Committed to Mutuality: An Interview with Eugene PetersonEditor's note: The online Alban archive contains extensive free resources for lay and clergy leaders of congregations, including David Wood's interview with Eugene Peterson, which is featured below and originally appeared in the May-June 2002 issue of Congregations magazine.
Eugene Peterson is perhaps best known for his 20 books, including Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness, and his paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, to be published in full this spring by NavPress. His primary vocation has been the pastorate. He "planted" a new congregation, Christ the King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, which grew to 500 members in his 29-year tenure.
David Wood traveled to the home of Eugene and his wife, Jan, in Lakeside, Montana, for a few days of conversation about his understanding and experience of pastoral life. I settled quickly into the Petersons' comfortable home on the shores of Flathead Lake, and into the Sabbath-like pace. For 30 years, the Petersons (now parents of three grown children) traveled here every summer from Maryland to return to their Montana roots and to be refreshed by the beauty and serenity of the land. After retiring from Christ the King and teaching spiritual theology for five years at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Eugene came home. Here he would complete his translation of the Old Testament. He is now set to begin work on a five-volume work on spiritual theology.
Recently Eugene, with Jan's full support, took himself off the speaker's circuit. After a few remaining commitments, he is off the road. It was time to give up pulpit and podium for pen and paper. He is as certain now as he was throughout his pastoral ministry that if he is not rooted in time and place, his words and witness will lose their gravity. He dwells in a place of solitude but not of isolation. He and Jan provide hospitality to a stream of family and friends. They are active in a local Lutheran congregation. Eugene spends time with pastors, helping them reflect on their work. The couple's life is uncluttered by e-mail or TV.
Peterson, raised a Pentecostal in Kalispell, Montana, was the son of a Pentecostal pastor mother and a butcher father. (He played high school basketball with Pentecostal classmate Phil Jackson, who later won fame as a coach in the NBA.) After college, Eugene set off for New York, where he attended Biblical Theological Seminary (now New York Theological Seminary). Though his sojourn from Pentecostal to Presbyterian began in fall 1954, Eugene's Pentecostal roots would continue to nourish his theological imagination.
While earning a master of divinity degree in English Bible at BTS, Eugene coached a winning church basketball team at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, where the celebrated George Buttrick held forth.
Eugene earned a second master's degree at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in Semitic languages. Married, and with a family on the way, he took a pastorate in White Plains, New York. Yale University, within commuting distance, accepted him into its Ph.D. program in Old Testament under scholar Brevard Childs. But before beginning his studies, he realized where his vocation lay: "I am a pastor." His turning to the pastoral life was not a renunciation of intellectual life or of his passion for biblical languages. But from then on his service to the church and his intellectual flourishing would be shaped by the pastoral vocation. In 1962 the Baltimore Presbytery asked him to start a congregation, and his long ministry began in earnest.
David Wood: Eugene, what's your reading of the current "clergy self-care" movement?
Eugene Peterson: My initial response is that it narrows the context of pastoral work and identity. I'm wary of the term "self-care." We're such incorrigible, selfish persons that I'm loathe to give it a fancy term that makes it OK.
Maybe the most important thing I did as a pastor in this area was not to assume that I needed to protect myself from the congregation and its supposedly insatiable demands. Instead, I sought to foster a collaborative relationship.
How did you do that?
Here's what I said: "Help me. I have needs. I can't function well without help from you. We're in this together, we're doing the same thing, we're worshiping together, we're living the Christian life together. You've asked me to do certain things to help you do it-to lead you in worship on Sunday, to visit you when you're sick, to help administer the church. But I need help in all of this." I worked to create conditions in which this kind of collaboration would flourish. For example, I would take my elders and deacons on retreat twice a year, and we'd spend 36 to 48 hours talking. We'd talk about needs-their needs and mine, and how we could help each other do what needed to be done. They became very imaginative and sensitive, coming up with things I would never have thought of.
It sounds as though you would not separate "self-care" from "congregational care."
Right. From time to time-three or four times a year-I would write a congregational letter on topics such as "Why your pastor keeps a Sabbath," "Why your pastor reads books," "Why your pastor stays home with his family on Friday nights." I wrote about these practices not to seek approval or to justify what I was doing with my time, but to invite [members] into the same kinds of practices -- practices that should matter to all Christians. This kind of writing helped me remember why these practices were so important to my life as a pastor, our life as a family, and our life as a congregation.Read more »
Eugene Peterson is perhaps best known for his 20 books, including Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness, and his paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, to be published in full this spring by NavPress. His primary vocation has been the pastorate. He “planted” a new congregation, Christ the King Presbyterian Church, Bel Air, Maryland, which grew to 500 members in his 29-year tenure.
I traveled to the home of Eugene and his wife, Jan, in Lakeside, Montana, for a few days of conversation about his understanding and experience of pastoral life. I settled quickly into the Petersons’ comfortable home on the shores of Flathead Lake, and into the Sabbath-like pace. For 30 years, the Petersons (now parents of three grown children) traveled here every summer from Maryland to return to their Montana roots and to be refreshed by the beauty and serenity of the land. After retiring from Christ the King and teaching spiritual theology for five years at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Eugene came home. Here he would complete his translation of the Old Testament. He is now set to begin work on a five-volume work on spiritual theology.
Recently Eugene, with Jan’s full support, took himself off the speaker’s circuit. After a few remaining commitments, he is off the road. It was time to give up pulpit and podium for pen and paper. He is as certain now as he was throughout his pastoral ministry that if he is not rooted in time and place, his words and witness will lose their gravity. He dwells in a place of solitude but not of isolation. He and Jan provide hospitality to a stream of family and friends. They are active in a local Lutheran congregation. Eugene spends time with pastors, helping them reflect on their work. The couple’s life is uncluttered by e-mail or TV.
Peterson, raised a Pentecostal in Kalispell, Montana, was the son of a Pentecostal pastor mother and a butcher father. (He played high school basketball with Pentecostal classmate Phil Jackson, who later won fame as a coach in the NBA.) After college, Eugene set off for New York, where he attended Biblical Theological Seminary (now New York Theological Seminary). Though his sojourn from Pentecostal to Presbyterian began in fall 1954, Eugene’s Pentecostal roots would continue to nourish his theological imagination.
While earning a master of divinity degree in English Bible at BTS, Eugene coached a winning church basketball team at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, where the celebrated George Buttrick held forth.
Eugene earned a second master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in Semitic languages. Married, and with a family on the way, he took a pastorate in White Plains, New York. Yale University, within commuting distance, accepted him into its Ph.D. program in Old Testament under scholar Brevard Childs. But before beginning his studies, he realized where his vocation lay: “I am a pastor.” His turning to the pastoral life was not a renunciation of intellectual life or of his passion for biblical languages. But from then on his service to the church and his intellectual flourishing would be shaped by the pastoral vocation. In 1962 the Baltimore Presbytery asked him to start a congregation, and his long ministry began in earnest.
