PODCAST | Leading A Resilient Life & Ministry (feat. Mark Dance)

Resources:

For more information Guidestone, go to: https://www.guidestone.org/

For more information about Mark Dance: https://markdance.net/

Get a copy of Start to Finish: https://www.bhpublishinggroup.com/products/start-to-finish-2/

Follow Mark on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/markdance/

Transcript:

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, manager of Marketing and Business Development here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast our account manager, Carey Sumner talks with Mark Dance. Mark's the director of Pastoral Wellness for GuideStone Financial Resources. He was a lead pastor and planter for 27 years before becoming the associate vice president at Lifeway, the director of pastoral development for Oklahoma Baptist, and the co-founder and leader of the Care4Pastors Network. In this conversation, Mark talks about how pastors and ministry leaders are facing increasingly difficult expectations leading to burnout. Whether you are 10 years into your ministry or you haven't even taken the first steps, Mark shares and important steps to take in order to serve well, lead well, and end well.

Carey Sumner:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm Carey, your host today on the podcast. Here at Vanderbloemen we exist to help make your team whole. And one of the ways that your team can really be weighing on you is when it's not whole. And so we know for you guys listening as leaders, as pastors, that it can be a stressful time when you are looking for someone new to join your team, you're going through transition and all. And as a leadership podcast here, we want to help you in those endeavors.
And so with that, today we have a very special person, Mark Dance is going to be joining us. He has a brand new book out. He's going to talk a little bit about that. He's also with GuideStone, and so he's going to talk a little bit about his work with that. And really, our hope is that you are going to be refreshed as a leader and you're going to have some good next steps for getting that healthy race going that God's called you to. And so with that, I want to welcome Mark. Mark, welcome.

Mark Dance:
Thank you.

Carey Sumner:
Glad to have you here today.

Mark Dance:
Very glad to be here, Carey.

Carey Sumner:
Yeah. Mark, talk to us just a little bit about you. Who are you? What is it that you're up to right now? And then we'll jump in a little bit to a new book that you have out.

Mark Dance:
Sure, yeah. Basically, bottom line is, I'm a pastor by calling, a pastor of churches for almost 30 years. And then Lifeway asked me to start Lifeway Pastors about nine years ago. I basically went from pastoring churches to pastoring pastors, and I've been been doing that ever since, now with GuideStone.

Carey Sumner:
That's great. That's great. Well, you have a new book coming out and really trying to help pastors out there, help leaders. Why this book and why now?

Mark Dance:
Man, sometimes I've got to wonder, "Do we really need another book out there?" And it was a conversation about 15 years ago that someone at Lifeway said, "Your first book," because I'm not really an author, I've been part of a chapter to three chapters, contribution here and there, but, "What's your core message?" That was the question. Write about that first and everything else can come out of that. So, I dug deep. And it was actually pastor in a church in Arkansas. And during a sabbatical, the Great Commandment, man, it just came alive to me. That was like a face mask moment. If you ever played football with a helmet, it's illegal, but used to be, the coaches, if they wanted your undivided attention, they grab your helmet.

Carey Sumner:
Yeah, I remember that.

Mark Dance:
Yeah, yeah, it worked every time. So basically, through a little bit of fasting and praying God grabbed my face mask, and for 20 years I've been really working hard to be a great commission pastor and had success by all measurements. The churches I got to serve grew, and thankful for that. But I really was so plainly spoken. Jesus says, this is the most important thing that ... because he was at, what's the most important commandment? What's the greatest commandment? And I thought, "Well, maybe my aspirations ought to be a great commandment pastor, not a great commission pastor. Because every great commandment pastor's going to be a great commission pastor."

Carey Sumner:
Sure, sure.

Mark Dance:
But not every great commission pastor is necessarily are automatically a great commandment pastor. The relationships are not always intact. And that's where I found myself there. And out of that reset came the seed for this book, Start to Finish.

Carey Sumner:
Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, Start to Finish and really there to help pastors, who specifically did you write this book for? And as God was laying this message on your heart, what was it that he was saying, "Hey, these are the people you're going after, you're praying for here?"

Mark Dance:
Yeah, my core audiences, our tribe of ministers, I mean, pastors. Pastors, missionaries, ministers, we all have the same job description. No matter what the title is, the org chart, who's paying our checks, that core calling that we'll call pastor is who I am and who I usually talk to. It is a very conversational, practical book, but it's really more, when I think of who I'm writing to, it's someone about 10 years younger than I am. Because I feel that stewardship of helping the next generation not only start well, but finish well, and those things are intrinsically connected. So, in the book come some of my mistakes along the way. I mean, nothing that would make on any headlines, any papers, but common mistakes that I thought other pastors might could learn from and avoid. That's where it came from.

