You all know the metaphor about boiling a frog. Supposedly, if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the heat will be so alarming that the frog will immediately jump out of the pot, saving its life in the process. However, if you put a frog in cool water and slowly raise the temperature up to the boiling point, the frog won’t realize what’s happening. It will just stay in that pot of water while the ever-increasing temperature eventually cooks the frog and it dies.
In reality, this is almost certainly not true. (Frogs are notoriously not great at sitting still.) Nevertheless, it remains an excellent metaphor! I experienced something similar in my own life before I decided to take a three-month renewal leave from my role as a pastor. I have been the proverbial frog in the pot. Slowly and without noticing it, my prayer life, my attention to sabbath, and my enthusiasm for ministry all slowly boiled away. I wasn’t just tired; I was exhausted, and the temperature wasn’t dropping. I needed to do something before my spiritual systems started shutting down.
At the time, I had been a pastor for fifteen years. When I graduated from seminary, I was fresh and full of energy. I was passionate about the work I did, even if I was a little raw and naïve. Importantly, I also maintained strong boundaries between sabbath, family time, prayer, and work. A decade and a half later, I still loved ministry. But the weight of those fifteen years, along with the gradual erosion of the boundaries I had placed around my time and my priorities, had begun to take their toll.
When I was in high school, a man named Dr. Keith Roberts was my Sunday school teacher. He was a sociology professor at a nearby college and much of his work focused on the sociology of religion. Later in his life, Dr. Roberts wrote a book based on his experience living with a stage IV cancer diagnosis. Rather than using the well-known metaphors of battle and war, he chose to write about it in the terms of a “reclamation project.” The imagery he used was taken from his own experience watching a polluted community dumping ground in St. Paul, Minnesota, restored to its original wetland condition by the Dakota people who lived around it:
It had been a wetland ravine—a place of birthing and beginnings for the Dakota—but all the water had been drained, and it had become a dump fouled with pollutants and filled with refrigerators and other appliances that residents had tossed there. In recent years, and with the help of some federal funds, the Dakota and others have been cleaning up this site. The trashed appliances have been removed, the water levels are coming back, and strategic native plants that either absorb chemicals or provide nutrients and renew the soil have been planted.*
This image of a reclamation project spoke to my soul. While my situation was less dire than Dr. Roberts’, I was also in need of restoration and renewal. As I began to my plan my renewal leave, I envisioned it as my own personal “reclamation project,” a mission to reclaim my passion and my energy for the ministry to which God had called me to dedicate my life.
Greg Pimlott is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and has served five UMC churches in the past 18 years.
This excerpt is adapted from Pastoral Pause: A Practical Guide to Renewal Leave (Upper Room Books, 2024).
In Pastoral Pause, Greg Pimlott shares the honest and inspiring story of his journey from burnout to spiritual revitalization. If you — or someone you know — needs a break, Pastoral Pause will help revive your spirits and provide a roadmap for your own sacred time of renewal. Learn more here. →
What boundaries have you established to protect your time for rest and prayer?
What areas of your life need to be “reclaimed” or restored right now?
How can congregations better support clergy in their need for sabbath and renewal?
How do you recognize when you’re spiritually or emotionally exhausted?
What does a personal “reclamation project” look like for you?
Share your responses with others in the comments below!
* Keith A. Roberts, Meaning-Making with Malignancy: A Theologically Trained Sociologist Reflects on Living Meaningfully with Cancer (Murrells Inlet, SC: Covenant Books, 2018).
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