125: The power and sustainability found in Holy Friendships

Can holy friendships be the key to preventing burnout in ministry? Join us on the Crabby Pastor podcast as Margie Bryce hosts Michaele LaVigne to explore how deep spiritual connections can sustain and enrich pastoral life. Currently, Michaele contributes to the Spiritual Formation Initiative at Nazarene Theological Seminary, focusing on spiritual direction and coaching. She will be hosting a webinar on August 29 on how to start a holy friendship group (see link below).

In our conversation, Michaele shares a personal story of feeling isolated in a large congregation and how divine intervention led her to form a spiritually enriching small group with two lay ministers. Using a spiritual formation primer from Renovare, they engaged in diverse Christian practices, ranging from scripture memorization to social justice actions. This journey not only transformed their spiritual lives but also influenced their congregational practices. Discover how structured holy friendships can lead to profound spiritual growth and leadership transformation.

We also navigate the challenges of establishing holy friendships in ministry, especially for women in leadership roles. Reflecting on biblical examples like Moses and Jethro or Elizabeth and Mary, we discuss the power of these connections. The episode concludes with a critical discussion on recognizing and preventing burnout among ministry leaders, emphasizing the need for sustainable practices and safe spaces where pastors can be honest and supported.

To register for August 29 webinar, please go to:
www.nts.edu/holyfriendships

For more information on Renovare:
https://renovare.org/

Chapters

• 0:01 Holy Friendship in Ministry Conversations
• 12:31 Building Holy Friendships Through Prayer
• 29:08 Navigating Holy Friendships in Ministry
• 45:18 Recognizing and Preventing Burnout in Ministry

Transcript

Margie: 0:01

Hey, there, it's Margie Bryce, your host of the Crabby Pastor podcast, where we talk about all things sustainability, whether it's sustainability in ministry, in your personal life and we acknowledge that the church is in a transitional time, so we hit topics there too that are going to stretch your mind and the way you lead, especially how you lead yourself, so that you don't become the crabby pastor.

Margie: 0:37

This is Margie Bryce, host of the Crabby Pastor podcast, where we talk about all things self-care, so that ministry leaders can fulfill the things that God has asked them to do and offer God our best in the process. So I talk about all kinds of topics, and today we're going to talk about friendship and holy friendship in particular. I have Mikae Levine with me here and she has managed to participate in and help others to create these kinds of relationships, because we ought not to walk through life and through ministry alone and become lone rangers that will indeed, in time, wear on us and really deplete us. If we and we pray for community. I believe that's replicated in the Father, son and Holy Spirit for us, so there is a very holy purpose and design for us for that end. So Michaele and I are going to chat, but I'd like you to introduce yourself to us, please.

Michaele: 1:50

Sure, sure. Thanks so much, Margie, for having me. So I am a mom of two. I have a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old. I've been married to my husband almost 19 years. Currently we live in South Bend, indiana, but my ministry journey has started in central Ohio. Got to be in at the ground level of a new start church there in a lower income neighborhood. That was a great place of growth and challenge for me. Yeah, just yeah. Well, that's a whole other story. We could talk about all the fruitfulness of that season. I was there while I was in seminary at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ohio.

Michaele: 2:38

Then my husband and I spent a year of volunteer missionary service in Southern Africa, a little nation known as Swaziland, now called Eswatini. Then from there we were invited. I was invited to join the staff of Bethany First Church of the Nazarene out in Oklahoma, and that came through the time that we were in Africa. We partnered a lot with that congregation. So I served there for five years, was the pastor of discipleship and then, from Bethany First Church, with a colleague from Bethany First Church, launched a new community in Oklahoma City, like the urban core Oklahoma City, and that became Eighth Street Church of the Nazarene, and it was that you know that place.

Michaele: 3:29

That really allowed me space to put some imaginings into practice, as you can do when you're starting from scratch.

