Rachel Boehm Van Harmelen
February 2007
Pastor Ron Klok of Glad Tidings CRC in Edmonton, Alberta, recently published an article in which he compared pastors to SUVs. http://www.crcna.org/pages/suv.cfm “They require copious amounts of fuel and regular servicing,” he wrote. “Without this fuel and servicing, a pastor will quickly find himself stalled at the side of the road.”
Klok admits that not too long ago, he found himself stalled, a “broken-down pastor,” his energy and vitality zapped, his zeal for ministry severely diminished. The challenge of dealing with some of life’s most trying situations—tragic accidents, abuse, suicides, broken relationships—and the daily stress of the ministry had left Klok feeling discouraged. “I had lost my fire,” he says.
Understanding that he had hit rock bottom, Klok began the long, slow road to recovery. He now understands better than most how important it is to prevent breakdown through something he calls “soul care.”
Passionate about preventing others from burning out, Klok and five other Alberta CRC pastors – Ron VandenBrink, Michael Koot, Johannes Schouten, Martin Mobach and Henry Steenbergen – started a peer learning group focussing on how pastors can nurture and care for their inner selves. “We recognized that in the busyness and challenges of pastoral ministry, it’s easy for our souls to become weary and dry,” says Steenbergen, who served as project coordinator for the peer group.
“It takes healthy pastors with healthy spiritual habits to encourage spiritual health within our congregations,” says Steenbergen. “We can only nurture the inner spiritual life of others when we cultivate our own inner life.”
In addition to meeting regularly to pray and share, the pastors went on three silent retreats, two locally and one five-day retreat at a Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos, California. “For these retreats, we spent our own time in silence except for the time we spent with our spiritual director,” says Steenbergen, who notes silent time could be devoted to prayer, reading of Scripture and “soul care” books or taking long, reflective walks.
Pastor Ron Vanden Brink discovered that silence before God can be a powerful way to discern his will for our lives. During the five-day retreat in California, Vanden Brink was struggling with whether or not to take on a new position with a church plant in Kelowna, B.C. Through the times of silence, prayer and meditation on God’s Word, Vanden Brink says that God’s plan for his work in Kelowna became clear. He and his wife, Monica, have since moved there to begin their new ministry.
Steenbergen agrees that God speaks through silence. “What surprised me most about my involvement in this peer learning group was the power of a directed silent retreat,” says Steenbergen. “These retreats are a time of being open to hear from God about some particular area of our inner life that needed some change or renewed attention,” he says. “I came away feeling spiritually refreshed.”
