Nurturing the Servant’s Heart
Insights from the “Lead2Serve” Podcast
Season 5. Episode 1
Have you ever felt spiritually exhausted? It’s like your soul’s check engine light is flashing. On the season opener of the Lead2Serve podcast, Pastor Bob Claycamp and I had a deep discussion about the importance of taking care of yourself. We agreed that ignoring these warning signs can lead to burnout. I know you don’t want to burn out! It’s crucial to seek spiritual renewal, as we can’t rely solely on past experiences or our own charisma to fuel our service.
We delve into the need to balance our spiritual input with our daily output. It’s vital to ensure we have a reservoir of spiritual strength to draw from. Like a well-tended garden, our souls need regular nourishment to flourish in service to others. Self-care is often overlooked and ignored. It’s easy to get caught up in serving and forget to pause for spiritual nourishment. Remember, to effectively lead and serve, we must align ourselves with God’s word and find rest in Him. Leading with love and wisdom requires more than just intention; it demands daily renewal and a fresh filling with the Holy Spirit each day, sometimes more than once a day! It’s about pouring out to others without depleting ourselves – a delicate but essential dance for anyone in a leadership role.
Being entrusted with the souls of men and women is not just a responsibility; it’s a privilege.
Lead2Serve Season 5 Episode 1
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Intro VO:
This is Lead2Serve with Ed Taylor, a leadership podcast.Pastor Ed Taylor:
Hey, welcome again to a brand-new season of the Lead2Serve podcast. My name is Ed Taylor. I’m your host as we launch into this brand-new season of Lead2Serve. You know, our goal with the Lead2Serve podcast is to help you grow in your servant leadership so that you’ll glorify God in all that you do. The better servant you are, the better leader you will become. And I have to say that the response to the podcast has been overwhelming, and we are grateful to connect with you in so many ways around the country, even around the world. I know that there’s some time in between seasons, probably more time than we really want, or desire. But man, the time is short. Like, we don’t have a lot of “flex time,” or what do they say, “margin time.” To be able to get in and talk about these things together is not as easy as it sounds, with all that’s going around the church here. So, appreciate your patience because you just know that it’s going to come at the right time. And, so, as we talk about these topics, related to serving Jesus, they’re going to help you no matter if you’re home or at work or at church. “Lead to serve.” “Serve to lead.” They all go together. And for this season, again, I’ve invited Pastor Bob Claycamp to be in-studio with me, and he and I are going to talk about these different topics together. Bob, welcome to the program.Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Oh, it’s great to be here.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
It’s good to be back. 54 years you’ve been married to Jeanne?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yes.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
The 54…of the best years of your life?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Absolutely.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
The best years of Jeanne’s life?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
I hope so.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Yeah, I hope so, too. Which also were talking before we started. You also have been in ministry for 54 years?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yeah, just after we got married. About a month later, we joined the “Christian house ministries,” which were highlighted during the “Jesus Revolution,” movie. I ran two of those houses. We spent our first four years of our married life, really, with a bunch of single people in the same house, which has its own issues regarding things in your marriage, but we’ve recovered well.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
And you were a pastor? Senior pastor in North Phoenix?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yes, up in the North part of Phoenix. Started as a home Bible study in 1981, and then it turned into a church. Met in a cowboy bar and grill for the first year on Sunday morning and grew. And then they sold the restaurant and then rented out some industrial space, built out our church there. We were there for nine years. And then moved to bankrupt strip mall on the other side of town on the Northeast side of Phoenix, and then built out our own place on five acres back in 1999.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Then you launched off, handed off the church. You felt like the Lord is moving you on. You handed off the church to a young man who happened to have a name very similar to yours.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yeah.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Your second son, Jesse.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Jesse. He’s pastoring.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Pastoring. Now, you were in Exeter, England, for six-and-a-half years.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yes. Took over that little church there in the Southwest part of England and planted Calvary Chapel Plymouth. Sent out three pastors to take the churches there. And so we had a fruitful time, but it was different than we anticipated.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
What was different?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Well, I had expectations of how things could go. And somehow I didn’t realize that God’s purpose in having me over there was to work on me and to break me of some things to prepare me for the future ministry with a new, more wholesome perspective.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Yeah. You mentioned yesterday in our devo time, either our devo time or in discussion that going to England, you had this thought of, “maybe I can step into ministry and correct things, mistakes that I made previously and do things differently.” And what you probably found out was there was a lot of opportunity to improve and learn from past mistakes, but you made a whole bunch more mistakes.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yeah, I did. And I think when you have expectations going in, some of them are underneath the surface and you don’t realize that they’re there. Until you run into situations where you have done everything that was reasonable to you. And then, when there’s no response, you start questioning everything. And it’s kind of like pulling a string on your sweater. Everything starts falling apart the more you pull it. And you get your eyes on what isn’t happening that you see could happen. But the Lord has to give you grace to do those things, because if He doesn’t give you the grace, then it’s “in the flesh.”