David Wood: Eugene, what’s your reading of the current “clergy self-care” movement?
Eugene Peterson: My initial response is that it narrows the context of pastoral work and identity. I’m wary of the term “self-care.” We’re such incorrigible, selfish persons that I’m loathe to give it a fancy term that makes it OK.
Maybe the most important thing I did as a pastor in this area was not to assume that I needed to protect myself from the congregation and its supposedly insatiable demands. Instead, I sought to foster a collaborative relationship.
How did you do that?
Here’s what I said: “Help me. I have needs. I can’t function well without help from you. We’re in this together, we’re doing the same thing, we’re worshiping together, we’re living the Christian life together. You’ve asked me to do certain things to help you do it—to lead you in worship on Sunday, to visit you when you’re sick, to help administer the church. But I need help in all of this.” I worked to create conditions in which this kind of collaboration would flourish. For example, I would take my elders and deacons on retreat twice a year, and we’d spend 36 to 48 hours talking. We’d talk about needs—their needs and mine, and how we could help each other do what needed to be done. They became very imaginative and sensitive, coming up with things I would never have thought of.
It sounds as though you would not separate “self-care” from “congregational care.”
Right. From time to time—three or four times a year—I would write a congregational letter on topics such as “Why your pastor keeps a Sabbath,” “Why your pastor reads books,” “Why your pastor stays home with his family on Friday nights.” I wrote about these practices not to seek approval or to justify what I was doing with my time, but to invite [members] into the same kinds of practices—practices that should matter to all Christians. This kind of writing helped me remember why these practices were so important to my life as a pastor, our life as a family, and our life as a congregation.
Once I wrote a letter titled “Why your pastor never repaired his television set.” Again, I didn’t do it with an attitude of moral superiority toward television. I simply related our experience as a family and how positively our life together was shaped by the choice not to repair our TV. Of course, there was an implicit invitation in the narrative: “Next time your TV breaks, try leaving it broken for six months and see what happens.”
In what ways is the pastoral life unique?
One thing unique about this life is that no other calling has quite as much intimacy in it. This is where things can go wrong for pastors. Intimacy is vulnerability—it’s a place where there could be much betrayal, exploitation.
One way to deal with this danger is to refuse the intimacy and say, “I’m a functional pastor. I’m not a relational pastor.” You may succeed as a manager or a program director, but you will fail as a pastor.
If you’re going to negotiate this tricky terrain of intimacy, you must have a strong commitment to mutuality. It’s not exactly like a marriage, but there are parallels. It is precisely the demand of intimacy that many pastors find so hard to sustain.
What allows you to stay in that intimate engagement and not be overcome by it?
A term that occurs in the literature of the spiritual masters is “detachment.” Now detachment is the cultivation of a relationship that is present, but not taking ownership, not being messianic or managerial. It gives the other person freedom—it allows the “other” to be “other.”
This way of relating requires detachment from a “need-based” relationship. It is inherent in the gospel, but it’s easy for it to get skewed by sin or co-opted by sin in the guise of compassion. I love the phrase in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “Teach us to care and not to care.”
Caring, but not caring. They’re both part of the same thing. It’s an art. You make mistakes along the way. You don’t learn it in your first year in the parish.
It sounds as though you are not going to hold a congregation responsible for what is your responsibility. At the same time, you won’t let them hold you responsible for what is their responsibility. Coming to this kind of understanding must take some effort.
It has to be learned, and it has to be learned without assuming an adversarial position. I refused to let any of this become adversarial. I’m even a little hesitant to use the word “negotiation” to describe the process I have in view. We’re friends. We’re brothers and sisters in Christ.
If you can see your relationship with parishioners as friendship “with mutuality and affection,” that undermines the hierarchical structure almost from the beginning. People feel that they’re being valued for their own sake, not for what you can get out of them or how you can use them.
That is why I insist on the importance of a pastor’s going to people’s homes—because you’re on their turf. They’re the host. You’re the guest. It’s hard to maintain that hierarchical function when you’re at their mercy.
That’s one way a pastor can practice mutuality rather than talk about it.
Yes. Friendship is at the heart of it. There’s a lot of talk about spiritual direction these days, which is good. But spiritual direction at its best is friendship—that is, paying attention to somebody with affection and appreciation.
Over 15 or 20 years, I was in the homes of parishioners three or four times. These visits were not prompted by crises—they were simply pastoral visits. When I left my congregation, I realized that many of these people had come to think of me as their best friend.
That didn’t happen because we did things like playing golf together or going to ball games. Friendship grew out of the way we learned to pay attention to one another’s lives over time. In many ways, it was this kind of relational work that kept me from burnout.
I don’t think pastors “burn out” because they work too hard. People who work hard often do so because they’re good at what they’re doing and they enjoy doing it. I think burnout comes from working with no relational gratification. Relationships become laborious and draining. Pastors can lose touch with relational vitality when their relationships are driven by programmatic necessity. When this happens, pastors can lose the context for love, hope, faith, touch, and a kind of mutual vulnerability. In the midst of the congregation, pastors become lonely and feel isolated—and that isolation can be deadly to the pastoral life. Those are the conditions in which inappropriate intimacies flourish.
I think the epidemic (if it is an epidemic) of sexual misconduct by clergy has less to do with clergy overindulging intimacy or not being careful about intimate relationships, and more to do with the absence of genuine intimacy.
Many pastors I know who are vital and alive to their work have an unmistakable relationship quality. It strikes me that there is little space in their lives for inappropriate relationships because they are so oriented by good relationships.
That’s right. I think “self-care” requires caring well for others. One principal way to keep your sanity, your health, and your emotional equilibrium is to care for somebody else.
I can remember times when I felt hemmed in or felt that I couldn’t do this work anymore. One way I got through those times was to care, in very deliberate ways, for someone else. It’s amazing how caring for someone else helps you forget about yourself.
Let me shift gears here. Sabbaticals are widely regarded as a principle strategy for sustaining good ministry over the long haul. As I recall, you had one sabbatical in 30 years. In your 24th year of ministry, you spent 12 months in Montana with your wife, resting, reading, and writing. But ordinarily you had two months a year away from the congregation—in Montana. Part of that time was vacation and part was study and writing. That strikes me as an annual sabbatical rhythm. How did this rhythm shape your practice of ministry?
My congregation always gave me a month’s holiday. And then, on their own, the session [church governing board] decided to give me an additional month for writing. They didn’t ask me. They didn’t consult me. They just gave it to me. It was part of that “help me” sort of thing, except I hadn’t said “Help me” right then. I’d write for a month, and I’d just be with the family.
