An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
It’s the pastor’s job, his calling, to care for souls. But what about his own soul? Who takes care of him? That’s the subject of this new book, The Pastor’s Soul: The Call and Care of an Undershepherd. I’m Fred Zaspel, executive editor here at Books At a Glance, and I’m talking today with authors Brian Croft and Jim Savastio.
Brian, Jim – welcome, and congratulations on your new book!
Croft & Savastio:
Thank you, Fred, we appreciate it.
Zaspel:
Tell us what your book is about and what contribution is that you hope to make.
Savastio:
Brian, go ahead. You’re the man who is finishing out a trilogy of books dealing with pastoral ministry.
Croft:
That’s true. Well, as Jim mentioned, this book is actually completing a three-piece work that really captures what our ministry, called Practical Shepherding, is all about. There’s a book on the pastor’s family; there’s a book on the pastor’s ministry; and now this is the third book on the pastor soul. We feel that those are the three key components to kind of holistically care for a pastor and his life and his ministry. So this book is to complete that third piece. It focuses on how pastors can care for themselves in the midst of their ministry. So often pastors pour out for their ministry, their churches and their families, but so many pastors that we work with don’t care for themselves that well and don’t give the time to do that. And this is a book that’s really calling them to, in a sense, care for themselves first, so that they are filled up to be able to pour out for others. The contribution we’re hoping to make with that is that pastors are going to be healthy and whole and spiritually vibrant, to then be able to go out and do the ministry God has called them to do.
Zaspel:
That’s really kind of a tricky thing isn’t it? Because you’re so caught up in pastoral ministry with others and other things. Somehow this is an idea that’s often neglected, isn’t it?
Savastio:
Yes, obviously we both believe that it was, and part of the reason why we wanted to deal with it. And it’s interesting that it is a matter of neglect because it is so much of what Paul addresses in his pastoral epistles and the major text we deal with is “take heed to yourself.” Paul recognized that Timothy’s own spiritual vibrancy would be the well out of which he would draw forth his ministry to others. And if he, himself, were not walking in those things it would be difficult or impossible for him to convey them with any degree of truth and passion. You know, to tell people to eat food that you, yourself, don’t eat, to have experiences that you, yourself, don’t have. So that’s part of the burden. And we recognize that just through subtle erosion of life, your own vibrancy can because short even as you’re trying very hard to minister to others and, in some sense, to really be faithful to your calling and faithful to the truth. You can wind up preaching a Christ that you, yourself, are no longer treasuring or experiencing.
Croft:
And, Fred, we’re convinced that there’s an epidemic of people falling out of ministry and burning out. And we’re convinced that this is the big reason that, in many cases, men allow themselves to not just get tired, but they don’t watch their life and they just fizzle out and aren’t able to continue.
Zaspel:
What are the categories or kinds of soul care that are needed – and perhaps often overlooked?
Savastio:
Brian, do you want me to start with that, since I begin the book and then maybe what we can do is just briefly cover what I deal with and then talk a bit about what you deal with.
Fred, what I deal with the book is some of the more spiritual issues. So that begins with the care of your own soul – taking heed to yourself, understanding who you are as a creature made in the image of God, who you are as a believer in union with Christ, and then who you are as a pastor with a particular call, and how soul care touches really, in a sense, on each of those aspects of our humanity, our life in Christ, and then our special calling as pastors. And so part of what I try to deal with is just some of those basic matters of the ordinary means of grace that can become for us, our jobs as pastors. Because it becomes our job to read the Bible. The Bible can become our toolkit out of which we forge our sermons. We can read the Bible for the help of others and neglect the reality that I am a believer who needs to have my own soul fed. And then because one of the aspects of our ministry is that we are called to pray and so we can pray for others and neglect to pray in regard to our own communion, our own experience of the power of the Holy Spirit, our own experience of the love of Christ, for instance, that Paul deals with in Ephesians chapter 3.
