Hey guys, frank here with another episode of Modern Church Leader, excited to talk about, I guess, church Ministry and pastoral burnout today with my new bud, jason. Jason, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, frank, good to be here. Yeah, yeah, I love the library behind you. By the way, I didn't get to say that we're jumping on. I mean, that's full on, like that's a legit library, yeah, people are always like is that virtual?
Speaker 1:I'm like, look, I go to the local like discount bookstore buy books. It makes you look, you know, smart and fancy. It is real, they are real books.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I should do this just because it'd be fun, so and I can Like, so I have over here for anybody that's on video. If you go over here you'll see like the library, but color coded, that's color coded. I know, mad respect for you, very crazy, but I will tell you that all the respect's going to go out the window because it's color coded and they are real books. But I can't say that I've read, you know, any of them. They're just really. It's really just for. That's amazing. My kids like my kids like going through them and checking out like there's all kinds of stuff in here and it's super fun, but the books that I really read just don't end up on the shelf. My wife's like no, they don't like, they don't look good, they need to be like yeah, they're doing that drawer over there.
Speaker 2:It's a perfect spot. There's like a few that make it back here. But yeah, exactly, they don't. They don't get to go on the shelf, not allowed. That's amazing. Well, man, you are an author and you've done lots of things, so, but you just published a new book, so it's all about not burning out but burning bright. So I love the title, I love the I don't know just the topic. It's like. I feel like it applies not just to ministry people, even though I know you wrote it for ministry people but you know, burnouts like a real thing, like in life, Yep, it really is. I'm sure it can apply to lots of people, whether you're in full time ministry or a volunteer or whatever and you're listening to the show. But I mean, before we get into the book, book, like, tell us a little bit about your journey into ministry and all the way to the point of you know writing things like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just worked in the trenches and you know, and local churches for you know, two decades plus, yeah, and had some really mountaintop moments and Frank man had some just just bottoming out moments that were difficult to navigate, really traumatic moments, to be honest with you, that really required a road of recovery. Yes, even working in the local church. And so on the writing side of I've always written articles and, you know, kind of toyed around with things. I really love the idea of a book. It terrified me. It terrified me because could I do it? Would anybody read it besides my mother?
Speaker 1:There's this perfectionism thing in me that's like. So I just kept making excuses and not doing it and finally just jumped in and my writing partner is amazing and just really brings a healthy rhythm, you know, to our process, and so it's a joy. It's humorous. I love to meet people and listen to their stories and what resonates in what they didn't like. I mean, I always think about the one guy he put a three star Amazon review and his description was nothing new here. So you know, you got to learn from everybody who's got something to say about your book.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know nothing new under the sun. We get it right yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what, frank? That is actually the truth. I think any book, it's not revolutionary, it's not brand new, it's just packaged differently and hopefully in a way that it's like you see the same thing from a different angle and you're like that makes sense to me. That's really the idea.
Speaker 2:Totally, or new to the person that maybe didn't read the things from the past or what you know like right. It's like there's always new people being born in that season of life that needs that thing and it's the one that's out now right Like so it's true with lots of different things. I don't know. Ai may change it all for us.
Speaker 1:Man, I'm telling you We'll see. It'll be interesting. That's how many right?
Speaker 2:My first book is going to be written completely by an AI bot. That's what I'm going to do?
Speaker 1:They're being sold on Amazon already, I know right, it's bananas.
Speaker 2:It's bananas, and so prior to bookwriting, and even during it, though, you spent 20 years working at the local church, did a bunch of things in ministry and have a ton of experience there. You want to give people a little bit of you know, journey into, or kind of backstory into, that part of your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from a role perspective, I've done the kind of teaching pastor thing. I would say if I were to like bucket, the roles that I did, I would say there's a leadership development bucket and that I mean that has a million things inside of it. A team development bucket and that could be paid staff or volunteers and then a guest experience. You know how do you create experiences guests love and want to come back, you know, to experience again and again, right? So I think all of the roles that I've done, they've really kind of been in those three spaces Got it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool. Well, I mean, what led you to write this particular book? You know what? What was the? Yeah? How did you get to like oh, I got to write this one, yeah.
