Response to “Mad Church Disease” Chapter 4

My friend Sarah is co-hosting a discussion on the book Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic by Anne Jackson over at her blog Living Between the Lines.  If you are in any way connected to either full time or volunteer ministry, you should read this book.  It is extremely eye opening!  At any rate, I started writing my commentary to her posting and realized it was going to be way too long to contain in a comment box.  So here’s my take on Chapter 4 which covers External Risk Factors.

I think a major risk factor, when it comes to pastoring anyway, is the mindset of many churches (I almost said ‘small country churches’ there, but I corrected myself, realizing it really exists everywhere) that it is the Pastor’s job to do everything, be at every event, and participate in every activity. If there is a ministry meeting, the Pastor should be there to give input.  If there is a church “work day” the pastor better be right there on the roof washing the steeple.  If there is a Sunday School class party, the Pastor is obligated to attend.  Holidays should be spent having special church services, not visiting relatives he never sees.  (Side note:  If he’s a youth pastor, he should be at every ball game, every recital and every play of every kid in his youth ministry.)  If someone’s cousin’s sister’s brother-in-law’s uncle is in the hospital with gall bladder surgery, the pastor should drop everything he is doing and rush over there, because only prayers by the pastor, in person actually have any worth.  He should work every fundraiser, attend every birthday/Christmas party, be the first one to arrive and the last one to leave.  He’s paid to do this, after all – and he really doesn’t have anything else to do except preach on Sunday and Wednesday.

The expectations aren’t limited to the Pastor though.  His wife better be at every baby/wedding shower, every engagement party, every tupperware/pearl/Southern Living/Creative Memories/Pampered Chief party (and buy something) or you can go ahead and count on there being some evil talk in the church about her.  Many churches still expect her to play the piano, be the president of Women’s Ministries, head up the nursery, teach Sunday School, coordinate the prayer chain, prepare food for every death, and basically do a full time job for the church without a cent of pay.  His children should act like little adults, not children, should never misbehave, never get cranky, and never act unspiritual in any way.

Even when all of this is done, you will still hear comments of “So you are a pastor, huh?  So what do you do the rest of the week?”  “You know, you really don’t act like a pastor’s wife.”  “You know, I really think we should have a (insert various ministries here) at our church.  Why don’t you go ahead and head that up?  You have Friday nights free, right?”  “Well, I’d really hoped your wife and the baby would have come too.”

When is “family time” occuring in all of this madness?  How do you avoid burnout when you may very well be voted out if you refuse to juggle all these balls?  How do you have normal family relationships when the only time you see each  other is at church?

I didn’t grow up ‘in church’ – I was saved as a teenager, so my perspective on family life is much different than my husband who grew up in a pastor’s home.  We spent a lot of time at home and a lot of time with my extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins.  The only evening activities that ever took me out of that circle of family – and then only to a very small degree –  was girlscouts once a month (my mom was the troop leader), dance lessons for a few years once a week, and little league baseball during the summer (my brother and my two cousins were all on the team together).  That was IT! Most of my growing up was spent wandering in the woods behind my house with my brother, riding horses with my Grandaddy, swiming in the little above-ground pool in our backyard, or riding bikes up and down our driveway.  Mama was always there; we had her undivided attention.  Daddy worked a lot, but when he was home, we spent time together – shooting basketball at the top of the driveway, playing tag in the backyard, or just being together.

Already when I compare my daughter’s growing up to mine, I am saddened by how dissimilar they are.  How much of her life has been spent in church nurseries?  How much time has she had to entertain herself during practices of all kinds?  Home is the place we sleep to her – not where we live.  Grammy has an ‘outside’ – we don’t.

When I read some of the testimonies in this book of Pastors who made it a priority to be at home with their families at 5pm every evening my first inclination was to laugh rather bitterly.  And then I stepped back and really looked at the thing.  Is it any wonder so many ministers are plagued with poor health, failing marriages, depression and moral failures?  How do you have a healthy lifestyle when the expectations placed on you by church boards and often even the church congregations themselves are so UNhealthy?

