The Perfect Storm

Occasionally, you find someone expressing thoughts that you have had yourself.  At the Orange Conference, Carey Nieuwhof communicated what I had been contemplating for the last several months.  All of it had to do with life in ministry. 

The life of the minister is a perfect storm. It is where faith, work, and community converge. For the minister, there is no opportunity to compartmentalize these three things.  For instance, when a pastor loses his job at a church, he doesn't have a church family to help him through the hardship.  He loses his faith community.  When a pastor is at home, his wife might want to talk about church, but to him she wants to talk about work. It doesn't take long to realize that ministry is your life.

This adds terrible pressure to the pastor's ability to process the experiences of life. When I struggled with clinical depression last fall, I didn't know where to go. I found myself struggling because, unlike the regular church member, I really didn't have a community to lean on.  Why? Faith, work, and community converge to make the perfect storm.

This dynamic is why many pastors are leaving the ministry.  It is estimated that 1500 ministers leave the ministry each month.  That is an alarming rate.  What do we do?

There are often four options taken by ministers: quit, fail, stay, or thrive.  Of course, the goal is to thrive.  There are seven things that Niewhof recommends:

1. Process privately while leading publicly.  Seek the help of a counselor.

2. Grieve your losses.  Don't just suppress how you feel.  Give yourself permission to grieve.

3. Put yourself first when it comes to personal growth.  If you don't, nobody else will.

4. Engage a spiritual walk that nothing to do with work. Read the Bible devotionally and prayerfully, apart from weekly sermon preparation.

5. Foster a community of accountability and support.  Loneliness is epidemic in ministry.

6. Never make tomorrow's decisions based upon today's emotions.

7. Persevere

A Day in Ministry by Christy Mead

 

My wife, Christy, wrote this article. Enjoy!

I wrote this for a friend who is gathering information from minister's wives. She wanted to know the craziest day in the life of a minister's wife. This one topped my list, but there are so many others! Someday I'll write a book!

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A day in ministry...

My husband was called to pastor a church in Arkansas, 5 hours from where we had served in Texas. Trying to sell our home, home school our children, and connect with a new ministry proved to be too much for the distance. So we decided, after an unsuccessful search for a rent home, that we would take up residence in our new church's gym. It was acceptable...2 rooms, public baths with showers, a kitchenette, a large place for our kids to play, and best of all it was free!!! This is a day of my ministry during the 4 months we lived in the gym.

Depression had hit like a ton of bricks. Trying to rouse myself out of bed to fix breakfast and homeschool our girls took every ounce of energy. I felt so lonely and out of place in this new town and new ministry. Just this week, we had learned our youth minister and his wife were leaving to go to another ministry. Even though this was in the works long before we got to our new church, it was still a blow.
I went through the motions that morning. I made my bed, and that's when I noticed black specks under my pillow. Upon closer examination, I realized these were mouse droppings! Right under my pillow! Eeek! I stripped my bedding to take to the laundry mat.

I made breakfast...cereal again! Ugh! No oven or stove in this kitchenette, so only cereal every morning for breakfast...sigh. The girls began to fight. "Mom, she took my doll! Mom, she hit me! Mom, she called me a name!" Sigh... "I'm changing my name to Dad!" I yelled out to them. In unison, they all said, "Dad!"

After breakfast, I went to check on our dogs. Before moving, I had a thriving dog breeding business. After moving to the gym, we had two litters of puppies born and several died due to the stress of the move. We had 7 Golden Retrievers, 3 Dachshunds, & 8 puppies that I had to feed and care for. After an hour or so, I made my way back inside to start our school day.

The girls had finally got dressed and headed to our home school area. I had them sit down with their school work. "You have an hour to finish your English," I told them. After several minutes, I could see they were not working at all. "you have to do your school work." "I don't want to do this, it's boring," came the replies. "You have to or there will be consequences!" More time passed, I checked their work, & every answer was wrong! I felt the old familiar pressure of trying to teach my kids, but fearing they were falling further behind every day. How can I get through to them??? In my frustration I began to lecture the girls about how important it is for them to stay on task and not fall behind their peers that are in public school. Their eyes glazed over, and I decided it was time for a break for all of us.

I went to take a shower, which was hidden in the public bathroom by the front entrance to the gym. The gym was situated in the middle of 45 acres surrounded by lots of woods. It wasn't the church's main campus, so the girls and I were all alone on this campus every day. I let the hot water carry my stress away as I escaped mentally and emotionally from my reality. Then, my daughter came bursting into the bathroom. "Mom!!! There's a policeman here and he wants to talk to you!" I grabbed a robe and peered out of the bathroom, dripping wet, soap in my hair, and greeted the officer. "Can I help you?" "Uh, ma'am, I noticed the children riding bikes in the parking lot and the loose dogs running around and wanted to find out what is going on down here, since there is usually no one here during the day." Now I'm totally frazzled and embarrassed as I tried to explain to this officer that this dripping wet, soapy, naked under my robe, woman that stands before him is the new pastor's wife of one of the largest churches in town and we are living in a mouse infested gym with 10 dogs and home schooling our kids. I don't think I made a great first impression!! But he seemed content with my answer and left me to finish my shower.

By the time my husband came home, I was not in a great mood. I made our usual dinner, frozen microwave meals, gathered our laundry, including the mouse infested bedding, and headed to the laundry mat.

By the time I made it back the gym that night, the parking lot was full. "Basketball Season!" The city was borrowing our gym for practice 3-4 nights a week. I wrestled the baskets of laundry into our makeshift closet and tried to be cheerful as I greeted strangers that were watching their kids practice. And then I saw him ... The very police officer that had a few hours earlier had stood before me while I fumbled through my excuses of why we were here. As luck would have it, his son played basketball and they used our gym for practice. Could this day get any worse???

I made our bed hoping to not have any extra "guests" sleep under my pillow. My kids waited to take their nightly showers. The basketball players would be be practicing until 9pm. Waiting, waiting, waiting for this day to end...9:00..9:05...9:10... 9:15...still waiting. Finally they left at 9:20. I rushed my kids into the showers while my husband went to lock up the parking lot gate. I put my dogs in their pens, tucked my girls into bed, and crawled into my clean sheets. The best part of my day!!!!

"Yep ministry is hard, but I wouldn't be satisfied doing anything else," I thought, as I drifted to sleep.

 Christy Mead