1 Timothy 3:1-7
1 The saying is sure: whoever
aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. 2 Now a bishop must be
above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable,
hospitable, an apt teacher, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome,
and not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own household well, keeping his
children submissive and respectful in every way— 5 for if someone does not know
how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's church? 6 He
must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into
the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover, he must be well thought of by
outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil.
Just about a month ago, on Sunday,
May 31st, I read a news story that I’m afraid is becoming too
common. Phil Lineberger, a well-known, well-respected pastor in Sugarland,
Texas—a pastor who had served his congregation for nearly twenty years, a
pastor who had been a leader among Texas Baptists, serving as vice-president
and president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) from 1988-1991,
a pastor who from all appearances was a well-rounded, active, and beloved
pastor—took his own life. He had been on medical leave from the congregation
since mid-March. His son-in-law said, “[he] lost a battle with depression and
took his own life.”[1]
That same day, I saw Facebook posts,
tweets, and Instagram pictures of the Sunday morning worship at the First
Baptist Church of Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta. Julie Pennington-Russel, who
had served as First Baptist’s pastor since 2007—the first woman to serve as
pastor in the church’s history, and the first woman to serve in such a
prominent church—gave the benediction at the conclusion of the service for the
final time. She had announced her resignation on April 29th, and May
31st was her last Sunday. In her letter to the congregation she
said, “After months of prayer and contemplation, [my husband] Tim and I have
discerned that for the sake of my own mental, physical and spiritual health, I
must step away from First Baptist, Decatur.” She didn’t resign because she was
called to another church. She didn’t resign because she was called to a
denominational position or to serve on a seminary faculty. She resigned because
she felt she had (in her words) “done my best to listen for God and to lead
this congregation according to Holy Spirit’s guidance. However, I’m afraid that
today our church has become ‘stuck’. The sticking point for more than a few
appears to be me, and my leadership.” [2] She
resigned without “something to fall back on,” without a “plan B.” She resigned
due to the pressures and stress that inevitably come with leading a
congregation forward, to make bold moves for the kingdom of God.
The next day, Monday, June 1st,
I was sitting in our living room with Sallie, watching television, when I heard
my phone vibrate. I had a message from a friend of mine who serves a rather
large (one might say “successful”) congregation in another state. His message
asked, “Are you doing ok?”
It reminded me of my time as an intern at Shades Crest Baptist in
Birmingham, when the pastor there, one day, was catching me up on all the
things going on at church: the progress we were making on our capital campaign,
the upcoming plans for a choir tour, the great things happening with our
mission partners. After he had run down the list, I simply said to him, “Ok,
but how are you doing?” A few weeks later, at my end-of-the-semester review, he
said to me, “One of the most important things you did was ask how I was doing.
When you enter the ministry, few (if any) will ask you that. They will bring
you their troubles; they will dump their complaints in your lap; they will hold
insanely high expectations of you and your family, but they will rarely ask how
you’re doing, how you’re really
doing.”
As my pastor friend and I messaged each other that night, it became clear
that even though his church seemed to be doing so well, that even though he was
such a highly respected pastor and leader, the stress gets to him at times too.
He said, “I’m always thinking of a ‘plan B’…I just about quit three times in
the last two weeks.” I had this conversation with him with the news of Phil’s
suicide and Julie’s resignation still fresh on my heart and mind, and if I’m
completely honest with you, it’s just one of many such conversations I’ve had
with friends and colleagues in ministry.
Can I tell you all something without sounding too much like I’m
complaining? You see, one of the hardest things for us clergy folks to do is
advocate for ourselves. It’s hard for us to admit when we don’t know what to
do; it’s hard for us to ask for something for ourselves; it’s hard to speak up
when we feel we’re being stretched too far, spread too thin, or held to ridiculous
standards of availability and self-sacrifice. So, can I just talk to you all
for a few minutes? I know some of you won’t hear what I’m saying, and some of
you will just write it off as the whining of some young pastor, but I think you
all need to hear what I have to say, what too many of us in ministry—most of us
in ministry—have to say, but we’re afraid we can’t. I want you to listen, to
listen to these statistics reported by numerous surveys of thousands of pastors
across North America.
Every month, 1,500 pastors leave the ministry FOR GOOD due to burnout or contention in their
congregations. They don’t take a leave of absence; they don’t leave for another
church or another ministry position—they leave vocational ministry FOR GOOD:
1,500 every month!
Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages end in divorce. While that sounds
like a familiar statistic among the “non-ordained,” keep in mind these are
ministers, and many of them site the reason for their marriages ending is the
stress and demands of ministry. I know that’s true because 80% of pastors and
84% of their spouses are discouraged in their ministry, and 80% of pastors report that
congregational ministry and its demands have adversely affected their families—80%!
That’s a number too big to ignore.