Michaele: 3:39

And so I was able to live into more of the spiritual formation realm of discipleship and wrote weekly practices for our congregation, really was able to lean into and offer a lot of the gifts of contemplative spirituality and Christian practice, and that also began some of my journey to what I do now, which is mostly spiritual direction. So I've been operating, serving as a certified spiritual director the last three years, which also coincided with our family move to South Bend for my husband's work, and I don't pastor a church in the same way that I had, you know, for those um for my previous life, um, but I do lead a house church gathering on Sundays and then the majority of my work throughout the week in ministry is spiritual direction, seeing folks individually, most of whom are pastors, um, but then also leading some workshops, retreats, um and conference kinds of offerings along the lines of, you know, contemplative prayer and spiritual practice and holy friendship, which is what we're talking about Sure and I forgot that we shared the Ashland thing.

Margie: 5:03

Ah, yes, I was out there for my doctoral work and I love Ashland, love that place dearly. So you also have a role at Nazarene Theological, is that correct?

Michaele: 5:14

Yes, yes, so just recently we launched what we're calling the Spiritual Formation Initiative through Nazarene Theological Seminary and I am directing that along with Dr Doug Hardy and Dave Sharps who's overseeing Praxis. So it's really kind of an extension of what has been happening within the classroom already for a long time the investment in individual spiritual formation of the pastor. But now we're working to extend that beyond the classroom and into pastors' lives and their congregations. So one of the things that we're doing is connecting a network of other spiritual directors to provide resourcing and care for our pastors and then create opportunities for congregations also to receive the gifts and lean into that deeper kind of listening and discernment that can be offered through those more slow and formative ways of being together.

Margie: 6:28

Yeah, that slow down thing. You have to work at that.

Margie: 6:34

As iconic as that sounds. You absolutely. I've learned that fairly recently and I've also had a spiritual director. I still have a spiritual director and then last, my last pastoral charge, I had a coach at the same time. So that was, you know, very different. Um, but I know, even for me as a coach, I'm pretty. I'm going to ask at some point when it's appropriate, where's god, god in this, what do you think, and those kinds of spiritual direction things. So I see the great value in doing that and I have to be really honest, some of my connectivity with coaching and spiritual direction is as wonderful and valuable as they certainly are.

Margie: 7:23

And I still think that today not just in the past, but some of that initially for me was because I had trouble connecting with other ministry leaders to sit down. We would talk about this when I was out at NTS, we had to write a rule of life and all that, and we talked about having others on the journey, but I found that I had trouble connecting with other people. I mean, we would talk about it. We would say I know I really need to do this, I know it's really valuable and so I would take some initiative and try to do okay date, time and place you know and try to nail it. And once it moved to that place, people lost interest and I was very confused by that and so I thought I got to do something, especially when I went back out to Ashland. And again, this is some of the process that's involved we're writing our personal vision statement and again it comes up about don't be doing this journey alone, and I attempted again.

Michaele: 8:32

And.

Margie: 8:33

I just I don't know if I get a failure grade for this or what, but I do know and we'll leave this kind of information in the show notes about upcoming workshops where you're going to help us with that. So talk to me some about your journey with Holy Friendships, how that evolved.

Michaele: 8:55

Yeah, I think what you say is so true, Margie, because we I think for a while anyway, at least within this current and maybe one generation of education prior to us we know that we need to do things together, but it's the how that we struggle with. There seems to be a real disconnect with how do we actually do this together? Right, and I do think that it makes a lot of sense. Reaching out to a spiritual director and or a coach is is one really important way, right, and and that that matters deeply. I don't think that they are mutually exclusive, though. I think we need both. We need the one voice that is speaking as a spiritual director that says you know, I'm going to listen deeply with you for how the Holy Spirit is working and all of our conversational emphasis is focused on you. It's not, you know, reciprocal in that moment.

Michaele: 10:07

But then we also need those spaces that are mutually reciprocal, that we can be together and say we together are going to listen to one another and also listen to the Holy Spirit with each other and give guidance as the Spirit directs us. That is not an easy thing to accomplish because most of our ways of being together and our ways of speaking with one another are quite different than that. I felt like you, I felt a need for this for a very long time before I actually was introduced to anything that felt like it was meeting that need. And I will tell you that it came through Renovare. Okay, I'm familiar with that organization.

