I remember a retreat giver once telling us that we are "Human Beings" not "Human Doings."
That, from a man who never had to work to put bread on his family table because he was a priest and therefore was supported no matter how little he did, rang hollow.
I don't understand.
There are different forms of work, and in all kinds of professions some people work hard and some don't.
Some priests might just deliver the necessary services. Most will be very active in pastoral work and community roles, and some also take on additional work - like leading retreats.
In addition (at least in the CofE and other UK denominations) many priests and ministers are self-supporting - they work full-time somewhere else (or use their pension) to support their ministry.
Julian of Norwich was almost certainly a wealthy widow. Anchorhold was one of the few options other than convent life or remarriage for respectable women. Bishops wouldn't brick in poor women because the bishop may find himself supporting her himself. The horror......
As far as I know the jury's still out on whether Mother Julian was a widow but it would make sense to make that conjecture.
In Bruges a few years back my late wife and I visited the Beguinage and were struck by how much 'agency' the Beguines had in late medieval Flanders.
They could kick ass when it came to rejecting unwanted suitors or even lobbying civil authorities.
But we are still getting into the 'work pattern' thread territory - interesting though these things are to discuss in relation to church ministry and clerical/ministerial burn-out.
@chrisstiles - quite agree. It's one of the reasons I started the thread about work practices and patterns more generally.
To the point of clergy working long hours, I can identify with that. But late in my ministry I discovered a little trick.
First, you divide your whole week into four-hour blocks, that is 24 x 7 = 168/4= 42 blocks. 10 of those blocks devote to work. The rest of the blocks are yours.
However, if you end up working in one of your private blocks--say you were called to the hospital at night for an emergency---you take compensatory time off from your scheduled working blocks.
Learning that little trick helped me stay with it for at least another year.
There was more to my burnout. I will address that later.
I'm not ordained myself, but I'd be interested to know what those who are think of the following idea, which I have experienced in my own work in a totally different sphere.
Clergy are burned out because they trapped between sets of competing, incompatible expectations, and indeed between their own ideas of how things should be and what they can achieve under current conditions.
Their congregations expect more of them because those congregations are becoming needier. They are getting older, and the younger members are often more stressed than they used to be ,and therefore have less surplus resilience than they used to.
The hierarchies of churches are seeing diminishing congregations and panicking. As with unity (which to my mind is a total chimera, and a naked insertion by the early church of their liturgy into the biblical narrative, literally putting words in Jesus's mouth), no (arch)bishop wants to oversee decline any more than they do division, and they enjoin more and more activity of the clergy "within their care". It seems to be more a matter of management than care at the moment, which strikes me as another reason behind the burnout. The world is mostly indifferent or hostile, and their congregations are exhausted, so the law of diminishing returns sets in. Less money then means fewer clergy and less support, further accelerating clergy burnout.
Clergy have their own callings - to pastoral work, to liturgy, to theological enquiry, to a life of prayer - none of which has to do with being a replacement social worker/child/parent to their congregations or assuaging the guilt of those above them in church hierarchies.
None of this seems to me to have a solution until churches - just about all churches - collapse and sink into the ground in their current form. Only when the landscape is cleared and resources released (as they are by the decay of plants into compost) can anything really new arise. Until then, we endure - all of us in our various positions - until we are ourselves part of the decay, in one form or another.
... They should have introduced National Service. That would have sorted them out. ...
Everybody I've ever heard advocating national service has been,
old enough to have done it themselves and so want to get their own back on the young;
safely old enough that there's no likelihood of their ever being called up; or
women, who are therefore in no danger of being called up.
With respect the majority of the people I've heard advocating for national service in the UK have been firmly in category 2, with category 3 restricted to a few columnists working in places like the Telegraph/Spectator.
It's a shame "national service" seems to mean nothing other than serving in the military. There are a lot of other things that would serve our countries a whole lot more.
National military service existed in France until quite recently. It's been replaced by "civic service", which involves doing something useful for society. It's voluntary but can be very good thing to have on your CV.
Norway used to have an alternative ‘civilian service’ for conscientious objectors to military service. A quick google tells me this was abolished in 2012 and they are now exempt, though they can be called up for civil defence training.
It's a shame "national service" seems to mean nothing other than serving in the military. There are a lot of other things that would serve our countries a whole lot more.
