People with mental health problems...in OUR church

It's likely there'll be people with mental disabilities, or mental health problems in your congregation. You may be dealing with them and their situation with compassion and concern. But what if you don't know how to help them, even in the most basic ways? (My own church has a particular ministry towards people with mental health issues, but there's a very small percentage of the congregation who are actually involved with the group who come to church.)

In an article that appeared in the Leadership Journal online, Through a Glass, Darkly:
Ministry to the mentally ill, Amy Simpson talks about her own experience as a teenager with a mother who was mentally unwell, and how she has learned what things pastors and congregations need to know to help not only those with the mental health problem, but also their families and friends. For instance here's what she has to say about pastors trying to assist:

"Sometimes clergy distance themselves from people with mental illness because they realize the problem can be long term. To become involved with this person may mean a lengthy commitment. Perhaps this person will never be cured. Such a problem is contrary to contemporary Western ideas of being in control of one's life and destiny. People in modern day America expect to find a rational solution to any problem. And yet, in this case, there may be no solution. It is tempting, if an answer is not apparent, to avoid the person for whom one has no answers."

Simpson also looks briefly at the theological issues, and at the problems of overspiritualisation of mental health issues. This is quite a long article, but it's full of good insights, and practical suggestions.

Busyness

“Busyness, of course, is not peculiar to the pastoral life; it is endemic to our culture.. We need a strategy that takes into account two sets of demands that seem to cancel each other out.. The first set of demands is that we respond with compassionate attentiveness to the demands of the people around us...demands that refuse to stay within the confines of regular hours and always exceed our capacity to meet them..

“The second set of demands is that we respond with reverent prayer to the demand of God for our attention, to listen to him, to take him seriously in the actual circumstances of this calendar day, at this street address, and not bluff our way through by adopting a professionalized role. This is a kind of attentiveness that we know from instruction and experience can be entered into only slowly and deliberately. There is a large, leisurely center to existence where God must be deeply pondered, lovingly believed. It means entering realms of spirit where wonder and adoration have space to develop, where play and delight have time to flourish. Is this possible for pastors who have this other set before them daily?

“It is possible for pastors. Because there is a biblical provision for it.. The name for it is sabbath…”

Eugene Peterson in Working the Angles

Unchurched

There is a dread code word that church people, particularly Professional Church People, use for those who are, well, unchurched. For sheer stupidity it ranks with ‘deplane,’ as in ‘in an emergency, you will deplane from the door or window nearest you that is marked as an exit.’ My favourite days are those in which I am a thoroughly ‘deplaned’ person.

The best commentary on the word ‘unchurched’ that I know of came from a grocer in a small town in Iowa, apparently one of the suspect heathen. One day the pastor of the Lutheran church approached him about providing food for a district meeting of church evangelisation committees. These are the people, the pastor explained, who have a special ministry – here he paused, significantly – a special outreach to the ‘unchurched.’ The grocer took the order for cold cuts, sliced cheeses, rolls, cookies, and fruit. When the pastor unveiled the large deli platter in the church basement, he was startled to find that the centrepiece was a cross constructed out of slices of bologna.

From Amazing Grace: a vocabulary of faith, by Kathleen Norris, pg 325

Problem-solving

“In running a church I solve problems. Wherever two or three are gathered together, problems develop… It is satisfying to my ego to help make rough places smooth.

“The difficulty is that problems arrive in such constant flow that problem solving becomes full-time work. Because it is useful and the pastor ordinarily does it well, we fail to see that the pastoral vocation has been subverted. Gabriel Marcel wrote that, “life is not so much a problem to be solved as a mystery to be explored.” That is certainly the biblical stance: life is not something we manage to hammer together and keep in repair by our wits; it is an unfathomable gift. We are immersed in mysteries: incredible love, confounding evil, the creation, the cross, grace, God.”

From The Contemplative Pastor - Eugene Peterson, pg 65. Quoted by Len Hjalmarson in this post on spirituality.

Ministers and extra-marital affairs

One of the issues pastors/ministers/priests seem to face - perhaps even more than other men (and I focus on men purposely here) - is that of the extra-marital affair. The consequences for ministry and family can be devastating, as you'd expect.

I came back to the Lord via the Pentecostal scene. In my naivete I thought these Pentecostal ministers were pure in heart and deed, and admired them for their integrity. And then one fell out of the ministry due to an affair, and then another and then another - and another! All within a few short years. Two of these guys were leaders in very large New Zealand Pentecostal churches.