Michaele: 11:05

I attended a workshop day not long after moving to Oklahoma city. There was a um, a retreat workshop in Tulsa hosted by Renovare and was really just kind of a one day, um, deep dive into um, into all things, spiritual formation, and okay, how do we getting to that? How question like, how do we actually engage? And their, their push was you know, if this feels like something that you are being drawn into, it's not a singular, it's not an individual enterprise. So find one or two other people use this workbook. They really recommend it as a starting place of a thing called the spiritual formation primer and go through and just practice. And it really was outlining like the broad, the multiple streams of Christian spirituality and tradition through Christian history and saying the necessity of each of those, and then also gave practices to you know, grow into those different streams and, you know, said this isn't something for you to do alone, it's something for you to do with a group of people in prayerful conversation with one another.

Michaele: 12:31

Well, I had just moved to Oklahoma city, bethany area, and was a young member of a staff and just felt like I was at a loss as to who I could be in these kinds of conversations with. It did not feel like I had the longevity in that place or the sense of safety as a staff person among a very large congregation to just find lay people, find lay people. And there weren't there were very few other women on staff at that point in time that I felt like we would have that kind of connection and so I just sat on it for several months and every time that thought would come up I would just kind of get disgruntled and be like, wow it's so unfair, that I can't do anything about this, you know.

Michaele: 13:26

And then one day I remember so clearly, you know those moments where you know that God is breaking through. It's not an audible voice, but it's so clear and I was grumbling again and just felt that nudge of like this is something that you need to do, and in exasperation I was just like I can't do anything about it. You know, I don't have people, and so clearly I sense the spirit say, well, when are you going to ask me? Are you going to ask me if I have any ideas about who you should? Oh, yeah, I know.

Margie: 14:05

And then you, in those moments you kind of feel like this is sort of Christianity 101.

Michaele: 14:09

Right, oh, asking God for guidance about what God's asking you to do. What a novel idea.

Michaele: 14:15

No, no, that's so funny when those moments happen funny when those moments happen and lo and behold I mean it was. It was so vivid Like I. I paused and I said well, okay, god, I'll humor you. You know, sure, tell me who you think would make a good you know, holy friendship partners with me, or whatever. And I mean those two names flew at me so fast and they had never appeared on my radar before. But as soon as they, you know, as soon as I wrote them down in my journal, I was like huh, that actually might work.

Michaele: 14:54

There are two ladies who were, you know, in their own process of determining a call, but were currently lay ministers in the church, working their way through local and district license kind of questions. And one was teaching a Sunday school class and two, you know, different age ranges. But I thought, huh, okay. So I reached out to one and then the other and told them what I was thinking and that I had asked the other person and of course, I mean the Holy Spirit just orchestrated it so perfectly. Each of them said I have been longing for something like this and they knew each other which I didn't know, and they knew each other which I didn't know, and they didn't know each other well, but they had had a connection, you know, like a decade prior, and it was really good and they had very fond memories of one another. And so we just was like okay. So we started working through this.

Michaele: 15:57

I think it's like a nine or 10 week process or session we didn't meet weekly, I don't think and so we did that spiritual formation primer through Renovare, and at the end of those weeks, well, I should say it's kind of like it's teaching, like you read through kind of curriculum together and then you have discussion and then you pick a practice that you want to try between that time and the next time that you meet, and the next time that you meet you talk about what that practice was like.

Michaele: 16:33

You know, what did we learn, what did you experience, whatever and so we did that for I don't know eight to 10 weeks, and then at the end of it, it gives you like a kind of a way to review how. What was this process like? Do we want to keep meeting? Is there anyone that we want to add? And we decided to keep meeting and we didn't use the exact form the whole time. That kind of gave us structure, but we did try to have some kind of structure to keep us on track so that it wasn't just a free for all of conversation. You know we would give an update about.

Michaele: 17:11

here's what I sense God doing. Here's how you can, we can, pray for one another. And then here's something that I want to practice or work on between the time that we meet next and then we would.

Margie: 17:22

So would that be a spiritual practice that they work on?

Michaele: 17:25

Yes, or would it?

Michaele: 17:26

be, yes, usually yeah. So the way that book works is that it gives you, like the I think it's six or eight streams. It calls it of Christian tradition and practice, calls it of Christian tradition and practice and it outlines like the here's, you know, within the evangelical tradition, within the holiness tradition, within the social justice tradition, within the contemplative and incarnational tradition. So it gives you all of these like ways to practice in that area, and so every time we met we would choose one of those practices. So some would feel like a very classic, you know spiritual discipline, like memorizing scripture, or you know a very specific way of praying. Others were like, you know, write an encouraging note to your politician, or, you know, send a letter to someone in prison from the social justice tradition, or you know just, it was a. It was a broad variety, shaped the way that I led my congregation in spiritual formation and then shaped a lot of the practices that I wrote for our congregation. That ended up becoming the book Living the Way of Jesus. But that's a whole other.

