Better to Burn-Out or Rust-Out?
Posted in: Uncategorizedi have a great pastor friend that i spend a lot of time with. He is in his 50’s now and he is starting a new stage of ministry. i believe he has transitioned wonderfully! i am jealous of how well he has handled this move. i pray that i can have the same level-headedness in my decisions later in ministry.
one of the things he has learned and is passing down to younger pastors is the idea of finishing well.
most pastors do not finish well. in fact, if i were to ask you to name pastors that you can think of that have been doing it for 20-25 years and are still going strong, or who ended strong, your list would be very short…that is if you could even have a list. i’ve been around the church all my life, i couldn’t name a hand-full of guys that have ended well. On the other hand, i could rattle off truck-loads of names of guys that have crashed and burned!!! you could too.
Charles (my pastor friend) has said there are guys in ministry who have said to him, “it’s better to burn-out than to rust-out.” Think about that! That’s nuts! Burning out is bad! It means you didn’t finish well, or at all!
Burn-out means that you spent yourself too much at the beginning and never finished the race. How horrible would it be if you were an Olympic runner to say that you never finished the race?! it’s not enough to just be in the race…how you run it matters…if you finish matters!
As far as i’m concerned, i am hoping to rust-out! i want to be so old that people can’t believe that i’m still going! I want to preach and teach and pastor until i drop over dead! i don’t want to be one of those young, mid-life, moral failure guys who burns-out and burns-up the church and his family with me!
Let’s be men and women of integrity. let’s glorify God in the way we do ministry. in EVERYTHING we do, let’s put Him first and let’s do it for a long, long time!
so, for you…is it better to burn-out or rust-out? what do you say?
peace.out.
