Five and a half years of solo-pastoring had come to a screeching and painful standstill. Diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and burnout, I was on an emergency sabbatical from church. I did not know if I would return to serve my congregation with renewed fervor, or to leave and go…well, I didn’t know that either. I spent two weeks at QuietWaters at the beginning of my sabbatical, desperate for answers.

How did I get here? How do I heal from this depression? What is next for me?

As the second half of my two-week stay began, my counselor held up a graphic to help me understand the chaotic journey I was undergoing.

Usually she sits erect—shoulders back, head up, chin square, eyes tuned in. Natasha typically leans in during a conversation and engages her audience, however small or large, with hospitality, confidence, and grace. This day she is a shadow of herself.

Her shoulders slump with the weight of her broken heart and grieving soul. Her gaze rarely wanders from the surface of her coffee. She spends most of her meager energy on containing tears.

This is not the church leader I know.

“I…I…I just feel so…so vulnerable and skittish,” Natasha says. “I feel like I could break down sobbing at any minute. I am so hurt; I’m not sure which part I’d be crying about. And if anyone asks anything of me, even the slightest request, I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest. I am totally unable to give, and…and…”

She trails off and searches my eyes for reprieve.

The following are a few reflections on my experience:

The Struggle

“Too much ministry; not enough money!”

That’s how one pastor replied when asked about the biggest hurdle in the relationship between ministry and money. I agree. Or I did in the past. I have stumbled over that same hurdle, but now I am careful to avoid it, having discovered a secret.

That secret, however, first revealed a greater hurdle that exists in the relationship between ministry and money: me.

My start in ministry was probably similar to yours: obedience to the call, commitment to serve God and people, willingness to sacrifice. Whatever it took, I was in. I’d find myself happily and sincerely singing lyrics like…

“Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.”

“Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold.”

“All to Jesus I surrender; all to him I freely give…I surrender all!”

As years went by, however, something slow and sinister began occurring: My call became less compliant, being bullied by comparison and envy; my commitment to serve God and people grew weaker, thanks to complaining; and the sacrifice I once offered freely now teetered precariously on the altar as self-pity climbed up beside it.

I remember creating my children’s ministry budget for the year. This is what it looked like:

• VBS (a program inside the building): $6000
• Sunday morning celebration (a program inside the building): $10,000
• Team building and training (for the people who volunteered inside the building): $1000
• Conference and further education (so I could get better at planning all my “inside the building” programs): $1000
• Mentoring/meetings (aka lunches out on the church): $500
• Outreach (which was really all about getting the community to come to the building): $500

It was a hard reality to see that most of the money given by faithful tithers was feeding ourselves and not really doing much outside our walls. I was only doing what I was taught in Bible college. Church ministry was my life, so I budgeted based on what I had been taught should be my priorities. To me, ministry was all about how many people we had on a Sunday morning and coming up with creative ways to get them out of bed and into our pews. I slowly started to become frustrated and wondered if I was missing something. Was this really what ministry was all about? filling pews?

The problem came several years in. We had grown by that point to around 200 people and had rented a larger, more expensive facility to hold everyone. And in the earliest days of the church, the pastor’s office was in our home, but it soon became clear that this was less than ideal since the church needed a secretary and extra space for Sunday school. So when office space opened up across the street from the community center where we met, it seemed the perfect solution.

But as any church plant grows, the congregation’s commitment to that church diminishes. The 200 did not feel as invested and determined to see the church grow as the original 40 who liberally gave of their time and money and who had a clear vision for the church. So after several months of increased expenses, our budget began to run in the red.

Sure, there is the difficulty of talking about money in your organization – sermons and stewardship campaigns. Salaries and budget shortfalls. But that’s really the easy stuff.

What about a leader’s personal relationship with money?

I am a ministry leader and a pastor’s wife. While I earn money through my writing, teaching and leadership coaching, the bulk of our family’s income comes from my husband’s salary, paid for by our church. It has always been this way for us, nearly 17 years in full-time employment by one church or another.

I am accustomed to making our living through the church. Yet I continue to be troubled by the potential traps and trappings of this arrangement.

Sometimes I am aware that the people in our church watch what we do with our money. Most of the time, however, I don’t feel that they intentionally scrutinize. This is probably partly because we don’t live extravagantly, and partly because a certain standard of living has always been assumed in the communities where we have lived and ministered. If we don’t push the boundaries on either end of this standard, no one bats an eye.

Need an example? We recently stayed in a Westin Hotel for $52.00 per night and rented a mid-size car for $12.00 a day.

