Many pastors feel burnt out or lose joy in ministry due to their busy schedules—but there is hope.
In this video testimonial, SooSang Park and Yung Kim, two pastors at Revive Church, share about the joy they have experienced as pastors because they are seeing positive outcomes and the Great Commission be fulfilled.
What’s their secret? Life-on-life missional discipleship.
As a pastor, it can be easy to think that everything rests solely on your own shoulders, but this is not the case.
If pastors want to avoid feeling burnt out, they need to trust that there are capable individuals in their church who can become pillars of support. Through life-on-life discipleship, you can encourage the growth and maturity of men and women in your church to increase the number of reliable pillars of support.
As they grow, they become more reliable and can even begin to disciple other leaders and pillars of support. Jesus loves to work through his people, and when pastors focus on equipping their people for ministry—He produces fruit.
Watch the video now or read the transcript below:
Transcript
SooSang Park: I’m SooSang Park. I’m the lead pastor of Revive Presbyterian Church of Silicon Valley. We’re one of the latest church plants in the PCA for the Bay Area.
Yung Kim: And I’m Yung Kim. I am a pastor of adult ministries at Revive Church.
I feel like I’ve met a lot of pastors who, they’re so busy, and rightfully so. There’s a lot to do when you’re a pastor. And they’ll oftentimes share how they’re feeling burnt out or feeling dry, or lost a little bit of that initial joy of doing ministry.
As they’re sharing, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “I have joy, and I have excitement when I come to the office as a pastor. And it’s because we’re able to fulfill the Great Commission. It’s because I can see fruit. It’s not just only sowing, but God has been gracious and we’re seeing fruit happen.”
And so, when I have these conversations with these fellow pastors, I do everything I can to try to communicate the excitement and the joy that God has given to me, and to our church through Life-on-life Missional Discipleship. We are really committing to the Great Commission and taking that step of faith and have our leadership on board, “This is what we’re going to do. This is what our church is going to be about.”
SooSang Park: We served in the English congregation of a Korean immigrant church before we became a church plant. But, we started the journey to implement a Life-on-life Missional Discipleship while we were still in the Korean immigrant church.
That was a supremely painful period because the Korean congregation of that church went into a civil war. We were on this Zoom call and we’re just bawling because what we were going through was so supremely painful to our hearts. We both have roots in this church.
And, that whole first year while the church was completely being torn apart, we did year one of Life-on-life Missional Discipleship. And Yung and I, we would get together. And every day I’d ask him, “Hey, how was your group last night?” He was like, “Man, it was awesome. How about you?” I was like, “Yeah, it was awesome.”
And all throughout that year, when we were profoundly wounded and extremely stressed out, what gave us life and joy and sustained us was pouring into these groups of men.
I mean, he was more ambitious than me. I took three guys. I was like, “I don’t have energy to do any more than three guys. I’m going to pick the minimum.” But those three men, watching them grow before my eyes and chase after Jesus was so life-giving to me. I don’t know if I would’ve made it through that year if it weren’t for Life-on-life Missional Discipleship.
One of the things I want to say, especially if you’re a lead pastor out there and you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders as a pastor, please let Jesus give back to you by obeying. You think you’re doing all these things for him, but watch him do a lot of things for you.
A second thing I want to say is, you feel like everything is on you because you’re the pastor, right? But, everything is not on you. There is a pathway. There will be more pillars inside the church. You feel like your churches are you, your wife, maybe you got one other good dude and his wife and there’s like, that’s it. There are four pillars in the church. And if one of you topples or if he leaves, your church plant or whatever, you’re going to collapse. Or if he leaves you, all of a sudden the work will fall on you and then you will collapse.
So, how do you get more pillars in the church? You trust that there are men and women inside your church who can become those pillars once they become thick and begin to mature in Christ.
This is God’s way to build more pillars in your church, more men you can trust, more women you can trust. And so, I feel the weight off my shoulder feels lighter. It feels like this is really growing, growing, growing. And it’s not all on me or on Yung, or on me and my wife.
I would strongly urge you to start putting this into your church and let Jesus grow it that way.
Love this Story?
We love SooSang and Yung’s story and their perspective on preventing pastoral burnout and life-on-life discipleship.
By investing in the men and women in your church, you can build many strong pillars to help grow the church and keep it healthy. One of the best ways to invest? Life-on-life discipleship!
Want to learn more about life-on-life discipleship and how it can transform the lives of your church members? Checkout our discipleship training program to discover how we can help you start a discipleship movement in your church.