L1-01 Caring for Your Soul on YL Staff

Show faithful pursuit of intimacy with Jesus through spiritual disciplines and soul care.

INTRODUCTION

You have been chosen by God and affirmed by mission leaders to be on Young Life staff. There is a calling on your life for Christ and a calling on your life for adolescents. Those two callings from God meet up in the mission of Young Life – to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and to help them grow in their faith. As important as it is to faithfully carry out those goals within the mission that is not your primary role.

Your primary, fundamental responsibility, whether you work for Young Life or not, is to cultivate a deepening and growing relationship with Jesus. Human beings are created in the image of God and our deepest longing, our vocation is to live as image bearers - freed from the dehumanization and destruction of sin and into the freedom of worship, joy of service, and the richness of fellowship with other image bearers. Caring for our soul, in many respects, is how we come to know that this is God’s story for us. His deep desire and sincere longing for our hearts is that we grow and mature as his image bearers through our relationship with Jesus. We know God’s story so that we can understand our own. As we understand this in light of our image bearing calling, then we are better equipped to enter into kid’s stories. The foundation of all we do for the care of our own souls and our ministry starts from a place of Healthy Spirituality.

Evidence of staff demonstrating this objective looks like:
  • Has a growing spiritual maturity (daily time in prayer and scripture, generosity, church, fellowship and accountability).
  • Has a regular practice of retreat and rest within a weekly, monthly and annual rhythm,
  • The leader joyfully lives the disciplines of sabbath rhythm, gathering/community/service with the greater church body,
  • Growth in prayer, Growth in the knowledge of the Word,
  • Growth in living our intimacy with the Lord in other various spiritual disciplines as he/she is propelled to do the works created in advance by the Lord.
  • Greater Holy Spirit dependence

 

YOUR SOUL ON YOUNG LIFE STAFF

As you serve in Young Life, it will be important that you enter into the story of others from the overflow of your own heart. It may not surprise you to hear that working in ministry for Jesus, is not the same as being in a relationship with Jesus. In other words, caring for your soul does not happen as a function of your job. What has been surprising to many in ministry – and this is definitely true for Young Life staff – is that the demands of being a ministry leader can actually be at odds with caring for your soul. Ruth Hailey Barton, in her book “Strengthening the Soul of your Leadership” says,

“There will always be a tension between what the human soul needs in order to be truly well and what life in leadership encourages and even requires; the need for measurable goals and results and the measuring of that which is ultimately immeasurable by anyone but God.”

This means that none of us can count on our work to minister to our soul. At the same time, we shouldn’t resent our work because it isn’t nurturing in this way. Caring for your soul through a deepening relationship with Jesus while you work in ministry requires a consistent, thoughtful, and honest commitment.

Not only is ministry leadership often at odds with caring for your soul, there is a danger in being so consumed with the needs of adolescents that you neglect the time and space needed to care for you. You can slowly, almost indiscernibly, begin to dance while no longer hearing the music. It’s possible to do Young Life ministry well while at the same time your relationship with Jesus erodes. Just being aware of this risk is not enough. Soul care is more than knowing the right things. Soul care really is about loving or trusting the right person. In other words, having our heart in line with God and what he loves. This takes intentionality and discernment.

There are no shortcuts to cultivating a deep and abiding walk with Jesus. Your soul is much like a garden. Once the seeds have been planted, there is nothing you can do to make them grow faster. It simply takes time. But there are ways to participate with the Divine Gardner as he tends the soil (John 15:1) to create conditions in which the soul can grow. This kind of participation is not to the exclusion of grace. Dallas Willard was fond of saying, “God is not opposed to effort. He’s opposed to earning.”

So, what does it look like to cooperate with the Divine Gardener in cultivating our souls? It has a couple of ‘directions’ to it – it requires a ‘putting in’ and a ‘taking out.’ A gardener puts in what is required for a healthy crop – good soil, fertilizer, good sun exposure, water, etc. – and roots out what gets in the way of a healthy crop – things like pulling weeds and removing pests.

SO HOW DO WE PUT ALL THAT TOGETHER IN A SOUL CARE PLAN?
ENGAGEMENT

Begin with habits and practices of engagement. What are the things you will do this year to grow in Christ in the midst of your ministry? Here are some ideas (though this is very personal and particular to each person and his or her own journey, so obviously you will choose your own):

  • Study or read some chosen Scripture each day.
  • Journal your prayers, reflections or meditations over scripture each day.
  • Find a prayer book that helps you create a daily liturgy or prayer, confession and Scripture.
  • Take a sabbath each week
  • See a mentor, spiritual director, or counselor regularly.
  • Take a day of retreat or solitude each month.
  • Take a nightly walk to review each day with God and pray.
  • Join a Bible study or fellowship group.
  • Fast and pray from something once a week.
  • Read one spiritual book each month or semester.
  • Memorize a verse of Scripture each week — have 12 by semester’s end.
  • Make the Liturgical calendar a priority, making time to celebrate holy days and seasons of the church (e.g. Lent, Advent, etc.).
  • Partake in church sacraments regularly, such as communion.
  • Regular church attendance and membership.

