After meeting in college, marrying, and working in ministry for a number of years, Moriah and Elizabeth Seaman felt ready to step into a lead pastor position and moved to Milton, Florida, to engage in a three-year succession plan to take over an existing church. Due to COVID, they ended up taking over leadership of the church in late 2020, only a couple of years into their plan and a couple of months after their second baby was born.
Moriah was bi-vocational, and he had to work another job in addition to being a brand-new lead pastor. He was also parenting two small children and navigating the stress of COVID during this season. “When we moved to Florida in 2018, I was paid a part-time salary [at the church] to work 20-25 hours weekly. It was a significant part-time role, but not a significant salary because the church just didn’t have the money. So I took a full-time job on top of that, and for about four years, I worked 55-60 hours a week, which just about killed me. I was hitting some major burnout.” Finding himself regularly thinking about quitting, Moriah reached out to Super Regional Leader Joel Seymour for help. “We had a very encouraging phone call, and I just remember feeling like, ‘Okay, somebody who cares about me is praying for me. And they want to do something to help.’ And that was the beginning of things turning around.”
In addition to the prayers and encouragement, Joel connected Moriah with Danielle Pathak, who had just become the Associate National Director of Pastoral Health for Vineyard USA. He remembers that “she was very concerned, and I think she was having a lot of these kinds of conversations as she stepped into this new role.” On their call, Moriah expressed how it felt like Danielle cared more about him than his ministry, and that these conversations helped him to realize that he needed to take better care of himself and work on prioritizing his family over his ministry. Otherwise, his ministry would likely fall apart: “I was just overwhelmed because Danielle wasn’t stressing about what might happen to my church. She cared more about what happened to me and my wife, and my family, above all, and that was just incredibly refreshing.”
Danielle had some very practical suggestions for Moriah: Could his church offer a sabbatical? Could his church provide a $5,000 bonus just to help with some financial needs? He didn’t think any of that was possible, but a few of these suggestions were taken up by the church. Moriah says that some of the members of their initial church board were not very receptive, but over the course of a year, almost the entire board resigned, and the church ended up with an entirely new board with an entirely new attitude. Even though it was projected that the decision could lose the church $15-20k, they decided to bring Moriah on full-time and pray that the Lord would provide, “and by some miracle, we didn’t lose a dollar that year.” The change to one full-time job was amazing for Moriah’s spiritual, emotional, and physical health. “It was the relief that I needed to go from working 60 hours a week to 40 hours a week, only having one job to juggle instead of two. It was such a leap for our church financially, but God provided.” The board also voted to give him a bigger salary than he asked for, as well as an annual $5,000 bonus to pay for any financial emergencies. “It was just like Danielle had suggested to me, but I hadn’t shared it with the board. I think it was just a God thing.”
Moriah remembers crying during that board meeting. “It was such a shift, from a board that seemed primarily focused on preserving an organization, to a whole room of new people that were showing us ‘We value you above the ministry.’ Joel had said so many things to me, like, ‘Mo, you guys are the most important asset that this church has anyway. They need to invest because your ministry, long-term, depends on your pastoral health.’ I was still just trying to accept that, because of the church culture that we had seen in some churches growing up.”
Fast forward to 2025, and Moriah says he felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit to join the Spiritual Health cohort offered by Vineyard USA’s Pastoral Health and Formation team. “It was a bit of a battle because I’m like, ‘Well, I’m full-time now, I’ll be fine.’ But then I’m reading the description of this cohort, and everything sounded like something that I have been neglecting for way too long. I signed up, and during our weekly Zoom gatherings, the Holy Spirit met me in powerful ways every time. Through the course of this cohort, I developed rhythms that have really put my life back on track.”
Moriah says that the Spiritual Health cohort was a source of healing and correction that he needed, not only to get past the burnout season, but to renew and restore something that was broken. “Two big changes that my wife and I were able to implement through this cohort: we both have a Sabbath day now, because we didn’t have a Sabbath for years. It’s been so life-giving, and now we protect it. It’s been so good for our souls, and just for our health holistically across the board.
“Another really big change that the cohort helped me make was that I got into the rhythm of spending time with Jesus every day. It’s amazing how easy it is to neglect time with Jesus when you’re serving Jesus; just hitting to-do lists and checklists and all these things. I could spend 3-4 days straight just doing church work, and not even say hello to Jesus. And so I actually put it into my systems. I put it into my daily reminders and into my calendar: spend time with Jesus.”
Moriah says that he was also stretched in how he experiences his faith. “I tend to be a very practical and pragmatic Christian, and a lot of this felt lofty, or abstract and ethereal, and not something that I would say is congruent with my strengths. It challenged me and opened up some avenues in my spiritual walk with Jesus that I had just never really considered. It was not exactly my cup of tea from the beginning; it was kind of a learned taste, and it proved to be so good for me and exactly what I needed.
“I think one of the biggest challenges for me in even signing up was thinking, ‘I’m full-time now, I got what I wanted, I’m fine.’ And that’s probably the equivalent of someone walking out of ICU saying, ‘I’m fine, I’m out of ICU.’ But there is still healing work that needs to be done. And you can’t just rush back into the same circumstances that caused these injuries without getting proper care and addressing the needs that are still there.
“I’m just incredibly grateful. I know for a long, long time, Vineyard USA has had minimal resources to accomplish its mission. When I heard about the Lilly Grant and all these changes they’re making, and a determination from Vineyard USA to do all they can to help our pastors, it was such an encouraging shift. I’m really grateful to everybody who made this possible, because I’m in a much better place today than I was a couple of years ago before going through this course.”