From a place of weakness…

Posted by David Ward on 04/06/2019
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“ This is what happened to me. I came to a full stop. One day I was in my bishop’s study, as if in some eerily calm nightmare, hearing myself say these words: I cant do this anymore.”

Paul Swann

In a church where often so much emphasis is placed on success and strength, imagine being a church leader who is suddenly struck down by the raw experience of failure and debilitating illness, causing him to question the very foundations of his life, faith and ministry as he goes through a time in a wilderness of fatigue…

In 2016 the Francis Schaeffer Institute published the findings of a survey on clergy health and stress. They do not make for encouraging reading.

At least 90% of ministers feel honoured and satisfied to be in this role, and work hard at it because they genuinely care for people.

Unfortunately, it seems that such commitment comes at a cost, indeed that very commitment often makes it impossible to even notice, and therefore respond to, the results of stress and pressure in our ministry before we are close to breaking point.

A 2016 survey of pastors in the USA by the Francis Schaeffer Institute has some grim statistics:

  • 54% of pastors work over 55 hours a week
  • 57% can’t pay their bills without a second income 
  • 54% are overworked and 43% are overstressed
  • 53% feel their training had not properly prepared them for the task.
  • 35% battle depression
  • 26% are overly fatigued
  • 28% are spiritually undernourished and 9% are burnt-out
  • 23% are distant to their families
  • 18% work more than 70 hours a week and face unreasonable challenges
  • 12% are belittled.
  • 3% have had an affair

This does not paint a healthy picture of those who are called to model a healthy Christian life…

Sustaining Leadership coverThe church leader referred to in the opening paragraph was Paul Swann. After a number of years working hard in two growing parishes in the Diocese of Worcester he was forced to retire early due to  chronic fatigue syndrome (ME). An enforced period of reflection helped him to put together the circumstances that had led him to this place, and to identify the many warning signs that had been ignored along the way.

He now serves as an adviser on spirituality, offers spiritual direction and leads retreats, from a place of weakness. His book, “Sustaining Leadership – you are more important than your ministry” is both a helpful preventative and ongoing resource for a life and ministry characterised by a balance of self-care with healthy ministry.

The book begins by telling Paul’s story of disintegration and  reintegration, using this as a model for much sound and helpful advice. The chapter entitled “A question of balance” was very helpful and challenging, especially its advice on the keeping of a “Sabbath lifestyle”, and the “Soul Food” chapter amply repays the purchase price of the book and more.

The book finishes with a section on “Holding on to hope”, which invites the reader to move forward, not sustained by ‘false strength’, but rather from hope in a place of vulnerability. Faith and hope are often major casualties in this burnout process…the whole thrust of the book relates to keeping those essentials alive.

Guiltless challenge…

Posted by David Ward on 22/02/2019
Posted in: Books/Articles, Personal thoughts, Prayer and liturgy. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I read lots of books about prayer. One of my most recent reads is “Prayer in the Making” by Lyndall Bywater. Readers of this blog may remember that I found her previous book, “Faith in the Making” challenging and inspiring, so I thought I’d take a look.

I am not a great prayer, but I do take pains to keep my relationship with God fresh and two-way, so I like to get ideas and be inspired by others who are perhaps more accomplished pray-ers than me.

Books on prayer can be ‘deep’, otherworldly and guilt inducing. “Prayer in the Making” is not one of those; it is thoroughly practical and encouraging, as one would expect from someone who has travelled the path of discovering prayer herself. Challenging…yes, guilt-inducing…definitely not!

The sub-title of the book, “Trying it, talking it, sustaining it’ gives away something of the authors approach, as she invites us to investigate 12 different ways of praying to find those that suit both our personalities and our lifestyles…it is about an open door to prayer rather than a narrow gate opened to the chosen few.

Using a scriptural theme and lots of practical examples we are taken on a journey through the themes Encounter, Worship, Listening, Stillness, Action, Intercession, Strategy, Restorations, Voice and body, Scripture, Warfare and Resilience. Each section finishes with exercises to help us try it, talk it and sustain it.

When I read a new book, I like to use coloured post-it tabs to mark pages of interest, and there is a veritable forest of tabs in my copy of this book. The section about ‘grief and gratitude’ in worship is a firm favourite, as are the sections on ‘Stillness’, ‘Strategy’ and ‘Scripture’. The section under ‘Resilience’ that talks about building a rhythm of prayer, and uses the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ as a template is excellent (I’ve read lots of books about the Lord’s Prayer, and the section in “Prayer in the Making” is one of the most helpful and accessible I have found.

This book makes for a great personal read, but would also provide excellent material for Home Groups, Reading Groups and so on, and would even provide a useful framework for a teaching series on prayer.

But don’t take my word for it…read it for yourself!

Love…fear…change…

Posted by David Ward on 22/01/2019
Posted in: Bible, Personal thoughts, unity. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Something has happened in the nations that make up the UK. It crept up on us silently and unannounced. It took most of us completely by surprise, and is causing many of us to lose sleep.

I see it in the news, I hear it on the streets and I read it on social media. It seems as if everything is changing, and many of the things we have taken for granted are being shaken.

It must have been bubbling away just beneath the surface for many years, occasionally breaking through into plain view before diving again.

Then, it seems that the events of 23rd June 2016 allowed it to burst to the surface and slowly take over our whole society.

Fear, especially of those who are different to us, now seems to dominate so much of our time. It seems that no one is immune – politicians, workers, bosses, educationalists, pensioners, students have all succumbed to it.

Our nation is deeply and dangerously divided.

At the same time, something more hopeful is also stirring.

Long ago, Jesus prayed a prayer that has largely gone unanswered…perhaps until now.


“I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

John 17:20-23, New Testament

As I talk to Christian people all over the UK, as I travel around and catch up with friends who are also believers through social media, I am aware that God is at work in our land.

Churches in many places are coming together, working together in ways I have not seen in my lifetime. Denominations far apart on the theological spectrum are laying down their differences of interpretation, preference and practice and coming together out of their love for Jesus and each other and from their shared desire to see his Kingdom come “on earth as it is in heaven”.

What has prevented Christians from coming together in the past, indeed, why is our history littered with splits and divisions?


 “Perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment”

I John 4: 18, New Testament

Could it be fear that has kept us apart, the same fears we see expressed in the world round us. Why do we fear others?

  • Fear of difference
  • Fear of the unknown
  • Fear of being criticised
  • Fear of being “polluted” – “will God be angry with us if we mix with them?”

Many of us spend a lot of time working out who to exclude, based on our fears. We need to remind ourselves that Jesus always hung around with the excluded…maybe we should too if we want to know him better.


“You cannot love those you fear”

Robert Benson, “The Body Broken”

Some of us find it hard enough to love people in our own church who are different from us. How will we be able to be obedient to Jesus and love those in other parts of the church that are different to our own? Paul and the other letter writers in the NT were well aware of this tendency among us, hence the frequent warnings against gossip, criticism and sowing division.

Part of the good news, the Gospel, is that Jesus death heals divisions between people as well as healing the division between us and God. John goes as far as to say that if we can’t love our brothers and sisters who are right there in front of us, it calls our love for God into question too…if Jesus has really changed us it affects the way we love everyone.

It’s important that we ask ourselves, “Why is God bringing Christians together in new ways today?”

I believe that a more united church is demonstrating a prophetic and counter-cultural contrast, as a sign of hope to the increasingly fractured and broken culture in which we live.

I guess the question is: do we want to be part of what God is doing, or will we continue to allow old fears and prejudices keep us apart?

(Adapted from a talk given by me at Tweedmouth Parish church on 20th January 2019, at the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity)