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Stress in the Ministry
Posted by Bowden McElroy in Church & Missions
I see a fair number of ministers – pastors and staff – and their families as clients in my counseling practice. I would guess that in any given month, anywhere from 10% to 20% of the people I see serve on a church staff. They come from large and small churches, various denominations, and from urban and rural settings. Some are young, most are middle aged, a few are elderly. All are concerned they find a therapist who is competent, shares their Christian world view, and has some understanding of the unique stresses that come with serving in the ministry. I give most of my clients a hard time about their claims of uniqueness; ministers, though, really do have stressors other families don’t have.
My next several contributions to sbc IMPACT! will address the more typical problems I see when counseling ministers and their families.
A Sense of Isolation. One of the common complaints I hear from pastors is a lack of meaningful friendships. One pastor told me:
“I really feel the need of fellowshipping with other Christian men who don’t see me as a pastor or attend my church… How hard is to find a group of men to fellowship and pray together, where I’m not Pastor Joe but just me – Joe – a Christian man?”
I am convinced that in the transient culture in which we live, developing and maintaining friends is a never ending process. I don’t think it has always been this way. My grandparents moved into a house in Wichita Falls, Tx when they were first married and never left. Nor did any of the neighbors move away. Friendships were made in the neighborhood and at church… and they were constant. (Up and down at times, I’m sure, but constant nonetheless.)
I remember being about 30 and passing through town on business. I thought I would stop by and see my grandmother, certain she would feed me and save me the price of a hotel. Only she was on the other side of the country visiting my aunt and uncle. Not a problem. Mrs. Banks, who lived on the corner, saw me at Nana’s door, brought me to her house, fed me dinner, and saw to it I was current on all the latest gossip. (Including what was going on with my cousins: she knew more than I did.)
My point is this… I don’t think that world exists anymore. Not even in rural Oklahoma. About the time I develop a good, close friendship with another Christian man, one of us moves. (Historically, that would be me. I was 28 before my age caught up to the number of moves I had made. And that was two cities ago. I told my wife I have one more move in me: across town or to another continent doesn’t matter, there’s only one more.)
I talk to a lot of ministers who tell me they have “good friends”: someone years ago they went to seminary with or served on the same church staff. “I can call him any time”, is what I often hear. But, I don’t think that counts.
Friendship is emotional intimacy. And one of the key ingredients of intimacy is time. I’m not buying the phone, email, virtual friendship with other men any more than I would buy into the idea of a marriage based on the same principles. The process of developing intimacy is the same for friendships as it is for marriage. The difference is one of degree. (That’s why so many affairs start out as “just talking”… and that’s why we need male friends. Emotional intimacy with a woman other than our wife isn’t necessarily evil, it’s just playing with fire.)
I think this notion throws people for a loop because “intimacy” has, unfortunately, become a euphemism for sex. Intimacy is shared thoughts, shared goals, an open communication of ideas and emotions. And trust: a belief that you are looking out for my best interests and won’t stab me in the back.
I don’t know how that can be achieved once a week in an accountability group whose membership changes annually. I think groups and church are important. But so is time spent on the golf course… and over lunch… and helping me at 2:00 am when I’m 90 miles from home and just discovered the spare is flat, too.
Too many ministers don’t have this because:
1) They don’t believe they should. “Don’t have close friends in the church” is still be taught by some pastors and mentors. “It will cause problems in the congregation.” Yes, it will… and your point is? Conflict is inevitable in human interactions. It doesn’t have to be destructive; in fact, I submit emotional and spiritual growth is impossible without conflict.
2) Ministers move around too much. The only person who moves more often than a Southern Baptist pastor is a high school football coach.
3) We are not deliberate. Somehow it feels manipulative to set about strategically developing friendships. So we don’t have a plan. Come on, men. We’re not in high school anymore… best friends won’t just happen. I encourage all men, ministers especially, to think strategically about who they might want to get to know better. Think of relationships on a continuum: acquaintances at one end, a best friend at the other. On whom can you take a chance toward moving the relationship just a little to the other end of the spectrum? Just a little.
You may make an effort to get to know someone and decide… that’s close enough. Move on to the next guy!
So what to do? Acknowledge that genuine friendships with other men are difficult to have. Whether it’s genetic or cultural probably doesn’t matter. Church members can support their minister in having friendships within the congregation. And have a plan. We men are allegedly the task-oriented gender. We need a strategic plan for having friends in our lives.
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Bowden,
As a formerly young minister who is now reaching middle age, thank you for your words of encouragement, insight, and challenge. I doubt that there is any minister who doesn’t find himself in what you have written! Your insight is painfully honest and accurate.
I plan to print these words out and pass them along to a few “young” ministers that I know! I hope they’ll take the time to read them and to heed the wisdom.
This looks like a good series. I appreciate your doing it.
It took me about a decade to get over the poor advice given me that you shouldn’t make any close friends in the church.
Great thoughts, Bowden, as usual. I’m always impressed with the depth of your thought.