Margie: 18:50

Right, right, that's all. So let me ask and I will put the link to Renovare because I've been to one of their workshops day long and they are amazing for sure, because I've been to one of their their workshops day long and they are amazing for sure. And but what I would like to ask now is how do you pattern your current?

Michaele: 19:14

process of holy friendships, yeah, so. So the process that I described just, you know that started with the Renovare. That began in about 2011, I think, and we met pretty faithfully up until 2015 or so, and then there were quite a few changes and we added someone to that group and then someone moved out of the country and so, you know, it just was a little bit in flux and so we stopped meeting regularly about, um, maybe it was 2016 that that happened.

Michaele: 19:53

Anyway there were several years where I wasn't meeting regularly with any kind of um group. And then during COVID, when everybody was just in the height COVID and you know the in the wake of George Floyd's murder and Black Lives Matter movement, and just so much upheaval and distress, exhaustion and isolation, it just felt like I needed something. But I looked around and noticed that the majority of people that I, you know, I have a broad network, as you do, you know, being a pastor, you have a broad network of other pastors. And I was like man, we pastors are some of the most isolated and exhausted among the bunch. This is not a good place to be.

Michaele: 20:48

And so, again, I really sensed this, I really sensed this drawing into this way of of relationship again. And so again I prayed and asked okay, who, who are the women pastors that I can? You know that that really are my peers that we can engage with together? And this time it was quite different. We already knew, you know, everything was virtual, so I wasn't limited to geography, and I knew of a handful of women that I had engaged with online or had seen speaking, or, you know, we're in where we're in some level of communication already and just kind of admiring one another. We're encouraging one another from afar, right. And so I reached out to, I think, six and just kind of said, hey, I have this idea, what do you think? And four jumped on it and said yes, please, this is really.

Margie: 21:52

How many did you ask? Just for those of us that are sitting back?

Michaele: 21:55

going. Yeah, no, I think I asked five or six, and four students, yeah, okay, I think. So Maybe I'll have to go back, but anyway, it wasn't like I didn't cast a wide net. I really just, you know, and I even thought, if everybody says yes, we might be too large of a group, you know, but these are the people that came to mind, so I'll follow up. So we met as a group of five for a while, for two years, and then now we are a group of four.

Michaele: 22:32

One of those women made some transitions and is no longer meeting with us, doing some other things, doing some other things, and that group did not start with the same level of structure that my previous group did. I think everybody at that point was nobody knew each other well. Some of us had known each other in previous ways, but nobody knew each other well and we were living in four different States, and so we decided that we just really wanted to get to know each other and pray together and create a place of safety and honesty for one another. Now this is a group of really mature and I I mean I think some of the I mean I'm biased, because now they are like my soul sisters you know, but some of the best of the best Right.

Michaele: 23:35

And so you know, we have folks in that group who have studied spiritual formation and direction for a long time, and I think everyone but me now has a doctorate in some level of, you know, spirituality or formation. So we weren't coming into this newbies, but we also were not again. We were like people who know what you need to do, but you just don't know how to do it, and so we gave each other the space to practice and we just like, tried stuff. So at this point, we've now been together four years, I think. Yeah, wow, almost four years, because I think we started meeting the end of summer 2020 or beginning of fall, and we've seen each other through family deaths and work transitions and illnesses, just big moves. I mean, it's just been, you know, all the stuff of life.

Michaele: 24:43

So at this point, we need far less structure to really talk about deep the things of how goes it with your soul you know, but we needed some guide rails at the beginning to say, like, how do we structure this sacred time together different than any other time that we meet? So now we're in a rhythm where we take turns, one person leads each time, so it doesn't fall to one person every time and that person just leads off with you know some kind of small shared practice or devotional, you know something that we've read in our own devotional readings and give some like questions for thought, and then we go around and share along with like hey, what, how is you know this situation that we've been praying for and how is your spouse handling? You know the current whatever, and and then we, we pray together. We also have a very active WhatsApp thread so that in between times that we meet, where we're sharing life and talking and and keeping the conversation going that way, yeah, so you meet how often?

