Be All That You Can Be,” said Dale Huff, director of LeaderCare and church administration for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. Using this one-time U.S. Army slogan, Huff challenged leaders to greater physical and spiritual health.
“We want our leaders to be healthy and become healthier — each one, every one being all that Christ intended His church to be.
Recounting a story from his youth when he sought to be the Charles Atlas bodybuilder type, he said he knew he was pumped up to the point of being impressive, until he stood alongside a real bodybuilder.
“When we compare ourselves to an unbelieving, sinful, disobedient world we feel strong, but compared to Jesus, we know we have some more growing to do,” he said.
Socking leaders with the responsibility of church health, he said, “No group goes beyond its leadership. If a group is going to grow, leaders must be growing and becoming healthier.”
Failing to manage personal health can send leaders down the roads of stress, obesity and diabetes, which if not addressed and treated can devastate people and ministries.
“We need physical strength equal to the tasks we have to do,” he said, citing statistics from various sources that defined the dangers of stress.
Being stressed to the point of exhaustion can debilitate Christian leaders’ ability to effectively minister.
“Not many of us will ever make the best dressed list, but some of us may qualify for the best stressed list. We are overweight, overworked, overstressed and thus it affects our health and our capacity to have an effective ministry in Jesus’ name,” he said.
He said exercise is one of the most researched and proven techniques for enhanced health, including helping the body deal with stress.
The effects of poor personal management of health are widespread in Alabama and the nation, he said. Alabama has the highest ratio of diabetes population of any state in the nation, he said. “I encourage you in this year ahead to commit yourself to growing stronger and healthier physically,” he said.
Improving physical health through diet, exercise and weight loss can in some cases prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes.
But for leaders to build healthier bodies is simply not enough. They must flex their minds as well, Huff said.
Alabama Baptist leaders should strive to strengthen their minds by filling them with the Word of God, Huff said, pointing out that one of the ways Scripture instructs us to love the Lord our God is with our minds.
“As long as we live we need to learn and stretch our minds,” Huff said. “As long as we live we need to be learning so that we can be more effective instruments of the Lord’s work.”
A way to have success in developing a healthy mind is to avidly pursue God’s Word — study it, absorb it into our lives and know it, he said.
Healthy leaders should pay strong attention to their relationships and in particular their families to achieve comprehensive health in their lives, according to Huff.
“The Christian faith is one of relationships,” he said. “A healthy leader is ever growing in his right relationship with the Lord and is ever growing in his relationship with folks, most especially those precious gifts the Lord’s given us — our families. The Lord is first and the family next,” he said.
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