Are You Making Time For Your First Foundations?

Successful ministry is built on strong foundations.

Your success as a youth minister, especially in the long term, will depend on the strength of your foundations. These are the essential areas of your life that support everything else.

Steven Bartlett, in his book Diary of a CEO, describes physical health as our "first foundation." He argues that our relationships, work, and mental well-being all rest on the fragile table of our physical health. If the table collapses, everything else follows.

It’s a useful reframing. Physical health isn’t just one priority among many - it’s the foundation that many other aspects of our life are built upon. For Bartlett, an atheist, this means physical health is the top priority.

As a Catholic, I think Bartlett’s insight is valuable, but it doesn’t capture the full picture. There’s another foundation even more important than our physical health: our relationship with God.

We have other foundations as well: our vocation, our family, our mental health, but I want to focus on the two foundational priorities we all share: our relationship with God and our physical health.

As the New Year approaches, it’s the perfect time to reflect: Am I making time for my first foundations?

1. Prayer

If you were having dinner with your closest friends on the last night of your life, what would you say? No doubt, it would be something important. When Jesus sat with His disciples at the Last Supper, He gave them this enduring reminder:

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:4-5).

Notice, Jesus didn’t say “apart from me, you can do less.” He said, “apart from me, you can do nothing.”

Abiding in Christ, through prayer, is the single most important foundation for success in our ministry and our lives. Yet, as a full-time youth minister, I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve often neglected prayer. Caught up in the demands of ministry—planning events, answering emails, and supporting young people—I’ve let prayer shrink to five minutes in the morning or at night. Every time I do, my ministry and my well-being suffer.

Over the past year, I’ve made prayer a priority. I even adjusted my work hours to start an hour later, ensuring that I could start each day with prayer. It’s been a game-changing way to ensure that I start my day by abiding in Christ.

If you don’t have time for 20 minutes of prayer every day, it’s time to make changes. Wake up earlier, restructure your reschedule, or change your work hours. Do whatever you need to do to prioritise your relationship with God. Without this, nothing else will truly bear fruit.

2. Physical Health

The default lifestyle of a youth minister won’t do your physical health any favours. Weeks filled with late nights and pizza often leave little room for exercise or rest.

It’s easy to take your physical health for granted – especially when you’re young and everything is working the way that it should. For years, I’ve squeezed in the occasional workout and hoped for the best.

But this year I’ve watched two friends, both young adults, have their lives unexpected upended by back injuries. Both were left incapacitated for months - unable to work, socialise, or even leave their homes without significant difficulty. Their experiences were a stark reminder that if you don’t make time for your physical health today, you should expect to make time for illness or injury tomorrow.

Investing in physical health doesn’t have to mean spending 2 hours at the gym every morning. I aim for 45 minutes of strength training or cardio three to four times a week. These small, consistent efforts help protect against injury and ensure that, God willing, I can still do ministry 40 years from now.

Our ability to do what we love, including youth ministry, depends on our physical health. Make it a priority every week.

Making the Time

Youth ministry can be all-consuming, if you let it. There’s no shortage of needs to meet, and those needs can easily crowd out the other things you should be making time for.

Ironically, when I focus on ministry to the exclusion of everything else, I’m a terrible youth minister—grumpy, fatigued, and uninspiring. To thrive in youth ministry, I’ve got to continually invest in my first foundations. I’ve learned that I’ll never find time for prayer and my physical health; I have to make time.

Your success in 2025 will depend on the strength of your foundations. Will you make the time to invest in them?