One of the most helpful books I’ve read to date on both giving pastoral care and taking care of myself in the process is Clergy Self-Care by Roy Oswald. Below are my favorite quotes and once you’ve read them, I encourage you to pick your top three and discuss them with your spouse, closest friend, or leadership team:

• Spiritual healing is often the prerequisite to healing on an emotional or physical level.  Congregations are in a strong position to be involved in holistic health efforts, which counter what I believe is a dysfunctional medical model that treats pathology in isolation from the whole person.
• Theorists claim that only fifteen percent of what we communicate is verbal: the rest- eighty-five percent- comes through non-verbally.
• [Self-Care] means striving for the best we can be given our age, genes, liabilities and disabilities, and life experiences.
• Whatever cards life has dealt us- our genes, our family origin, our traumas and tragedies, our friends- the spiritual task before us is to take that stack of cards and shuffle them in such a way that we come up positive, joyful, grateful, and humble. Then, we can offer ourselves to church and society.  I believe our chief task here on earth is to learn and grow.
• Some would say that doctors know a lot about illness but very little about mental health.
• I must reinterpret my call to a church as primarily a call to serve God, not necessarily to serve people.
• We cannot maintain our health and wholeness unless there is support for this among our people.
• Thomas Merton once said that we as spiritual leaders need to learn to say “no” to our people at times or we will find ourselves supporting their illusions about themselves and the world.
• At least seventy percent of the illnesses that doctors treat are stress-related.
• Pastors are in a people-related profession in which our value to others is our ability to get down in the trenches with them when the bombs are dropping all around.
• The ability to see options is one of the most valuable things we can offer people when tragedy strikes their lives.
• We may notice that even though all family members are exposed to a cold virus, only the most stressed-out members catch the cold.
• Trying to simplify my life is rarely a guilt-free process.
• “Over-peopled”- being so bombarded with people’s concerns all day that one doesn’t have the emotional energy to deal with one more person.
• Burnout can occur when people overuse their listening or caring capacities. They become consumed by too many needy people or too much responsibility over long periods of time.
• The key factor that determines whether people in helping professions burn out seems to be control.  How much control does the person have over how many needy, hurting people invade their space?
• All great religious leaders eventually learn that they must do ministry within the confines of the human body… I do not believe God calls us to be exhausted, cynical, disillusioned, and self- deprecating.
• Paul gives us a clear pathway out of burnout; namely, a deeper reliance upon God and a dependence on friends earnestly holding us up in prayer.
• Many of the spiritual giants of the past acknowledge that pain and adversity were their greatest teachers.
• Anything we do to enrich our spiritual lives will help turn our adversity into a refiner’s fire.
• The way to keep a congregation vital is to be a vital, growing person in their midst.
• Clergy don’t need more knowledge or skills as much as they need a deeper spiritual life.
• Spiritual disciplines can be for us the regular pathways by which we open ourselves to the Grace of God.  They become the process by which we allow our own emptiness, lack of perspective, our self image- yes, even our hubris- to be confronted with the Holy. Spiritual disciplines can help restore us to a sense of being whole, forgiven, and at peace.
• Ministry will happen best for us when we are healthy on all three fronts: physical, emotional, and spiritual.
• We do some crazy mental flips and talk about keeping the Sabbath in spirit through worship, while forgetting the logic and wisdom behind the need for regular weekly rest for both physical and spiritual renewal.
• We need a new set of heroes among those in spiritual leadership. We need persons who can make a church come alive without sacrificing their bodies, their families, or their souls.
• Jesus chided the Scribes and the Pharisees for their legalism in regard to the Sabbath, but he did not do away with a day of rest.  The Sabbath is a wonderful spiritual discipline that is built right into the order of creation.