Chad Estes has written two posts recently on the subject. In one he reviews a book by David Trotter called Lost + Found: Finding Myself by Getting Lost in an Affair, and offers some comments about how it can be difficult to maintain friendship with someone who's fallen in this way, but that it's necessary nevertheless. In the other post, Why Pastors Have Affairs, he offers six reasons why men in these positions of responsibility have perhaps greater 'reasons' to have affairs than other men. 'Reasons' in the sense that they can find reasons for the affairs better than some of us.

Richard Floyd on Burnout, work, and more

In a provocative yet wise blog post, Richard Floyd writes: 

I think the whole category of “burnout,” although quite real, is also a bit of a red herring. All the articles agree that clergy are overworked. And when cast in terms of “work” that is undoubtedly true.

My question is simple: “Should clergy really be working?” Or to put it another way, “When did what clergy do come to be understood as work?” Clergy have always been busy doing what clergy do, visiting the sick, attending to the dying, preaching and administering the sacraments and the scholarly preparation for same. The “work” clergy are now expected to do is a category drawn from the industrial and post industrial West, and seen in terms of their terms of efficiency, productivity, and professionalism.

Further down the page he writes:

Years ago one of my GE manager types got on my oversight board and hounded me into doing detailed hourly logs of what I do as part of a compensation review (I know this sounds like Dante, but it really happened.) I was insecure enough to hold my doubts and my tongue, and dutifully filled them out, but a good deal of the time I found myself in comic reflection. For example, when I was thinking about whether Paul’s radical theology of justification in Romans led to antinomianism while soaping up in the shower, was I “working?” Or am I working right now while I ruminate, for I have no position and am not being compensated for it?

and....

We....have guidelines for how many hours (divided into parts of days called “units”) that pastors should be “working.” Like so many things in our churches these suggestions are right-minded but wrongheaded. Because ministry can’t be cut into tranches like pate.

The category of burnout is a symptom of what happens when you take on these models. If your criteria for “success” is efficiency and productivity you will always fall short, because ministry is neither efficient nor productive in the terms of the world.

Read the whole post.   Whether you agree with his analysis or not, it's worth reflecting on, and may assist in your own avoidance of burnout....

Vocation vs Job revisited

An extract from a post by Bob Hyatt in the Out of Ur blog, again on the topic of where 'job' ends and 'vocation' begins - or vice versa.

First, as always, I need more fully to embrace the Gospel at a personal level. My failure at turning off ministry and making true rest a part of my weekly rhythms reveals within me a basic disbelief of the Gospel truth that Jesus is enough and that my identity can and should be rooted in his finished work for me--not the results I get, the church I pastor , how well (or poorly) it’s doing, or whether I think people are approving or disapproving of me based on the amount of access I give them to myself and my time. The only way we pastors will ever find sustainability and longevity in ministry is if we do what we tell other people to do ALL THE TIME: Rest our souls in the finished work of Christ. Stop getting our identity from our job/ministry. Take some time to unplug, unwind and, more importantly, connect with God, our families and our own souls again.

Ways for congregations to drive their pastor crazy

On previous occasions we've posted about the bullying of some pastors by their congregations. This time, with only a little tongue-in-cheek, Richard Floyd sets out a fairly comprehensive list of ways in which congregations can make sure they're doing their best to drive their pastor crazy.

Unfortunately the list will be too close to home for some in ministry. Don't read this is you're already feeling low.

Floyd calls his list Ten Highly Effective Strategies for Crushing Your Pastor's Morale.

A couple of examples:

3. Make sure to have an annual customer satisfaction survey where every member of the congregation fills out an anonymous questionnaire about their views of the pastor’s performance during the previous year. Make sure all the negative (or ambiguous) comments are read aloud at several meetings, and publish them without attribution in the church newsletter.

5. Cut the mission budget to balance the budget. Better yet, ask your pastor to choose between a raise in salary or an increase in the mission budget. This would be a good subject for an extended conversation at a congregational meeting. You can never talk too much about clergy compensation at a congregational meeting.

There are some funnier ones, and some that will set your teeth on edge. One or two would make Jesus himself weep.

Leaders Who Last

Rowland Croucher has placed a review of this book by Margaret J. Marcuson on Facebook. What follows is just a part of the review.

Here’s one of the best little (150 pages) books on pastoral leadership with an American mainline church /Alban Institute flavour to emerge in the last decade.

They say every sermon/book should be summarizable in one sentence. Here’s mine for this one: ‘Your pastoral leadership style/conflicts can’t be understood apart from your family-of-origin experiences; so be patient: most changes in a pastor’s approach and a congregation’s responsiveness will take time and sensitivity to that church’s history as well.’