Carey Sumner:
One of those that you talk about and get into is burnout.

Mark Dance:
Yeah.

Carey Sumner:
I think burnout is such a dangerous trap for us as pastors. I remember early on in my career pastoring working long weeks and rationalizing that by saying, "It's the Lord's work. How do you ever take time off of that?" And I love what you're doing in this book and helping us understand, well, being a follower of Jesus is all of the time and how that flows into our pastoring. But maybe share with us a little bit about just your journey into burnout, where it was work, you were finding it as being work as opposed to just that natural flow of, like you said, commandment, Great Commandment living?

Mark Dance:
Yeah. Well, I'd be happy to. The fact is, anyone who's been in ministry more than 10 or 15 minutes is going to get overwhelmed. You hear about those surveys of pastors that feel frequently overwhelmed. And I think the ones that say they're not are just lying. Because it's like, "Hey, I've been overwhelmed for 35 years." But when you're stuck, and that's where I was, that's where came to about 15 years ago is I had, again, the church that I was serving kept growing, and eventually we relocated onto a campus 10 times the size of our original campus.

Carey Sumner:
Wow.

Mark Dance:
Yeah, I'd stopped growing and we all get tired. I think we all get down or maybe even depressed, not clinically necessarily, and we all get burnt out. If you stay that way, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. And I was in trouble. I still had my on button, so it wasn't obvious, but when it came down to it, I reached out to my doctor, because I had been stuck for a while, and he asked me questions about, I guess that he asked people every day, and he diagnosed me as being clinically depressed, and we were in the middle of that relocation. I said, "Well, I really don't have time for that. So, there's something else? Is anything else on the table?"
A week later a lady, a licensed therapist, completely different conversation, came by my office and only asked me two questions. "Do you know you're clinically depressed?" Was the first one. And I said, "Yes, ma'am, I just found out last week." The other is, "You're taking anything for it?" I said, "Yes ma'am, I don't know if it works. I just picked it up Wednesday." And those two folks came together, as well as some trusted leaders, and helped me to get healthy again. Because I wasn't having a spiritual free fall or even in a physical. But in that case I'd run out of ... I had completely neglected the Sabbath, disobeyed it openly, as we're often prone to do, use the God card to play hooky on the fourth commandment and use all kinds of justification. But I'd run out of gas, run out of serotonin, whatever you want to call it. And I needed some help getting healthy again. And when I did, on the other side of that, we weren't just able to finish relocation, but really my ministry changed for the better after this caregiver let somebody care for me.

Carey Sumner:
Yeah, that's great. That's great. You know what? I find that so often in our work when I'm talking with church leaders, what we do here at Vanderbloemen is helping fill those church staffing roles. And so when you're a pastor and someone has stepped out or someone, God forbid, has had a moral failing, one of the things as a pastor, the congregation oftentimes is expecting the church to run like it normally does. And you feel that stress and that pressure of, "Hey, we've got to keep this thing going." And so it can be very, very difficult. You talked about pressing that on button to have those places where you can press that off button. What would you say to church leaders about helping to find some of those places, those people? You mentioned seeing your doctor, seeing a therapist, other places where they can press that off button and really deal with what's going on physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, keeping those integrated?

Mark Dance:
Yeah, I think that God's actually put people all around us, and I don't want to minimize loneliness in ministry, or isolation, but most of that is preventable. We are usually leading a ministry with people all around us. And there's a generation behind me, I mean, when I started the ministry in the late '80s, it was like, "Hey, don't be friends with church members. Keep your guard up." Favoritism, all that stuff. And man, this is lonely, especially for our wives. It's like everybody's a part of the family, except me.
But those two people that helped me first were both members of my church, by the way. These are church members. One of them I've been to China on a medical mission trip a couple of times. So, whether they're in your church, which is a little riskier, or not, they're people that God has gifted and who are educated in areas that we're not. I took a counseling class at seminary, didn't make me a counselor, right?

Carey Sumner:
Right.

Mark Dance:
Also made me take a music class, all the theology. Had to make me a music minister, and I didn't go to medical school, so I didn't have to be proficient in everybody else's profession. But when it comes, and you don't necessarily need lots of friends, but to have a mentor, someone in your ministry lane about 10 years older, it's going to take some effort on your part-

Carey Sumner:
Sure.