The 12-month sabbatical I received was, again, a “help-me” thing. I told them I would like to stay there [in the congregation] forever if they wanted me, but I didn’t think I could do it without a sabbatical. They were generous and gave me a 12-month sabbatical. When I came back from time away, I was energized, fresh, and ready to go.
How would you contrast or compare the rhythm of stand sabbatical politics to the two-month annual arrangement you had?
I was grateful for the annual rhythm. In the Presbyterian Church, we’re given a month’s vacation and two weeks’ study leave. People work hard on those study leaves. You’re supposed to produce something. It wouldn’t be that much different to add two weeks to it and tell [pastors], “Do anything you want to do. Read. Go to a monastery. Photograph wildflowers. Write.” For me it would be to write, but not everybody’s a writer.
The almost total incomprehension by our society of what a pastor does puts pastoral identity at risk almost every day. Two months would not be inappropriate vacation and leave for the needs we have.
Those annual two months away must have been sustaining.
Very much so. One of the side benefits from my annual time away was that it developed a competent lay leadership. Over the years I did less and less of what ordinarily is seen as what pastors do. The laypeople did it very naturally, easily, because they were trusted. I think it’s important to trust people to do things. They’re not going to do it the way you did it. They are going to make mistakes, but you make mistakes too.
There is no question that any strategy of clergy “self-care” must include the development of a competent congregational leadership.
Let’s talk a minute about the engagements you had beyond the congregation. Throughout your ministry you taught a seminar/university context
Teaching was a natural for me. It was what I loved to do, and I was in a place where there were schools. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time for somebody to know who I was and what I was doing.
I’d teach one semester a year, either spring or fall. I taught at a university, a seminary, usually alternately. I have often wondered, if I had been in a rural place with no schools for 500 miles, or even 50 miles, what would I have done? Was there anything I could do other than that? I think I would find a place to work part time that wasn’t too demanding that would put me in a different environment for a few months a year, or a half-day a week.
I have a friend who lived in farming country. Every summer he worked in the fields at harvest time. He worked half a day for six weeks. But he got to know farmers. It was totally refreshing for him.
Your teaching placed you in a different setting and role. I don’t hear you suggesting that these engagements should be thought of as a way to escape the parish.
Oh, no. It was to feed the parish, actually. I never felt that teaching drained energy from pastoral work. If I had felt that, I wouldn’t have done it. My main work was the congregation. This was a way to bring fresh blood into it.
Another engagement beyond your congregation was your weekly gatherings with a group of pastors for lectionary study and collegial conversation.
That was an important part of my pastoral life. It became part of the rhythm of our life. The pastors who did this with me still call me and write to me about how significant and sustaining it was for them.
When did you meet?
Every Tuesday they’d come to my study at noon. They would bring a bag lunch. I’d have a coffeepot. We’d meet for two hours. We were serious about what we were doing but not terribly disciplined. There was small talk. Sometimes somebody would come with a personal crisis. We’d drop everything and just spend the time listening and praying.
The group included a variety of pastors and backgrounds. There would be 15 or 16 in the group, and fewer than half were Presbyterian. We had Presbyterians, Pentecostals, and Roman Catholic priests. We even had a rabbi for a number of years. It was very ecumenical. What brought us together was a conviction that preaching was the primary task we had to do, and we wanted to do it as well as we could.
Most of the time when we met, we would focus on the lectionary texts for the coming Sunday. It varied from the Old Testament to the Epistle to the Gospel, every season. We wouldn’t necessarily preach on the texts we discussed. It was the discipline of being together around the Bible, thinking preaching, thinking sermon, thinking interpretation, that was highly significant.
I can imagine that the group came to think of one another as friends.
We’d often have one evening a month, Friday evening usually, when we’d have a potluck supper together. Another significant thing we did: in late spring, as close to Pentecost as we could make it—we never met through the summer months—we would take a day away together for a silent retreat. We would end the day with the celebration of the Eucharist. Even though we did that only once a year, it did a lot to build the solidarity of the group. It was a culmination of a whole year of relationships, prayers, and conversations.
Monday, September 21, 2015
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More from the Alban Archive"The Abilene Paradox Goes to Church: Why Some Congregations Can't Nail Down a Decision" by Jerald L. Kirkpatrick
All organizations are made up of human beings, and, as the prophets have told us, humanity is prone to act against our own best interests both in making decisions and in avoiding them.
The letter was crystal clear: “You have precipitously dismissed the most valuable member of the church staff. And now you will pay the price.”
So it seemed. After 40 years of employment, the choir director at Sunnyvale Church was being let go. When the pastor and the personnel committee chair asked her to retire, she left the meeting in a huff. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Reaction was swift. One-third of the choir left for another church. The organist resigned in solidarity with the director. Word got around town that after years of faithful service, Sunnyvale was cutting Louise loose. What a shame. And what a surprise!
Prolonged Indecision
Well, not so great a surprise as one might think. Investigation disclosed that a sizable group of church members had had serious reservations about Louise for years—her choice of music, her manner of dealing with people, even her musical ability. Those people had repeatedly registered complaints to the liturgy and personnel committees, but no action was taken.
The committees themselves often discussed Louise’s job performance, going so far as to warn her, “Things have got to change.” For more than 20 years, it seemed, the committees were constantly preoccupied with changing Louise and the music program.
Nothing changed. Louise continued to do as she had always done. She bullied the pastor, ignored the critics, and verbally abused the choir. Her manner became more brusque. Finally, when the pastor and personnel committee could stand it no longer, they acted. But the reaction hurt the church. Members blamed one another for the debacle, even changing sides in the debate. Before the dust settled, the pastor had left; the personnel chair had resigned; the church was divided.
Why hadn’t things changed? Why didn’t the people do what they wanted to do 30 years earlier? The answer is easy. The “Abilene Paradox” had come to church.
Feelings Concealed
The Abilene Paradox is a management concept introduced more than 25 years ago by Jerry B. Harvey.1 Harvey asks why organizations don’t do what their members agree should be done. His concept is based on an ill-fated outing he and his family made from Coleman to Abilene, Texas, on a hot summer night to eat mediocre cafeteria food. No one really wanted to go, but each agreed to make the trip, thinking everyone else favored the idea. Harvey contends that had family members disclosed their true desire to stay at home, no conflict would have surfaced later about having gone.
Old First Church had weathered many storms in its downtown location, including attempts to move the congregation to the suburbs. In recent years, however, a new generation had become active, and plans were under way to build a new sanctuary and office complex at the present site. The board appointed a building committee, and the committee hired an architect. After extensive listening sessions, the architect took what he had learned and produced a preliminary plan.
