neglect being in a group.

HABIT #3— READ, THINK, AND WRITE REGULARLY. 

To be a leader is to be a learner. Too many pastors set their ministry on cruise control, failing to be challenged intellectually and spiritually. 

In what’s likely the final letter Paul wrote, he asked Timothy to bring him books and parchments (2 Timothy 4:13). Paul’s example of continued learning at the twilight of his ministry is instructive and motivating. 

Charles Spurgeon encouraged pastors to spend their leisure time reading the Bible, reading sound theology, or praying. 

The spiritually healthy pastor will make time to learn by reading, thinking, and writing. 

Reading reveals how much we don’t know. Thinking helps us integrate what we’re learning into our daily lives. Writing engages the mind, providing clarity, understanding, and application with what we’re learning. 

You may argue, “But I don’t have time for this stuff.” Begin by carving out small blocks of time each day for reading, thinking, and writing. 

Get a subscription to audible.com, check out audiobooks from your local library to listen to in the car, take short windows of time that are specifically for reading, writing, or thinking. If you took 30 minutes a day for reading, writing, or thinking and tracked it for a month, you would be amazed at how much reading, writing, or thinking you actually got accomplished.

As church leaders, we aspire to have an effective ministry. As Christians, we aspire to spiritual growth. A ministry or a life with longevity and effectiveness will require habits of learning that’ll keep us growing.

In the spirit of this article, I’d love to learn from your feedback. What are some ways you’ve built learning habits into your life? 

Originally published here at LifeWay Facts and Trends.

A Word about Suffering

I’m not an expert on suffering. My life’s suffering has been minimal. My mom died a couple of years ago, and I’ve had the flu and bronchitis, but generally I’ve had a pretty non-eventful life. This post is not written from the perspective of an expert, but rather a fellow traveler seeking to understand what God wants to teach us in our circumstances.

Now Job is an expert in suffering. Following a heavenly conversation between God and Satan (Job’s accuser), God gave permission for Satan to bring suffering into Job’s life. By the end of chapter 2, Job had lost most everything he owned, had to face the death of his children, became ridden with boils, and was encouraged by his wife to curse God and die.

Few people on earth have ever suffered as Job.

The next 35 chapters of the book are basically a dialogue between Job and his friends about the reasons for Job’s suffering. These dialogues include lament, complaint, disappointment, and argument. It is normal in times of pain and suffering to complain and wonder why. But our complaints are not always profitable. Think about the wasted days of conversations between Job and his unhelpful friends. They didn’t change Job’s mind, and Job didn’t change theirs.

So how do we respond to suffering and pain?

Dr. Donna Gibbs, in her excellent book Becoming Resilient, suggests that we draw a large circle. Inside the circle, we should imagine key words like comfort, peace, forgiveness, hope, and love that reflect our relationship with Jesus Christ. Our circle contains the deepest and most important aspects of our faith. But too often, because of fear or frustration or doubt or worry or sorrow, we leave our sufferings outside the circle representing our faith in Jesus. She writes,

“Until we muster the courage to bring our suffering into the circle, into our relationship with Christ, we will miss the opportunity to experience great relief.”

Donna Gibbs, Becoming Resilient, 165. 

What is profitable in our suffering is to bring our pains and difficulties directly to God. He alone can comfort and heal.

I love how God responds to Job and his friends at the conclusion of the book.

God’s response to Job and his three friends is poignant and powerful. It is direct and quite confrontational. For the better part of four chapters (Job 28-41), God peppers Job with question after question after question. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” And on and on. 

Do you know that God never answers Job or his friends regarding the reason for Job’s suffering? I think God’s response is instructive for two important reasons.

First, When God speaks, we need to become silent and listen. Too often all that can be heard regarding our suffering is our complaints, our opinions, and the opinions of others. Too often, we don’t pause to listen to God. We need to hear God speak by silencing our voices and reading the pages of Scripture. We need to listen for the guidance and comfort of the Holy Spirit in our situations. According to C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” We might actually learn more about God in our pains if we will be silent and listen to him.

Second, We need to see God and not merely seek answers. The book of Job is a beautiful picture of the divine authorship of the Bible. No human author would spend 37 chapters building a story around a singular question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and leave the question unanswered. If the book of Job had only human authorship, then the author would have written a response from God into Job’s question. But when God arrives, he questions Job. He silences the complaints of Job. He critiques the false statements of Job’s friends. In essence, God’s monologues to Job say, “Job, I’m enough.”

What we need more than anything else is to remember that God is enough.

Do you believe that God is enough even when you are suffering?