A little honesty here… I’ve tried to befriend at least 3 pastors now. They were “my” pastor at the time, and each time I have been very disappointed. The “don’t have close friends in the church” mentality is very much alive and well. I was, to an extent, a “throwaway”. They felt they could count on me and lean on me when necessary, but when the relationship of “going to church together” came to an end, I was no longer a part of their life. Doesn’t sound much like a friendship, does it?
Pastors are like cops and soldiers. They only WANT to be around people of the same nature. The don’t trust anyone else. At all. If a church member tries to be a friend, it’s only because that member wants to run the show.
That hurts, to a big extent, because it has left “me” with few to no real friends. I never went to seminary, so I don’t have those relationships to lean on. I have finally found some friends from high school with which to reconnect, but they are on an ENTIRELY different level now, and there’s very little real friendship to be had.
Not only do pastors have this problem, but family men do as well. As you say, genuine friendships with men are very hard to have – period. Being together regularly results in “situational friendship” which ends when one of us changes jobs or churches. Being a real friend is something different entirely, and I think I have about two of those, if that many.
Steve & William,
Thanks for the kind words; I hope this series is well received.
Bernard,
Sorry you’ve had such a hard time making friends with your pastor(s). Maybe pastors, cops, firefighters, doctors, etc only hanging around each other has to do more with their belief that their jobs are unique enough only others in the same field can understand them and not so much that they don’t trust others.
Meaningful friendships are difficult to form and harder to maintain. The only failure, I think, is giving up. As long as we’re in the game and trying… then we’ll probably be okay.
Bowden,
Great first installment in this series.
Bernard,
I guess I fall a bit outside the pastor “mold.” Let me be completely honest and say that the people I tend to enjoy being around the least are other pastors. The few that I have tried to get really close to always seemed to be in “scan” mode, always on the lookout for someone to speak to or talk to. The gift of “hob-nobbing” (i.e. “shooting the breeze” or “shucking and jiving”)practiced by most pastors seems to be little more than a way to keep things intentionally superficial … to keep people at arms’ length.
I choose not to live that way. I am in my seventh year of pastoring this church, and all of my really close friends (other men) are church members. Of course, my love for the outdoors has allowed me to grow some very close bonds. You don’t have any choice when you spend six or seven hours together in a boat or a deer blind. I also have fellow musicians who are my friends.
But, in the end, my best friend is right here in my home. There is nothing I like better than staying at home, firing up a pot of coffee (I have a pot of Peruvian Pachamama Arabica perking right now!), and watching an episode or two of “24″ with my wife.
Another thing that keeps me close to other guys is our LIFE Group (small group) that I host in my home. My small group gives me the license to become very close to a group of men. I intentionally take a group of guys to the Gulf coast in the Spring on a fishing retreat.
In short, I am intentional about forming friendships among the guys. I guess the difference is in overall attitude. Like Bowden said, the only people who move more that SBC pastors are the HS football coaches. With an average stay of under two years (just long enough for to grab that next “rung” on the pastoral career ladder), most probably don’t care to try and form deep relationships. How sad.
I pray that God will give you not only a pastor, but a friend.
Geoff,
I think you hit on a key point – you spend time with other people who are part of the church with you. Unfortunately, I think many pastors do not consider themselves part of the church. Also, I don’t think other believers think of pastors as part of the church. Instead, our church culture has raised us to see pastors as somehow separated from the church. Our pastors come from outside the church, and history tells us that they will soon leave. This is not simply a matter of longevity, but that is part of it. Until this changes – both in the minds and lives of pastors and others – I think it will continue to be difficult for pastors to form close relationships with those who are part of the church with them.
-Alan
[...] (You can read Stress in the Ministry: part 1, here.) [...]
It’s not just the pastors either. I’m a computer programmer with a Bible degree. I’ve never really felt a call to be a pastor, but I occasionally wonder if I have a calling as a sheepdog (the pastor is up front, leading, while the sheepdog runs around inside the flock, dealing with what he runs into there). Over the last 35 years as a Christian, I’ve seen God developing what I hesitatingly might call a ministry of insight (I’m uncomfortable expressing it as that because it sounds boastful). I’m comfortable with pastoral-level theology, enjoy dealing with scholar-level, but have a bit different approach, a hermeneutic rooted in the art of listening and various issues of communication.
And I’ve been feeling the isolation, in a sense, from the opposite end. I’m comfortable with the fellow church members with whom I often share my insights, but I’m realizing that I probably could use a friendship with someone with at least a pastor’s knowledge of theology, whom I could run my more outlandish insights by, someone with enough knowledge of good theology to keep me rooted, but willing to listen to an out-of-the-ordinary approach without getting bent out of shape.
For some of those isolated-feeling pastors, there may be some church members, not exactly like me, but in an analogous situation, where a close friendship with the pastor is going to enhance the ministry of both.
Oloryn,
I think men in general (at least in our culture) struggle with a sense of isolation.
my father is a computer programmer for Alwill Software and it is a high paying job”‘,