The Minister’s 20 Question Spiritual Health Assessment
One of the most challenging yet essential responsibilities of ministers is to monitor their spiritual health.
I have found this assessment developed by my good friend and mentor Keith Meyer, author of “Whole Life Transformation…….Becoming the Change Your Church Needs,” can help discern the status of your gauges by answering each question with a green (consistently), yellow (frequently), orange (infrequently), or red (seldom or never)
Application: Spiritual Health Assessment for Ministers
1. __ When I ask someone or someone asks me, “how is your spiritual life?” … do I answer primarily in regards to the quality of my devotional practice and church involvement OR the whole of my life, my heart’s condition, bodily habits, the quality of my character and relationships?
2. __ How often am I in God’s word for ministry sake, preaching, teaching & service vs. for my own growth and refreshment in God?
3. __ Am I going to God when I am at my best mentally and physically (try that one with a mate) or do I try to add or squeeze it into my schedule?
4. __ Is my prayer life primarily perfunctory and professional (prayer my job requires), an AM quiet time or more a conversation with God throughout my day.
5. __ What is my first thought upon waking and my last upon sleeping and do I have a time to offer myself and my day to God and a time to review my day with God and my spouse?
6. __ Do I spend time praying for what I am hoping God will do in me, my family, my friends & enemies and those I minister alongside and to and do I carry that prayerfulness for others with me during my day?
7. __ Does God have enough of my attention that he can interrupt me and my agenda and am I present enough to others that they can too?
8. __ Do I memorize God’s word, meditate & reflectively pray it into reality and act to master it in my body and life?
9. __ Is my knowledge of scripture’s commands for my behavior and attitudes, “embodied obedient knowledge” or just theoretical/head knowledge?
10. __ Can I tell the difference between my thoughts and those from the Spirit of God or the enemy?
11. __ Do I know the difference between a weakness (that God allows to build my trust in him and humility with others) versus a blind-spot, besetting sin, unaddressed addiction or stronghold of the enemy that is keeping me from God’s best for me & others?
12. __ Do I have a good, clear and compelling vision of what and who I could be in a strategic area of my life that God has called me to develop?
13. __ Do I have practices that indirectly begin to put my body, mind, heart, soul and relationships into God’s hands for transformation or am I just trying harder and harder at the moment of temptation?
14. __ Is my practice of sin just “managed” and so, reinforced, or is my sin being mortified to become boring, uninteresting and disgusting to me?
15. __ Do I really believe that obedience to Christ is “the best possible way to live” rather than what the world, my flesh and the enemy and their lies say makes for happiness?
16. __ Do I believe that obedience makes for a life that is easier and that sinning is actually harder on me than obedience?
17. __ Do I believe that with Christ’s life transforming me I can do everything Jesus says I can do?
18. __ Is there anyone in your life who knows everything about you and regularly listens with you for God’s work in your life or speaks into your life?
19. __ Are there any areas in my life that I have given up hope to change or the “Church” as a whole has given up hope for?
20. __ Have I asked Jesus to be my teacher in life, to show me how he would live my life?
Action: Which two of the twenty questions for spiritual health are most challenging for you? Why so? Which two are the most natural for you? Why so?
If you found this blog helpful be sure to check out “100 Soul Care Questions Every Minister Should be Asking” by clicking here.
Posted on June 17, 2014