When the architectural model was shown to members, nothing seemed right. The bell tower was the wrong size. The sanctuary was not oriented properly. The traffic pattern in the office complex was unsatisfactory. The architect countered every complaint with survey results: “When we asked you about this, you said, . . .”
During this phase, First Church called a new senior pastor. In the first meeting after his arrival, he summed up what committee members already knew. The church did not need new buildings. Redecorating and minor remodeling would suffice. The committee paid the architect and thanked him for his time. The plans disappeared into a file cabinet, never to be seen again.
What had happened? The committee—and by extension, the whole congregation—had taken action contrary to the data it had for dealing with problems. As a result, problems were compounded rather than solved.2 That, in a nutshell, is the Abilene Paradox. No one wanted to be the odd one out who disagreed with the other committee members. Although countless “parking-lot discussions” may have centered on the idea’s wrong-headedness, individual members could not bring themselves to do what they privately agreed must be done. No one wanted to be exposed to humiliation, ostracism, or criticism, so each person concealed his or her feelings from the group. I am reminded of Adam, who said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:12).
Resisting a Firm Decision
Some years ago, when I served a congregation in southwestern Oklahoma, we decided we needed an associate pastor. We asked the judicatory for names of prospective ministers and began the search. Oddly, no potential candidate seemed to have the right qualifications. As we winnowed the portfolios, we discovered that every one had some deficiency; some were unqualified for any position. Finding no candidate who met our expectations, we asked the judicatory for more names. Even with two subsequent lists, we couldn’t agree on anyone. Finally, someone in the judicatory office said, “I’m not sure this person is available, but you might try her.”
We were elated. Here was a live one. We telephoned her; she was interested. We did a phone interview and liked what we heard. She agreed to visit us.
After the visit, at which we had met her and her family, we sat down to see if we wanted to negotiate with her. Here was the moment of truth. As the discussion went back and forth, I first thought we were ready to call her. Then reservations began to surface about her family. I pointed out that we were calling her, not hiring her family. More discussion followed. People wondered if she would stay with us only long enough to get a church of her own. I countered that two or three years were better than none.
Finally, it became clear that no one wanted to call an associate. Each had held this opinion for some time, but no one had expressed reservations in the committee. I understood then why it had been so difficult to reach this stage. We didn’t want to get there. We were desperately looking for a reason not to call an associate. It was too painful to admit that we had neither the money nor the size to support another full-time pastor.
With difficulty, the committee chair confessed our predicament to the candidate. She graciously accepted our decision, but did point out that we had strung her along for quite a while. A few months later, we hired a part-time youth director through a local employment agency. We all agreed that we had done the right thing.
Phony Conflict
Why did we focus on the candidate’s family or her career plans while hiding our agreement not to hire anyone at all? Harvey calls this behavior “phony conflict.”
Phony conflict occurs in the Abilene Paradox because people agree on the actions they want to take and then do the opposite. The resulting anger, frustration, and scapegoating—generally termed conflict—are not based on real differences. Rather they stem from the protective reactions that occur when a decision that no one believed in or was committed to in the first place goes sour. In fact, as a paradox within a paradox, such conflict is symptomatic of agreement.3
I believe that my own strong advocacy for calling an associate made the committee’s job harder. Since no one wanted to disagree with the pastor, each person assumed everyone else was on board. In fact, my response to questions about the candidate’s family or motivations could be seen as bullying. Had the committee failed to discover that the congregation could not afford another professional staff person, we might have continued on the road to Abilene, blaming each other when things did not turn out well.
Blame Game
That, in fact, did happen in a church served by one of my old classmates. The senior pastor lobbied for an associate; the committee found one and recommended him to the congregation. All sorts of reservations were evident, but no one spoke up. Finally, after two or three years of difficulty, in which the associate was judged a “wrong fit” and the senior pastor was characterized as a martinet, members resorted to expressing their frustration and anger in the offering plate. Both senior and associate pastors had to leave. Both were damaged, spiritually and professionally.
What is the alternative to “going to Abilene”? What can leaders and pastors do to avoid this potential disaster? Harvey thinks organizations can do many things; by extension, so can congregations. People must break the cycle of silence and blame that accompany the Abilene Paradox.
Speaking Truth in Love
The best way is open confrontation—preferably in a group setting.4 The accuser must tell the truth—speak the truth in love, as we church people are disposed to say. The accuser must own up to his or her position and prepare to take the consequences. This approach lets the group know that the accuser fears the committee is about to make a decision contrary to the church’s best interests. One might say something like this:
I know I may have said things before that made you think I was supportive of what we are about to do, but I have had other thoughts. I don’t think we will succeed in doing this. In fact, I believe we will be acting against the church’s interests if we do it. I wonder if anyone else thinks as I do. Actually, I’m pretty sure most of you do. If we don’t do something now, we will recommend a project to the church that is bound to fail, and hurt us in the process. I need to know where you stand.
The accuser can expect two kinds of results—technical and existential. For the accuser, the existential experience seems more important.
At my Oklahoma church, we experienced a technical result. We stopped negotiations with our candidate, regrouped, and hired a part-time youth director. Everyone agreed that our change of direction was warranted, and the passage of time confirmed that.
On the other hand, Sunnyvale Church suffered existentially. Many people felt hurt by the forced retirement of the music director. A sense of failure pervaded the congregation, and people looked for a scapegoat. The church did not resolve anything until members admitted their own complicity.
How does the Abilene Paradox come to church? It comes just as it comes to any other organization. All organizations are made up of human beings, and, as prophets have told us, humanity is prone to act against its own best interests. How is the Abilene Paradox prevented? One does that by recognizing the symptoms, confronting them, and being forthright with each other. Or, as we say in church, by speaking the truth in love.
—————
NOTES
1. Jerry B. Harvey, “The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement,” Organizational Dynamics (summer, 1974). Harvey is professor of management science at George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
2. Ibid., 20.
3. Ibid., 28f.
4. Ibid., 32f. "Reaching our Limits: Burnout or Transition?" by Karen Minnich-Sadler
Could it be that some of the burnout clergy are experiencing is something more fundamental than exhaustion? Could it be that we are called to more? Read more »
Burnout is a pressing concern of clergy—perhaps today more than ever before. Exhausted, overwhelmed, and caught up in a vocation that no longer embodies the meaning it once had, a pastor may fear that the clergy life, which once made sense, has disintegrated beyond repair. As increasing numbers of clergy suffer the symptoms, we must wonder why burnout seems so widespread today, after decades in which the malady was much discussed and presumably well understood.