Speaker 1:So Jonathan and I who's a co-writer we've talked about it before, I think it's you know. The idea of burnout has always been around, right, it's not new. But there was this acceleration, uh, and during backside of cobit, that we really started to notice, and we saw it on the volunteer side, we saw it on the staff side. So, if truth were told, we actually submitted a proposal and it was rejected. And it was rejected for a good reason, and the reason was hey, the market is already saturated with I'm on this topic. My response was you're absolutely right and yes, and we are seeing the highest levels, highest numbers of burnout at the same time. So something, we're seeing the market saturated, but you're the highest number ever. Like what's up with that. So, jonathan, I pulled back. We said, okay, like how can we look at this?
Speaker 2:when you submit it. Give it just that for that context, like when did you submit the first one? Last year?
Speaker 1:Some, yeah, last year, and um, and you know this is fifth book with the same publisher, so we have a relationship with them and trust them and they trust us and they push back hey, thanks, nice, and all think of it a different way. So John got to talk and really honestly, frank, what we did is we inverted the entire book. Is here's what we discovered it's cheaper, it takes less time and the recovery isn't really existent. If you prevent it, then if you spend time on the back end trying to recover from it. So we started looking at the again same thing, different angle, and realize what if we wrote? Because here's what we realized a burnout in leadership is not inevitable. See, when I was raised in my undergrad program and grad program, my doctoral studies, I often heard, and even mentors often heard, well, burnout is just, it's just comes with the territory.
Speaker 1:And it's like, does it so.
Speaker 2:I realized, like, why does it have to come?
Speaker 1:exactly why and we realize burnout in leadership is not inevitable, it's actually preventable. So we wrote the book on the front side, not only just how do you prevent burnout and exhaustion, but really that next step, like what if you could keep your light burning brightly? What if you could keep your joy and energy up here and you didn't have to experience on the backside of, like this, depletion and recovery, which is really challenging to recover from? So the book really speaks to, I think, couple groups. One If you find yourself already at the point of burnout, exhaustion, the books for you in Bree. It breeds life and hope when you are. If you are in the middle of it, it can help you, maybe reroute your direction to a better, into a better direction. And three maybe you're not there yet and you need to put a plan in a place that can prevent you from being there and keep that light burning bright. It's for you as well, yeah yeah, I love that well.
Speaker 2:Like how do you spot burnout? Like how does, how does a pastor, church leader volunteer Know if they're there?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, there are. There's some characteristics. So I mean you could read statistics and reports all day about the the significant percentages of, you know, people burning out, lacking energy, things of that nature. What's interesting is what contributes right. So we see an increase in workload and stress. We see isolation, loneliness. We see grief and loss. We see financial strains at the church, but also at home. We see Uncertainty and fear. We see high expectations, role conflict, lack of boundaries, emotional labor, like the labor on me to provide for you emotionally, but yet for me the tank is not getting full. And then home right rhythms, people, things of that nature. So Leadership is exhausting.
Speaker 1:One of the questions we did ask when we wrote the book is like, how do you know? Like, are there some Signs? And so we discovered, in both on the practical side, like in the trenches, and in the research side, we discovered Are you discouraged? Do you lack energy? Do you no longer care for people as deeply as you used to? Do you no longer care for things like you used to? How's your creativity taking a hit? Do you have brain fog? Are you more irritable with your family? You may not say these things, but are you unwilling to reach out to people? Are you unwilling to try new things? Are you slacking on your time with God? So as we started looking at some of these things, we realized these are very, very common.
Speaker 1:What's interesting about those things is when they show up. So, for example, right, you know, those are the things that you may see, but there's these underlying kind of this undercurrent of what can get you there. Like I'm addicted to motion. If I'm not producing that I'm not valuable, or I have such an insecurity it drives me. Or fear of rejection, or fear of failure, fear of irrelevance. You know Pride, procrastination, laziness. When we think about these things, they're contributing to those other things. I just read a discouragement, a lack of you know things of that nature, but often what gets attention is the symptom and not really the underlying route that is going to continue to produce. What it's producing is that's what it's designed to do. So we want to create a pause in your rhythm, for you to hold up a mirror and ask some hard questions and reclaim hope once again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. What are the hard questions? Give me a couple of them. Yeah, so when?
