Beneficial Brokenness (or “why it is good to be burned out”)

The soul-shattering, heart-crushing initial moments of brokenness are the things of pastoral nightmares.  The ornate rug of pride (we call it acknowledgment of God’s blessings), self-righteousness (we call it discernment), and arrogance (we call it confidence) is pulled from beneath our well-polished Sunday shoes and we find ourselves on our backs, looking up at the ugly face of reality.  The world has an axis and in such moments we rediscover the uncomfortable reality that it is not us.  The impact leaves us breathless, stunned, hurting.

During such moments we feel hopelessly ruined, gravity has shifted and what was up will now be down for all of time.  The recovery does come, but slow.  And this is where we find truth  in the biblical paradox: last really is first, weak really is strong, broken really is whole.  The swift knock to our far too large heads brings clarity, the godly perspective: we really are not capable of anything by ourselves.  Our sin-soaked, self-seeking hearts are addicts of praise, we are glory thieves, we hoard what we were never intended to receive.  When we glimpse the divine perspective we are convicted, which leads to confession, which leads to repentance, which leads us to a place where we can worship “in spirit and in truth”, and when we worship we can truly minister properly.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss said, “It is a wonder what God can do with a broken heart, if He gets all the pieces”, and it is when we are on our knees after being put on our backs that we learn exactly how true her words are.  Being burned out means relying on God, and there is no substitute for such a powerful position of weakness.

The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back (or “twitter broke my heart”)

It begins with a monster disguised as a little bird. I’d made my obligatory Twitter account a couple of years ago, but at some prompting or another decided it was time to take it for a test flight. Three hours later I was down in flames. The public profiles of my students revealed their keen ability to communicate bitterness, hatred, vileness, and immorality in a never-ending barrage, each one efficient to 140 characters or fewer. Each post left me deeper in despair. This is no overstatement, I was moved to tears, an anomaly, as I soaked in their bile.

I was just coming off a seemingly powerful weekend youth retreat, one of those “mountaintop” getaways described in such impressively exaggerated summaries: “God really showed up!” “The students were moved!” “Life-changing!”  In Youth Pastor currency I was a very wealthy man; certainly Pride and Ego, those ever-hungry beggars of the mind, were momentarily sated. Oh, the good I thought I had accomplished.

Then the little bird, that logo of the site of hatred, the dump site, where my students had been publicly displaying their projected selves while I was blissfully ignorant and thinking myself effective, tool of God.  Tool, alright.

I read for three hours.  I looked up weeks when I knew we were on some big youth trip.  I studied.  I searched.  Eventually I became desperate to see one tweet, one casual side comment, one single mention of truth, wisdom, love, purity, godliness… all the things I thought I had been effectively teaching!  They certainly mentioned God, but in acronym form and certainly not honoring, especially when my Student Leaders had room to employ the ‘F’ character.  One student had retweeted a few Bible verses (one student out of many, we are a somewhat larger youth group, though not huge), but none of her self-written posts mentioned God with anything resembling honor.  Soon my students noticed I was ‘following’ their posts and began to block me, some before I even got to their profiles.

My heart sank, shriveled, and partly died.  Some would say I took it too seriously, kids will be kids, and teens will be monsters, but this was my life! I was ten years into ministry, and by modern evangelical standards I was a success! My identity was wrapped into this ministry, I had sacrificed so much time, so much effort! What had ministry already cost my family? And I had thought things were going so well!  Just a week earlier I had written my annual report, declaring the youth ministry to be healthy, growing, and effective. Everything I thought I was accomplishing, all that I thought God has blessed and touched through me, was false. We are known by (identified by, judged by) our fruits, and my garden was full of manure and weeds wrapped in falsehood, like rotten pumpkins.

I prayed.  I vented, then humbled myself as recently read words came to heart. Ann Voskamp’s book was my judge/guide: There is God in it, there is something here to be thankful for, God is at work even in this. I cried to God, I pleaded for eyes to see His fingerprints even in this, the realization of my failure. I’ve just lighted on the pile I’ve received from God in response to this prayer, this blog will be my searching through, cataloging, marveling at the pile.