pastors

Pain by numbers

One of the keys to surviving in ministry is being open about your pain.

During the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (my denomination), which met in Houston this past week, I sent out this tweet:

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In no time at all, I got new Twitter followers and a number of retweets and favorites from people I don’t even know. Several pastor friends who had seen my tweet came up and thanked me for it. I’m guessing they just needed someone to tell them they weren’t crazy.

So many ministers of the gospel are carrying the scars of ministry but think they are alone. They are not. According to reputable studies and surveys…

  • 1,500 pastors leave their ministries each month due to burnout, conflict, or moral failure.
  • 23% of pastors have been fired or pressured to resign at least once in their careers.
  • numbers25% don’t know where to turn when they have a family or personal conflict or issue.
  • 33% felt burned out within their first five years of ministry.
  • 40% of pastors and 47% of spouses are suffering from burnout, frantic schedules, and/or unrealistic expectations.
  • 45% of pastors’ wives say the greatest danger to them and their family is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual burnout.
  • 45% of pastors say they’ve experienced depression or burnout to the extent that they needed to take a leave of absence from ministry.
  • 50% feel unable to meet the needs of the job.
  • 52% of pastors say they and their spouses believe that being in pastoral ministry is hazardous to their family’s well-being and health.
  • 56% of pastors’ wives say they have no close friends.
  • 57% of pastors would leave the pastorate if they had some other option.
  • 70% don’t have any close friends.
  • 75% report severe stress causing anguish, worry, bewilderment, anger, depression, fear, and alienation.
  • 80% of pastors say they have insufficient time with their spouse.
  • 80% believe that pastoral ministry affects their families negatively.
  • 90% feel unqualified or poorly prepared for ministry.
  • 90% work more than 50 hours a week.
  • 94% feel pressured to have a perfect family.
  • “Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could” (New York Times, August 1, 2010).

I share this not to create sympathy for pastors nor to give you pastors a reason to boast in your wounds, as though they make you righteous. But we have to admit to ourselves that pastoral ministry is HARD.

The Puritan Richard Baxter (1615-1691) pastored a church in Kidderminster, England, for close to twenty years. He wrote in his journal one day, “…the more I do, the more hatred and trouble I draw upon me.” Marshall Shelley, in his book Leading Your Church through Conflict and Reconciliation, says, “The only pastors who don’t experience regular, character-building periods of conflict, are either bullies who walk all over everyone or cowards afraid to stand up for what God wants to accomplish.”

If there’s one thing I’ve found necessary for my own ministry survival, it is to come out of hiding. Let someone you trust know what you’re going through. Don’t suffer in silence.

 

The best advice I was ever given

Years ago, while I was still in seminary, a man who mentored me gave me the best advice I’ve ever received.

He said you minister out of who you are.

At the time, I’m not sure I understood what he meant. Or at least I didn’t grasp the importance of it. But through the years in pastoral ministry, I have come to see the wisdom and value of his words.

On the one hand it’s a statement of fact. You can only fake it so long. You cannot give what you don’t have. So my mentor’s advice means that to be effective in ministry, I must prioritize my own spiritual health. I must, in the words of Proverbs 4:23, keep my heart with all vigilance, “for from it flow the springs of life.”

But on the other hand, my friend’s advice was a word of comfort as well as charge. In ministry, I do not have to be other than who I am. I do not have to be Tim Keller or Rick Warren or Francis Chan or any other pastor. God designed me the way He did for a reason. It’s not that I don’t need further sanctification–God knows I do. And it’s not that sometimes I don’t have to push myself out of my comfort zone and try things that are difficult for me–I do every day! But when all is said or done, I am who I am. I am an ISFJ. I am insecure. I am not good at telling jokes. I need notes in the pulpit. I’m a plodder, not a sprinter. I’m better with people than plans. I get nervous before elder meetings. I have a hard time seeing beyond the next couple of months. I’m a shepherd, not a fundraiser-motivator-debater-theologian-cheerleader-visionary.

And that’s OK. No, it’s very good.

Because I am needed in the battle, just the way I am.

It’s when I try to be someone I’m not, that all the life and energy go right out of me. I get pressured and stressed and worried and angry. And that’s not what God wants for me or His church.

You minister out of who you are. Take that to the bank. You’re a beloved child of God. Sure, you need to grow. There are areas of your life that are in serious need of improvement. Me, too. But in the meantime, the Lord your God is with you. He rejoices over you with gladness, quiets you by His love, and exults over you with loud singing (Zephaniah 3:17).

Be who you are, and you’ll be a better pastor. Not only that, you’ll enjoy being a pastor a whole lot more.