Speaker 1:you think about Leadership being difficult. I think sometimes the mirror that we hold up is we're asking our ourself questions like how did I get here? Why am I here? What is going on? The the Nobody intentionally wakes up because you know what. I cannot wait to be discouraged and exhausted and burned out, like that's the goal. Yeah, it's not. Like it shows up at 2am and surprises you and goes, boo, I'm here. It's a drift, it's this progression until you realize wait a minute, I'm here. Whatever here means, right. You just know you're not where you should be, it's not a good spot and you sense something.
Speaker 1:Some of the questions that you can ask yourself are best asked with somebody else, because if we could fix this thing alone, then you would have more people doing it, and I don't think we're good enough, especially when we're in the moment, to be asking. You don't tend to ask healthy questions when you're in a healthy place, right, because you don't have the capacity and clarity to answer the question. So I'm going to ask you To answer the question. So I would give you a list of questions, I think the questions that we asked. The first question is who should be asking you the questions? Right, and depending on your situation. You know it could be a simple as I know this is a silly example but Facebook, you know, in their box, like what's on your mind, on your mind, right, and it could be starting high level. What's on your mind, I don't know, but I don't feel like showing up to work today. Yeah, like when did you notice that? All it's been like for years, and so it's kind of tracing down this line of thought. It's almost kind of like root cause analysis. Right, we're gonna ask all these, these five, why is? And try to get down to a deeper level to figure out How'd you get here? I'll be honest, frank, one of the things I see a lot. That's been a struggle for me.
Speaker 1:If I'm at confession right now, there is a celebration of a hustle culture. We don't celebrate healthy, we celebrate hustle. I will say it's okay to hustle for a sprint, but it's not possible to stay healthy when we're hustling for a marathon. But often what churches do is we celebrate the people. I was one of those people. We celebrate the people who seem to hustle the most. We don't tend to celebrate the people who are the healthiest, and so what does that look like?
Speaker 2:Say what Like harder to spot right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's easy to see the hustle. Yes.
Speaker 2:Because it's you just see it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. I don't know. I think it's just it is asking questions in a mirror, but the biggest question is who do I need to invite to really be asking me these questions, because I'm not at a healthy place to be asking and answering them myself, or I might not even be here.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean one of the things I had, you know that I was like, oh, we got to talk about this is like how to? It's like how does the person see it? But maybe more importantly, how do people around them see it? And then ask them some of those questions or like approach them. You know, like, did you guys dig into that a little bit? Or, in your experience, what have you seen? You know, like people around, when you see some stuff, you know how do you get in there and love the person that looks through there Looks like they're going into burnout mode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a leader I used to work with. He posed this question years ago and it's appropriate here, and it's like hey, what's it like, frank, to be on the other side of me, you know, and what's interesting is the people. We want to be honest with us. There are some contingencies, right, and so we think we would be honest with us.
Speaker 1:The challenge is, sometimes people are honest with us. We're not even honest with ourselves, and so people aren't. They don't feel safe with us. So oftentimes they'll say Frank, trust me, you know you should trust me, frank, and Frank's like should I? And so, you know, there's this idea in the leadership space been around for two plus decades of what it means to be psychologically safe. Right, can I share ideas, can I ask questions? You know things of that nature, and it's safe and there's no retribution. So sometimes people are is it safe to talk with you through these? Are you open and accessible for us to have these conversations or not? And so a lot of times we think we are.
Speaker 1:The problem is, research says that leaders only 15 to 20% of us are actually self-aware, but when we take an assessment, we actually rank ourselves a lot higher. So the reality is am I self-aware enough to think that people do trust me and will share with me and create that space to get that kind of feedback, because that is really where there is a lot of value, right. But if people don't feel comfortable, then that that's actually a layer. In fact, we talk about it in one chapter, about really creating a team. That's imperfect and that's perfectly okay, but how do you do that in the context of a team and trying to achieve a mission?