So bottom line:  why don’t we say no?  Why don’t we draw a line in the sand and say, enough is enough?  Because our jobs are on the line.  Because most of us don’t make enough money in the ministry to have a cushion to get us through unemployment (gratefully our denomination has taken great strides to provide a safety net in that area) so we just keep toughing it out.  Because we were trained (like my husband) to think this lifestyle is normal and to be expected.  Because we think if we aren’t working ourselves to exhaustion “for God” we aren’t really loving Him with all our strength.  (That we equate works with love is some screwed up doctrine, isn’t it?)  Because we are riddled with guilt – of our own manufacture and that aimed at us by others – if we don’t.

Don’t get me wrong.  Like Sarah said in her blog, I love ministry – real ministry.  The kind where lost souls are saved, hurting families healed, addicts find deliverance, and the church really is the hands and feet of Christ.  I love being a part of that.  But all this other stuff…all this ‘adding to the law’ that I see in our modern church age….not so much.  I have a mission statement of my own:  I will not sacrifice my family on the altar of church.  Period.

It is a mad, mad, mad world.

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Imposed Hypocrisy (by Keith O’Neal)

I asked permission from Bro. Keith O’Neal to repost this very timely and very powerful message he had shared with his followers on Facebook. In light of recent discussions with fellow bloggers on the book ‘Mad Church Disease’, I really thought his insights were worth sharing.

When you are a pastor just who do you go to when your personal life is a mess? It is common knowledge that religious people (not true Christ-like believers) can be some of the cruelest people on the planet and that makes it tough to be open or transparent. That has fostered an environment where struggling believers cannot be open or transparent about their personal struggles.

Hypocrisy comes from the word comes from Greek Theater. In ancient Greek plays, the actors held masks in front of their faces to play a part. Of course in the theater everyone knows who the actor is. But in the faith community it is often tough to see who is “masking” the issues of their heart and living a hypocritical life.

James 5:16 teaches us that we should confess our sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. You see, it is not God’s plan that His people be alone during tough times. Members of Christ’s body should be able to count on others for support and prayer during difficult times. This is hard to do when you fear “the system” that is made up of far to many carnal believers who are spiritually immature.

Retribution, ridicule, and rejection, along with gossip mongers and judgmental attitudes, make it near impossible to “come forward” for help. For that reason storing our areas of struggle in the basement of our heart has become a common practice amongst believers because it is out of sight and unseen by those who are and are not close to us.

When you know you will be treated so poorly by so called “Christ-like” believers how do you muster the strength to come out into the open? If you struggle with lust who do you go to? If you have a drug or alcohol problem who do you call? If you are bound by gambling or a host of other vices that grab you by the throat and won’t let you go, just who do you turn to knowing that you will experience the “fall-out” that comes when your “dirty laundry” is available for all to see?

If you are in ministry and you are under personal attack, or your marriage is in serious trouble, what do you do when you know it will cost you your place in the congregation and your standing in the community? Too many times facing the system is just too difficult, thus, “imposed hypocrisy.”

So what do we do and how do we avoid falling prey to this spiritually fatal trap? The choices are rather simple. You can do as I and millions of others have done and try and ignore the fact the basement of your heart is rapidly filling up with “junk” that will ultimately be exposed. Or, you can come clean and allow God into your basement for a thorough cleaning. Both paths take courage, because one means confronting pride and the other involves confronting our people-pleasing tendencies.

I have personally walked both roads and I can tell you that the best option by far is humbling yourself and allowing God access to those things that have you bound. King David’s Prayer of “Create in Me a Clean Heart” (Psalms 51:10) isn’t an easy road to take, but it is the fastest road to right standing with God and to spiritual health.

Be sure of this, the rumor mills will run rampant once you open up. You will need to close your ears to the hurtful words that are spoken by enemies, friends, and yes, even family.

King David, a man I have come to relate to very well, seemed to know about this subject. He wrote these words in Psalms 31:13-18:

13 I have heard the many rumors about me, and I am surrounded by terror. My enemies conspire against me, plotting to take my life.
14 But I am trusting you, O LORD, saying, “You are my God!”
15 My future is in your hands. Rescue me from those who hunt me down relentlessly.
16 Let your favor shine on your servant. In your unfailing love, save me.
17 Don’t let me be disgraced, O LORD, for I call out to you for help. Let the wicked be disgraced; let them lie silent in the grave.
18 May their lying lips be silenced–those proud and arrogant lips that accuse the godly. NLT

Finally, hypocrisy cannot be imposed on you if you can get delivered from pride and approval addiction. Once that freedom comes, God will have free access to the basement of your heart and you can experience freedom from living a lie and masking the real issues that you deal with. That will make that long walk to the judgment seat of God a lot easier to make!

