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"Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  (Matthew 11:28-30)

 

Years ago, I was the poster child of what NOT to do in life as a disciple of Christ. As a full-time pastor, I over-functioned thinking I had to be all things for all people at all times. That is a recipe for disaster… and it was.  I burnt out in ministry.  And then life happened, and things really got difficult.  After my spouse passed away in 2022, I knew something had to change. In October of 2023 I decided that I needed some personal time off to figure out life.  I didn’t really take much time off since Carol died in September of 2022 and I was having
a hard time deciding what I wanted to do with my life now as a single person.  So, on October 15, 2023, I resigned my call at Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church and took time to dream and do some travelling.  I took an unlimited unpaid sabbatical to find life again. I then took time to visit friends and family from all around the country that I haven’t seen in years. One of the bucket list items that I achieved as well was to travel to Italy. I took a tour through the country and saw the Vatican, Venice, and even Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. What an adventure!  When I got back from Italy, I spent as much time with my kids and Grandkids I could without driving them nuts. I also did a lot of camping and RVing around Arizona to keep busy.


In February, I also completed a major goal in writing and publishing my book. I wrote a 500 page plus book called, My Musings, that contains all my newsletter articles written from 2019-2023. I reformatted each one of them into a devotional with scripture and a reflective question. The book is available for purchase on Amazon.com under my real name Anton Scheer. These are great devotions to help heal and live. It took almost a year for me to get back to the mindset of living life as a disciple of Christ again… in a healthy manner where I realize now there are boundaries and ways to learn where the limits are to serving others and the church. This volunteer or disciple burn out is something all church members need to be aware of as well. We all are a part of the body of Christ, and it takes all of us to do the work of the church.


Beautiful Savior is a very busy place where ministries are occurring every day! This takes a lot of time to execute! It takes lots of energy. As your interim I will be sure to create healthy limits for myself AND help you see the healthy limits for your volunteers. However, it takes more than devotionals to remain a healthy disciple. I have noticed that there is a lot of cross over in ministries in this congregation where we have many of
the same people working in many of the ministry teams. This is a big warning sign of burning out. We don’t want anybody to feel burnt out or lose anybody because they are overwhelmed. This month the Council President is going to ask for more volunteers for a few more very important ministry teams to get you through this transition this year and we need some more talented bodies to help serve. We can’t have the same people who are busy in other ministries in these teams too. We need your help to stay healthy! If you haven’t served on a ministry team before in your church, I strongly encourage you to consider doing so now…. As your church is in transition and needs you now more than ever! We need to be sure we allow our leaders to remain healthy and avoid burning out. We need the yoke to be easy and the burden light.


Thank you for the opportunity to serve.  I hope you too will consider being a part of the everyday life of this congregation! They are not complicated ministry teams. If you have any questions, please come to see me!

Peace,

Pastor Tony