That’s part of what I begin to deal with, and then I take the take heeds – taking heed to yourself, taking heed to your doctrine, and taking heed to the flock – and try to demonstrate how from a particular vantage point, how our own life, our own spiritual vibrancy, our own walking with integrity can impact our doctrine because very often immense doctrine changes when his own life undergoes decay. And then his inability sometimes to really minister to the flock, to get near to the flock because he has to hide himself and so he becomes far more professional and he’s pulpit oriented and he’s not flock oriented in part because he doesn’t believe he can withstand the scrutiny of people seeing what his life has become. Sometimes what can happen in public ministry… I can’t remember who, but I saw somebody reference this the other day…but it becomes such that we are preaching out of an echo of what we once were. And we have memorized the lines, and maybe we can even imitate the compassion or the passion of it, but it’s no longer genuine and real to us, what we are calling others to. And so that’s the beginning of what I deal with, again, demonstrating how, if we’re going to take heed to ourselves, we take heed to our spiritual and our moral self as an emphasis, and then taking heed to our doctrine. That our doctrine is often tied to our own walk before the Lord; and then our ability to minister faithfully both publicly and privately is tied to our personal soul care. So that’s a bit of what I deal with in the first part of the book.
Croft:
Fred, we had a really important strategy in approaching this book – we gave Jim the spiritual part of the book as the more spiritual of the two of us, and then we gave me the pieces that I feel I can handle, the lighter lifting that I felt like I could deal with.
Savastio:
So, are you the more physical of us then, Brian, because you deal with… (Everyone laughing) you deal with sleep because you sleep more than I do?
Croft:
I guarantee you I sleep more than Jim that does (more laughing).
So, the complement of what Jim described, Fred, is what I tried to do. Both Jim and I share a frustration that when pastoral ministry and even a pastor’s soul is talked about, there’s an imbalance with it. Either someone puts us in this idealistic understanding of a pastor that nobody can achieve and they just kind of leave it there and expect guys to deal with the failure of it. Or, because guys have been hurt by that, then they really just focus on the grace side to it. Which is good, but then a lot of times it creates no standard of the calling. What Jim and I tried to do with this is balance that out. It’s both, we’ve got to find a middle ground. So Jim really shows in the New Testament the calling of a pastor, the nobility of the call and the importance and the seriousness of the calling. But then, on the other side to it, I tried to bring out the humanity of the pastor and that we are weak, we need Jesus just as much as everybody else. A lot of pastors feel the pressure to be Superman, so they try. What I’m to come along and do is… It’s in four parts. Jim does part one, I do part two, he has part three and I do part four we kind of go back and forth trying to capture that balance, purposefully, dealing with helping pastors see their own weakness and their own frailty, their own sins and their own brokenness and their need to be able to have help and find others to walk with them.
You’re talking about the physical side of things. The whole of chapter 4 is talking about how the pastor needs to exercise and get the right amount of sleep and have friendships and eat well and think about how you are taking care of yourself. And also how the soul is tied to those things. I make an argument in the book that how we eat, how much sleep we get, whether we exercise or not, actually reflects on our soul and how our soul is being cared for, and what’s the activity in our soul. So, trying to really bring a self-awareness to the pastor’s life as he’s evaluating his own soul is what I spend more of my time focusing on.
Zaspel:
Are there certain structures that could be in place in this regard that might help ensure that the pastor guards himself?
Savastio:
Well, I think that you have to be able to live, hopefully, with a wife who is in tune with how you are, how you’re really doing. And then, hopefully, fellow elders who have access to you and the recognition that even though you may potentially be, or the readers of this may potentially be in what one might call a primary leadership role, and a primary preaching pastor and whatnot, that he still has men that he regards, not just that he is leading or that he’s mentoring or that he’s helping to pastor, but that he really does view them as his own pastors. I think that’s vital. And then also there’s the same kind of thing that we would say to anybody else, you need the body of Christ. So one of the things I deal with in the book, which I think is not dealt with enough, is the pastor as a churchman. You are not just a shepherd, but you are a sheep. If we met a believer and they said, “I don’t go to a church and I don’t have a pastor,” we would probably be alarmed. We have the verses and we have the theology to say to somebody, “You’re in a vulnerable and dangerous position.” But, practically speaking, many pastors really don’t have a pastor, and they don’t really have a church in the same way that other people have churches, and they don’t get ministry, they don’t get teaching and preaching. And, again, they are the one doing it. Ninety percent of the sermons they hear are their own voice, and I think there can be an inherent danger in that. By allowing yourself to say, I’m a part of this church; I’m a sheep; I have shepherds; I need to listen to preaching; I need to be the same way I would encourage anybody else to be – open about your life, open about your struggles. Hopefully, as a pastor, you have a wife who loves you, who sees you, understands where your struggles are and how sometimes your public ministry and public disappointments and difficulties in the church are affecting you. But she’s going to be involved in how that is affecting your walk, how that is affecting your joy, how that is affecting your soul. And then, as I said, elders and the body of Christ coming alongside you where you are able to be open. I know I’m your pastor, but, I also wrestle, I struggle, I wrestle with unbelief, I wrestle with spiritual fatigue and finding my own joy and hope in my own identity in Christ, etc. Those are some things I see as vital components to accept to our help.
