Overfunctioning and the Pastoral Imagination

Rev. Mike Whang

My present ministry and embodiment of the Christian life was born of a simple question:

How do I become a healthy pastor?

Have you ever met a clergyperson who is overworked, overstressed, and overeating, overfunctioning while struggling with their marriage and their finances? A pastor whose ministry is informed more so by anxiety, ambition, or anger, as opposed to a sustained quiet joyful union with God?

Recent Barna studies will show you most likely have.

Allow me to testify.

Not only did I fit the unexaggerated characterization above, most of my clergy colleagues did as well.

So I sought counsel.

I met with a mentor of mine — one of these published author types in the latter years of life. We had a Conference-paid coaching session coming up.

After an hour-long discourse on vision casting, managing millennial staff and volunteers, and crafting a narrative sermon arc, I got to the real question burning in my soul.

“Dave, I think I can do all this. Please send the invoice to our administrator. But, I have a much more urgent question now: how do I become a pastor who is healthy… and you know… happy?”

He smiled.

Took another sip of coffee.

Looked slowly into my soul, and said with a disarming simplicity,

“Mike. That’s easy. You already know this. To be happy, you sleep 8 hours a day, exercise, eat well, pray, and spend quality time with the people you love.”

Well, damn.

The present system by which I was serving the church was the very thing keeping me from my family, my God, and my own well being.

Also, this was the early 2020s.
And I wasn’t keeping up with inflation.

So I set out to solve for three things:

Financial Health.
Mental Health.
Dignity.

I began to prayerfully and imaginatively ask:

What systems of revenue generation will allow me to not only provide for my family, but allow my preaching and teaching to be detached from a co-dependent relationship with bureaucratic hierarchical systems that subsequently affect my family’s future well-being as well as the integrity of my call? Was tentmaking an essential part of Paul’s courage and unentangled devotion to building up the church?

What weekly rhythms of life and ministry will allow me to sleep and eat well, while being fully present with my daughters and my spouse? How might prayer be both a joyful ongoing communion with Spirit, and a designated time to smile and enjoy God each day? Maybe to be still and know God is as serious a scriptural imperative as the call to make disciples.

And finally, what lifestyle will witness to my own soul that my faith and my actual life are congruent? Do I really believe in the work I am currently doing in the name of God? Do I really truly believe holding 60-minute Sunday morning worship services and seasonal midweek small groups over the next 30 years of my life will result in the cultivation of joyful enemy-loving Christians who are differentiated from the cultural logics of a bipartisan America primarily focused on geopolitical victories and capital accumulation in my given mission field of Middle to Upper Class Suburbanites?

These were dark questions. They demanded unearthing a thousand assumptions.

To answer them beyond theory and armchair theology would require significant, painful, costly changes.

But (and with apologies to the anti-melodramtic readership of this substack) my marriage and my soul were at stake.

I mean. I probably would’ve made it out with my marriage intact, and I would’ve likely appreciated a 2049 Annual Conference with an edited-down 30-second video summarizing my ministry with a humorous anecdote or two, but I knew — ineffable regret and stress-related health issues would’ve been buried deep inside my bones long before any tax-advantaged clergy pension plan would annuitize.

So I stayed with the questions. And I processed for months with my wife.

Slowly, I began to imagine new ways of being a pastor.

Not in a prescriptive manner for others, but for my own soul, for my own family, for our own sense of faithfulness to God.

Might this holy vocation, allegedly born outside man-made systems, be lived out in ways that truly nourish souls including my own?

Thus emerged my present co-vocational life. And Oikon Studios.

Oikon Studios is a living digital resource for spiritual formation. Each week, we offer a poetic liturgy, reflection, and song.

Wesleyan, contemplative, and rooted in a modified take on James Fowler’s faith development theory, Oikon is an on-ramp for seekers of God’s Presence. Given the nature of its founder, it lends itself to those who are unpacking past experiences in the church.

Some of our readers go through these liturgies with loved ones or with a group of friends. Others read them over breakfast, in line at a grocery store, or in bed. Some will share them as devotionals for church small groups. As with other Phygital Fellows who have shared, the best ministry often takes place in direct messages to the inbox.

As with all expressions of God’s Kingdom, this work is emerging. Retreats, albums, visual liturgies, and contemplative prayer guides are ahead, but the most important thing for me is this:

This ministry is not born of anxiety. It is not dependent on donors. My family’s future is detached from its perceived success.

I’ve always maintained that the measure of a pastor’s success is not worship attendance but the happiness index of their spouse.

Of course, success ultimately is hearing the Master say well done, but when the persons who know you in secret are proud of the work you are doing, and rejoice in the way you live, that is about as close a measure of integrity as you can get.

For me, leaning into a digital platform for ministry was the pathway towards my own sense of congruence as a pastor, father, and husband.

I am by no means a champion of digital ministry or innovation. But I do believe Jesus meant what he said – that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. So perhaps the better question isn’t how do I become a healthy pastor? But Whose yoke am I carrying today?

In a world shaped by algorithms and AI, faithful presence will take many forms – online and off. For me, leaning into digital liturgies and co-vocational life brought a new kind of wholeness. Not productivity. Not prestige. Congruence.

I wonder what congruence might look like for you. Ask the darkest of questions buried in your soul. Let them disturb and delight you. May your life and ministry, in whatever shape they take, reflect the quiet joy of walking with God.