The Endurance Factor: How ministry leaders can avoid burnout, live well, and finish strong

by Greg Surratt, Chip Judd

Whatever you need to finish the race, God has already provided.




Marathon runners are known for their endurance-they train, they master the habit of discipline, and they persevere through pain. Fortunately, even marathons end. If you have picked up this book, you are likely running a marathon of your own-the marathon of ministry leadership.




The Endurance Factor will transform you into a ministry athlete! In this book, Lead Pastor Greg Surratt and Pastor of Leadership Care Chip Judd of Seacoast Church provide ministry leaders with practical wisdom and hope to help them finish the race strong with a captivating double narrative. You will learn practical principles about how




-Fight for your spiritual well-being by embracing the discomfort of vulnerability

-Invest in your ministry without sacrificing your relationships

-Get painfully honest about your character flaws without losing sight of God's unfailing grace

-Build teams on the basis of God's enduring love to create a culture of resilience




Your primary ministry is to rest in God's love, the love that conditions the weary soul to win every race set before you!

210 pages, Paperback

Published September 26, 2023

Reviews

[Spencer Sutterfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars may be too low… but I might also just be picking up this book too late. I also have plenty of bias!

There are good bits of wisdom in each chapter, but this books feels like publishers handed pastors a blueprint on how to write a book. Pastors then fill in a template with personal stories and some good advice. Mostly on burnout, which seems to have ran its course through the talking points of evangelism at this point. My biases are that I am a young pastor wrestling with the way the typical evangelical church does church… this book doesn’t deal with those issues - but I wish it did!

[Josiah Huffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a pastor, this book was written right to me, for me, and with men like me in mind. I will apply the principals to in this book when it comes to my relationship with God, realizing that more trauma in my past can be a hinderance. That rest is very important in the life of a pastor.

[Kimberlee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a gift from our previous Pastor and current friend. If I could, I would give this book 4.5 but that is not an option, and what I liked made up for what bothered me. The concepts in this book are deep but practical. The authors share from their own lives how they have seen what they are espousing lived out. I appreciated the way the authors explain things, like three things that shape who we are and how we respond to people, the three ingredients necessary for an environment that nourishes and supports growth and change, and the four meta-skills. A highlight of the book for me was pages 123-125 where Chip recounts a conversation with a Pastor about what he sees as the reason he was created. I have shared this with others, friends and family. I loved the analogy that thinking we were created to love God is like Warren Buffett asking me to lunch, and wanting me to pay for it. Another highlight of the book that I have not shared yet is the poem, "The Table" by Jonathan Wiggins. I look forward to sharing this at tables I get to sit at with friends/sisters I do life with. A few quotes that I loved were: "Hey, you have a Father who delights in you. He longs to fill not just your leaky cup, but your aching heart, to convince you that you can't earn security and significance. You already have it to the fullest! Know it, receive it, and delight in it....It's not wrong to be thirsty. In fact, it's a necessary pre-condition to find the right drink. But stop drinking from broken cisterns, and in fact, stop digging them! Go to the source....Can I picture Jesus saying what they're saying and doing what they're doing the way they're saying and doing it?" A worthy read for sure.