Croft:
I would add a couple of things. One is friendships, even friendships outside your own church. Other pastors, even other people who aren’t pastors, but are just people outside of your church that can feel like a safe place for pastors when, at times, maybe there’s parts of the church that do not. I mean the goal is that a church can be a place of help where, as Jim describes, the church actually ministers to you. You have elders and leaders that care for you. But there’s a lot of guys who are listening to this right now who don’t have that in their church or very much at all. So, the structure that needs to be in place is that they have created friendships and relationships outside their own church for people who are taking responsibility to care for them in some ways.
The other part I would mention in regard to the physical, is to for a pastor to guard himself. To make sure he has times to rest. That he actually is taking time away from ministry, taking vacation time, even taking a sabbatical at times. Stepping away from ministry even when guys don’t feel like they want to or need to, I think is vital for the longevity of most men who are pastoring. Knowing yourself and knowing what kind of break you need and what kind of time you need off and what you need to do from a standpoint even recreationally to be able to feel like you are resting from the rigors of ministry.
Zaspel:
What is some counsel you would give to congregations in this regard?
Croft:
Well, I will jump in and say that churches need to be reminded that their pastors are not superhuman. I think a lot of churches ask so much from their pastors. They are not mindful to try to care for the pastor. And I don’t think this is malicious to most people in the church, it’s just a matter of that’s the posture you take with your pastor. He’s the one that spiritually cares for you, you look to him in that way. But the one thing I would mention to churches is just to be aware that your pastor needs encouragement, your pastor needs care, your pastor’s family needs care. And to be mindful to make efforts to care and encourage the pastor and his family and not always take. That would be one thing that would really help a pastor soul in regard to the longevity of his ministry.
Savastio:
I would say two things, Brian, and it really does touch on what you’ve already said, and I’ll just underscore. I think one is we have to present openly a theology, an accurate theology of eldership, and who pastors are, what they can do and what they can’t do. And that needs to be reinforced at times with a wholesome realism. We have to be careful not to come across as whining or complaining about how hard our job is, but that’s a balance, at the same time, saying that there are unusual and peculiar strugglings and wrestlings that we go through. I feel it; I have felt it a bit more the last year or so because it’s now 28 years of what really becomes unrelenting pressure. Paul says on top of everything else that he had experienced, he says it was my care for all the churches. It’s as though he’s saying that if you thought getting robbed was bad, and being in a shipwreck was bad, and being beaten was bad, and being in jail was bad, you know what was really hard is I’m just burdened, I never rest from that burden about the people of God and how they are doing and what can I do to help them. That’s an unrelenting pressure. Paul was vulnerable enough to say that, so I think that’s a theology of it.
The other thing is being relational enough with people that they know you. You’re not a distant figure. You’re not an enigma to them. They’re in your home; you’re in their homes. Hopefully, you’re in a position where you can develop some friendships in the church and people know and they love you, they care about you. The bad part of that and the danger of that, sometimes, is that people who need help might withhold the asking of that help. At least I have found this to be the case because they say they didn’t want to bother you. And you don’t want to do that because people need to be able to have an appropriate access to you. We have to straddle some of that, but I think as you present it, as you live honestly, as you preach, in part, out of the matrix of your own life and soul. Who was it that said, “he preached what he did feel, what he did smartly feel.” Sometimes you just have to say to somebody, this is where I am right now. As I preach this or as I consider this text, these are the burdens on my own heart, I’m simply sharing this with you. You can pray for me and you know that I need to drink deeply of these things I am encouraging you to deal with because this is where I am right now. So, I think those are a couple of things that need to happen.