Yes, but that's not the goal of reintroducing national service. Its aim is to beat young people into submission and turn them into people who'll habitually lick the boot that kicks them in the workplace and at the ballot box. Plus the idea helps the gammonatti get it up.
Ahem ...my reference to National Service was a joke. It's the sort of thing Angry of Tonbridge Wells would write in a letter to newspapers. In green ink.
It was the sort of thing some of the older teachers used to chunter when I were a lad.
'All these hippies and dippies ... they ought to bring back National Service. That would sort them out!'
Or 'All these hooligans and hobbledelhoys ... they ought to bring back National Service. That would sort them out!'
Or even, 'They ought to bring back the birch ...'
I wasn't advocating any such thing myself, you understand just riffing with the idea of mendicant Franciscans skanking off people like a bunch of hippy-dippy layabouts. They should have got on their bikes and gone looking for work ...
We wouldn't have put up with that kind of behaviour in Poona.
We'd have given them a dashed good thrashing.
A few of us here are old enough to remember that sort of talk. There were equivalents in the US and other Anglophone countries of course.
John Wayne telling hippy students that if Washington had them at Valley Forge America would never have won its independence.
That sort of thing.
Franciscans? Get them to do a proper job like everyone else.
I'm not ordained myself, but I'd be interested to know what those who are think of the following idea, which I have experienced in my own work in a totally different sphere.
Clergy are burned out because they trapped between sets of competing, incompatible expectations, and indeed between their own ideas of how things should be and what they can achieve under current conditions.
Their congregations expect more of them because those congregations are becoming needier. They are getting older, and the younger members are often more stressed than they used to be ,and therefore have less surplus resilience than they used to.
The hierarchies of churches are seeing diminishing congregations and panicking. As with unity (which to my mind is a total chimera, and a naked insertion by the early church of their liturgy into the biblical narrative, literally putting words in Jesus's mouth), no (arch)bishop wants to oversee decline any more than they do division, and they enjoin more and more activity of the clergy "within their care". It seems to be more a matter of management than care at the moment, which strikes me as another reason behind the burnout. The world is mostly indifferent or hostile, and their congregations are exhausted, so the law of diminishing returns sets in. Less money then means fewer clergy and less support, further accelerating clergy burnout.
Clergy have their own callings - to pastoral work, to liturgy, to theological enquiry, to a life of prayer - none of which has to do with being a replacement social worker/child/parent to their congregations or assuaging the guilt of those above them in church hierarchies.
None of this seems to me to have a solution until churches - just about all churches - collapse and sink into the ground in their current form. Only when the landscape is cleared and resources released (as they are by the decay of plants into compost) can anything really new arise. Until then, we endure - all of us in our various positions - until we are ourselves part of the decay, in one form or another.
Hmmm ...
I used to be part of a church grouping that believed it was part of a divine initiative to 'restore' the Church to its imagined original pristine purity and power and initiate revivals that would ultimately result in the return of Christ.
It's mostly folded up now.
So I'm not convinced about a kind of Pol Pot slash and burn Year Zero approach or one that says, 'Let it all decay and let's see what re-emerges from the mulch.'
Chances are, it ain't going to look that much different to what we have now.
I'd rather 'strengthen the things that remain', or encourage organic growth and development within that footprint where possible.
Watching the Kirk collapse (a la the famous about going bankrupt: first slowly then all at once) I often find myself contemplating "unless a grain of wheat falls onto the ground it remains but a single grain", but I suspect that may just be me trying to find a crumb of comfort as I scurry around carrying deckchairs. Also on my mind is Gramsci: "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear".
I'm not ordained myself, but I'd be interested to know what those who are think of the following idea, which I have experienced in my own work in a totally different sphere.
Clergy are burned out because they trapped between sets of competing, incompatible expectations, and indeed between their own ideas of how things should be and what they can achieve under current conditions.
Their congregations expect more of them because those congregations are becoming needier. They are getting older, and the younger members are often more stressed than they used to be ,and therefore have less surplus resilience than they used to.
The hierarchies of churches are seeing diminishing congregations and panicking. As with unity (which to my mind is a total chimera, and a naked insertion by the early church of their liturgy into the biblical narrative, literally putting words in Jesus's mouth), no (arch)bishop wants to oversee decline any more than they do division, and they enjoin more and more activity of the clergy "within their care". It seems to be more a matter of management than care at the moment, which strikes me as another reason behind the burnout. The world is mostly indifferent or hostile, and their congregations are exhausted, so the law of diminishing returns sets in. Less money then means fewer clergy and less support, further accelerating clergy burnout.