Thank you for your honest and much needed reflections, Bro. Keith!

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Friendship….it’s complicated.

Friendship + ministry = complicated.

That’s the short version of my take on friendships in my life.  As a child you choose your friends and they choose you and it’s all based on simple things like being in the same class at school, or being in the same girl scout troop, or having the same interests.  I don’t think I really understood how complicated friendship could really be until I was married and graduated from college.

Being in full-time ministry as David and I have been our entire married life makes having long-term friendships very difficult.  Moving from town to town while most people live their entire lives in one place makes friendship – deeper ones anyway – much more difficult.  I remember when my best friend in college told me once when I suggested that I hoped we would always have the kind of friendship we did then:  “That sounds nice, but in my experience, you let a few miles and a few years get between you, and no matter how good your intentions, you won’t be as close as you used to be.”  Oh, I argued with him at the time, pretty vehemently if I recall correctly.  But I soon found his words were true.  No matter how much you want a friendship to last long-distance, it is very hard to maintain in practice. Maybe that’s just because of my personality.  I hate talking on the phone – always have.  The only exception to this rule I married, so that tells you all you need to know about that.  Email and more recently Facebook have helped in the occasional bridging of the broken connections….but it just isn’t the same.  I need friends I can go out to eat or shopping with, people I can hug on a weekly basis.  I want  them know where my glasses are in my cabinets without having to ask.  I want Petra to talk to them without hiding and David to actually feel like he can be himself and not have to put on the ‘Pastoral Front’ that he has to wear with so many people who do not equate the words “minister” with “human being”.

I think that’s the other factor in my lack of long-term friendships.  Pastoral ministry can create such a false reality between the congregation and the ministry family.  I mean, here we are, regular people who just happen to have a calling on our lives to something much greater than ourselves; we uproot ourselves from our own biological families and the support system they offer, head out into the wilderness of an unknown community and who do we interact with night and day?  The church people…so that should be where we draw from to form friendships, right?  I’ve lost count of how many minister’s retreats and seminars have warned against that concept.  “Keep your distance from your congregation.”  “You are their shepherd, not their buddy.”  “Don’t get to close.”  “Don’t trust too much.”  These same seminars suggest we should form friendships with our fellow ministers – the people we get to see….well….once or twice a year at these seminars.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are two or three ministry couples that David and I only see once in a blue moon, but when we do get together, it’s like we’ve never been apart.  We laugh and talk and enjoy each other’s company every moment we get….almost desperately, knowing how long it will be again before we have such kindred spirits to commune with.  So 360 days of the year my friendships are with…whom?  If I break the conventional wisdom (as I have done many times over – I just refuse to be an island) and form friendships among the congregation, what then?  How do you keep the other church from feeling slighted or from feeling like you have ‘favorites’ or a ‘clique’?  How do you stay impartial?  What happens to those friendships when an unforeseen move has to occur?  I’ve seen a gambit of reactions – everything from hysteria, to depression, to denial, to anger, to downright hatred.  Only in a few rare cases do I see the individuals I became close to at a church really get it, not take the decision to move on personally, and actually pray for God’s blessings upon us as we move on to other things.  And then of course, there is the unspoken taboo of trying to maintain any contact with your former congregation.  If you do, you are encroaching on the new guy/girl.  If you don’t, you must have never really cared about those people in the first place to drop them so easily.  It makes you gun-shy.  David is even more wary than I am, partly from his own introverted nature, partly from being hurt one too many times.

So here we are again…really getting settled finally in a new community.  We know our way around town (mostly) and know where all the good restaurants are.  Most of our boxes are unpacked, though I still haven’t gotten my address changed on my driver’s license….really need to DO that!  And I’m wading out into those sometimes shark filled waters of friendship finding again.  Got some good prospects…maybe this time we’ll be here just a little bit longer….maybe this time those friendships can get just a little bit deeper.  I need that.

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Why Not?