Margaret’s a Baptist, but as a non-fundamentalist Baptist myself, I hasten to add that the people she quotes and the ideas she espouses indicate that she’s a ‘broad church Baptist’ (yes, some of us do actually exist!).

Some of her (and her professional friends’) wisdom:

• When we are less dependent on the approval of others we can be more effective in our ministry (p. 6)

• Carrying other people, until we can’t do it any longer, is the real source of burnout, not overwork (11). We can be the most help by giving people space to find creative solutions to their own struggles (17). Identify who in your family you were trained to rescue so as not to mistake legitimate professional helping with illegitimate family rescuing – which is inevitably tied to unhealthy ways of trying to feel good about oneself (18-19).

• Many clergy are oldest children: they learn early to over-function in relation to others, to take responsibility for them (34-5). Of course not all that we learnt from our families is negative. Ask: ‘What gifts did your parents give you?’ (36). An initial step in looking at our family story is to create a family genogram (37). And remember: the problems with parents is that they had parents (46).

• Clarifying your vocation: Where do I want to go? What energizes me? What future possibilities do I see? What legacy do I want to leave? Do I know what I love to do? Can I do more of it? What was my original thinking in going into ministry? If I had to write down my ministry purpose in one sentence right this minute, what would I say? (73).

• The person who desperately wants to be liked is never the most popular; the leader who desperately wants others to follow is not the most effective (76)

• Teresa of Avila’s daily prayer: ‘Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you; all things are passing, God never changes. Patient endurance attains to all things; who God possesses in nothing is wanting; alone God suffices’ (110).

The excellent final chapter on personal spiritual disciplines includes such classical wisdom as: worship in different places and traditions, go outside, find a spiritual mentor, read Scripture devotionally, not just for your sermon preparation.

At the end of each chapter are some very helpful discussion-starters. The ten questions to ask about your church’s history are brilliant (32). I’d suggest this book as an excellent resource for your pastoral colleagues’ support-group.
Alban Institute 2009

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?

On being a new minister

There's an excellent post on the Per Crucem ad Lucem site today, entitled: Pastors aren't Prophets - some unsolicited advice for newly-minted ministers. It's by Rick Floyd.

In it he discusses (amongst other things) the need for ministers to gain the respect of their congregation by being a faithful pastor to the people day in and day out - only then can you speak prophetically to them, and have them listen.

You need to be aware that in spite of all our calls for self-care and avoiding burnout, a minister's job is never going to consist of a forty-hour week, with no evening/night calls or weekend work. It's truly a full-time job...though that doesn't mean you mustn't take any time off. As he writes:

One of the modern heresies (but by no means the only one) of the contemporary mainline church, is that you can have something akin to a normal 40 hour a week professional life and be a faithful pastor. It isn’t true. A pastor’s life, and the life of the pastor’s family is necessarily involved in the community of their congregation in season and out of season. Sometimes, even often, it is wonderful; other times it isn’t. That’s the way it goes. It isn’t the Canyon Ranch spa. I often say being a pastor is the best vocation there is, but perhaps the worst job. If you are not called to it, it is something you really don’t want to do.

And a little later:

One of the things I learned was that you have to love your congregants, even the unlovable, of which there are far too many, and who take up a good deal of your time. If and when you find yourself loving them, you know you are on your way to really being a pastor. Some of them you will just never learn to love, and you have to turn them over to God, who does.

Floyd probably packs more wisdom into this one article than you'll find in many a day. Essential reading.

More from Croucher

As promised, here's another article from Rowland Croucher on the issues of stress and burnout amongst ministers. This one begins with a story about a man who had the ability to preach, but always lost his church job through conflict. In the end he was virtually down and out, his wife just managing to make ends meet.

Rowland goes on to look at what helps a pastor/minister last the distance.

Today it's both easier and harder to be a pastor. Easier, because we have more resources to help us - like the World Wide Web for sermon-material (ever used the search-engine Google as a concordance?), more support-groups to encourage and pray for us, better access to the world's practical theology experts, and a higher standard of living, on average, than pastors have ever enjoyed.

But it's also harder. Many of us can identify with the apostle Paul who said, 'Who is equal to such a task?', about his own call to pastoral ministry. These days the expectations of our people are higher - and more likely to be expressed vigorously. Up-front leaders and speakers compete with dynamic personalities on television. There are more 'religious' people not attending churches (in the West) than ever before in history. Our people are likely to be better-educated - and differently-educated than we are. 'One size fits all' doesn't work any more: people are more mobile, and brand-loyalty doesn't work for Generation X'ers (those born since 1965) - or even Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964).

