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From empty to energised – The art of recharging

Lead On Article, September 2025, by The Rev Luke Briggs, Anglican and Co-ordinating Chaplain to University of Leicester.
 

A war of attrition?

Sometimes leadership is exhausting. How’s that for an obvious starting statement?

As I write this, I’ve just returned from helping lead a CPAS Ventures summer camp for 10-16 year olds. It’s an amazing week - we have a lot of fun and see God work powerfully in young people’s lives. It is also a war of attrition. It’s nine days camping in a farmer’s field. The schedule is full. The enemy has a crack at us spiritually. Some of the kids come from messy home lives and that brings up challenges. You will probably know the feeling, whether from similar short-term ministry endeavours or the day-to-day grind of your leadership role.

There’s nothing wrong with a certain amount of stress. Adrenaline and cortisol can play their part in good performance.1,2,3 Many of us operate best when we’re just about into our stretch zone (see Yerkes-Dodson principle).4,5 Sometimes we can and must move faster for a season. But you know as well as I do that it has to be sustainable – we can’t run at our top speed through all of life any more than we can sprint a 10k. Just as a smartphone is all kinds of useful but needs charging, leaders require a recharge in order to stay effective. But how?
 

Resurgence in Sabbath rest

There has been a resurgence of evangelical interest in properly practicing Sabbath in recent years. This was not part of my spirituality until my thirties and I will heartily recommend it to anyone who knows they need a recharge rhythm. To paraphrase John Mark Comer, you’re free not to practice Sabbath, just like you’re free to eat concrete…6 I also like Rick Warren’s oft-quoted mantra of ‘divert daily, withdraw weekly, abandon annually’. But whether it’s one day out of seven, some stuff woven into the weekdays, or what we do with our annual leave or a retreat, we still need to know what recharging looks like.
 

Recreation vs Restoration

A huge factor in knowing what recharging looks like is distinguishing between recreation and rest, or relaxing and recharging. I have loved following sport since I was six years old. Had I not been called to ministry, I would have tried to become a sports journalist. I’m slowly learning, though, somewhat to my dismay, that consuming more sport – whether live or news – doesn’t always recharge my battery. In fact, there are times it can drain me, especially if I really care. 

I’ve got this fantasy cricket app, I enjoy joining in a little league with a few friends, but I reluctantly recognise that a weekly frenzy to select my team is not restorative. That doesn’t make it sinful - I’m free to use my leisure time for this - it just means it doesn’t count as something that replenishes. It might not be sport for you, it could be social media or streaming series or video games or online shopping, or any number of other things. 

The point is, which recreation is not actually recharging? At Easter I went on holiday with my family and switched off from all my usual sport apps. It was undeniable that I recharged quicker and better than I had on previous trips.
 

Body and Mind

Another factor is the physical. Biblically, we are integrated beings. The bifurcation of body and mind is really more gnostic than Christian7,8, so it’s no surprise that how we use our bodies affects how we recharge. The old adage of ‘work with the body, rest with the mind’ and vice-versa is, I think, pretty solid. If you work mainly with your mind, as is likely for this readership, then it might actually help to rest by moving your body.

I was a lockdown runner and now consider this a spiritual discipline as much as physical one, but if strenuous exercise isn’t your thing there’s still a lot to be said for just walking, if you can, especially out in nature. There is even some science behind this regarding the blood-brain barrier. 9 There’s just something about moving the body to still the mind. Add to that the beauty of Creation and the upsides (for most of us) of silence and solitude and we’re really onto something.
 

Something better than screens

Another thing that can help is reading and writing, but perhaps not our normal diet thereof. We spend a lot of time on screens, digesting thousands of small chunks of information, often requiring us to make decisions. This is exhausting. Arguably, we put our brains through a bit too much. At the very least, we’re making them work faster than any previous society anywhere in all of human history. Perhaps the most profound single piece of advice I could give for recharging is simply ‘Be on your phone less’. Attempting this weekly for a family Sabbath, with varied success, has nonetheless been extremely freeing for me in the last few years. Ditto holidays and retreats.

