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Beyond budgets, schedules, and gear, how’s your walk with God? A quick three-question self-assessment could change everything.
How’s it going, production leader?
I don’t mean ministry stuff like your volunteer count, your budget, or your schedule. I mean you. How are you? How is your heart and your walk with the Lord?
Let’s check in.
Are You Loving?
We’re very often encouraged to read our Bibles, pray, attend worship, and listen to the sermon, but those are all a secondary means of connecting to the Lord after one thing—love. We can do all those “spiritual” things, but Jesus left us one command: to love one another. It’s the spiritual “hack” of all hacks. If you want to connect with God, who is love, you must love and love well.
There’s a priority list to love, too. If you’re married, your spouse is first. How you love your spouse is a direct reflection of your love for Christ, and you will teach your children (if you have them) how to love by loving him or her well. If you do have kids, they come next. It’s easy to think that our ministry job is our main ministry, but it’s actually those children. You should be discipling them by how you love them, which looks like parenting them as God has parented you while teaching them about the goodness of God with your example and your words.
It’s easy to think our ministry job is our main ministry—but it’s actually our families.
You probably guessed this, but everyone else comes after that. If you’re not married and don’t have kids, then it’s open season. Be generous with your time and lavish love on people. You’ll find that God is near when you are loving.
Are you Seeking?
Love is the primary means of connecting to God, but we are called to seek him by other means. Those means almost always involve scripture and prayer, so here you have the stuff I mentioned just a minute ago.
Are you taking some time to be in scripture? That can look like a lot of things, not just raw bible reading. A good book by a good theologian, a quality devotional, or listening to good sermons are just a few of the ways to feed your soul with the Bible. And don’t check out during sermon time at weekend services. I know that’s hard because you probably already saw the pastor’s notes, but listen anyway.
Are you praying and worshipping? I mention these two together because they go hand in hand. Worship is prayer; prayer is worship. You need personal time in prayer, and you need time in corporate worship with your brothers and sisters. These are fundamental instructions from the Apostle Paul. These things form your spirit to the nature of God (which is love!) and draw you closer to your spiritual family. They are secondary to love, but no less essential.
Are You Resting?
This can be especially hard. Many of us are starting families, so we have small children alongside an already varied production schedule at church. Just remember that a little goes a long way, but you need to rest regardless. You will burn out if you don’t. We wrote about this a while back, how Sabbath might look for a production leader.
Just remember: a little rest goes a long way. Burnout is not a badge of honor.
How’d you do? If your answers to these questions helped you realize you need to make some adjustments, the Lord bless you. Don’t panic; just pivot a little. The Lord with with you and he kind. He sees your work and it honors him.
You are doing well. I pray that you remain faithful, friends.