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Yeah, we don’t want the flesh. No, “the flesh doesn’t please God.” It doesn’t do what we…it doesn’t take us where we really want to go. We want to serve “in the Spirit,” not “in the flesh.” Now, you came back. You had a serious…and we’re just catching you up…you may have joined us for the first time on this season. I want to introduce you to Bob. I want you to know who’s in-studio. I’ll share a little bit about me that I don’t have much of a flowery life as Bob does. But together, we’re able to talk about things and hear different perspectives. So want to introduce you. My name is Ed Taylor. We have Bob Claycamp, Pastor Bob, in-studio with us. He’ll be with us for the entire season. One of the biggest feedbacks, Bob, that we…two, two feedbacks on the podcast that have really helped refine the direction is, number one, the need to have someone in-studio to talk. There was great feedback on when I was just hosting it and talking it through, but then when I had guests, then, especially you, there was a greater response to go, “that’s what we want.” “We want to hear a conversation.” We want to hear things talked out, number one. And then, number two, the feedback for having Bob, in particular. So people love you, Bob, and they love to hear your perspective. And together in our perspectives and how we share seem to really resonate with people’s hearts. So you come back, you had a medical condition, a heart attack.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yes. 2018, September…end of September. I thought it was acid reflux, and it wasn’t. They didn’t want to give me any Gaviscon. They wanted to wheel me in and…
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Rip your heart out!
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
“Oh, my gosh, no!” “You can’t do this!” I drove myself to the emergency room because, I mean, “what’s the problem?” And they didn’t like that at all.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
No. No, they didn’t. They took care of you. But that was a beginning of the season of, “I think maybe we need to come back to the states.” You end up landing here. You’ve been here at Calvary church in Aurora for four-and-a-half years.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yes.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
And you also serve with Poimen. So, real quick, as a pastor that gets the freedom to go visit other churches, fill in the pulpit, do assessments, minister to pastors and their wives, all that kind of freedom. Tell us a little bit of what Poimen looks like in your relationship in this new season of ministry.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
The burden on my heart was to take my limited ministry experience, really, because I haven’t run crusades and I haven’t run a Christian school and I haven’t done a lot of things, but I have experienced a lot of things. And what was on not only my heart, but my wife’s heart was to come alongside other pastors and their wives, to assist them, to encourage them. And looking back over the almost 14 years I’ve been with this particular ministry called Poimen, it has been a ministry of perspective just to come alongside especially younger pastors who are full of questions about why aren’t things happening as they should, that “I watched other places, like, grow tremendously, and we haven’t.” And the perspective is you’ve got to go back to how Jesus called you initially to take care of His sheep in His place because He loves them. And as a senior pastor, you are more like a foster parent with these people and they are not yours.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Yes.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
And yes, you will get back to square one. People will go sideways, especially missionaries out there in the field. They have a very difficult time ministering into a different culture. And, so, that’s been quite effective, especially my wife’s part, to minister to the pastors’ wives. And, so, Poimen is Anglicized word from Poimeno, the Greek word for “pastor,” or “shepherd.” And so that word poimen has to do with a group of us. There’s about 13 pastors that’s part of this ministry. And our desire is to come alongside others for assistance, for encouragement, sometimes to help in a transition, sometimes to give a set of fresh eyes walking in and seeing for a brand new person coming in. This is what they see because we can all develop blind spots because we get comfortable that things work. So why change it if it’s working and you have to keep the ministry fresh. So that’s been a lot of what we have done. And I just received a request recently to do that at a Baptist church, actually, and so we’ll see how that goes.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