Michaele: 26:02

Again? Well, in the summer it's quite all over the place. We try to meet once a month in the summer, and then in the office, and then in the rest of the time it's every other week. Okay, all right.

Margie: 26:16

So I think I'm guessing it's purely a guess that what you're doing now is what has influenced your upcoming workshop on this, absolutely yeah.

Michaele: 26:29

Yeah. So the Holy Friendship webinar or workshop, whatever is offered through the Wine Coop Center for Women in Leadership at Nazarene Theological Seminary, we hope and we are planning to broaden that and invite some male colleagues and so that we can also offer this as a non-gender specific offering. But right now we have specifically designed this webinar and the accompanying resource for women clergy. Again, it's because that's who we are particular to, the there's something particular to the challenges of women in ministry that this seems like absolutely essential. So that's where we started. We also, you know, recognize there's all kinds of. We seen the need for this and we long for people to participate, but we can't keep adding individuals to our group. That's just not how you do it.

Margie: 27:50

What's the, what's the you'd want? Maybe what four?

Michaele: 27:54

five. Yeah, I would say probably we operated with five. That's the largest group that I've been a part of. We operated with five. That's the largest group that I've been a part of and I think that's probably max, mostly because maybe if you're in person it's a little bit different. But organizing time schedules gets challenging and then also keeping your meeting time to where everybody has equal opportunity to share that that's really really important and the more people you add, the harder it is to actually do that.

Margie: 28:37

So you're looking at maybe, how long does an average or typical.

Michaele: 28:41

We try to meet an hour. Sometimes, you know, if we're like, hey, we haven't met in a while and we really need a longer session, then we'll, all you know, plan for an hour and a half or something. We've also now met twice in person for like a kind of retreat all together and we've done that like, I think, two days each time and that's been really, really good.

Margie: 29:07

Nice, nice. Well, you had an era where you practice the Renovare process and then you had a time in between where you didn't have anything, and then move to a time where now you you do again have this. Can you describe for us, then, what you felt during that era where you had nothing?

Michaele: 29:34

I would say, while I didn't have anything that was holy friendship, I had other things. Anything that was holy friendship, I had other things. Um, that was the. Those intervening years were the height of, um, my toddler, mommy phase and church planting days oh, that's busy. It was very busy. My husband was working on his PhD. It was very busy.

Michaele: 30:03

But in that busyness there was a different kind of holy friendship that emerged from our church planting pastor team degree, you know, but a lot of shared life, shared prayer, shared visioning, so that I did not feel like I was going it alone.

Michaele: 30:31

But it just took on a different shape during that season and that's also the season that I started regular spiritual direction direction.

Michaele: 30:38

So I think that you know again, it's not the same thing, but a lot of what I it felt like.

Michaele: 30:54

There were things that I, for as much as I trusted and loved you know, my initial holy friendship group there were some things that I I needed to be challenged in and process through. That needed to happen at the non-mutual level. Right, it needed to be me and the spiritual director really wrestling some things out, or really me and the and the Holy spirit, you know, and wrestling is probably not the right word, because the spirit engages us so gently and invitationally, um, but that seems like an invitation to go into a deeper place. That prepared me for what was next. So it wasn't like I had nothing, um, but it was just a very different and I think, I think that's an important, that's an important thing for us to name and give permission for the need for different seasons and the way that, you know, our relationships and our practices can ebb and flow based on the particularities of any given season, and that spirit is maybe more okay with that than we are.

Margie: 32:12

Sure, If you had to name, then what? Why we need this what would you say?

Michaele: 32:24

Why we need? Why we need?

Margie: 32:27

each other, why we need the holy friendship yeah.

Michaele: 32:36

Gosh, there's so many things that we need. There's so many things that we need. I think it is really difficult as pastors to find spaces where it's safe to be known.

Margie: 32:56

Yeah, I can say it this way we need a safe place where we can be honest. Yes, exactly.

