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