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, let's shift gears, right? Because I think your big point in the book, like you said, you flipped it upside down. It's like how do you burn bright? And focusing a little bit on that side of the book, I mean, there was like three or four things that caught my eye that I just thought were cool, right. So you talk, we'll just kind of go down the list, right. So the first one that I thought was really a great point was setting healthy boundaries, and I know that's not a new topic either Great books written about this but it's really important, right. So how do you? Because some of that I'm processing through my own life and like I don't know that I've thought about burnout personally, but I have thought about certain parts of the boundaries releasing controls, staying humble and maintaining health with a four. That kind of stood out to me, right. So I'm like those I've thought about personally and I think have helped me a ton in different ways. So, anyways, healthy boundaries how do church leaders do this?
Speaker 1:This one might be one of the hardest, because in church we're almost trained to always be available, always be responsive. We've got to share care. I mean, jesus is at the center of and he cared for people, so there is a little bit of this guilt laden approach that having boundaries we shouldn't, and so maybe it's looking at boundaries from a different perspective. I mean, yes, henry Cloud wrote this whole boundaries book, right? He kind of an expert in this space. The way I like to think about boundaries boundaries help keep the right people close, and for me, thinking about boundaries is I'm really choosing between healthy and unhealthy, right? So think of a boundary as a gate, not a wall. And oftentimes we think of a boundaries like I'm going to put up this wall and you're out and you're in and I'm at, you know it's just versus a gate, like there's movement. Who may be healthy this season may not be healthy in a future season, or vice versa, right? The idea is this many voices have instant access to you and me, and many times I give you permission to have instant access to me and so it's this idea of categories of people, right, there are really three categories. There are people we get from you know, think of, you know mentors, therapists, things of that nature, but we sit with right friends, colleagues, and that we give to, we're going to invest, we're going to mentor others, and so when we begin to think like, who are the people in these worlds and are they healthy, do they contribute? You know anything healthy? To me is a really worthwhile question.
Speaker 1:Maybe, if I picked one thing that is potentially the most challenging from a relational boundary perspective, it's saying no, and there's going to be people listening and watching this that for the sake of living, you can't say no, for whatever reason. Right, you're afraid to fear of rejection, right, you feel like it's a burden of responsibility, whatever it is. I came across a psychologist and she had a very simple approach to saying no, and it's very simple. It's appreciation for what was asked of you, it's the no, and then it's kind of these well wishes of something. For example, if I were to say, let's say, frank, you invited me to speak somewhere or to be in a meeting or whatever, and my internal response is like I really can't do that, what do I say?
Speaker 1:Because the more we say yes, potentially, the more ineffective and less productive we are for that particular person, because what happened is we're depleting. We only have so many asks or yeses, right? So all the asks, eventually they deplete us and when we've got nothing and we still show up, we're not contributing anything. Help, so you could say something like this hey, frank, thank you so much for thinking about me, the appreciation. I don't have time. I don't have time on my current schedule to be at the meeting or speak at the event.
Speaker 1:I know it's going to be a great event cheering you on, and you just kind of have to practice this repetition because what's happening is in our brains and you, I'm sure you know this and those of you watching and listening, you're probably familiar with this.
Speaker 1:But it's kind of like a field and when you think about cattle or horses, when they walk through, walk down a pathway so many times that that feel that hey, that grass lays down, they've created a pathway of familiarity that they follow. Our brains do the exact same thing. Right, they're called neural pathways and really what we've got to do is how do we create new neural pathways? They're less familiar right now, but as we continue to do them, they become more familiar, they're healthier and they actually yield a better product and they actually help us relationally, they help us emotionally and they actually help us keep up some of our energies. But it's just making a decision and then practicing that decision until that new neural pathway, which is 30-ish days, is created. It doesn't mean the old one goes away, it's just this new and the healthier version becomes more familiar and we tend to stay in that lane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think there's boundaries in just repeating back right, like a lot of what you're talking about. Right, there is boundaries with people, different kinds of people.
