The pastor's personal spiritual life

This week you will spend a certain number of hours preparing a message that is intended to help the spiritual development of your congregation.  How many hours will you spend in your own spiritual development?  My experience is that most pastors (both bivocational and fully-funded) spend much more time trying to help others to grow spiritually than they do in their own spiritual growth.  Eventually, such pastors learn that they have nothing left to give.  This may explain why many pastors seldom stay at one place for more than 4-5 years.  They move on so they can repeat what they did in their previous pastorate.

Unfortunately, most pastors are graded by what they do.  As a judicatory minister I've had several churches complain that their pastors are poor at one or more aspects of ministry.  I've never received a complaint from a church member that their pastor was neglecting his or her personal spiritual development.  Pastors are unlikely to hear such complaints either.  They know what their congregation is judging them on is their ministry activity, so that is what they provide.

Perhaps even more unfortunate, most pastors with a little experience and training can provide adequate ministry activity with little or no spiritual development in their lives.  Sermons can be prepared quite nicely with the proper commentaries and sermon helps, and this is even more true now that many of these helps are available on-line.  We can make hospital visits and offer comforting words and even say a little prayer without having spent much time studying Scripture or enjoying times of personal prayer.  We can organize and plan ministry activities using the same techniques business leaders use, and nobody will bat an eye.  We can grow our churches while our own souls are slowly spiritually starving.

I have to confess that I've found myself guilty of all of these at more times in my ministry than I care to admit.  As a type A personality I enjoy staying busy.  I like doing things.  It is easy to convince myself that I have too much to do today for God to spend much time (if any) in prayer or Bible study.  Besides, I tell myself, I can pray later in the car while driving to the next activity.  No one has done more to help me address this tendency in my life than Eugene Peterson.  His books always remind me that I am responsible for my own spiritual growth, and it is out of such growth that true success in ministry will come.

How are you doing?  Many bivocational ministers struggle to find time for their own spiritual development.  Has this been a problem for you?  If so, how are you addressing it?