 

RESISTANCE

Caring for your soul also requires resistance. We need to be honest and vulnerable with ourselves about what gets our time, resources, and attention. The world is full of narratives and stories that persuade our hearts to give ourselves to them such as, “being busy in ministry equals success in ministry,” or other compelling tales about how we use our time and possessions. We know in our heads these are not true but the issue is not what we know. It’s what we love or trust – and these stories offer us a shortcut to significance or success but end up only deforming our hearts along the way. Satan loves it when we seek shortcuts (see Jesus’ temptation).

It’s not wise, then, to think that we can engage or add soul care practices to our lives without paying attention to or resisting these alternate stories that speak to our hearts. These are indicators of what our hearts love and they often run counter to soul health. In order to engage in soul care we need to also be willing, just as a gardener is willing to bend down and pull out the weeds of his garden, to resist or root out that which gets in the way of those soul care habits and practices. A simple example might be if you want to wake up early for morning scripture reading and prayer it probably means resisting the temptation to watch movies or scroll through social media late into the night.

 

As you put together your soul care plan, keep the words of Jesus, from Matthew 11:28-30 (the Message translation) in mind:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me— watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill- fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Keep this in mind. You have a much better chance of keeping your relationship with Jesus healthy and growing if you: 1) share your spiritual goals with a couple of friends and ask them to check in with you regarding your goals; and 2) look at your goals two or three times a week. It’s good to include a few personal goals along with your, “nurturing your soul,” goals, as well. These might include things like: working out at a gym, enjoying a hobby, visiting family, or whatever you like to do that feels like play, rest, or refreshment. Write those goals down also. They can help you take care of yourself and keep you from becoming completely consumed with ministry.

SOUL CARE PLAN

In your first assignment in Leadership 1, you are going to create your own personal plan to care for your soul this semester. Using the template below, called a “Simple Soul Care Plan,” the idea is to begin to think about regular habits and practices that you can do daily, weekly, and monthly that will nurture and grow your relationship with Jesus at the soul level.

But it also requires that you reflect on some of the current habits and practices in your life that you might need to change or resist in order to make room for those soul care practices. So, before you begin the plan, it might be helpful to do a little personal ‘audit’. James K.A. Smith, in his book “Desiring the Kingdom” asks us to consider every day habits and practices as “ritual forces in our culture that we perhaps naively immerse ourselves in – and are thus formed by – that, when we consider them more closely, point at some ultimate end - and that “end” often times is something other than life with Jesus. Here are 5 questions that might prompt us to examine or take an inventory of key aspects of our lives that we should give attention to when thinking about soul care:

  • What practices are you regularly immersed in each week? How much time is spent doing different sorts of activities? Name 3-4 things you do in a week and the time spent doing them.
  • What are the first two hours and the last two hours of your day typically taken up with? How do those routines help [or hinder] how you start and end your day with God?
  • What activity do you feel incomplete without (however mundane…could be getting coffee or going on a walk)? How does this activity shape your daily routine? How does it shape you?
  • Are there habits you go to when you feel sad, angry, lonely, or hurt? How do those habits shape you? Do they help you move toward God?
  • Are there rituals in your day that encourage your anxiety, impatience, or distraction?
Simple Soul Care Plan
ACCOUNTABILITY

Having a plan is a great first step, but the danger is simply having a plan and not putting it into action, or continuing to refine it. As we work through our Leadership 1 lessons we’re going to focus on four key words to help us understand where we are, and what next steps we need to take. These help us in our own accountability, as well as in how we lead others well. We’ll focus on the four words: HAVE, ACTIVE, SHARED, GROWING

  • I have a Soul Care Plan, including a consistent devotional time with the LORD, and I have a way to retain what God is teaching me (like a journal). HAVE
  • I am sharing what I’m learning regularly with someone else (roots on my tree, small group at church, etc). ACTIVE
  • I am regularly sharing with my team about how God is speaking to me and inviting them to deeper sharing times as well. SHARED
  • I am reviewing my Soul Care Plan and discussing that with my mentor/small group to respond to how God is inviting me to deeper discipleship. GROWING
ACTION ITEMS
  • Before your meeting with your trainer, spend time creating your Simple Soul Care Plan for the semester. Be prepared to show this to your trainer and discuss how your plan will help you care for your soul.
  • An additional challenge is to think how we encourage the volunteers we work with in their own soul care. All our volunteers should also focus on their soul care as their first priority. How are we helping lead them in this?
    -What does it look like to help our volunteers HAVE a Soul Care Plan?
    -How do we help them keep their plans ACTIVE?
    -How do we encourage our team to SHARE how God is speaking to them?
    -How do we mutually support an encourage each other to keep GROWING in our discipleship?
  • Reflect first on your own Soul Care: ​ Where are you in these accountability questions? Where do you want to be? How can you get you to that space? Write out your answers to these questions and send them to your trainer before your next meeting.
  • Reflect now on your team and their discipleship: Where is your team in these accountability questions? Where do you want them to be? How can you get your team to that space? Write out your answers to these questions and send them to your trainer before your next meeting.
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