I have a blog.  An often neglected, not posted upon for months blog.  Do I really need another one?  I guess since I’ve  been reading the blog posts of my friend Sarah I’ve come to realize that just writing about my daughter only gives a small window into my life….my identity is more than just Petra’s Mommy.  I am a lot more than that.  So today I think I will begin a blog about all the other hats I wear.  Oh I’m sure Petra will creep into it from time to time – she is my one and only after all.  But I have a lot to say and it isn’t all about toddlerhood.  And just maybe….what I have to say is actually valuable.

So let’s start with my most public role:  wife to a full-time Youth and Evangelism pastor.

How do you define a youth pastor’s wife?  There isn’t really a title that even comes close to describing what the wives (or husbands I suppose) of ‘that youth guy’ (or gal) actually do. Secretary…treasurer…artist… ..cook…..janitor….professional chair and table set up person…PowerPoint guru….counselor…musician… …organizer…therapist…van driver…nurse…wife…mother…and the list goes on and on..

My husband David, and I have been in full time youth ministry for 12 years.  When we got married, we determined that we would have a ministry of marriage.  From start to finish, we would be a united front transforming the lives of people by the power of the Holy Spirit for the upbuilding of HIS kingdom.  Never would I be a woman who sat on the sidelines, oblivious to the warfare my husband was raging in the spirit realm.  No, I would be at his side, holding up his arms when he needed me to and doing my own warfare with all the passion and strength a handmaiden of the Lord can bring to the battle.  We agreed that he would not protect me from the messy side of ministry – if something bad went down, he didn’t shield me from it like I hear a lot of modern ministers suggesting husbands should do with their spouses.  We faced it head on, as a team.  The end result of that?  I’m probably a little more cynical and a lot more realistic about church work than some minister’s wives I know.  My priorities are a little different because my perspective is different.  And my husband knows without a shadow of a doubt that if the whole world was to turn their back on him, I’d be standing right beside him, because nothing has been hidden, and I’ve never walked away.

Being a youth pastor’s wife is easier than being a pastor’s wife, I’ll say that right up front.  I’ve worn both hats, and I definitely prefer the former to the latter.  The stereotypes and the expectations for the Senior Pastor’s wife are so unbending and so unrealistic at times it makes me wonder how any woman in the role keeps her sanity.  Everything about her from her wardrobe to her mannerisms to her facial expressions to her very personality is scrutinized and compared to every previous model who came before her.  It’s not fun and it takes a lot of self-confidence not to be defined by people’s expectations, especially when they are so loudly and unabashedly expressed.

I think the hardest stereotype for the youth pastor’s wife to overcome is the stigma of youth and inexperience.  You are married to ‘that youth guy’ who everyone looks at like he’s 20 (even if he’s 34 and has been doing this for 17 years) and you can’t possibly know what you’re talking about.  You are so young (even if you don’t feel like it) you can’t have ever dealt with anything like this before.  The powerful try to snowball you, the manipulative try to manipulate you, and the kinder ones just humor you.

Being a youth pastor’s wife isn’t just fraught with challenges though – it is full of those amazing ‘God’ moments when He does things that completely blow your mind and mess up your whole paradigm of ‘church the way we know it’.  Teenagers are such complicated creatures; full of potential and angst, energy and laziness, passion and apathy all at the same time.  One minute they can say something so profound or minister in such a tender way that it leaves tears in your eyes, and the next minute you are ready to strangle them for their wishy-washy attitudes and worldliness.  I love them.  They make me laugh until it hurts.  When they worship unashamedly I weep for joy.  They jump in eyes closed, arms wide open, into the deep end of ministry with you and are just happy to go along for the ride, where ever Jesus takes us.  That astonishes me.  I have an unending passion for teenagers and probably will be in some kind of youth ministry when I have a walker and have to take my hearing aids out to stand the music at the concerts I go with them to see. 

I am glad Petra already knows what human videos are and wants to be in the drama team when she gets bigger.  I am thankful for the half dozen texts I get a day from my teens because they love me and want me connected to their life.  I treasure every hug, every heart-to-heart talk, every tear shed on my shoulder.  I praise God for every soul saved, every teen filled with the Spirit and every young man and woman called to the service of the King.  I even look back fondly to the all night lock-ins and hour long road trips – for all the hours of sleep I lost can’t be replaced but neither can the hours of one-on-one ministry tranformation that occured in those times.

I have it pretty good, I must say.

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