Just in time!  Last week I was trying to encourage and de-stress our readers and Next Step clients.  My friend Tracie has been thinking and writing a lot about the topic of de-stressing, so she’s here to share some of her insights and invaluable resources with us this week.  Take it away, Tracie!   

Several years ago, I found myself immersed in ministry and consumed with stress.

I had made a commitment to God that I would serve Him in whatever way He called, because a few years earlier I had disobeyed His call to be a speaker. I was terrified at the thought of sharing my testimony or standing on stage, even if those acts would glorify God. My fear overwhelmed my faith, and my answer to God’s call, was “No thanks”. “Not now.”  “Maybe never.”

But out of my love for God and feeling ashamed of my lack of trust, I convinced myself that if I served God in lots of other ways, that my service would be sufficient. Unfortunately, that not only prolonged my disobedience to God’s true call on my life, but over time I became over committed, stressed out and burnt out.

You see, I had become a “yes” girl to anyone who asked, because I regretted telling God “no” in the past. I was unknowingly serving in whatever way people called, not whatever way God called.

When someone asked me to sing in the choir, I said yes. When someone asked me to paint three huge wooden props for the Christmas play all by myself, I said yes. When someone asked me to lead a Bible study, I said yes. When someone asked me to help with the children’s nursery, I said yes. When someone asked me to lead the whole Women’s Ministry program, I said yes. You get the picture. 

I was serving God in meaningful ways, but as a result of not obeying what He was really calling me to do, I was serving for all the wrong reasons. Although I enjoyed doing all those things, I was serving to please other people, not Him. I was serving to fill a gap in my heart, not a gap in the needs of my church. And as a result, over time, my overload turned into burnout. My ministry work became a job instead of a joy, and something needed to change. Although God was grooming my heart through these acts of service, I knew I wasn’t fully living in His will.

Since then, I have learned to be aware of the warning signs that my spirit and my body exhibit when I am on the dangerous path towards stress and burnout. I have learned to seek God’s guidance before saying “yes”, and continually building my relationship with Him, in the hopes of avoiding reaching the burn out stage ever again.

And I want to encourage you in your quest to do the same so that God can continue to be glorified through you as you follow His lead.

Recently I was featured over at www.womensministry.net sharing a one minute video about How To Avoid Ministry Burnout. You can also download my free handout from that site titled 10 Keys To Avoiding Ministry Burnout. If you have been struggling with feeling overcommitted in ministry, or just feeling burnt out in your every day responsibilities, I pray these tips might encourage you.

Just as stress comes with the territory of serving God, it is also a normal part of life, but if left ignored, it can begin to control our lives.  My new book Stressed-Less Living: Finding God’s Peace In Your Chaotic World addresses this problem and helps you become aware of the stress in your life and the toll it might be taking on you physically, emotionally and spiritually. The official release date is October 2, 2012, but it is currently available for pre-orders through Proverbs 31! More information is available at www.stressedlessliving.com .

And, if you want to make sure you avoid burnout and get your stress under control, I invite you to sign up for my free 10 Day Stress Detox!   Visit my blog at www.traciewmiles.com to get signed up.  

For everyone who signs up for the Stress Detox before this weekend, I will send an expanded, more detailed 8 page version of the 10 Tips To Avoiding Ministry Burnout for free!

If interested, just forward your email subscription confirmation to me at and your informational and motivational freebie will be on the way!

Sweet blessings!

 Tracie Miles

Hi friend!  Today we’ve got a fabulous follow-up post on social networking by Suzie Eller.  Before I turn it over to Suzie, I want to give you one more reminder to sign up for Brass Tacks:  Message Development Essentials, a conference call that will be held this Thursday, Sept. 13 at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.  I’m working hard to present all the things I’ve learned and am learning in a format that contains something for every speaker at every experiential level.  Please join us!

Without further ado…Here’s Suzie!  ~Amy

In our last post  I shared a second question: How will I communicate my message throughout my entire social media platform?

Can I be honest with you about something? I don’t like the word “brand”. But I love the word community.

Once we know who we are, the heart of our message, who is searching for that message, then we want every piece of cyber real estate that bears our name to reflect the type of community we hope to build, and the audience we hope to draw.

In our last conversation, we talked about a fashionista mom blogger. She’s smart. She’s savvy.

She’s also bummed.

She’s working so hard on her blog posts, but only a few are coming to her blog.

My advice to this beautiful mom blogger is to reach out to a larger segment of the cyber population to build community. A perfect second “home” in cyberspace is on Facebook.

I already have a Facebook page, Suzie. 

There’s a major difference between your personal page, where you share pictures of your kids and what you had for lunch, and your ministry page, which is specific to your audience and core message.

To create a Facebook page, you go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. This is a separate page from your personal page. There is no limit on the number of people who can “like” your page. It offers some very cool options like having multiple administrators, event announcements, the ability to pre-post your status updates, and much more.

Facebook allows you to have both a personal page and an organization or nonprofit page, but keeps those worlds separate.

Your ministry page reflects your ministry. It is specific to your audience. When you look at one of my ministry pages (yes, you can create more than one!) at www.facebook.com/MomsTogether, you find a ministry devoted to encouraging moms with solid information, giveaways, community, and connection.

Next, my advice to the mom blogger was to create a Twitter account ().

Let’s say that our fashionista mom posted a great thrift find, and how much money she saved on her blog post. Then she takes a few moments and adds a status update with a link in her FB ministry page, and then a short, fun tweet with a link in Twitter.

The original exposure was just to those who came to her blog post. Now suddenly she’s opened a door to two entirely different audiences, but with the same core message, and same fun content. And in doing so, she is building a solid community of moms of faith who love shopping, or fashion, motherhood, and who want to live on a budget.

This creates word of mouth. It also establishes your identity. When people visit you on the web, they don’t have to try to figure out who you are. They know who you are!

Building community is just that. Using social media takes time. The key is to offer consistent and valuable content.

As you create your cyberspace community, understand that it may take an entirely different turn than you expect. My FB community surprised me the most! Moms Together will be two years old in November, 2012. It started with 100+ moms and today its nearly at 12,000 and growing daily.

Today, take an honest look at your blog. Your Facebook page. Your Twitter. How does each reflect you, your core message, your audience’s felt need, and yes, even your brand?

What is one step you can take today to begin to build community?

Suzie Eller is a Proverbs 31 Ministries speaker and author, and Christian Writers Guild Mentor. Connect with Suzie at www.tsuzanneeller.com.

is not to count on the dollars, but build the community beforehand so that readers are waiting to receive the book, rather than trying to find readers after . .

is not to count on the dollars, but build the community beforehand so that readers are waiting to receive the book, rather than trying to find readers after . .

is not to count on the dollars, but build the community beforehand so that readers are waiting to receive the book, rather than trying to find readers after . .