Speaker 2:And I think there's boundaries. I know my pastor. They don't work on Mondays. Mondays is their day off. You try to get a hold of them on Mondays and we're good buds, right. He's not responding, it's just if it's something crazy urgent or whatever. Yes, he will. But yeah, it's a very hard boundary where they're like him and his wife, they're on Mondays, they are off, like they will not respond to people. It doesn't matter. So I think there's those kind of boundaries too. Right, just schedule boundaries, I think. For myself. I don't know if this is a boundary, but it's like I make sure that there's gym time in the schedule, even though it's like oftentimes people want to schedule meetings over it and I'm just like no, no, no, yeah, it's like a hard thing that you have to kind of set it. So is there stuff like that when you think about boundaries too, just scheduling and 100%, like 100% how you think about your day, those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's not just relational, but it is schedule. And here's the thing about when you establish boundaries. Let me give you a warning. Here's the disclaimer you have to be willing to accept the consequences, and by that I mean you might actually get less done. That's going to bother some of you, right, you might actually make people mad. That's challenging. You might be perceived as lazy or resistant by some people. So there are consequences. Let me give you a real life example of how.
Speaker 1:I didn't model this very well. So a challenge for me is I love to work. I'm not a workaholic, but I love to work and I've gotten better as the years have progressed. I've gotten to a healthier place. I think my wife and friends would say Jason's not perfect at it, but he's gotten better.
Speaker 1:But one of the things I did very practically and I bet anybody watching listening this could resonate with you I would send emails to people on my team or staff at 11, 12, 1, 22, 4 am regularly. I would always tell them hey, you don't have to respond when I send that to you. However, there was this unspoken will of Jason's working. Maybe I should be working and he has high expectations of people. So there were actually unspoken things that people were assuming. And let's say, I emailed you at 4am because for years that was my wake up time, 4am. I emailed you at 4.15 and you get in the office at 9am and I'm asking you about it at 9.30. Not out of irritation, but you haven't even looked at it yet.
Speaker 1:So people began to tell themselves well, in order for me to be prepared to have a conversation with Jason, I also need to respond as fast as he does, or I need to be working at stupid hours of the night and morning. So really kind of built this unhealthy, unspoken thing as it related to even responding to texts and emails until people said hey, and we would talk about it. So now what I try to do is to do that differently, or I will schedule them to send out at 8am versus at 1am, because I don't want to be contributing to people's distractions. Because here's the thing Distraction can eventually lead to discouragement, and discouragement precedes destruction, and so discouragement drains us, discouragement pulls us down, but encouragement and being considerate of other people restores that energy. So how can I make decisions that are more restorative versus draining? And for me that is just one example of how I wasn't doing it well as a leader with my team.
Speaker 2:The schedule email in email client and in Slack is brilliant. I use the Slack one often for weekends or late evenings or whatever it's like. The schedule features great, because then I'm just like, okay, it's going to go to these people at a normal hour and not. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, Frank, one thing that if somebody may be asking is what happens when I get pushed back? Well, one, don't be, don't let it surprise you, Don't be alarmed, Don't you know? You don't have to get crazy on them and you know, kind of like you know, come at them but be humble about it. Assume positive intent, right? Don't assume they don't want you to have boundaries. They may not have boundaries, or maybe it's so new and dealing with you, they maybe they've worked with you for 10 years and all of a sudden you're this new boundary person, yeah, and it's like who are you? And like how does this thing work? Maybe ask about their expectations or ask for clarity on on your perception of their expectations. You know, and it's just having a conversation. One question I like to ask is hey, what do you think would what healthy would look like under those expectations? So a lot of times I just I just ask them a question because really I'm trying to be curious and I'm trying to surface clarity.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, I love that. Okay, let's let's talk about releasing control. That's another big one. In any leader on the planet, especially as you kind of lead more and more people over time like that that responsibility is bigger and bigger. But you know, if you can't learn to release control like you set, you kind of set a ceiling for yourself and you cannot grow beyond, like your organization, your, whatever you're trying to grow can't grow beyond you because you have this 100% invisible ceiling, right? So, yeah, how do you release control? How do you get leaders to release control and let others, you know, lead around them?
Speaker 1:There's actually a problem before releasing control, and it's helping the leaders see that they are controlling.
Speaker 1:Yeah they don't even know it's there. Don't even know it's there. And so that's really step. Step one is having these conversations and, you know, if you're listening or watching this, you may say, well, how do I know that? Well, the best way is to ask people. The challenge is, if they don't feel safe with you, they won't be honest with you. And so there is this little bit of a journey of you know, do you have controlling tendencies? And if you do, why do you? You know, is there something that you're in need of that that control gives you? Right? And again, that those would be the spots where you would actually put in the work Right. You know what's in the way of you releasing control. What are you afraid of? The things of that nature? So right they're.
