Running Beside the Chariot
In Acts chapter 8, Philip is pulled away from revival in Samaria—where things are thriving—and sent to a desert road. No map. No rationale. Just a direction: “Go south.”
And he obeys.
What he finds on that road is a man of influence, reading aloud from Isaiah, trying to make sense of what he’s hearing. The Spirit says, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” So Philip runs. Not with an agenda, not with a platform—but with the willingness to come alongside and ask the right question:
“Do you understand what you are reading?”
Last week, we were a part of two very different pastors’ retreats—one in Niagara, and one in Dryden with Indigenous leaders. And I can’t stop thinking about that line.
So many of our pastors across Canada are serving from a place of exhaustion, isolation, and emotional depletion. They are reading the signs—in their marriages, their ministries, their bodies—but many don’t understand what they’re seeing. Or worse, they think they’re the only ones seeing it.
At Niagara, I watched couples exhale for the first time in years. I saw spouses turn toward each other in compassion. I heard pastors admit that vulnerability still feels unsafe—and often, it is. The expectations placed on spiritual leaders have a way of demanding strength and punishing honesty.
At Dryden, I heard stories that broke me. Of trauma stacked upon trauma. Of pastors cutting down the bodies of 13-year-olds who’ve taken their lives—and then standing up the next morning to preach hope. One man shared how the death of a child he helped raise shattered him, then transformed him, then led him to adopt six more. These are leaders with staggering faith. But they are tired. And there’s no safe place to come apart.
Across both retreats, I was struck by the same truth: pastors are human beings first. Before the calling, before the office, before the platform—they are people with limited emotional, physical, and spiritual bandwidth. And if we ignore the emotional side of their humanity, we jeopardize the spiritual health of the Church in Canada.
We didn’t ask to be in this lane of ministry. But we’ve been called here. Like Philip, we’ve been handed a message pastors are quietly longing for: the gospel of emotional and spiritual wholeness. The reminder that burnout isn’t a character flaw. That health isn’t a luxury. That being a pastor doesn’t mean being invincible.
As Ed Weiss said in Niagara: “You cannot hope to be spiritually healthy if you are emotionally unhealthy.”
So here’s the question I’m sitting with this week:
Are we still willing to run beside the chariot?
Not to overtake it. Not to control it. But to stay near enough that when a pastor quietly wonders, “What is happening to me?”, we’re close enough to say, “Let me walk with you. Let’s read this together.”
God bless you in your work and ministry this week.