It’s going to be great. I know that when you come in and we’ve watched you for the last four-and-a-half years and hearing the feedback firsthand, it’s going to be great because those fresh eyes are used by the Holy Spirit to give some feedback and talk and see how God might want to stir up a freshness in the fellowships that you visit.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yeah. And when we give our assessment and our feedback, we leave it with the senior pastor. We don’t go to the board, we leave it with the senior pastor, and then we take our hands off it and it’s up to him before the Lord on what to do.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Well, welcome again to Episode #1. I wanted to have a little bit of introduction to Pastor Bob. My name is Ed, a pastor here. I think we’re coming up on 25 years. This will be the 25 year anniversary of our church this December. In July, it’ll be 25 years since we moved here from Southern California, my little family of five, to be used of the Lord. And there’s a lot that we can talk about, but combined with Pastor Bob and me, we have 80 years. We’re kind of, like, there’s a lot of years of experience sitting in this room. A lot of mistakes made. A lot of…and I’m counting even the years that I wasn’t pastoring, just…I started serving right away at the church that I was saved at Calvary Chapel in Downey and just jumped right in. We had the freedom to jump in. I made a lot of mistakes. And we’ll talk. We’ve got a whole season to talk. Today’s topic, I want to spend, I don’t know, 15 minutes or so talking about this particular topic. And it’s “give out as much as you take in,” or “take in more than you give out.” Either one of those phrases is very important in the spiritual realm as you seek to serve the Lord. The idea of giving out as much as you take in has the perspective of, I’m in the Word. Every day I’m praying, I am open to the Holy Spirit, and then I’m giving myself empty so that I can be filled again. And it’s something fresh. And I’m not leaning on yesterday’s. I’m not leaning on yesterday’s manna. I’m not leaning on yesterday’s wisdom. But my heart is to give myself, empty, so that God can fill me afresh. What are your initial thoughts on, you know, as you’re serving the Lord? How easy it is just to give yesterday, last week, 30-years-ago ministry? Because you can.
Pastor Bob Claycamp
Well, yeah, you can, because you’ve got an experience base to draw upon, and you can just throw out answers, but you have to be filled with His love because “you can’t manufacture it.” Like Warren Wiersbe says in his book, “On Being A Servant Of God,” because you can’t manufacture God’s love. I mean, there’s human love, and that’s a place for that, and that’s a good thing. But the love that comes from Heaven is a unique quality that only comes from the Holy Spirit and has to come from a relationship with Jesus Christ. And when everything, all the work you do, comes out of that root of God’s love, that’s how it’s supposed to work. And when you’re just relying upon your own charisma or your own sense of rightness, or whatever, and you’re not being filled with God’s love, you’re giving yesterday’s manna. I mean, manna came every day for a purpose, and that was to train the people to trust God for the provision. But the manna didn’t last unless it was Friday, and Friday’s manna lasted through Saturday, and then they got fresh manna on Sunday (Exodus 16:29). But I look at the scriptures and I hear Paul talk about being poured out, and it has to do with being filled with the Spirit and then pouring out. In 2 Timothy 4, Paul talking to Timothy through that letter, he talked about himself. “I’m already being poured out as a drink offering,” because he’s at the end of his life and he says that in Philippians 2:17, Paul says, “yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.” The Greek word for being poured out is “spendo.” It’s interesting. I’m being spent because I come to the Lord to be used by the Lord, but I can’t be used by the Lord unless I’m filled by the Lord. And being filled with the Holy Spirit is not a one-time event like going to a confirmation class. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is in every day, even sometimes every hour, request that you make of him to fill you. And then you step into situations by faith and then you see it unfold.