Could it be that some of the “burnt-out” clergy are experiencing something more fundamental than exhaustion? If so, does a common theme unite some of these struggles? Could these experiences of burnout have more to do with personal transition and growth issues than with dysfunction? And if that is so, could an understanding of the process help us persevere through these crises with more compassion for both others and ourselves? If we better understood the concept that feelings of distance and alienation are a necessary part of the transition, would we be less likely to believe that we need to leave a relationship, a congregation, or the ministry to achieve resolution in our lives?
Things Fall Apart
“Constructive-developmental personality theory,” an idea developed by psychologist Robert Kegan, deals with human growth and the ways we understand our relationship to the rest of the world. It also addresses those terrible times of transition when everything falls apart and one is caught totally off balance, feeling that nothing makes sense anymore and uncertain that it ever will again.1 Although in one sense we are always growing and learning, and changing, these times of profound transition are few. If we fail to understand them, they can overwhelm us, for the way we have understood the world and ourselves to function is giving way.
Transition is a time of profound loss, for if we are to view the world from a new perspective, our old way of understanding must die. For people who are autonomous (self-differentiated),2 this time of transition is especially intense, and can cause us to question our closest relationships, our call to a particular congregation, or the vocation of ministry itself. It is this process on which I reflect.
Church leaders who see the world from the vantage point of autonomy (self-differentiation) often experience this transition as a vocational crisis. Autonomous people tend to experience a sense of completion for themselves and their lives through their vocation. For pastors, the tie to vocation is especially strong because our vocations are intertwined with our faith.
Rather than saying “I have this job to do within the church” or “I have been given this task as a child of God,” we are likely to assert that not only is our work what we do but also who we are. This intermingling of self and vocation has more to do with seeing life through the lens of autonomy than it does with faith issues. Autonomous people in other vocations would tend to feel the same: that their vocation somehow completes them and tells them who they are. For church leaders, however, the tie of self and vocation is so strong that we often have difficulty seeing ourselves as people apart from our work. We tend to equate our call as pastors with our call as children of God; we have difficulty seeing where vocation ends and self begins. As a result, ongoing tension in the congregation or a job loss can catapult clergy into a time of painful questioning that plants the seeds of transition.
Life Turned Upside Down
Aging increases the possibility that transition will occur. Many second-career pastors now enter the ministry in their 40s or beyond. Because of their maturity, it is more likely that transition for these pastors may begin at a fairly early stage of ministry (that is, within the first five years). If that happens, these pastors may find themselves wondering why they ever turned their personal and professional lives upside down to answer a call that they now question.
For example, I was ordained at age 44, with a background and interest in behavioral dynamics. I felt prepared to meet whatever life and the parish might throw at me. But I was unprepared for how quickly I would feel my limitations, and how overwhelming that experience would be. I vacillated between despairing that the congregation would never change and feeling inadequate to the call. It became clear to me, because of my experience with Kegan’s theory, that more was at stake than my needing to learn new skills and information. Life has a way of taking us to our limits and, in so doing, issuing an invitation to journey. While we may not know what lies ahead, we sense that to refuse the invitation could mean that something precious, struggling to be born, might not be given voice and life.
Directing Anger Outward
As we step out on the first stages of the journey, we feel that the world no longer works as it should. We can direct these feelings toward our spouses, our congregations, or the church itself; but the common thread is the conviction that if only they would straighten up, I would be OK. What we are struggling to do is to hold onto ourselves—keep ourselves together—in the face of a situation that no longer makes sense. Blame and anger are directed outward.
Sooner or later in this journey, however, we will reach a place where we begin to question ourselves, and to believe that we are the ones who do not “work” anymore. The world is OK and everyone else seems to have a place in it, but we feel disconnected, insubstantial; we have no idea whether life will ever come together again in a meaningful way.
Kegan discusses this process in detail in chapter 9 of The Evolving Self.3 One idea, I believe, may be particularly helpful to us in ministry—the concept of pushing away people and things that represent our old way of understanding the world.
When we begin to move away from our old way of understanding, we naturally reject what has been part of the old perspective. We will eventually recover these things in new and richer ways, but that recovery is still far in the future. For quite some time, we will be in a vulnerable state of mind, feeling that we may need to jettison certain commitments such as marriage, leadership of a congregation, or the ministry as vocation if we are to get our lives together and move on. At this point the pain may be so deep and the struggle so oppressive that we seek relief at any price. What is happening, though, is that we are confusing our partner in marriage or our partners in work with the side of ourselves we now have trouble accepting, the part that no longer works and that we want to abandon as quickly as possible.4
No Solid Ground
An added complication to this time of transition: Autonomous people tend to identify strongly with certain principles—such as integrity, justice, competence—and see these principles or standards as part of who they are.5 Thus, if an autonomous person’s integrity or competence is questioned, one may feel that that his or her very selfhood is being challenged.
As this autonomous way of seeing begins to disintegrate, one will also feel a disintegration of the standards with which one has identified. Suddenly a void opens where universal principles used to be, and the individual is no longer certain of truths on which to rely. A by-product of the awareness that one no longer stands on the solid ground of standards is despair or cynicism. For a child of God, the anguish of this stage may result in a choice to opt out of ventures or relationships to which one had been deeply committed.
Kegan describes this juncture as a sense of leaving the moral world behind, feeling beyond good and evil, or having no way to distinguish wrong and right that is worthy of one’s respect. If the
journey ended here, we would be left with despair or cynicism.6 While these feelings are intrinsic to the time of transition, they are not to be permanent stopping places for the people of God. The fact that we cannot see God’s truths accurately and completely does not mean that no truths endure to be known. What we will come to realize in a deeper way, if we allow enough time to the journey, is that we do indeed see through a glass darkly but that God is still with us and anchors us on life’s continuing journey.
The Necessity of Grief
Throughout this process we will grieve because our understanding of the way life works has suddenly, it seems, been wrenched from us. We will mourn specific losses; we will mourn that loss is a fact of life. What we are most mourning, in a myriad of ways, is the loss of ourselves and our place in the world as we knew it. This transition does not happen overnight or in one giant step; it is an ongoing process that includes times of extraordinary intensity.
We will have moments of joy and peace when things seem to come together, but will likely then find ourselves thrown into turmoil once more. Our way of seeing affects every part of our lives, and we will come to see in new ways, piece by piece, before final resolution comes. But grace abounds, always grace. Our glimpses of peace and renewed joy in life are a taste of what lies ahead. We can trust the purpose of the journey because we know that God is present in it.
Understanding the process does not lessen its intensity. The experience is necessary for growth and cannot be avoided. The process is indicative of neither dysfunction nor an inability to handle matters appropriately. From the perspective of human development, this time of transition beyond autonomy will be one of the deepest and most profound of our lives.