Croft:
I would like to add one more thing to that, and I’ll just kind of piggybacked on what Jim’s talking about. As far as counsel to a congregation, for congregation to be mindful to look to each other to serve and meet needs, especially if it’s one single pastor, but I would certainly affirm the plurality of elders that Jim articulated. One of the ways you can care for a pastor who is carrying a lot is… And it’s not to say I don’t want to ask for help by anybody, because that burdens a pastor’s soul that much more, that doesn’t help… but to go to another elder instead of just always going to the one pastor. Or going to other people in the church, being mindful when actually a need can be met by others. Our role as pastors in a lot of ways is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. So, for us to go and equip the saints so the Saints can care for one another in community is a big piece to the pastor not being constantly overwhelmed and having to deal with all the needs. Because as it starts to happen, things start to separate, and you really do start to see the things that the elders really do need to deal with, and you start to see the things that other church members can meet the needs of other people and kind of eliminate the pastor, somewhat.
Zaspel:
Before we sign off, give us a brief overview of your book so our listeners can know what to expect.
Savastio:
I began, so my first couple of chapters are: Take Heed to Yourself, and Take Heed to Your Doctrine, and Take Heed to Your Flock. And then I do a chapter on why this is so vital, and I deal with why it matters to God. It matters to your own conscience; it matters to your flock; and it even matters to unbelievers, these particular matters of the soul. And then Brian takes over for a bit.
Croft:
Part two is where I come back. It flows, I think, well with the excellent part one that Jim does. I call pastors to consider a self-awareness about their own soul in regard to their own weaknesses. I do this in two parts: part one is talking about emotional health in the pastoral ministry. Challenging that men, especially, a lot of times do not allow themselves to feel emotion well, which then affects the way they love and show compassion to others. And to show that that’s part of a weakness that we are to embrace that I think links to 2 Corinthians 12 where Paul says when we are weak we are strong when we are in Christ. Calling pastors to embrace weakness in a way that enhances their ministry, not hinders it. And then we go to part three that Jim does.
Savastio:
What I deal with there, Fred, is just simply the private means of grace and the public means of grace. One of the struggles I deal with under the private means of grace is how do we try to maintain… With our great familiarity with the Word, spending sometimes 30, 40, 50 hours a week working with the Word, week in, week out… how do you maintain a sense of wonder with that? I use an expression about avoiding what I call Park Ranger syndrome. I talk about what it would be like if you were a park ranger at the Grand Canyon and you may know the canyon better than anybody else, but because you see it every day you can lose something of your sense of awe and wonder. So how can we as believers strive to maintain something of our felt sense of communion with the Lord? And then the next chapter is on the public means of grace and that’s what we talked about earlier, the whole matter of the pastor as a churchman and living in light of what we tell other people. You need ministry, you need a church, you need the body of Christ, you need pastors to watch over your soul. And again, I think that, for a variety of reasons, some of which are very understandable, but a man of God can neglect those things and if he neglects them for too long I think it’s going to bring about the kind of deficit in his own life that it would bring about in any professed believer who lives without a church.
Croft:
Part four is the last section where I deal with six areas that are really practical in regard to what a lot of us would put as the physical manifestations in our lives of things. I try to make arguments on how closely tied they are to the soul. Six things that I recommend: sleep, eat, exercise, rest, friendship, and silence. I tie those six areas to how they affect the soul and how they can even reveal the activity of our soul and become more self-aware of what’s going on there. So that’s how we wrap it up in a really practical section. Then we have a couple of appendices that give some explanation on what a sabbatical is and how to approach that for churches. I get asked that question a lot from pastors and churches trying to figure out how to care for their pastor. How do you explain a sabbatical to a church full of people who maybe have gotten two weeks of vacation their whole lives? And they don’t understand what this is, so we try to give some helpful explanation and documents in the back.
The last thing I’ll say is that David Murray wrote the Foreword for this book. I’ve written several books, and this has got to be the finest Foreword that I have ever received from somebody.
Savastio:
It’s actually better than the whole book. I read the Foreword and I thought, man, that’s better than anything we wrote.
Croft:
I can’t remember the book, but there was a book that J. I. Packer wrote the Foreword for and they are just like “buy the book for the Foreword.”
Savastio:
His foreword, or his introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is published by itself, so maybe one day they will publish David’s in a tract form. (Laughter.)
Croft:
I’m grateful to David because he captured so well why this is such an important topic in this age right now.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Brian Croft and Jim Savastio, authors of the new book, The Pastor’s Soul: The Call and Care of an Undershepherd. It’s a neglected subject and a needed book for pastors and for their congregations.
Brian, Jim – thanks so much for your good ministries and for talking to us today.
Croft & Savastio:
Thanks, Fred, we appreciate it.
Buy the books
The Pastor’s Soul: The Call and Care of an Undershepherd