Whether you’re attending a leadership conference, engaging in educational enrichment, or organizing a much-needed staff getaway, how can you make your travel budget go further than it ever has before?

Here are four ways to save money on your next ministry trip.

You’re currently on tour with Chris Tomlin. As a worship leader, how do you navigate the balance between performance and worship on stage?

That’s a good question. It took me a little while. When I first learned to lead worship, I was focused on sounding good and not missing a note. It’s natural to do that, but I think over time, practice makes permanent. As worship leaders our job is to be so in love with God that it’s contagious and catches on for other people. For me personally, I need the Lord so much. There are just everyday things I’m going through, and I have to say, Lord, give me wisdom in this.

Worship for me is such a place of connecting with the Lord and laying down my burdens. If I’m able to do that on stage in front of people and not worry about what they think, it helps me look more authentic and not be so performance-oriented. But you can’t lose people either—there are some worship leaders who don’t care at all what the congregation’s doing, and they often completely lose people. So there’s got to be a good balance. I’m working on that all the time. I don’t have it down yet.

I was 17 the night it happened: the single, tragic event that would shape my journey and life’s purpose from that point forward.

In that instant, I knew my mother had hung herself from the rafters. My father was holding up her body to keep the rope from choking her further.

The Example of Edith

On Easter Sunday Edith Schaeffer—a woman best known for the L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland she founded with her husband, Francis—died at the age of 98. She wrote more than a dozen books, on topics ranging from biblical womanhood to children and family life to human suffering to music and art. As the wife of a famous husband, she had her own voice and platform for promoting her causes.

She valued beauty and fashion, wearing pearls and Chanel No. 5 unapologetically as she championed the arts at a time when many evangelicals did not take them seriously: “A Christian, above all people, should live artistically, aesthetically, and creatively,” she wrote in The Art of Life. “If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for our appreciation.”

As the Her.meneutics tribute notes, she was not the perfect model of a female leader, as her son’s books claim she put up with years of abuse and concerned herself with maintaining an outward image of perfection. Her life is a testament to the reality that even imperfect leaders can impact the Kingdom when they consistently point back to a merciful, forgiving, overcoming, loving God.

Because let’s face it: we don’t want to take a risk on someone cutting their leadership teeth on our projects and our teams. We know everyone has to get experience somewhere—we would just prefer it be somewhere else. And yet “no experience” may be exactly what is necessary in order to access what is perhaps the church’s greatest untapped resource: young women leaders.

Go with me for a moment. Because of the intensity of our world’s challenges and the pace at which they are changing, young leaders’ voices, ideas, and perspectives are needed now. Their collaborative, connected, and complex approach to life is a different kind of “experience.” And we simply don’t have the luxury of waiting 10 to 15 years for them to get the experience we think they need.

Twenty years after earning her undergraduate degree, Susan felt called to pursue a master’s degree at seminary with the aim of becoming a certified spiritual director. To afford her studies, she lived for a year in the guesthouse at the convent for the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, a few blocks from the seminary. Before her time was up, these Anglican sisters had invited her to become their first-ever Alongsider. For a year she’d live, work, and worship (four times a day) alongside them in order to experience and better understand the daily life of a monastic, all while continuing her studies.

Susan jumped at this chance to enrich her vocation as a spiritual director. The former businesswoman also wanted to find the balance between the frayed busyness of her life and the key disciplines of silence and solitude. She found something else, though: a way of leading that’s challenged her assumptions about how we lead, particularly in church contexts.

The trouble began when she was diagnosed with cancer and had to resign from her position during chemotherapy. She struggled as she saw her beloved ministry pass to other hands. Because she’d been the only head of the women’s ministry, she felt very strongly about how it should be run. She tried to communicate this clearly to church leaders, but in the end, she had no choice but to watch her position be handed to the most willing but, in her opinion, unqualified person.

Tabitha was delighted with the opportunity to take over the women’s ministry. She felt Lillian’s ideas were outdated and suited only for the older women of the church. She couldn’t wait for the opportunity to gear things toward the younger women who had never been much engaged in the activities Lillian had planned.

That’s when the battle commenced.

The word benediction comes from a Latin term meaning “to speak well.” Traditionally, a benediction is a short prayer for help, blessing, or guidance. Benedictions aren’t just for the end of sermons. A close study of Scripture reveals the power of the final word can do more than the entire conversation before it.

That day at my kitchen counter, I was ill-equipped to guide my young friend through a difficult time. I ended up falling back on some lame words about “everything being OK,” words neither of us truly believed. For me, that conversation sparked a desire to lead better. How could I provide a better “ending” when someone is looking for guidance or help?