You should be mindful that your mind and thought processes are a vital part of your ministry, which means that you should take care of your physical health. Take part in some form of physical activity—regularly walk, ride a bike, do some calisthenics, and eat a decent diet…Remember, you’re not a soul trapped in a body—you’re a body-soul human being, take care of both. 

The pastorate can take a toll on your body. Perhaps it’s because the pastorate is conducive to a sedentary lifestyle—you sit at your desk and study for hours, then you meet someone for lunch, show up to a church social and eat a stack of cookies, and then meet someone at your local coffee shop and, why not, go ahead and grab a scone. Before you know it, your “roomy” pants are no longer roomy and your bathroom scale screams at you. Sometimes, some pastors just go with the flow and pick up the weight—it’s just the cost of doing business. But we should ask ourselves whether this is the best course of action.

For the sake of discussion, let’s set aside the morality of obesity and gluttony—an important subject for another day. I instead want to focus upon the relationship between our bodies and minds. All too often orthodox Christians live like gnostic heretics—they intellectually affirm that they are body and soul creatures but live like the body doesn’t really matter and the soul is the only thing that really counts. A pastor might gain more weight and think nothing of it because he believes that so long as his mind stays intact, what’s the harm of carrying a few extra pounds? Yet, the Bible presents a very different picture—one that we need to live out on a daily basis.

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