Mark Dance:
... to find these people that God's provided. They're not just going to come knocking on your door, sometimes you have to knock on their door.

Carey Sumner:
I found that to be true in my ministry life was when I was very young as a leader in my early 20s, there was that desire for mentorship. And eventually I realized, "Oh, I might have to do something for this. It's not going to just show up a mentor knocking on my door." And oftentimes the people who are the best mentors, they are so humble, they're not going to insert themselves into your life. But asking and inviting, "Hey, would you speak to me? Hey, you're seeing me walk down the road. Any signs in my life that you're seeing?" And really having that willingness to have a good open dialogue and conversation. And like you said, invite that to come in.

Christa Neidig:
Compensation is a critical component of building a great team and retaining your staff members. Talk to our team today about our customized compensation solutions, or visit vanderbloemen.com/compensation to learn more.

Carey Sumner:
That makes me think of just within the book, you talk about neighbors. And who is your neighbor? Maybe speak to that a little bit as far as it gets into this dynamic of Start to Finish?

Mark Dance:
Yeah, I got to tell you this, there's no secrets or shortcuts in this book. It's about as old school as you can get. When the scribe asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, he already knew the answer. He'd said it twice a day his entire life as parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. And those that would easily forget, they'd stick a box on their head so they wouldn't forget. Basically the other side of the Great Commandment is love your neighbor. We all know that. We love God in the most comprehensive, all in, all our heart, soul, mind, strength. He only asks for one, but naturally the second commandment, the neighbor means the nearest one.
And so if you think of that in terms of application, Jesus got that from Leviticus 19, "Love your neighbor." He didn't just grab that out of his top of his head in Deuteronomy where he got the first commandment. When you look at Deuteronomy 19, the neighbors he's talking about start at home. The first application is about honoring your parents. One of the commandments, and so neighbor means the nearest one. 35 years ago I broke up with my parents. And when I said, "I do," to Janet, which is what the Bible tells us to do. And so she got promoted. So that Jesus is my king, Janet is my queen. That's where the second commandment, that's the basic first step in application if you're married. And if you have kids, for 20 years we had two kids, we still have them, but we kicked them out. And so those were our nearest ones. Now we have elderly parents who need us more than our adult kids do.

Carey Sumner:
Sure.

Mark Dance:
And then the application of loving your neighbors was fleshed out by Jesus in the Great Commandment, because that same scribe, after Jesus answered the question, said, "Who's my neighbor?" And that's where the parable of the Good Samaritan came from. So, it doesn't stop with your family, but it does start with your family. And then it moves on to the uttermost parts of the world. But there is a pecking order that God has for every pastor. And so in the Great Commandment he says, "I'm first and then your neighbor," starting with your family. "If you don't get that right, you're worse than an unbeliever," he tells the son in the ministry. And then the neighbors in your neighborhood and across the world. All those things that we already know are true, but there is an order of preference, because in God's eyes everyone's equal, but we're not God. And so when people in our ministry needed demotion, or even in our family needed demotion, like we did when we say I do, that's when we get the priorities, the Great Commandment priorities right, which also fuel the Great Commission priorities.

Carey Sumner:
That's great. Mark, with that, what would you say to the pastor, the man, the woman that finds themselves in the middle of life and they didn't start their ministry run with that? And so now they've got all kinds of pattern, of life going patterns, of ministry going, different people have different expectations on them right now. And if they just stopped during this podcast and took a check, an inward check, they would say, "My nearest are not as near. They're not in that right pecking order," as you said. What are some ways that they can begin taking some steps to course correct so that they're not feeling the pressure of, "Oh, the toothpaste is already out of the tube here, it's all over." So, you can take those steps to create that healthiness.

Mark Dance:
Yeah, it actually starts with leading yourself. Also, part of the Great Commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Carey Sumner:
Self.