 

Don’t forget, pastor…

imagesWhen you feel the pressure to perform, to succeed, to grow your church…

When fellow leaders tell you they want to see more results…

When the voice inside your head tells you you’re not good enough…

That’s when you must remember:

You’re a minister of the gospel, not the bottom line.

Even Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6).

Just be faithful. Do your part.

Be content to fill a little space, if God be glorified.

Five things the devil tells pastors

In our work awhispers pastors, an evil alliance conspires for our discouragement. The world, the flesh, and the devil try to wear us out, bring us down, chew us up, and take us out of the fight. These are the same enemies every Christian faces, but they operate in us pastors in unique ways.

Take the devil (yes, take him, PLEASE!). He hates what we’re doing. Just as Satan tried to derail Jesus in the wilderness through persuasive words (Matt. 4:1-11), so he suggests things to us pastors that, if believed, will kill our joy and effectiveness in ministry. Jesus said the devil is a really good liar. “He…does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

I’ve identified five things the devil regularly tells me because he hates me and hates my church. Sometimes he uses people to say these things. But usually my own sinful nature gives him all the help he needs. Notice that hidden inside each lie is a small grain of truth.

1) Lie #1: “You’re amazing.”

“You’re indispensable,” the devil says to me. “After all, you have training, gifts, and experience no one else has. Nobody else can get the job done like you can. As for your preaching, why, it’s extraordinary–it just hasn’t been discovered yet. And your spiritual insights–incredible! If only people would pay attention to you, their lives would be so much more fruitful. What’s the matter with them?!”

2) Lie #2: “You’re awful.”

“Listen to yourself,” says Satan in the next breath. “The very fact that you think those elevated thoughts about yourself just goes to prove how proud, arrogant, and self-reliant you are. What kind of pastor–what kind of Christian–would be so boastful? Don’t you know God doesn’t use dirty vessels? You’re such a hypocrite. You might as well hang it up, dude.”

3) Lie #3: “Get busy!”

“I have a suggestion, pastor: Get to work. Stop thinking about yourself all the time. There are souls to be saved, battles won, cities rescued, nations evangelized! Why are you wasting time talking to that Forlorn Freddie when there are so many more important things to do? You haven’t a moment to lose. It’s fine if you want to pray for a little while, but God wants results.”

4)  Lie #4: “Relax.”

“OK, maybe I went a little overboard,” the devil says. “You’re right, you need a break. Hardly anybody Sabbaths anymore–you need a Sabbath. In fact you need a sabbatical. You’re working too hard. Every soldier needs a furlough. Don’t worry about those souls, battles, cities, and nations. You believe in predestination, don’t you? God’s going to do what he’s going to do. You’ve done all you can. Let the chips fall.”

5)  Lie #5: “It’s hopeless.”

“You’re a mess, pastor. And so is your church. Look at the numbers: your church is not growing. In fact, Christianity is declining everywhere you look. Islam is growing like gangbusters, but not Christianity. Looks like you guys are losing ground. The bad guys are winning, pastor. The church looks more and more like the world all the time. You still think the kingdom of God is advancing?? How long are you going to hold on to that foolish idea?!”

These are just a few of the often contradictory messages I hear from our enemy, the devil. What does he tell you, and how have you learned not to listen to him?

Pastor, do you need a place to heal?

I did.

And when I was at my lowest place in pastoral ministry, my church did a very good thing. They sent my wife and me to Marble Retreat.

Marble Retreat is an eight-day intensive program for hurting church leaders located 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains of western Colorado. My wife and I went there in December, 2000. The program takes just four ministry couples at a time. Each couple gets a room in this amazing, beautiful lodge. Each day’s schedule includes free time, group therapy, and individual therapy led by professional Christian counselors. My wife and I were blessed to be there when Dr. and Mrs. Louis McBurney led the therapy sessions. Louis and Melissa founded Marble Retreat in 1974. Dr. McBurney is now at home with the Lord.

imagesThe three goals of Marble Retreat are:

  • To allow each participant to safely unburden the hurts and pressures of life and ministry.
  • To assist each person to understand him/herself more completely as their life patterns have developed.
  • To encourage and enable development of new levels of self-acceptance as well as more effective relational skills.

I went to Marble wondering how in the world I would survive in ministry. I was confused, angry, and humiliated. I felt like a failure. But Marble Retreat gave me renewed hope that my life of ministry was not over. I returned to my church with a much better grip on my identity in Christ, my giftedness for ministry, and my next steps. It was due to my experience at Marble Retreat that I took a new direction as a pastor. Here I am fourteen years later, still reaping the benefits of the decisions my wife and I made at Marble. Oh, and our marriage was restored as well.

