Pastor and Nurse

I’ve been a nurse for 23 years this year. For much of that time, I’ve also served as a pastor. Most of the time those two roles existed almost completely separate from one another. Sure, I was still a pastor when I was working as a nurse, and I was still a nurse when doing my pastoral work. Still, there was a sense that these were two separate parts of who I was, two parts that seldom crossed.

Over the past several years I have truly longed for a way to combine what felt like to separate pieces of me. I considered many different ways to make this happen but kept coming up dry. I wanted to be a pastor, mentor, teacher, and coach to nurses, but couldn’t think of what that might look like.

Then I started Restoring Nurses

After that time of searching, I kinda sat that idea on a shelf. Then I started working on a new project, Restoring Nurses. This came from a heart to help nurses learn to love nursing again. It grew beyond that to wanting to help nurses improve their lives outside of work too. This evolved into helping nurses take better care of themselves. This is where I developed the 6 Domains of the Restored Life (LINK).

I found myself struggling again

Fast forward to about 2-3 weeks ago. That’s when I found myself struggling, again, with exactly what it was I was trying to do, who I was trying to serve. I knew I wanted to serve nurses but was it new nurses, experienced nurses, burned-out nurses, or nurses trying to prevent burnout? I wasn’t sure.

I wrestled mightily with the notion of narrowing down my mission to specifically serving Christian nurses. It felt right, but I didn’t want to exclude all those nurses that didn’t consider themselves to be Christian. I really wanted to serve all nurses. Then I remembered something I’ve heard from a number of business coaches/experts, “If you try to serve everybody, you’ll end up serving no one.” That’s when I gained the clarity I had been longing for and it looks like this:

I help Christian nurses build healthy, happy lives for themselves and their families

There it is. I said it. 

This clarified mission allows me to finally combine those pieces of myself that have always been separate, nurse and pastor. 

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not trying to exclude anyone. In fact, I truly believe that the concepts I teach can help anyone restore their life if applied to their lives.  Far from being an attempt to exclude anyone, this is more a matter of making my message more clear. I’ve not tried to hide my Christian beliefs, but moving forward Biblical wisdom will be prominent in my content.

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