He offers a number of suggestions over several articles (I've only listed the first few here, as the others run comfortably on from the one before.)

1. Jesus as the model for ministry
2. Spiritual formation -keeping on bel
3. Images of Ministry - what is yours?
4. Saint or Pharisee?
5. Keeping the Spiritual Disciplines - this point keeps turning up; is God saying something?!
6. What about the 'Call'?
the rest of the article appears in a second page:
7. Understanding yourself - how much does your family history affect your work?
8. Co-dependency - blaming others for your own faults
9. Mentors and Networks - absolutely essential!

5 Barriers to Church Growth

Back in August this year we posted a piece relating to Charles Arn and his five principles of church growth. [Church growth principles remain.]

I've just come across another piece by Arn, which looks at the same issue from the opposite perspective. He calls it 5 Barriers to Church Growth. (Mr Arn actually cheats a little - there are nine points in all in his article, but we won't quibble too much.)

The five barriers are simply stated: the Pastor himself can be the first barrier, the Congregation can be the second, perceived irrelevance (on behalf of the community the church is situated in) the third, using the wrong methods the fourth, and finally having no plan for assimilation.

No new words there, you might say, but these are things that we need to keep reminding ourselves about. That church down the road that is growing: does the pastor have vision and communicate it? Does the congregation have a sense of being ministers to their local community (which will deal to the third issue)? Is that church using methods that we might consider trendy or faddy or out in the left field? Do they have a way of making sure new disciples grow?

If the answer to more than one of these is Yes, then perhaps they're doing something right. Worth checking out!

Pastors and Artists

While meeting with my supervisor a week or so ago, we discussed the difficulties artists have in being themselves in churches, in becoming part of the worshipping fabric, or of any fabric at all where they can express themselves as artists. She said churches can be toxic for artists.

Yesterday I came across a link to a post by Mark Pierson on the same sort of subject. He'd been invited to a church to talk on his experience of the interaction between art and worship 'in a church such as ours.'

Controversially, perhaps, Mark entitles his post: Are Pastors Killing Artists? - it's not very long, so read it through, especially if you're a pastor (or an artist). You may feel it's rather cynical; regrettably it isn't.

The Next Evangelicalism

The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity, by Soong-Chan Rah.

This book, critical as it is of American white evangelicalism (and therefore also of NZ white evangelicals) sparks a strong critical review from one Amazon writer, an Assemblies of God pastor. His biggest concern is that Korean-born Rah sees the white culture as one big negative. For him, Rah forgets the very many strong and positive traits of Western civilisation, and lumps all white Christians together as one homogenous group.

That aside, however, he has some good things to say about the book, and admits that in spite of its ‘flaws’ it points out something that is needing to be said in regard to the group that is 60% of the world’s Christian community: the Africans, the Asians and the Latin Americans.

“No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't escape the conclusion that Rah - to a significant degree - is right. The American evangelical church is declining, or at least its Anglo component is. But as Rah points out, the non-Anglo component of the American evangelical church is thriving. This is true in my own denomination, the Assemblies of God.

“…the Anglo evangelical church in America declining, it is guilty - in various parts and to varying degrees - of practicing an individualistic, consumerist, materialistic, and racist form of Christianity. Why do we focus on personal evangelism rather than also on social transformation? Why do we think the three B's - buildings, bucks, and butts in the pew - are indicators of a church's success, if that's even an appropriate word for a church to use? And why do we presume that non-white culture is a mission field that needs our contributions and competence, rather than the other way around?”

To sum up, “correction does not mean the total negation of the one culture nor the total affirmation of the others. It requires a balancing off of weaknesses and strengths.”

The need for evaluation

In an article on the Roxburgh Missional Network this week, entitled New Directions for a Leadership Style, John McLaverty writes about the need for ongoing evaluation of our lives and ministry. After he quit his job as a full-time pastor nine years ago, McLaverty was encouraged to take a 360 evaluation.

“ A 360 what?”, I believe was my quick and rather anxious response. Patiently and wisely [the Vocational Psychologist] responded, “A 360 is an effective instrument through which you can filter and evaluate changes you may want to make in your style of leadership. It is a multi-rater, full circle (hence the 360) feedback survey. We are going to ask 20-25 of your friends, colleagues, peers and work associates to fill-in a confidential survey on how they perceive you both in strengths and challenges. In the end we will provide you with a confidential report and recommendations for your professional development. We will also suggest you form a support group that will help guide you through the recommendations.”