Another benefit of Marble Retreat is the friendships you make. I still keep in touch with two of the three couples we met at Marble. One couple had just lost their son in a tragic car accident. One of the other pastors had just been booted out of his church because of pornography addiction. The other couple was in a similar crisis. As for me, I was just ready to quit.

All eight of us were broken when we arrived. We were still broken at the end of the program, but the pieces were beginning to be put back together again.

Please. If you’re a hurting church leader, check out Marble Retreat. Scholarship aid is available. Go.

 

 

A new way of seeing your ministry

It was timeimages to go to the optometrist again. My glasses were scratched and I wanted some new frames. So I made an appointment, took my seat in the exam room, and looked into that periscope gizmo. Uh oh. “You need a new prescription,” the doctor said. My “far” vision was still pretty good, but my “near” vision was worse than ever.

Which reminds me: Things can look really blurry when they’re up close.

That’s why church leaders often need to get away from the day-to-day grind of church ministry. We need to step back, relax, get a new way of seeing, and listen to God. Jesus did it. Who are we to think we don’t need to “withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16)?

Wayne Cordeiro wrote a helpful book called Leading on Empty. The subtitle is “Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion.” Cordeiro is the pastor of a big church in Hawaii. The book tells about his experience with burnout and recovery. It’s also a clarion call to make sure we finish well. In order to do that, we need a new way of seeing ministry.

Here’s a good sound bite from the book: “Do the things only you can do.”

Cordeiro says that 85% of what we do, anyone can do. With a little training, most people could do another 10% of what we do. But unfortunately, because we are insecure or refuse to delegate or are just undisciplined, many of us give our time and attention to that 95%, and neglect the 5% that only we can do. It’s that “crucial 5%” that God will one day hold us accountable for.

Think about your ministry and ponder these questions:

  • What is it that only you can do?
  • What is your unique contribution to the spiritual growth of others?
  • What do you love to do?
  • What makes you angry?
  • What brings you joy in ministry?
  • If you weren’t around, what would people miss out on?
  • What are you best at?
  • What do people say they appreciate the most about you?

Questions like these can help you identify the things that only you can do. Devote yourself to those things.

The apostle Paul knew his unique calling. “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” he said (1 Cor. 9:16). Paul told Timothy to “fan into flame the gift of God” that was in him (2 Tim. 1:6). “Do not neglect the gift you have,” he said (1 Tim. 4:14). In other words, do the things only you can do, young Timothy.

How would you complete this sentence? “Woe to me if I do not ________!”

Obviously, we all have to do things that lie outside our job description from time to time. But Wayne Cordeiro is right. Most of us church leaders and pastors need a new way of seeing. We can’t–we shouldn’t–do it all. If we try to do it all, we’ll wind up leading on empty.

What has helped you focus your time and energy on things only you can do?

I’m writing a book, and you can help

So what’s my book about?

Here’s the way I’ve pitched it to an agent: Being a pastor is sort of like living on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi or Louisiana. There’s always the danger of a ministry-killing catastrophe. Churches are often unsafe places for ministers. Churches are filled with sinners, and I’m one of them. Many pastors walk into a church with a naïveté about the danger of what they do every day. They are vulnerable to difficult people, unresolved conflict, incompatible visions, hidden agendas, and sin–their own and that of others.

I endured five years of conflict and crisis in a church (see My Story). I went into that church unprepared. I should have asked harder questions. I should have taken more time to build trust. I should have been more careful and compassionate about introducing change. Fellow leaders should have been more cooperative and forgiving. It was a perfect storm, a Category 5 hurricane in the making. When the storm came, I should have been more prayerful, less accommodating to the wishes of others, more loving, patient, and honest. The conflict eventually exploded in a “splant” (that’s a cross between a split and a church plant) that hurt my family and me and many other people. It threatened to end my career as a pastor and seriously damage my marriage.

But through that catastrophe, I learned valuable lessons. I moved on, recovered a love for the church, and eventually returned to the role of lead pastor elsewhere. In my book I will reflect on my experience and share the lessons learned. I hope to redeem the experience by helping other pastors recognize, negotiate, and redeem their own ministry hurricanes. I will also share anecdotes I collect from other pastors. Unfortunately, there are many stories out there to share.

In fact, that’s where you come in. You may have experienced or witnessed a ministry hurricane yourself. If so, may I interview you? Or can you put your story in writing and send it to me? I plan to keep all stories anonymous and will change the names of people and places.

