New Mind, New Me

Devotion, Leadership, Pastor's Life, Personal Development

I began publishing videos on YouTube in August 2015. For the first few years, I released one video a week, every Tuesday at 10 a.m. When I saw that the channel was growing exponentially, I had the crazy idea to release two videos a week, one on Tuesday and one on Friday. What was I thinking? For the first two years or so, I was able to maintain this pace. However, as both my ministry and family were growing, I realized I would have to slow down. Something had to give. I had officially burned out. I began to feel pressure unlike anything I had ever experienced. I was out of shape. I started gaining weight. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I wasn’t getting enough sleep at night. My life just felt like a big ball of pressure. I would release a video on Tuesday and exhale for maybe a few hours, only to feel the pressure of releasing another one just a few days later. I began to run out of ideas.

My thought process was more “I’ve got to get a video out” than “What does the Lord want me to say to the people?” But I was in a quandary. “How can I slow down now when the ministry is growing with such great momentum?”

When Fear Drives Ministry Decisions

I remember being overwhelmed with fear. If I went down to one video a week, we would lose momentum on the channel. The YouTube algorithm would no longer prioritize my videos for my subscribers. And if I lost momentum, we would lose ad revenue. I’d eventually be unable to pay my team to do the work.

To make things worse, there was another YouTuber who was crushing it and getting millions of views, and I felt this sense of pressure to keep up with him. So I kept grinding, trying for another year to keep up the unhealthy pace of producing two videos a week. That is, until one day I met with a mentor of mine and told him everything. He kindly showed me that my faith was misplaced and that I needed to renew my mind.

Renewing Your Mind and Learning to Trust God

Through that conversation, he helped me see that I was placing my trust in an algorithm rather than in God. I was prioritizing my ministry over my marriage and family. I was operating from a place of fear rather than faith. I didn’t truly trust that if I did the right thing and scaled back, God would honor that decision. He also revealed that part of my motivation for wanting to work at this pace was due to my ego and jealousy of another YouTuber. I felt like David after Nathan confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba: deeply convicted.

Finding Peace and Freedom After Ministry Burnout

After that conversation, I decided to scale back to releasing one video per week. Almost instantly, I felt relieved from the pressure I had been under for the past few years. I had more time for myself, my family, and my relationship with God. And shortly thereafter, I saw God provide for our family and ministry in ways I hadn’t seen before I made the decision, which to me was confirmation that I had made the right move. Reclaiming my inner peace, joy, and freedom was the result of renewing my mind. I had to start thinking differently about my entire ministry. Once my mind was renewed, freedom followed.