At least 40% of pastors seriously considered leaving the ministry in the
past three months. With schedules that are more often bent than flexible,
pastors find the fixed boundaries of a “normal job” tempting: the thought of
clocking out and leaving it all in the office until tomorrow is something many
pastors dream about. This seems to be especially true when one considers this
sad statistic, one I found particularly telling when it comes to the
expectations of those of us in pastoral ministry: pastors who work fewer than 50 hours per week are
35% more likely to be asked to
resign or fired. That means if a pastor makes time for him/herself, time for
rest, time for their families, that pastor is more likely to lose his/her job than a pastor who snubs Sabbath
rest, ignores their families, disregards their health, and doesn’t care about
their overall physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Only one out of every 20 pastors who enters the ministry will retire from
ministry. Half (50%) of pastors feel so discouraged in being unable to meet the
unrealistic demands of their congregations that they would leave ministry for
another job if they could, but they have no other way of making a living
(seeing as how they have devoted their lives, education, and training to
ministry). One in four pastors has been forced out or fired from a ministry
position at least once. Ninety percent—90%!—of pastors say they feel
inadequately trained to cope with the stress and demands of their jobs (many of
them have undergraduate and extensive graduate degrees in religion, theology,
ministry, etc., and still feel
this way!). I suspect it’s not the training itself, but rather the
insurmountable expectations placed upon clergy.
Forty-five percent of pastors say they’ve experienced depression or
burnout to the point of needing to take a leave of absence (I doubt most of
them do, or that most of their congregations would let them). Seventy percent
of pastors say they do not even have one close friend. Another 70% say they
have lower self-esteem than when they entered the ministry. According to
denominational health insurance agencies, medical costs for clergy are higher
than for any other professional group, as pastors deal with stress-related
health issues such as high blood pressure, obesity, insomnia, and depression.
And one of the most telling statistics for me comes from the Schaeffer
Institute: of the 1,050 pastors interviewed, every single one of them had a close friend from seminary
who has quit ministry because of burnout, conflict in their church, or a moral
failure. [3]
Personally, I can think of at least five, and one of them left the faith
altogether.
Now, I know what some of you will say: “Chris, my job is hard too. My job
comes with a lot of stress too.” I don’t doubt that; I don’t doubt that for one
minute. But here’s where I think things are different: too many pastors are
forced to resign, are fired, or take their own lives, because their vocation is
completely intertwined with their faith, their spiritual lives, their very
identity as a child of God, and when they do their job, when they seek to lead
others in the way of Christ, when they strive for justice, when they make bold
steps towards revealing the in-breaking kingdom of God, and are then faced with
constant criticism, the downright hateful actions of those who wish to see them
removed, the ignorance of those who wish to carry on with their ways of life as
if the call to come and follow Christ is only a nice suggestion, is it any
wonder so many want out? When pastors pray, study, and wrestle with a text for
hours, only to be told that they are wrong by someone who’s reflections are
only minutes old, when a pastor gives every waking hour to the ministry and
work of the church only to be told she forgot to visit someone’s great aunt in
the hospital in another county, when a pastor weeps and prays over the pains
and trials of a member who is going through hell only to be chastised for not
smiling at some other church member at the grocery store last Tuesday, when a
so-called church member—a supposed follower of Christ—stands in a pastor’s
office and threatens him to stop preaching about this or that or else he’ll
make his life miserable, when a pastor rejoices in the news of another giving
her life to Christ only to be deflated by complaints about length of the
service, the order worship, or the temperature in the sanctuary, when we’ve
poured ourselves out spiritually only to be told that the toilet upstairs is
clogged, there’s a committee meeting waiting on our arrival, and that same
person who always has something say is waiting for us in the hallway to tell us
the dozen things we’ve done wrong this week…is it really any wonder so many of us give up? Is it really any
wonder so many of us think about walking away several times a month? a week? a
day?
When we are called by God to lead, when we give of ourselves to others,
folks who might otherwise be total strangers, when we pour our hearts and souls
out and preach what the Lord has given us, and yet our leadership is ignored,
our words dismissed as the irrational opinions of someone who doesn’t know any
better, and when our ministry is seen as an “easy living,” is it really any
wonder so few of us make to retirement?
I really hope you don’t hear this as complaining, but I want you to know
what those of us in ministry go through. I want you to know that ministry isn’t
just some cushy job that only requires working one or two days a week. I want
you to know that, as your pastor, I can’t do it all. You can’t pay me enough to
add more hours to the day or cause me to spontaneously self-replicate. I want
you to know that ministry isn’t just my
job, my vocation. As a church
member, it’s yours too! We are
all in this together! That doesn’t mean your part is to pay for stuff, to pay
salaries, to make requests, to sit back and hope things go your way. That means
we are all in the dirty, hands-on business of kingdom work together. That means
we all have to work together—even when we don’t agree, even when we think it’s
someone else’s job, even when the work is hard. That’s what it means to be a
church member. That’s the difference between a member of the body of Christ and
a mere spectator. That’s the difference between following Christ and giving lip
service to religion. That’s what it means to be a church member, to join in the
work of love, to follow the ever-forward call of Christ, to trust in the God
who has called some out as shepherds, to listen for the voice of the Spirit in
your own heart, as God may be calling even you out of the fold to the work of
ministry.
May you all listen for the voice of Christ. May we all join in the
uniting work of God’s kingdom. May we all know and live what it means to be
part of the body of Christ, what it means to be church members. All of us, not
just those of us who are called “clergy” and hired to do it. Amen.
[1] The article from Baptist
News Global can be found here: https://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/30138-denominational-leader-pastor-phil-lineberger-dead-at-69
[2] You can read Julie’s
resignation letter in its entirety on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/julie.penningtonrussell/posts/10102080126262183
[3] J.R. Briggs, Fail: Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of
Ministry Failure. IVP Books: Downers Grove, IL (2014). pp. 46-7.
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