Obviously, my book will be aimed at pastors, but people in a variety of ministry settings will be able to relate to it. My goal is to help people in ministry recognize the signs of an impending catastrophe, limit its damage, learn its lessons, and live with gospel optimism for the future.

Leading with a Limp

Get hold of Dan Allender‘s book, Leading with a Limp. It’s unlike most other books on leadership. Allender’s thesis right there on page 2 is “to the degree you face and name and deal with your failures as a leader, to that same extent you will create an environment conducive to growing and retaining productive and committed colleagues.”

Wait a minute… I thought leadership was about know-how, competence, expertise, control!

No, says Dan Allender. In this book he calls us as leaders to be willing to expose and dismantle our sins and shortcomings out in the open, where our colleagues and employees can see us for who we really are. Put another way, we leaders are supposed to be the chief repenters.

Allender spells out five challenges every leader faces: crisis, complexity, betrayal, loneliness, and weariness. He explains that there are both ineffective and effective responses to each of those challenges. Drawing from both personal experiences and Biblical stories, Allender calls on leaders to move into the chaos of each challenge with courage. But the kind of courage we must exercise is paradoxically the kind that admits weakness. “You are the strongest when you are weak, and you are the most courageous when you are broken.”

If you’re looking for a book that will tell you the five secrets to success or the seven steps to taking your organization to the next level, Leading with a Limp is not it. But if you’re a discouraged leader who wonders whether God can use you, a mother or father who thinks you’re the only parent in the world who doesn’t know what to do next, or a church leader who wants to see your church grow as a gospel community, this would be a great read. It certainly encouraged me.

What books have you found helpful for surviving in ministry?

The ordinary

We used to have a little dog named Dabo. We named him after Dabo Swinney, the head coach of the Clemson Tigers football team. Dabo (the dog) was a Bichon Frise. Not a yapper, thankfully, and lots of fun. He never met a stranger, and he especially adored kids. We ended up “adopting” him out to our daughter’s family in Mississippi. They’re fans of Florida State so, as you may guess, they renamed our dog Jimbo (after Jimbo Fisher). Yes, Jimbo’s the head coach of the FSU football team. At least our dog is still in the ACC.

Dabo regularly taught me lessons. One was not to be in a hurry. Whenever I took him outside to go to the bathroom, he would just kind of wander aimlessly around the yard, taking his fool time, smelling everything, chasing lizards, looking around, and sniffing the air. Finally he would get down to business.

From Dabo I learned enjoyment of the ordinary. On sunny afternoons I would go outside with Dabo and he would find a spot in the backyard and just…sit. I’d say, “Let’s go over here, Dabo.” And he’d glance at me, turn away, and…lie down in the grass. It’s like he was saying, “Umm, I don’t think so. Why are you in a hurry? Don’t you want to just stay here a few minutes and feel the sunshine?” I couldn’t resist. So I’d walk over, plop myself down next to Dabo, stroke his back, and enjoy the ordinary.

I hate to confess this, but I apparently needed a dog to teach me this lesson. Otherwise I don’t know if I’d ever stop and feel the sunshine on my face.

I’m reading Zack Eswine’s book for pastors, titled Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry As a Human Being. It’s a wonderful but convicting book about enjoying the ordinary. He says we ministers are, generally speaking, driven people. We are always hankering after some “significant” work, chasing some “God-sized” dream, trying to change the world, thinking that we have to move on to some exotic place where we can “make a difference.” Problem is, we are not God, though we secretly fancy ourselves to be. We are not omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent. We are actually pretty much…a mess. And anyway, God usually chooses to work through ordinary people in ordinary places.

He who called you to where you are declares that you needn’t repent of being in one place at one time. You needn’t repent of doing only a long, small work in an extraordinary but unknown place. Standing long in one place allows the roots to deepen.

I wish I’d read Eswine’s book years ago when, as a young pastor, I felt “called” away from my small, rural church to a city I knew nothing about but where, I thought, I would really make a difference for the kingdom. I don’t know, maybe I was called there. But looking back from Dabo’s perspective, maybe I was in too much of a hurry.

The prophet Jeremiah told his friend and secretary Baruch, “Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not” (Jeremiah 45:5).

That’s what I heard Dabo saying to me in the backyard on sunny afternoons. Standing long in one place allows the roots to deepen.

 

A great read for pastor survival

Whether you’re in a ministry crisis or not, here’s a book that ought to be on every pastor’s desk and deeply pondered. It’s Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry As a Human Being, by fellow pastor and Covenant Seminary grad Zach Eswine.