Amidst all this, there’s something to be said for slower and less task-based reading and writing. It’s well documented that reading novels is good for mental health and helps develop empathy 10,11,12 – the slow development of narrative and identification with characters is good for us. If we can read from a page instead of a screen, that might be beneficial too. 

The same is true of journalling. I have utterly terrible handwriting, but the physical act of writing is psychologically cathartic and transferring thoughts in the brain to words on a page is super helpful processing. It doesn’t have to be beautiful prose in full paragraphs either – a recent tweak I’ve adopted is to just jot down phrases, sometimes in different impromptu fonts, or even add little doodles.

I’m rubbish at art, but that’s not the point. I heard illustrator and former Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell say that if you can make a mark on a page, you can draw. 13 Learning to incorporate this practice has been essential for my recharging. Sometimes it’s maybe more of a pre-charging or defrag, getting all the stuff out so that, now emptied, I can be refilled. Often I’ll combine this practice with aspects of contemplative prayer, which further lend themselves to recharging. We may need some other stuff to lead us there, but in a way there’s nothing more subversively transformative than to sit still, breathe deep and rest in God’s goodness and love.
 

Kill the ‘should’

A healthy tension to hold is that of feasting and fasting. Both can arguably recharge us in very different ways. Skipping a meal and using the time to pray can refuel us spiritually, but obviously depletes us physically (again, we’re integrated beings). Indulging in luxurious food and drink, perhaps on a sabbath or holiday, can leave us feeling great or feeling grotty. It’s different for different people; there’s no one-size-fits-all. But I wonder if a solution is to ‘kill the ‘should'. Retreats, sabbaticals, proper sabbaths and holidays are all a bit better without the pressure. If recharging becomes just another tick-list of achievements in order to be ‘good enough’, will we actually recharge at all?

I find it helpful, then, to give myself grace in some areas, but try to make wise decisions as well. If I’m practicing sabbath and I feel like a run, I’ll go. If I don’t, I won’t… but I will try to stick to my exercise routine through a normal week, so long as I’m not unwell. If I’m away on holiday or retreat, I’m likely to feast with my food but fast from my phone. That’s what seems to work for me; it might be different for you. Trial and improvement plus time with the Lord should lead each of us to ‘unforced rhythms of grace’ (Matthew 11:29, The Message) that truly replenish.
 

Self-awareness

There is more to consider e.g. introversion vs. extroversion – some of us need laughter to recharge, others need silence or a deep chat. For me, quality time with my kids can recharge me, but I usually need a bit of quiet time too. Diversity of personality is a glorious thing, something to celebrate rather than sneer at. 

A gradually growing self-awareness is good here and, since loving others is really the name of the game, creating the right kind of recharging for whomever we do life with is really quite important in a sphere that can sometimes become selfish. At the same time, we’ll be no good to others if we never recharge ourselves, so we’ve got to get past the lie that we don’t need to feed our own battery. As they taught me on the Arrow Leadership Programme, self-care and self-denial are both part of the gospel. Self-indulgence and self-abuse aren’t.
 

Familiar vs. novel

Finally, in all this there’s a factor of familiar vs. novel. Some of us need new things, but most are creatures of habit. There’s a place for adventure when it comes to recharging, but also something to be said for repeated rhythms and rituals. As we grow in our ability to recharge well, we’re likely to stumble upon things that work. When that happens, we should keep doing them. That might mean visiting the same place year after year, keeping a similar itinerary to our days off or scheduling regular recharge practices in the weekday diary.

Let’s end where began, just as a charged battery always does. Leadership is tiring. We must recharge, not just relax. Doing so sustains us for the long haul, helping us stay healthy and effective as we live and lead.
 

Reflection Questions

  • What do you run to ‘switch off’ that doesn’t actually recharge you?
  • What are the things that actually do recharge you?
  • What 1-3 things can you practically commit to that would help ensure a regular recharge rhythm?

 

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