Mark Dance:
Self. Self-care and soul care are the same things. It's the same word in Greek. And so I love this passage, 1 Timothy 4:16, "Pay close attention to your life and your doctrine or teaching, persevere in these things. And in doing so, save yourself, but save also your hearers." I mean, it's not save them from their sin, but save them from their stupidity. Basically he also tells Timothy live in Acts 20, the same thing. "Watch yourself closely, or pay attention to your life and your flock." Both times he starts with life. And I know your question is about, how do you keep those relationships? But if you have nothing to give, then you can have all the relational pecking order stuff in your head just right, but you have nothing to give them.
And so self-care, soul care starts by saying no, sometimes to say stop to ministry. And even taking care of, I mean, because self-care can be selfish if you hear right, but pastors aren't generally good at taking care of themselves. And you see from that 1 Timothy 4:16 that in doing this you save not only yourself, you not help not only yourself, but also your hearers. Your family, your ministry benefit if you are walking in a way that's physically, spiritually, emotionally, heart, soul, mind, strength, that you take care of yourself. And then from those covenants that God's laid out, I'm first, spouse second, your kids and family and your ministry. And then you create parameters, which means you have to say no. Which again, Genesis two says, you say no to your parents first. And not all of them, not all parents just love that. They know it's good. But then they keep calling or wanting you to have holidays.
Well, then same with church members. They don't like hearing no either. And the kids definitely don't like hearing no. But as a minister, twice in our job description in 1 Timothy 3 it says, "To manage your life before you're, and manage your home, or you're not even qualified to manage God's home."

Carey Sumner:
That's good. That's good. That word no.

Mark Dance:
It's hard.

Carey Sumner:
Oh, man. That's like a dirty ministry word, isn't it?

Mark Dance:
But yeah, when you do you're discipling the people you say no to. You're showing them how to live out this life. And some will never get it. Some will never go, "You know what, you're right. You need to do that." But we don't answer to them.

Carey Sumner:
That's why, that is really why it's so dangerous to take our cues from the congregation around us all of the time. It really is. I think you're talking about, what is my inward journey with the Lord and how am I listening to him through his word, through the wise counsel that he puts forward. Look at the people of Israel in the Old Testament. Every time one of the leaders asks them to do the decision making, they end up walking around a mountain for 40 years, or they end up attacking the wrong people group. And so really having those good mentors like you talked about earlier, and really that inner life. With that, let's talk a little bit about your work with GuideStone Financial Resources. It's a ministry that helps leaders find guidance to run the race well from start to finish. Talk just a little bit about what that is, what you do with GuideStone?

Mark Dance:
Yeah, so my particular role is I'm still a pastor and I work with other pastor advocates at seminaries and state conventions, associations and other ministries outside of the SBC as well. But GuideStone is kind of the financial arm of the SBC with insurance, retirement, and even Mission:Dignity, which is for retirement age ministers that need some assistance. We want to provide financial security and resilience for all the ministers, because we want to help them finish well. And the earlier we get to them, the better. Because right now the average person comes to us for retirement planning at 40, and we can't catch them up that fast. And so, if we can kind of like Paul did to Timothy, he said, "I want to finish. I'm going to finish the race, the ministry that God gave me." He wanted to finish well. What does that finish line look like?
And GuideStone wants to help them not only start well, which is Vanderbloemen is important part of that helping so many start well and fitting churches and ministers together and ministries, but then thinking, "Okay, how do I want to finish? Not just to retirement, but through retirement? I want to finish strong." And financial literacy and advocacy are part of that, so we try to help them with not only saving for retirement, but living within their means. A lot of things that we are not naturally good at as a profession. And we're even at loan risk as a profession. And it's like we can do better because we should. Again, manage means we've got, rarely are we the most proficient person in the room, but we're always the most responsible one.
And so God has people around us that can help us. They don't have to be GuideStone people, but whether you're protecting your home or your ministry with good insurance, or you're providing for them for a time when you're not going to be here anymore. Because you don't want your spouse to have to borrow from your kids someday because you weren't setting some money aside or you were overspending. And so we try to provide some tools to help them to be resilient. Because you're going to have some tough challenges, but help them prepare for that strong finish. And this pastoral wellness, the financial part is part of the greater whole life discipleship that includes all the other, the physical, the spiritual, emotional.

Carey Sumner:
Well, it affects all of those. When you're in a place in life where you are worried and concerned about money, suddenly the enemy's got you, right? You're taking your mind off of trusting the Lord in that. And so he's got you in all those other areas. And as just sharing this, thinking about to finish the race well, you have to have an understanding of where you're going when you begin the race. To be at a starting line of a 5K and you don't know where the end point of that 5K is, you can find yourself running a marathon very easily. And I think that's probably, you guys encountered that a little bit. Pastors who they only needed to run a 5K, but they're about three, five Ks in and still trying to get there. And so that's such an important work.
I know my time as an executive pastor, one of the things we would oversee is our retirement plans. And we would give a match. And I was so adamant to our staffs, "Hey, if the company, if the church is going to give you a match, that's free money you've got to take." But I was always surprised at how many of our church staff didn't, they chose not to. And I think that's even, for those of you pastors leaders listening where you are in a good space with this, maybe you've gotten some help down the road. We would encourage you, work with those younger staff. When they're 25, the power of what they're doing from 25 to 35 is huge.