Michaele: 33:06

And I would say that at the beginning of our holy friendship, this kind of second edition that I'm a part of now, I don't know that you can't just manufacture that safety in an instant right. It takes a level of trust that grows over time. But over time, you know, I know that to those women I am not Pastor Michaele LaVigne, church Planter Michaele LaVigne, spiritual Director Michaele LaVigne, conference Speaker Michaele LaVinge, conference speaker Michaele LaVigne or author Michaele LaVigne. I'm not. I don't have to put on a show, even on the days where I have nothing good to show up with, you know. And and then there's also the times that there have been for each of us.

Michaele: 34:20

There's been seasons where something so hard is happening that it's hard to even say it out loud, let alone voice it to another person. And yet the incredible gift of walking with people who the hardest stuff out loud, the bad news, the thing that feels like the impossible situation. They don't rush to fix it, they don't judge you, they just sit with you where you're at and commit to praying, and pray with wisdom, I mean, it's just and then speak the truth that you forget sometimes. Right Like this is not what, what you are feeling and thinking and all of the shame that you're piling on yourself right now. That is not of God we have. We have to have people that say that to us For sure, for sure, for sure.

Michaele: 36:06

In a post-gendered or misogynistic society where, like you know, we're past all of that, right, and the reality is, and there are times when we need, as women, to say to one another you know, you're coming up against the principality and powers of sexism, right, like you know, that's what this is, yeah. And then it's like, oh gosh, you're right. Okay, now we can name it, now we can put that out there and say, all right, then that changes how I handle things or how we're going to pray about this, and then giving wise and bold counsel to one another, because being a woman in that place of leadership is so challenging, because you don't want to play the gender card right all the time.

Margie: 37:01

Right, you don't, but you don't want to play the gender card right All the time. Right, you don't, but you don't want to always hesitate to kind of go in that direction. But I just had a conversation yesterday with somebody where I said not only am I female, and if I complain to God, I'm like this little yapping piece of clay saying you know, you're male, which then I'm telling God you made a mistake which I can't do theologically or anything. You know, maybe it's just it I said, and then I'm short. So this is kind of you know, and you have to figure out how to still function according to what God is asking you to do, regardless.

Margie: 37:48

And that's why I'm thinking of the picture of Moses and his father-in-law, jethro, coming and holding arms up, and you need people to come around you and you need to be that. You need to hold somebody else's arm up as well. It's a real mutual kind of gift, really. It is.

Michaele: 38:04

I also think of the story of Elizabeth and Mary, you know, and I think this is such a beautiful example of holy friendship where, quite literally, one is giving witness to what God is growing inside of the other. Oh, I like that picture, oh yeah, and saying you're not crazy, I see it too, and you are deeply blessed in in this and that mutual rejoicing, solidarity in the hardship of people not understanding and thinking that you're crazy. And you know, being marginalized and and knowing that there's a hard, your favor in God's eyes also brings a harder road ahead. But, but you are not. But, but there's another person who knows what it's like, and I think that is what we so desperately need and what I've been so deeply fortunate to receive.

Margie: 39:17

Well, thank you for painting this beautiful picture for us and for sure I will be adding your workshop link. I'll get that from you and I'll put that in with the show notes and I'll push it out to the places that I can push and hopefully we will have more people to step in to this and get to experience even a taste of what you have presented to us today would be amazing, yeah.

Michaele: 39:57

Well, I'm glad. Yeah, well I'm glad. I'll let you know too, because I think that the how is even more it's not more important session preview or a kind of a getting started sort of thing, similar to what I received in the Renovare stuff. But this is particular to women clergy groups and gives us a chance to set the tone for a different way of being together and in conversation. So that will come. As you know, people who sign up for the webinar will receive that automatically with the cost of the webinar.

Margie: 40:56

Right Great, and the cost of the webinar is Right Great, and the cost of the webinar is yeah, you were going to ask me that.

Michaele: 41:02

I'm pretty sure it's $30.

Margie: 41:04

Okay, that's a deal. Yeah, you can say $30-ish. Yes, if it hasn't been nailed because we, you know record these way in advance and you know stuff. But yeah, so it is. Let's is, let's say, affordable. Yeah, we're trying to make it so, yes, okay well, thank you so much for being on the crabby pastor podcast. I appreciate this so much, but here's a question that I frequently not always, because I don't know. It falls out of my head sometimes to even ask. But, um, is there anything about life and ministry that makes you crabby?