Hope is Present
Understanding the process can give us insight into what is happening and perhaps encourage us to persevere through the journey without making major decisions we may regret for the rest of our lives. Hope is present: although the struggle feels like death, we know that in reality new life struggles to be born. Eventually we will realize that nothing has been lost, that what has come before is recovered in new ways, and so we are doubly blessed.
The call of Abram in Genesis 12 is applicable to this experience, for Abram was called from his country, his familiar place, out into the unknown. He was given a promise by God that the journey had purpose. Even such a promise can be hard to hang onto when we arrive at the most difficult places and have no idea where or when the journey will end; but we, like Abram, can believe that journeys always contain possibilities for new life.
God tells Abram that God will bless Abram so that Abram in turn may be a blessing. That is, after all, what makes the journey worthwhile. As we grow and experience new life again and again, we are put in a place where we can be a greater blessing to those who too must make the journey, and who perhaps find parts of the journey difficult to bear. We bring into the process ourselves—not our expertise, but our compassionate and understanding presence made possible because of the compassionate and understanding presence of God—and in doing so, provide for others what every human being in existence needs: a tangible affirmation that we do not make this journey alone.7
We, like Abram, embark on this journey with no guarantee, except that God goes with us. At times that will be all we have, but it will be enough. We learn this truth and live it because—by the graciousness of God—we come to that place in our own journey where we are able to say, with absolute conviction, that the journey was indeed worthwhile.
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1. This theory is presented in detail in Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), and applied to contemporary life issues in Kegan, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
2. The capacity to understand self as separate from others, holding one’s own opinions and views.
3. Kegan, Evolving Self, 255–273.
4. Ibid., 250.
5. Ibid., 102.
6. Ibid., 232–233.
7. Karen Minnich-Sadler, “A Congregation in Conflict: Applying Robert Kegan’s Constructive-Developmental Personality Theory to the Underlying Issues” (D.Min. project, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, 2000), 36–37.
"Great Expectations, Sobering Realities" by Michael Jinkins
If pastors are to meet the challenges ahead, and if they are to meet these challenges not only for a moment but for years to come, they will need something more sustaining than their enthusiasm alone. Read more »
Jim stands in the study of his church in Walnut Valley, a small rural community in the Midwest. He received the call to this two-point parish—the other congregation of which is 15 miles to the north—shortly after graduating from seminary. Jim is single, 34 years old, and a former high school biology teacher. Both congregations have welcomed him warmly, and Jim feels like a child on Christmas morning. He cannot remember feeling so excited about life, about his future, or his vocation. As he unpacks box after box of books, new biblical commentaries, and tattered seminary textbooks, arranges them on the shelves of his study (the “Pastor’s Study,” a sign on the door reads), and hangs on the wall his newly framed diploma, “Master of Divinity,” Jim imagines the prospects of his new calling. Morning is broken, indeed.1
As we observe Jim settling into his first congregation, we have the benefit of knowing, from our historical vantage point, something he does not yet know. As we watch him, we know that in less than three years Jim will leave these congregations. He will walk away from his new vocation. He will return to teaching biology in a public school. He will depart ordained ministry feeling disappointed, defeated, and depressed, hurt beyond words, angry at the Church, bitter toward his seminary and his denomination—and toward himself. He will feel that he has failed, and that others, whom he trusted with his new vocation, others who should have known better how to help him, have failed him too. The bright possibilities he imagined on that first morning in his study will remain forever unrealized.
Sadly, Jim’s story is not unique. Recent studies have shown that a worrying proportion of pastors leave ordained ministry burned out, wounded, emotionally and spiritually damaged, some never to return to church either as pastors or lay persons. Perhaps the best-known study of clergy burnout to date is one conducted by Alan C. Klaas’ company, Mission Growth Ministries, under a commission from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s Board of Higher Education. The study found that approximately 40 percent of that denomination’s pastors were experiencing mild to severe burnout.
The findings of the Klaas study would be startling at any time but, considering the shortage of pastors nationwide, they are alarming—not only for Missouri Synod Lutherans, but for all sorts of Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, United Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Baptists, and other denominations as well. Thus, two years ago Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary entered into a partnership with the Favrot Fund to study the incidence of ministry burnout, its causes, and possible resources for burnout prevention among our seminary’s alumni (focusing on the experience of pastors in their first seven years of congregational ministry), and to offer a conference to help these pastors develop strategies to better resource their ministries.2 This article explores generally what our study revealed about the stresses and challenges pastors face, and the resources they have found to support their ministries. The actual survey results and a more detailed summary analysis of the study are available online through the Alban Institute’s Web page (www.alban.org/periodicals).
The study was conducted in two parts. Initially, we surveyed alumni of Austin Seminary. After receiving and analyzing the data from this survey, we subsequently convened a focus group from among our alumni to follow up on questions and incongruities in the initial research. The survey was mailed to 272 pastors, 161 of whom completed and returned the survey form. The final response rate was 59 percent. Our alumni are predominantly ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), but the respondents included United Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalian, Missionary Baptist, and Unitarian ministers as well. With respect to their ages, the largest groups were in the 25- to 38-year range (28 percent) and the 45- to 56-year category (44 percent). Only 1 percent of the respondents were under 25.
We were particularly struck by the conversation generated among the 15 pastors in the focus group. Broadly representative of the survey respondents, this group reflected a hard-won realism about the difficulties of pastoral leadership, but their enthusiasm for ministry and their love of the church was palpable. While seminary administrators, professors, and denominational leaders often are on the receiving end of criticism from struggling pastors (“Why didn’t you prepare me better?” “Where is the presbytery [or conference, or association] when I need your help?”), the pastors with whom we spoke expressed gratitude both for their seminary training and for the support they continue to receive from their judicatories. The pastors were not misty-eyed idealists. They acknowledged gaps in their training and made specific recommendations regarding areas of the seminary curriculum they would like to see changed. They recognized problems in their various denominational structures and were specific in their criticisms of ecclesiastical officials who have been less than helpful. But they generally took these limitations and failings in stride, understood them in context, and (perhaps most compelling) took responsibility for finding resources for their own ministries. Indeed, they seemed rather surprised—and frankly pleased and relieved—to discover that there are denominational resources, seminary continuing education events, workshops from groups like the Alban Institute, and other kinds of help that could better equip them for various areas of the church’s ministry, such as stewardship and church finance, leadership, and evangelism. Many of the recently ordained pastors had been trying to produce the resources they needed on their own. Both their resourcefulness and their ignorance of existing resources were something of a surprise to those of us who reflected on the focus group’s discussion.
Competing Commitments
A historical perspective serves to frame one of the most significant findings of the survey and focus group conversations. As the first data began to emerge from the most recent national census, newspapers across the country observed that Americans are experiencing a time crunch. Commutes are longer, work schedules intrude increasingly on family life, and families are frequently torn among conflicting commitments. Pastors are no exception. They are not immune to the sorts of factors that contribute to the general time crunch. However, they also fall prey to any number of specifically ministerial “crunches,” such as expectations among parishioners that pastors are “always on call,” confusion over the purpose and role of Sabbath, and difficulties negotiating family roles and the demands that overlap with ministry activities.
