Oddball leaders

Ministry and study both take a lot of emotional energy. They both come with certain structures and tasks you are expected to follow. This is the way of most work. I never really enjoyed my work or my study until I changed jobs and started my church apprenticeship. I wasn't unhappy before, but I wasn't thriving. I think it was because I'm a creative sort of person and I feel stifled when my time and 'procedures' are (too) prescribed. I can't be myself unless I'm allowed some space and freedom. Happily in ministry - and even study - it is possible to carve out, or to be given, these two. But you've still got to make sure you've got enough emotional energy left to engage your creative side.

Rory Noland touches on this in The Heart of the Artist. He talks about feeling that being both a leader and an artist was impossible, and yet he did not know which to choose. Then he saw that God had called him to be both.

[T]he secret to doing both is that we've got to stop seeing ourselves as half artist, half leader. We are full-time artists and full-time leaders . . . . How do you balance the tension between being an artist and being a leader? By throwing yourself into doing both.1

1 R Noland, The Heart of the Artist (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 249.