Michaele: 41:48

Yeah, yes.

Margie: 41:52

Would you have any particular item that you would care to share?

Michaele: 41:56

Oh, mercy. Well, I would say I mostly get crabby these days in trying to organize my schedule. Oh, okay, it's the tedium of administrative stuff, not having another brain to help keep me straight. Um, and I recently found where I had made a scheduling error and double booked myself. And um can't be at a conference and a retreat at the same time, and so that makes me crabby.

Margie: 42:37

Oh well, thank you so much for playing that game and and sharing that with us, because we all get crabby?

Margie: 42:46

I always ask this because at a conference, um, a gentleman came up to my table and said, because it had a crab on it, and said you know that stuff? And he said I'm never crabby, I don't know. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm never crabby, I don't know, like, I don't know what you're talking about, I'm never crabby. He didn't say I don't know what you're talking about, but he just said I'm not crabby. And I said well, why don't you go find your spouse and bring her here? And he never came back. Oh, surprise, but that's funny. You know, when you're not serving in a pastoral capacity, I feel like I'm a little more emboldened to push at times. So, anyway, um, that truth that we need to hear, I guess. Well, thank you so much for um being on the podcast and and, uh, blessings on your continued ministry in this new venture and in all the ventures that you have going right now. Thank you, thank you so much Blessings on you.

Margie: 43:51

So how do the pieces of your life fit together? Do they fit together well and things are humming along just fine, or are there some pieces that are tight or absent or just not fitting the bill? This is your invitation to join me in my glass workshop for a video series, where I am going to do a stained glass project while I talk to you about sustainability and building sustainability into your heart and into your life. So I am going to be doing my art, which is a form of self-care, and I'm going to invite you into that space with me and I'm going to chat. I'm going to chat about self-care and I'm going to chat. I'm going to chat about self-care and I'm going to show you how I create, and there's a nifty, nifty analogy Stained glass seems to be a very good metaphor for what I want to talk about. So I'd love for you to join me to do that. To opt in, I'll need you to email me at crabbypastor at gmailcom. That's crabbypastor at gmailcom. So you won't want to miss this. You definitely won't want to miss this. So make a plan to join me in the glass workshop.

Margie: 45:18

Are you wondering whether your fatigue, your lack of motivation, your lack of interest is burnout Maybe. I just wanted to let you know that I have a resource on the website, margiebricecom. That's B-R-Y-C-E. Margiebicecom, that's b-r-y-c-e. Margiebricecom, and it is a burnout questionnaire, free for you to download, and kind of self-assess and get a sense of where you're at. And there are questions that not only ask about what you're going through but maybe how often you're experiencing it and that's kind of a key to where you might be, because you have to know where you are in order to chart a course forward. And most pastors who experience pastors and ministry leaders who experience burnout rarely know that that's where they're at until they're well into it. And if you're unsure about that little statistic, so far, everybody that I've interviewed on this podcast who has experienced burnout, when I asked that kind of question, they're like, yeah, I didn't know, that's where I was at. So again, go to margiebricecom. It's on the home page of the website and you can get your burnout questionnaire and kind of see where you're at.

Margie: 46:56

Hey friends, the Crabby Pastor podcast is sponsored by Bryce Art Glass and you can find that on Facebook. I make stained glass, that's part of my self-care and also by Bryce Coaching, where I coach ministry leaders and business leaders, so the funds that I generate from coaching and from making stained glass is what is supporting this podcast and I will have opportunities for you to be a part of sponsoring me and, as always, you can do the buy me a cup of coffee thing in the in the show notes. But I will have some other ways that you can be a part of getting the word out about the importance of healthy self-care for ministry leaders. Hey, thanks for listening. It is my deep desire and passion to champion issues of sustainability in ministry and for your life, so I'm here to help.

Margie: 48:07

I stepped back from pastoral ministry and I feel called to help ministry leaders create and cultivate sustainability in their lives so that they can go the distance with God and whatever plans that God has for you. I would love to help, I would consider it an honor and, in all things, make sure you connect to these sustainability practices you know, so that you don't become the Crabby Pastor.