McLaverty recently asked in a different post, Why are you in ministry? It's a question he believes ministers should be asking themselves on a regular basis. (Us lay-people, of course, never have to ask such questions....!) The Pastor/Leader 360 is available via the Roxburgh site - it costs something, but you can download a sample report to get some idea of what it's about.

Wellness....or not

These figures were quoted in a review on Amazon.com for the book, Mad Church Disease
Some recent statistics from The Fuller Institute, George Barna, and Pastoral Care Inc.

90% of the pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week.

80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. Many pastor's children do not attend church now because of what the church has done to their parents.

33% state that being in the ministry is an outright hazard to their family.

90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands and 50% feel unable to meet the demands of the job.

70% say they have a lower self-image now than when they first started.

70% do not have someone they consider a close friend.

40% report serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.

33% confess having involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with someone in the church .

50% have considered leaving the ministry in the last months.

50% of the ministers starting out will not last 5 years.

94% of clergy families feel the pressures of the pastor's ministry.

The profession of "Pastor" is near the bottom of a survey of the most-respected professions, just above "car salesman".

Over 4,000 churches closed in America last year.

Over 1,700 pastors left the ministry every month last year.

Over 1,300 pastors were terminated by the local church each month, many without cause.

Over 3,500 people a day left the church last year, over 1.25 million people.

This shows that there's all the more need for an emphasis on Wellness amongst ministers and their families. If it's happening there, it's happening here (in fact we know it's happening here).

Killing the pastor

Do we only want pastors and teachers? What about evangelists, apostles, prophets? Or are people with these gifts too scary to have in the average church? Won't the evangelists be forever telling us to get out and evangelise? Won't the apostles be demanding we start up a new church every five minutes? Won't the prophets come to church dressed in weird garb and shouting loudly?
Len, on the New Reformation blog, has written:
Alan Roxburgh and others argue that the sola pastora (single pastor) model of church has not only sapped the missional impulse from the church, it has cast many pastors into relative isolation. Roxburgh claims that this model, with its focus on one dominant, usually shepherd-type leader, is “killing pastors,” leading to “terrible discouragement and loneliness, and creating a deep sense of personal failure.”
He goes on to discuss this issue, but I want just to mention that wellness in ministers these days is one of the great plagues of society, far worse than swine-flu, far worse than any pandemic we've supposedly known in recent decades. We have to change. Churches have to take responsibility for leadership, not just leave it all to one over-burdened man.

A Dark Knight of the Soul?

Christian Post reports that a group of youth pastors are emulating fight scenes in The Dark Knight and Quantum of Solace (the latest James Bond blockbuster) to draw in students. Batman and Bond employ the Keysi fighting method based on quick, instinctive movements to neutralize opponents. Keysi, which is technically not a martial art, has grown in popularity since the films.

Jeff McKissack, a Keysi instructor, is targeting churches and youth group leaders by offering to teach self-defense from a faith based perspective. The youth pastors are excited. They've been searching for an alternative since the karate outreaches featuring Ralph Macchio fell out of favor.

It would be interesting to know what youth pastors in New Zealand think of this. The comments that follow this report on Christian Post are surprisingly supportive, and, of course, use all sorts of Scripture verses to back them up.

Pastors and their time

I imagine every pastor has been accosted at some point in their career by someone demanding to know how they spend their time. Is the congregation getting 'value for money?' I'll even admit to heckling a young pastor in my church one day many years ago (along with a couple of other equally ignorant members) about what he was doing with his day.

So I was a bit surprised to see Todd Rhoades encouraging people to use Twitter to find out how pastors are using their time. He introduces his brief article in this way: Most church conferences have a time set aside for speaker Q&A, and one of the first questions asked nearly every time is "What does your day look like?" In other words, "How do you schedule your time, and how do you prioritize your tasks?" The answers are always interesting and insightful.

He then goes on to list a bunch of pastors who have offered their Twitter addresses to the concerned public at large. Is it just me who thinks this is crazy? Do pastors really need to account for what they're doing to such a degree?

Rhoades writes: You can find out when their days start, what they're reading, the meetings they're attending, how they balance their family time, and what gets them really pumped (or ticked off).

Good grief. Twitter only allows 140 characters at a time. Is this really going to tell anyone what their pastor is doing, and shouldn't these people be doing something more productive with their lives anyway? As my colleague says, he's a right twitter!