Pastor Ed Taylor
I like with what you had shared about the, when you’re feeling dry and empty, it’s like a light on the dashboard of your car, that your tires are low on air or that Check Engine light. The Check Engine light’s interesting in the car. I have no expertise with cars at all. I take it somewhere. They take care of it for me. And the Check Engine light’s interesting because it doesn’t actually tell you what the problem is. It just tells you there’s a problem. You need to take it in. I actually, even on Amazon, bought this little thing you can plug in, and I think I messed my car up plugging it in and I can’t even get something…
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Code reader.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
And even if I had the code, what difference does it make? What am I going to do? I’m still going to take it in, but I try to use it and I got it on my phone. And at any rate, a lot of times, serving the Lord as a mom, a dad, serving the Lord as a home Bible study teacher, even as a pastor or a leader, there’s a Check Engine light on. And you and I, we can’t treat the Check Engine light in our spiritual lives like we do in our cars. And what we do in our cars is we kind of hope it’s going to go away. We think it’s not going to be that big a deal. We keep putting, at least some of us do, put it off. put it off. Put it off until you can’t put it off anymore. For these feelings of being dry and empty, we need to pay attention to them. First of all, number one, feeling dry and empty could mean that you poured yourself out and you need to be freshly filled again. It doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. I have something on my car that, because it’s a newer car, it always flashes up. Take it in because you got to go in for service. Take it in. You got to go in. It’s been there for a long time now, too. Take it in. But it doesn’t mean anything’s bad. It means I need to go get it checked. Bring me in. Take your car in because you need it to be checked. And we have to have these points in our lives where tiredness is one of them. Long days. Wednesdays here are, midweek, is our long day. We’ve adjusted them a little bit because we come in a little later now. So that means you have the option of sleeping in. Even though I have that option, it doesn’t happen. But I have found myself to pace myself throughout the day. You come in, we have devos, we have meetings, meetings, and then I have more meetings. Then I have radio, then I have a Bible study, then I have ministry. Sometimes I have appointments and I get home after 10, 11 o’clock at night and I’m tired. But it’s not a negative tired. It’s not something like, “oh, I’m in trouble, oh, I need a Check Engine light, checked. No, it’s, “I poured myself out” a full day. I pray, go to sleep, get a good rest, and then wake up for a freshness in the morning.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yeah.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
What happens when you don’t pay attention to the Check Engine light spiritually, Bob, like what? You’ve been ministering to different pastors, different ministries. What’s a predominant, what do you see when you see a guy hasn’t been paying attention to this?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
You start focusing on yourself and your feelings. You start focusing on what you don’t have and you get your eyes off the Lord. And Satan is right there to agree because he’s the “accuser of the brethren,” who accuses us “before God day and night” (Rev 12:10). And so if you’re going to like, offer him a handle, then he’ll take that and try to drive you out and disable you. I think that you have to go back and just ask yourself, “How does Jesus actually see me right now?” “How does his word reveal him and his heart toward me right now?” “How does he see me when I’m asleep?” I’m not working. I’m not serving. I’m not doing things. How does He see me? Is He just waiting for me to wake up and get busy? I mean, sometimes we have to just go back to the basics. Go back into His Word, be filled with the reality of His Word. Play some really solid, good inspirational Christian music and just get yourself back on track. I mean, these roads in Denver knock out your alignment. I mean, you’re dodging potholes all around and when you hit one, you gotta go in and get a front-end alignment. And there’s a whole lot of times we gotta just stop and go before the Lord and say, “man, I need an alignment, I need to get my focus on You because I’m ready to pull off the road.”
