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Article as published on lightandlife.fm
“How are you?”
“Good, just busy.”
This is a conversation that I bet just about everyone has had, maybe
on a weekly basis — especially for those of us in ministry roles. As of
2024, we have more tools of convenience than at any other time in human
history. Yet we are more enslaved to the things we do in life than ever.
This problem is becoming an epidemic of sorts in the church as we try
to do more and more in the same 24 hours we have all had since God first
breathed a breath in Adam.
So what has changed, and, more importantly, what do we do about it?
My life has always been busy and somehow keeps getting busier. Having
grown up in a pastor’s home, I know the general hubbub that goes on to
keep things running every week. But something has changed in the last
couple of years. I’m now married, expecting my first child, working
full-time, and part-time at church while also completing seminary,
producing a podcast, and a plethora of other small things. Phew, I’m
exhausted just thinking about it!
I’ve also noticed that my alone time with God has suffered, my blood
pressure is higher than it was a couple of years ago, and, even with
sleep, I just always feel a little bit tired.
Eliminating Hurry
Maybe this resonates with you and sounds similar in some of the broad
strokes on the million different things you have going on in your life.
There’s been this looming suspicion that something has to give to make a
change. Then I picked up the book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”
by John Mark Comer. It’s not a long book. And contained in those pages
is a monumental mental shift in how I need to organize my life.
Comer starts by pointing out the problems he faced in his life and
then progresses to lay out the history of how we as humanity have just
gotten too busy for anything. One of the most shocking realities is that
the rapid secularization we see in our culture and the church likely
has many of its roots in the contained busyness that we increasingly see
continuing to devour our lives.
Comer quotes John Ortberg (who wrote the book’s foreword): “For many
of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is
that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we
will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives
instead of living them.”
When I read this, it brought the pit that had been growing in my
stomach right up to my throat as I had to grapple with the practical
reality of what I had just mentally consumed. The image was now clear;
some stuff has to go.
Here’s the tension that we all face. Most or much of what we do is
good stuff. Many of us are working for the kingdom, doing all we can to
share the gospel and see people’s lives transformed as they follow
Jesus. But what often happens is that we fill our lives so much that
life just passes us by as we rush from thing to thing.
In a recent prayer meeting of local pastors, someone shared something they heard that brings all of this to a point:
“If a church found out their pastor broke nine of the Ten
Commandments, the pastor would probably get fired. But if they found out
their pastor was breaking the commandment to keep a sabbath, the pastor
would probably get a raise.”
Let that sink in for a moment.
We live in a time and culture where much of the church is being
rocked by well-known leadership falling to their brokenness in public
ways. Yes, the church needs to deal with these issues and ensure that
those kinds of things have no place in God’s kingdom, especially in
leadership. But once it comes to the question of the Sabbath, we keep it
as an open secret that it doesn’t matter if our pastor does not keep
that one. Why would we want to?
Countercultural Solitude
Our culture and we in the church have become enslaved to busyness,
always working on something. Jesus presents a different way: one that is
slower, that provides a life lived with intentionality. Jesus took
intentional time to be in solitude, and never rushed even when He knew
someone was sick and dying (i.e. Jairus’ daughter or Lazarus). This kind
of life is countercultural in more than just a moral or political way.
It’s something that is practiced by just about everyone regardless of
political affiliation or career.
Many of us are racking our brains trying to find out “what is going
to bring in the youth.” What if presenting the way of Jesus to live a
slower life is the thing their hearts are longing for — not just to be
saved from their sins, but to literally have a different kind of life
where they actually live rather than going from appointment to
appointment?
I highly recommend that you grab a copy of “The Ruthless Elimination
of Hurry.” Comer doesn’t just diagnose the problem but provides a
thoughtful and practical guide from the life of Jesus. If we are those
who claim to be His followers, it also means living as He did. That
doesn’t mean we don’t have times where we are busy, or that life can’t
be full of things to do. But we need to take those things and live life
holding all of them loosely in the light of our relationship with Christ
that is the only thing that can satisfy.