Not angels in disguise

Continuing on with our occasional series of pieces from Rowland Croucher, today's article fits in well with the last post I wrote on pastors being bullied by their congregations.

Croucher's article is entitled: Do Yourself A Favour - Encourage Your Pastor!

We're too often keen to nitpick and complain about our pastors, forgetting that they aren't angels in disguise (and thus superhuman). Nor are they supermen/women whom only kryptonite can touch.

Croucher's article is an A-Z of things to think about in terms of your minister, from Accountability (yours as a congregation member, not his or hers as a pastor) to Zeal - zeal to pick up jobs around the church scene and not leave them to the minister to do....in his or her spare time.

And Y for Yourself is succinct and to the point: If every church member encouraged others as much as you do, what sort of church would it be?

Cracked Pots

While trying to track down a book called The Cracked Pot, the state of today’s Anglican parish clergy, by Yvonne Warren, I came across an article from 2007 on the Church Times archives, called What Price Priesthood? by Rachel Harden.

It discusses clergy burnout, stress, the difficulties of being ill and then having to recover within the parish, long hours with little time off, and other problems of ministry. Yvonne Warren, herself the wife of a clergyman for 40 years, notes that the Church in the 21st century is experiencing a cataclysmic time of change, with huge implications, and says, “This has affected patterns of ministry more than most, and many clergy are feeling the impact of this, not just in terms of workload, but in their sense of frustration and feeling of increasing irrelevance in a largely secularised society.”

Another book is mentioned in the article: Clergy Burnout: Recovering from the 70-hour work week. . . and other self-defeating practices by Fred Lehr. Lehr had a terrible time saying “no”, and loved feeling needed. “In reality it exhausted me, and I hated constantly being caught between my family and my congregation. I found myself helplessly falling in what we call burnout.” He sought help, and used his experience to work on a specialised treatment programme.

The Society of Martha and Mary produced a report in 2002 called, Affirmation and Accountability. In it they called on dioceses and other church structures to provide more constructive solutions for clergy who were on stress-related sick leave.

The article is fairly long, but well worth checking out. There are several personal statements at the end from people who have been through burnout and similar struggles.

Unfortunately, The Cracked Pot is now out of print, and only available through Print on Demand at the publishers, Kevin Mayhew. Affirmation and Accountability is also hard to get hold of in NZ (there is one copy, at the Kinder Library). Clergy Burnout is more readily available.