I have been at the Assembly Of God International Convention since Monday and it was a tremendous experience. I was a member of First Christian Assembly while Karen and I were at UC and after we started a house church across from Sander Hall. (Now torn down.)
We had anywhere from 30 to 75 young people at our home on a weekly basis. They were often "Sinners seeking God" or newly converted Modern American Pagans adrift is a hostile world looking for love in all the wrong places.
I had gotten the boot from my lifelong church group on a charge that I had become a Quaker. I did have a beard and long hair and I did lead home based Bible studies that failed to use the prescribed denominational answers to the questions of our young people. I did teach the students to pray and seek God so maybe I was bordering on being a Friend.
My dismissal from a lifetime in my denomination was difficult but it proved to be Providential. It opened me up to the Lord's leading me to the Jesus Movement and House Church Movement. It also opened me up to a ministry to the most deeply broken youth in our society.
Over the years many of the traumatized youth who came to Christ went into Ministry. Unfortunately, they carried some of their compulsive behavior with them. One that shows up regularly in Ministers is substituting "Church Work" for "God's works". Leaders can get so completely caught up in ministry that the original reasons they entered Ministry is lost. Whey do most people enter Ministry?
Because they had such a glorious spiritual awakening and spiritual life that they had to share it. However, in Ministry, duty, doing, driving and serving others replaces personal, spiritual life for too many of us. That is the core of burn out.
When a Minister things a sermon and church service can replace personal worship burn out is on the way.
It is not overwork or the church stress but stress from our own inner Stinking Thinking.
The Family Tree and Power Thinking books offer real assistance but don't rush and buy them.
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