Pastor Ed Taylor:
The key that I have noticed in my own life in the men and the women that serve alongside of me is the “giving out” part is not a hard part. Give out, give out. Showing up, being available, praying for folks serving like the serving part of our relationship seems to come much easier and quicker and more thoroughly than the “taking in” we begin to neglect. If we’re not careful, we’ll begin to neglect the basics. We’re talking about this in our pastors’ meetings every Wednesday, going through, for repetitive sake, one page of “Sure and Steady,” the book that we put together, training pastors. It’s a very simple book filled with a lot of great principles, and we are talking about these very things like “taking in,” “reading pastors.” I mean, and I know we’re talking to pastors as a part of this podcast, but also to anyone serving the Lord, it doesn’t matter. But pastors in particular – read your Bible and pray every day. There is no alternative to that. You don’t outgrow that. I would even say the more responsibility you have, the more time devoted to prayer. And the Word of God is of great necessity because you’re giving out, giving out, giving out. And if you’re not careful, you’re giving out of the reservoir. And sometimes you do have to have a big reservoir so you can draw from that because of an emergency or something. And then it’s like, “Oh, had a long day, but then I got another long day and I’m drawing from a reservoir…the Holy Spirit’s digging deep of the bottom of the barrel, what’s left in me?” But I can’t live that way. Like you use the illustration of manna – I can’t live that way. I need to take in far more than I give out, but I also need to give out as much as I take in. So I need to have a reservoir, but I also need to empty myself out. And a lot of guys are scared of that. A lot of folks are scared because they’re…especially those that like to save or even in the real, you know, just in the practical world, like hoarders, they’re not just saving, but they save everything. Like, fearful of the future. In serving God, you don’t want to hoard anything. You want to give it all away so God can give you something fresh.
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yeah. And it’s fear-based, it’s not faith-based. And there is that reality of what Jesus ministered to disciples about, “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof” (Matt 6:34). And so the provision will be there every day for what you need, but you gotta come to Him for that provision. Sometimes it’s just perspective. Sometimes it’s rest. Sometimes you just…you have to go take a nap. You know, you just have to go because it’s going to be hard work. I mean, Paul told Timothy, “the hardworking farmer must be first to partake of the first fruits” (2 Tim 2:6). And the emphasis is hard-working. And that means labor. That means toil, that serving the Lord. Maybe you’re serving your kids. Maybe you’ve got, like three kids. You’re at the house all day long. I’m speaking to you wives, mainly, and you are just spent by the…because they’re all within five years old, and you’ve got three kids and they’re just draining. And you’d have to get up at two in the morning to even have time for yourself, because I know how that works. But somehow you have to set the day by being in the Word, by talking to the Lord and just aligning yourself with Him, because you don’t know what the day is going to require.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
Yeah. 2nd Corinthians, 12:15, Paul writes to the church, he says, “and I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls.” So there is even an element of, although I’m tired, although it’s hard, whether it’s kids all day, or it’s meetings, or it’s work, you know, a lot of men and women are working full-time and then serving in their local church, maybe having a home Bible study or, you know, whatever God puts into your lap. We lose this sense of, “I’m glad,” like, “this is a blessing to be so tired.” It sounds funny, doesn’t it? This is a blessing. I think of the illustration with the kids. My kids are all grown up, but I can look back now on each of my kids, and it was a blessing to have them, even if I didn’t see it at the time, or I was frustrated at the time. If I look back now, man, it was such a blessing. I was glad that the Lord allowed me to raise kids as hard as it was or as challenging as it was. And it’s better to have that sense of glad before they grow up, where you can be glad along the way, instead of glad after the fact. And I think the same is true for ministry. Like, I want to be glad along the way. I want the end goal of my service to the Lord, not to be my service. My end goal is to please the Lord, to honor