Seventy-four percent of pastors responding to our survey reported that the greatest stress they experience relates to having “too many demands on their time.” This was by far the most significant stressor in pastors’ lives. For the sake of comparison, “feeling drained in fulfilling my functions in my congregation,” the next highest reported cause of stress, was at 47 percent and—surprisingly, especially in light of the Klaas study— “criticism of me and what I have done” stood at only 11 percent.
The root cause of the time crunch was an issue that the survey failed to illuminate adequately, but when the research team spoke to the focus group, the cause became apparent. Overwhelmingly, the pastors in the focus group told us that they felt incompetent in determining priorities among the competing values and ideals that guide their ministries, and that they were unable to distinguish between goal setting with reference to their congregational ministries and goal setting in their own professional and personal lives. The pastors were, by and large, using planning calendars and Palm handhelds. They scheduled regular office hours and generally took days off and vacations, but they did not know how to determine which meetings were more crucial than others, which ideas deserved closer scrutiny, immediate planning, or omission, and which committees required their attention, because they simply did not know how to critically assess the essential values that might guide them in their investment of limited time and energy. Many of them reported that they are “flying by the seat of their pants,” with little organizational consensus in their congregations (or comprehension in their own minds) as to how they should sort through the variety of issues, concerns, and crises that cry out for their attention. It has been said that being a pastor is like being a dog at a whistlers’ convention. The pastors with whom we spoke related to this grim joke.
The implications of this observation are compounded by the experience of many schools and denominational offices that coordinate or offer continuing education for pastors. While conventional wisdom says that awareness of a professional deficiency should provide the motivation to gain the necessary training and new skills, relatively few pastors who complain about deficiencies in goal setting and strategic planning (as well as other areas, such as church finance) seem willing to use their limited continuing education allowances to attend training in these areas. The continuing education programs that continue to attract the largest attendance offer high-profile “names” (celebrity scholars and preachers) speaking on biblical and theological subjects. However, the focus group with which we spoke expressed considerable interest in seeking out assistance in goal setting and strategic planning once it became clear to them, in their small group conversations, that such assistance might help alleviate the time crunch in their own lives.
Conflict Takes a Toll
Pastors consistently reported that interpersonal conflicts—the ordinary grind of disagreements over policies and goals and personalities in their churches—were among the more difficult aspects of pastoral leadership. This was not a surprise to the research team. But the aspect of these conflicts that caused the pastors the greatest distress was not the technical, but the personal. This was something of a surprise. The pastors felt fairly confident that they have some effective tools to use in dealing with conflict management and negotiation (some pastors bring these skills from prior careers, some from seminary course work, and others from print resources and workshops). They also said they felt confident that they could get additional training when they needed to. Their larger concern was the personal toll that interpersonal conflict takes over time on their energy levels, on their enthusiasm for ministry, and on their love for their congregations. They spoke of being worn down by the emotional damage of interpersonal problems within the congregation. One pastor likened it to the incessant drip, drip, drip of water torture.
Virtually none of the pastors said that the headline-grabbing conflicts, like the battles over gay and lesbian ordination that plague many denominations, cause them too much personal distress. They did not wish to diminish the seriousness of these issues, but, generally speaking, the pastors do not “live inside” these conflicts on a day-to-day basis. Rather, the small betrayals of trust, the corrosive influences of malicious gossip and backbiting, the apathy and despair in declining congregations (several of the pastors serve small congregations in rural communities where populations have been declining for decades), the thoughtless and snide remarks, the passive-aggressive digs among members and staff, the feelings of being stuck or trapped in a bad situation, of having their leadership subverted by retired pastors in the congregation or by the pastors who preceded them in a congregation but who refuse to give up influence there, of hearing the same complaints over and over again in the face of insolvable dilemmas—these are the kinds of things pastors said wear away their morale and try their souls. And yet they remain, on the whole, very excited about ministry and the future of the church.
Beneath the enthusiasm of the pastors with whom we spoke, however—just under the surface of the apparently very real joy and authentic excitement they commonly expressed—is the world-weary heart of leaders who are becoming better acquainted with human nature in all its frailty and fickleness. Like Dante’s analogy of the gambler losing a game of dice, reviewing every roll in his mind, sadly—but sadly wiser—and alone, the pastors with whom we spoke, early as they are in the vocation of pastoral ministry, reflect a hard-won sadness, a sapiential sadness they did not possess prior to pastoral leadership that senses the risks, the stakes, and the loneliness of leadership. But virtually none of these ministers (a mere 6 percent) indicated that they wanted to leave their current congregations.
How are these pastors dealing with the pressures they are experiencing? By grounding themselves more deeply in the life of the spirit and by finding community wherever it can be found. Both strategies are time-honored. Yet the pastors’ responses were not unproblematic.
The Pastor’s Spirit
Pastors consistently saw Bible study and prayer as crucial resources for personal and professional wholeness and effectiveness. Looking back on their seminary training, many of them emphasized the value of their biblical and theological studies, in particular, as contributory to their pastoral ministry. They said that they felt well prepared to reflect biblically and theologically on the lives of their parishioners, and that their preaching and teaching, their leadership of worship, nourished them as well as their congregants. However, relatively few of the pastors are involved in regular disciplines of Bible study and prayer. Sixty-two percent are not “involved in disciplined study of sermon texts,” 62 percent do not “have disciplined or scheduled times for study,” and 51 percent do not have “disciplined or scheduled times for prayer.”
A closely related finding was also somewhat discouraging: While pastors consistently recognized the value of having a pastor, a mentor, or a spiritual director of their own who could help them discern and deepen spiritually and emotionally, relatively few make consistent and disciplined use of such a personal resource. Of the pastors surveyed, only 41 percent have mentors at all. Only 22 percent make use of a spiritual director, and only 29 percent have utilized the assistance of a pastoral counselor or other therapist. In analyzing the data, our research team was compelled to ask, “If spiritual, emotional, and relational resources are as important to pastors as they say, what does it mean that so few of them have pastors, spiritual directors, or counselors of their own?”
These pastors also tend to approach Bible study, prayer, and reflection with their own pastors, mentors, spiritual directors, or counselors on an “as needed” basis—that is, when they feel especially burdened or in crisis, rather than allowing these resources to sustain and nourish them consistently. In the focus group, the pastors acknowledged that the lack of discipline and regularity in their seeking help could undermine relationships and exaggerate the lows they feel, but expressed doubt as to whether they would address the problem.