Mark Dance:
Huge.

Carey Sumner:
But they need those generations ahead to really give that encouragement, make that investment. Because sometimes it's hard to see the finish line from that early.

Mark Dance:
I had a GuideStone person 35 years ago helped me. I was just coming out of college, going into seminary, and first thing I did, I had a business degree from college. The first thing I did is I bought a VCR, feel free to laugh. I couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford it, so this gets worse. I go to Montgomery Wards, all right? And I got a credit card, Montgomery Wards credit card, so I only had to pay $10 a month for this latest in technology VCR. So, I ended up paying for it at least twice. And well, I'm also about to pastor my first church, I'm about to get married in the same year.
And I talked to some guy, I don't even know his name, what he looks like, it's been 35. And he gives me a vision of what it would be like to get on the other side of compound interest. And he says, "If you put aside of just even a little bit right now at your age," I was 22, "and you start digging a hole, you do those two things, you're going to be financially independent. You won't have to depend on your family, your government, anything."
And I thought about it, talked to my fiance, is like, "That is a better plan." And you know what, that's the last time I've paid a penny of credit card interest was 1986. And so somebody got into my life. And whether GuideStone, we're not hard to find, you won't even have to type the whole thing out, or someone else. Find somebody, if this is a blind spot for you, start right now seeking advice about things that you're not good at, whether it's mental health, financial health, relational health. If you need help with something, that just means you're human and you have to practice the grace that you're already preaching. And so, welcome to the human race, get on the right side of compound interest and just let somebody walk it through with you.

Carey Sumner:
I recently got to hear John Maxwell in person again, and he's 75. And one of the things he said was, people are consistently this point asking him, when is he going to retire? And he said, "I asked them now, 'Well, what is retirement?' And the typical answer is, 'Well, when you get to do whatever you want to do.'" And he said, "Well, I'm there. I'm retired." And yet here he is, training leaders all over the world. And what he has seen happen in his life is exactly what you are talking about here, Mark. Is the ability to at an early stage in his life see that end finish line. The finish line isn't necessarily retirement, go sit on a beach, kick your feet up. It's getting to do the ministry God's created you to do when you want to do it, how you want to do it, how he calls you to do it. And so that's what I love about what you guys do is you help us as pastors be in a position to do that, where we're not-

Mark Dance:
Thank you.

Carey Sumner:
... dictating our calling based on things like financial needs. We're instead able to trust God to provide for the calling that he's given to us, so that's-

Mark Dance:
Amen.

Carey Sumner:
Mark, so the book's coming out, we're excited about that, Start to Finish. Want to-

Mark Dance:
Here's a preview, an advanced copy, so it's.

Carey Sumner:
A preview, advanced copy.

Mark Dance:
You can order it anytime anywhere books are sold. But June 6th is when it actually is the release date.

Carey Sumner:
June 6th, excellent. We want to encourage you guys, go get a copy of that book, Start to Finish with Mark Dance. Mark, how else can people follow you, contact you, get ahold of you?

Mark Dance:
I'm about as hard to find as GuideStone. Just type my name in. I mean, I'm pretty active on all social and not that hard to get hold of. But it's a unique name, Dance, for especially a Baptist preacher. But yeah, just look up Mark Dance and if I can help you help other pastors, I'd be glad to. And I mean, even this, all the royalties and everything donated to Mission:Dignity. And there's 2,800 retirement age pastors and widows that get financial help through that. But here's what they all have in common. None of them want to be on that list. And so my encouragement to you is, take care of your body, your mind, your finances. Managing your life now is not selfish, it's strategic for a strong finish. And I know you want to finish strong, so hang in there and don't beat yourself up. This isn't a guilt trip. This is grace trip, right? Vanderbloemen's rooting for you. GuideStones' rooting for you. Lots of ministries rooting for you, but we can't help you if you don't initiate and ask for help.

Carey Sumner:
Yeah, that's great. That's great. Well, Mark, thank you for being here with us on this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. And we want to encourage those of you listening. Maybe you heard something new today and it's sinking in for you, but maybe someone came to mind for you. We encourage you, share this podcast, share Mark's book with them, and let's get ourselves healthy as pastors, as leaders, so we can do what Mark talked about. Finish that race that the Lord set out for us well. Mark, thanks again.

Mark Dance:
Thank you. Thanks for inviting me, I enjoyed it.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, vanderbloemen.com to learn more, and subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.