him with my life, to remember the grace of God, knowing that what I’m involved in, what I get to do, who I get to minister to, like, these invitations, these people that we get to come in contact with, it’s no small thing that God would give us an invitation into their life. I mean, it’s no small thing that he would allow us to be entrusted with an aspect of their life, to pray for someone, to encourage someone, to help someone, visit them at the hospital. I just saw a post yesterday on Instagram of one of the sisters in the church here. She was posting a memorial post of surgery she went to. And one of the things she posted with all of her pictures and her scar and all the things she went through, one of the things she posted is, “yeah, Pastor Avant was with me at five in the morning before I went into surgery.” That’s what she remembers on her days. She recollects that very critical crisis time in her life, very scary, challenging time. Of all her memories, one of them was a pastor there right before she went in. And of course, when I think of Avant has gone home to be with the Lord since our last season. I think it’s happened since we ended our last season of Lead2Serve. But Pastor Avant was a stellar of a man around here. Just a walking giant, like, a “giant of the faith.” Like one of those guys in Hebrews that you would say, “the world wasn’t worthy” of that guy (Hebrews 11:38). Like, he…unbelievable. And we miss him greatly. But the way I got connected with him in a deeper way over the years was not just meeting him at church and talking to him, but I was at his hospital at the side of his hospital bed when he went in for his emergency cancer surgery. That’s where I met his boys. As I was walking out, I prayed with him. He was all by himself. I’m walking in my car, it’s super late at night and who do I meet? His wife and his boys right in the parking lot. And I say all that to say that when on this topic as we wind down today’s episode, let me repeat it for you – “give out as much as you take in.” It’s worth it. Pour yourself out. Be spent. Do it gladly. This is God’s will for your life. I know you’re tired even listening to the podcast. You want one more podcast? One more, like, “I don’t have time for this.” “I’m so tired of listening to people talking.” I know we get tired. We’re human. We’re limited. But the Lord has given, has entrusted to you, the souls of men and women – and not just pastors. You know a lot of times we just think, well, “pastors get that.” “Pastors get that.” No, no, it’s all of us as believers. We get to be in people’s lives. We get to go to the hospital. We get to pray. We get to come to birthday parties. We get to be a part of each other’s lives so that the Lord might use us. And like Paul, we get to be gladly…we get to “gladly spend and be spent.” This is a privilege. So give out as much as you take in. But then the flip side of that coin is, take in more than you give out, because you don’t know. I mean, I can predict Wednesdays, Bob, Wednesdays are going to be a long day, no doubt. I don’t know what the rest of the days are going to bring. I don’t know how heavy Saturday night’s going to be…I don’t know how heavy Sunday. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the middle of the night. I don’t know if my phone is going to blow up because something happens as a tragedy of theaters in Aurora. I don’t know when that’s going to happen. So I need to be taking in, reading my Bible, praying every day, not minimizing the basics of Christian life and service so that I’m ready for every good work. Any final thoughts?
Pastor Bob Claycamp:
Yeah, the verse that comes to my mind is Paul telling Timothy, writing, “be instant in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2). You just don’t know. And, so, being ready. Just being filled and letting God put the outflow in.
Pastor Ed Taylor:
So thanks for joining us again. Episode 1, Season 5, Lead2Serve podcast. Be sure to leave us some feedback. You know, wherever you get your podcast, put a review there. It changes the algorithms and helps people find it. Share it, post it, forward it, and then, of course, email me – ed@edtaylor.org – if you have any ideas you want us to talk about. A topic to really wrestle with it, with you, here across the table. We would love to do that. But thanks for joining us, Episode 1. We’ll be back next time.
Outro VO:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of lead to serve with Pastor Ed Taylor, a leadership podcast from Calvary Church in Aurora, Colorado. If you have a leadership question you want to hear answered on a future lead to serve podcast, please email it to pastored@calvaryco.church
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