The lack of sustained and regular recourse to spiritual and emotional resources is compounded by the fact that most pastors (90 percent) understand their “listening and responding to people’s needs” to be a significant factor contributing to their personal and professional development (the same percentage as said that “Bible study and exegesis for sermon preparation” are positively contributory). While rendering pastoral care to others is clearly rewarding, it can also drain the pastor of energy if not kept in balance. Balance is the key issue here to long-term spiritual and emotional health. The pastors with whom we spoke emphasize the health-giving dimensions of their giving care to others, but they do not seem to practice the health-giving dimensions of receiving care from others who could serve as their pastors and ministers. Care-giving was frequently practiced at the expense of care-taking.
In recent years, many have recognized that burnout is essentially a spiritual issue, whether rooted in hubris or vanity. The pastors with whom we spoke, despite their current enthusiasm, may already be unwittingly tempting burnout in their ministries by failing to recognize adequately the limits of their resources and their need to be nourished by others in those disciplined, purposeful, and deliberately “unproductive” spiritual exercises of Sabbath and play, regular conversation with trusted mentors and spiritual directors, prayer, and prayerful reflection on scripture.
The Nature of Loneliness
Pastors in our study also spoke often of loneliness. But it became clear in our conversations with the focus group that the loneliness of which they spoke was not the same reality for every pastor, nor did loneliness have a single, common root cause. For some pastors, loneliness was primarily a result of their physical distance from other persons. Loneliness, in this case, is a synonym for a particular kind of aloneness. One pastor said that, in her geographically isolated parish, it is not unusual for her to spend the whole day without speaking with another living person. When she is not making visits, she is simply alone much of the time.
Another pastor, this one serving on the staff of a large, urban congregation, spoke of a very different kind of loneliness. While he is frequently in conversation with members of the congregation and staff, he yearns for a closer, deeper level of fellowship with his colleagues on the staff. They are all busy doing the work of ministry, shoulder-to-shoulder, day-in and day-out, but they seldom talk about the world of ordinary concerns that friends share as a matter of course.
Still other pastors spoke of the loneliness of the leadership position. Few of those with whom we spoke saw ministry as something they do alone, but they were conscious of the peculiar position and role the pastoral office places them in as a significant “leader” in the congregation. While friendships with members of their congregations may—and often do—bless their lives, these pastors are also aware of a difference between the friendly relationships they have with members of their congregations and the friendships congregants have with one another, as well as the friendships the pastors themselves have with people (often colleagues) outside of their congregations. One of the most poignant reflections shared with us came from a pastor who had been “badly burned” when she confided church-related concerns to a member of her congregation whom she thought of as a friend, only to discover too late that the person in whom she confided was not trustworthy.
This pastor’s experience highlighted the difficulties some pastors have in negotiating appropriate pastoral boundaries. Several of the pastors with whom we spoke, in fact, related their continuing struggles with discerning and defining a clear sense of pastoral role and the limitations this role places on their ability to be intimate and open with congregants.
Those pastors who are in ministerial support groups, including lectionary groups, generally speak positively of the experience, often citing such groups as a significant resource for their emotional health and effectiveness in ministry. One pastor spoke of the members of such a group as “soul mates” with whom she had been able to share openly and deeply on a weekly basis. While her group was originally formed simply as a lectionary study group, it evolved into a support group. However, easily 36 percent of the pastors we surveyed do not participate in any such group, and often the groups that do meet (another 33 percent) function largely without intentionality, structure, or mutual accountability. They do not work to guarantee a “safe environment” for personal reflection, and, according to our respondents, provide little or no real support.
Unfortunately, this leaves many pastors in the position of keeping to themselves the most difficult and negative emotion-laden aspects of their experience, or of “dumping” most of their pain and frustrations on their spouses, partners, families, or closest friends. It can be wonderful, as one pastor reported, to be able to share his difficulties, even his anger and sadness, with his spouse (who is, incidentally, a pastor in another denomination), but there comes a point when the relationship is in danger of becoming overwhelmed by “church stuff,” particularly in times of crisis.
In contrast, another pastor explained that she does not speak of her pastoral work at all with her spouse. He is a member of her congregation and, because she wants to avoid coloring his experience of the church, she draws a sharp boundary between home and church. However, as she acknowledged, this makes it all the more difficult for her to find an appropriate emotional outlet, a place she can go “to blow off steam.”
One of the most creative approaches to countering loneliness emerged from a group of women who went through seminary together. Now, as pastors and associate pastors in congregations across the country, they remain in regular contact with one another throughout the year by phone and e-mail, sharing frustrations and joys, and they come together on the seminary campus each year to study with a professor. Because they have known each other for several years, they are able to relate at a deep level of honesty and openness, calling one another’s hand when necessary, and providing a quality of mutual support that is simply impossible for mere acquaintances to give and receive. And, because they are in regular conversation (not only in moments of crisis) and their knowledge of one another is more than episodic, they can discern longer-term trends in each other’s personal and professional lives against the backdrop of knowledge of the whole person.
Serving in Troubling Times
After meeting with our focus group, a member of the research team remarked on how “into” ministry these pastors seem to be. And they are. They have great excitement about ministry and great expectations, and they find joy in the pastoral vocation. But they also face sobering realities.
Times are tough for pastors. Pastors are facing a range of concerns and needs in the contemporary church and in contemporary society that is simply staggering. They struggle to discover resources that will sustain and nourish them and their congregations, sometimes against daunting odds.
When we met with the focus group on the morning of September 10, 2001, none of us could possibly have imagined what the world would be like just 24 hours later. Our pastors returned to their homes and awoke the next morning to a shattering new reality, in the midst of which they continue to serve, to preach, and to provide pastoral care, counseling, and spiritual direction. If they are to meet the challenges ahead, and if they are to meet these challenges not only for a moment but for years to come, they are aware that they will need something more sustaining than their enthusiasm alone. They have every right to expect that they will not be alone in discovering the resources they need.
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NOTES
1. All names, locations, and incidents are fictionalized to protect the identity of pastors surveyed.
2. The Favrot Fund is a Texas-based endowment that provides grants for charitable and educational institutions. The study we conducted was administered by Keith Wulff of th
e Office of Research Services of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Ian Evison, director of research at the Alban Institute, and Michael Murray, consultant and Presbyterian minister, provided valuable technical advice. Alison Riemersma, faculty secretary, provided administrative support. I served as director of the project. The Resources for the Journey of Pastoral Ministry Conference, developed on the basis of this study, featured presentations and workshops by Jackson Carroll, Laura Mendenhall, David Bartlett, Scott Cormode, and Marjorie Bankson, and was provided at no cost to recent graduates of Austin Seminary.Visit Alban.org STAY CONNECTED
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