Speaker 1:And thinking about control outside of work, you know as share with me this if I'm in a coaching session and we're talking about control and say we're talking about you, I may say you know, let's say we've had a session or two talked about control, you exit, you admit, okay, I see it, but we've only talked about work. I might ask you a question like this Is there ever a time that you see the controlling piece or you hear someone mention you're being controlling outside of work. You know, my goal in asking those questions is to thread together, potentially, if this is a consistent pattern in Frank's life. Or is this isolated to a particular environment, place of work, home, things of that nature. And if you were to say, well, you know what my wife or my kids are, my best friend of 30 years. What it does is it gives us a pattern to go.
Speaker 1:So what we've talked about here is there's elements of it at work, there's elements of it at home. Your good friends have even said it when I say that to you, frank. How does that land? You know, because a pattern is one thing, something in isolation is a different thing. So one it's helping the person see that control is a thing right and control is making up for something else or some things. So kind of work in that direction. And then, what is a plan? What does a plan look like if you were to release control? Sometimes, quite honestly, it's. You realize I don't have the right people on my team, so I feel like I've got to do everything.
Speaker 1:I don't want to but I don't have the right people on the team and I can't trust them. Okay, that's a different situation, or maybe it's. Maybe it's from a past experience you hired somebody, they let you down. I was on a PhD seminar last night and somebody actually gave this illustration unrelated to this topic, but they said that it was really hard for them to trust somebody because they made the same three same mistake three times, and this last time was really costly, and so now they felt this burden to take it back to control it again, because they couldn't afford it, versus having a really hard conversation with that person. Right, yeah, so it's a. I mean, there's so many different. It's not like black and white. There are some things, but the real hard part is helping a leader look in the mirror and almost like if you're going to AA going, hi, my name is Jason Young and I am very controlling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know in work, right, it's like you get, you know, you, when you do certain things and you think you do them well, whether it's true or not, but you think you do and you've built certain things and you have to hire and let other people take on those things to keep growing right, like that. That whole experience is one that you know as as we've seen Tidely grow and everything like that we've had to go through right, and I, man, I'll just say, like, hiring great people to where you go, okay, I can, I can trust them with this.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Even if you don't think it directly like it is a thing, right, yeah, or you're letting go of control, but when you've got great people in place, it makes it so much easier, yeah, you know it's like hiring the right people, or or having the right volunteers, who you know maybe aren't paid, but they're still in leadership positions around you.
Speaker 1:I'm just for shit. Yeah, if you're not, if you're not trusting people and you, some people are just bent towards more of a control, and there's reasons for that. Right, that could be personality influenced, it could be situational influence, it could be you don't feel like you're enough, and the more control you retain, the more you get to do, which in then, in turn, makes you feel better and the more credit you get because you've done something, you've stood up something. It may come from that, I mean, there's a lot of different reasons, right, but here's what I'll say to you you don't have to stay there, right, you don't have to stay to spot. That's controlling, because eventually, controlling people isolate people and then you realize you're on your own and then you start kind of blaming everybody else and the only consistent pattern is you've been present in every situation. So it's not one of those things. I, before we got on this, I actually, on this little little notepad, I wrote down a statement as I was sitting here thinking about it, similar in the similar topic.
Speaker 1:Some of you watching and listening, and maybe even when you read the book or you take that the health assessment, potentially you have been in a state of denying things for a long time. And here's what's interesting Frank People, intellectually, they intuitively know denial is not good, right, but for many of us we deny things. So here's a statement, two sentences, I wrote down. If you find yourself at this spot, denying doesn't make anything disappear. It just temporarily relocates it until it wants to show up again, and it usually shows up with a vengeance.
Speaker 1:So if you're like denying control or you're denying, you're kind of like denying these things that are hard, they're hard for a reason and really this book is an invitation to lean in and to kind of have an open posture and open mind and an open heart to let God really do some amazing work inside of you and around you to build you into the leader that he wants to use for his kingdom not for yours, right? And if it's for your kingdom, then you are going to be buying those books and you're going to go to those workshops. How do I get out of this burnout hole? Right? And trust me, it will cost you more money, it will cost you more relationships, it will cost you more time to recover. If that is even possible for you, then it does to work on the front side of preventing and trying to keep that light bright.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love that. Let's do one last one real quick. Yeah, we're talking about maintaining health. So what? What do you mean when you say that? What are we talking about there?
Speaker 1:Well, really the idea is, this is not a one and done so I mean it's a maintenance, which here's the thing. Maintenance is not a sexy word. Nobody goes mad If I could just be a maintenance person with my habits, like that would be a dream, yeah. But it's doing the small things really well all the time. And so if you cannot maintain something and you kind of go in these spurts of like I'm going to do it this month and not next month, then I'm going to do it. You know that's not a healthy pattern. It's almost like kind of these yo-yo diets we hear about. You know it's the same thing, it's. You don't want to be a yo-yo leader from a health perspective, from an emotional side, because what's going to happen is it's not going to let you stay bright, it's not going to keep you encouraged and joyful, it's not. It's realizing this is going to be a terrible visual.
Speaker 1:I love the show Naked and Afraid. Now, some of you have never heard of that and you're like is that an adult show? What is he watching? Okay, so if you're not, google it, just not on your church computer. But when you think about like Naked and Afraid, they're dropping these people right in these remote locations they don't want to be at.
Speaker 1:But what I find very interesting and this goes maintaining health. I don't care if you're in the desert and it's 120 degrees or if you're in, you know, snow filled mountain and at 15 degrees. One thing they both do is they both start a fire, and they realize how it's important. The purposes are different, right? Maybe to keep big prey away, or to keep warm or boil water, whatever the reasons may be.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing when it comes to maintaining health Find what you need, get rid of what you don't need, focus on assembling what you already have and not distracted by what you don't have. Find the spark, get the spark right. It's got to start somewhere. Nurture the fire and guess what the fire will nurture you. And so when you think about maintaining health, regardless of where you are in your season of ministry or if you're in a nonprofit or on a church staff, find what you need. Get rid of what you don't, assemble what you already have. Instead of being distracted by what you don't have. Start with the spark, nurture it, let it grow, protect it, and it will actually nurture you in return. That's how you maintain health, just very simply.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. Well, this has been great. I got a couple three quick questions to end with. Okay, rapid fire, right? What's a book that we all should read?
Speaker 1:I would say the Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson is on psychological safety. So how do you create places that are safe for people that actually yield trust?
Speaker 2:Love it, love it. What's a podcast you're listening to right now?
Speaker 1:You know what? None, no podcast. If you read the book, no, listen, if you read the book, I actually say something in there that I think will cause more controversy than anything. Okay.
Speaker 2:What is it? Okay, don't know what it is, but you don't listen to podcasts, okay.
Speaker 1:No, not right now. Let me, let me, let me, I gotta. I can't leave it too fully open. Here's the thing I am so good at listening to podcasts, listening to books, reading books, watching blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People have way too much access. I need to take back some of that. I think I already know potentially enough of what I need to know to do. What I need to do right now, yeah, and if I'm not careful I can overshadow the voice of the Lord. So for me in this season it could change next season. I've limited who has access to me and what I'm listening to and not overloading myself with information, and that's actually one of the things we unpack and challenge people with in the book.
Speaker 2:Love it, love it, all right. Where can people go to get the book?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you can check it out on Amazon. Don't burn out, burn bright. I'll tell you this, it's cheaper at Baker Bookhouse. It's like seven bucks cheaper, free shipping. You can get book orders there. This is a great thing to take your staff through. Yeah, I mean imagine if the leader and staff of the you model this for all the other staff. And then the health assessment that's free is at don't burn out, burn bright. It's in the very top corner. You can't miss it. Take the assessment. It gives you one step. That's related to the book.
Speaker 2:Don't burn out, burn brightcom. Yep, that's it. That's a long one. Don't burn out, burn brightcom Everybody will put in the show notes and all the things, but you guys should all go check it out. Jason, this has been great man. Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, frank, thank you, buddy, love it. Thanks guys, we'll see you next week on another episode of Modern Church Leader. Bye, bye.