Clergy have their own callings - to pastoral work, to liturgy, to theological enquiry, to a life of prayer - none of which has to do with being a replacement social worker/child/parent to their congregations or assuaging the guilt of those above them in church hierarchies.
None of this seems to me to have a solution until churches - just about all churches - collapse and sink into the ground in their current form. Only when the landscape is cleared and resources released (as they are by the decay of plants into compost) can anything really new arise. Until then, we endure - all of us in our various positions - until we are ourselves part of the decay, in one form or another.
@Gamma Gamaliel nothing is available to strengthen that which remains. That's the precise nature of the problem. We need to stop pretending that things are available when they just aren't.
@Gamma Gamaliel nothing is available to strengthen that which remains. That's the precise nature of the problem. We need to stop pretending that things are available when they just aren't.
Sometimes, even a very small congregation - elderly, maybe tired, and burdened with a huge money-gobbling barn of a church - can still have the desire to serve the local community, and to provide an ongoing opportunity for the faithful few to worship.
However, it is true that, sometimes, starting again from scratch (without the money-gobbling barn) is the best option.
Oh indeed @Bishops Finger I'm just saying that, if that is what there is, it may not be possible for there to be more than that.
Yes, ISWYM, and agree.
It isn't to be hated. My current congregation is a little more diverse that your description implies, but it absolutely doesn't have the resources to make any other provision, and that has to be OK in order for that congregation to survive. It's that simple.
Oh indeed @Bishops Finger I'm just saying that, if that is what there is, it may not be possible for there to be more than that.
Yes, ISWYM, and agree.
It isn't to be hated. My current congregation is a little more diverse that your description implies, but it absolutely doesn't have the resources to make any other provision, and that has to be OK in order for that congregation to survive. It's that simple.
Much the same applies to Our Place, I think, where the congregation is now much more diverse than it was some years ago, when closure loomed. Resources are still very limited...
Quite what will happen in a year or so, when our active and much-loved FatherInCharge retires, remains to be seen. That may well be the time and opportunity for something of a sea-change, on which I have some thoughts and ideas, but this is perhaps not the place to discus them!
I'm not saying @ThunderBunk that there aren't times when we should start afresh. I s'pose I was saying - from bitter experience of 'start-again from scratch' enthusiasm going wonky, is that where possible it's probably better to start from where we are at.
That's going to vary across the board and according to circumstances.
Yes. There was a time, some years ago, when there were proposals to completely demolish Our Place - church, hall, vicarage, the whole lot - and to start again with a smaller, modern church/hall, releasing land for affordable social housing. A couple of similar schemes in Devon showed how it might have turned out.
The scheme could well have worked, although planning issues may have scuppered it, but we would at least have been better able to serve the parish, and to provide opportunities for worship, without the worry - yet another burden for hard-pressed clergy! - of financing buildings much too large for purpose in today's post-Christian society.
I'm with @Gamma Gamaliel on this. There are some clergy who arrive in a new parish so keen to make everything new that they give the impression they want God to get rid of their existing congregation and replace it with a completely new one, people who catch their vision and are as close as possible to clones of themselves.
It doesn't seem to occur to them that the congregation they have already got is the one that God has given them to care for, work with and in due course to get into heaven.
A lot of the free-lance, house church people seem to have the same view simplified by leaving out altogether any notion that there might be existing faithful in the neighbourhood that they are called to care for.
A lot of the free-lance, house church people seem to have the same view simplified by leaving out altogether any notion that there might be existing faithful in the neighbourhood that they are called to care for.
I don't know, I thought most house churches and other independents were made up of people who'd left other churches.
I don't know, I thought most house churches and other independents were made up of people who'd left other churches.
I get the impression they are, but I also get the impression most claim that they are making all things new and so can reach the places that the boring old churches don't reach.
I don't know, I thought most house churches and other independents were made up of people who'd left other churches.
I get the impression they are, but I also get the impression most claim that they are making all things new and so can reach the places that the boring old churches don't reach.
And that wouldn't be a bad thing if they were genuinely successful at it. If people find their way to Christ through a house church who wouldn't have found it through their parish church then that's positive. We have a house church locally formed after a row among the local Baptists (financial management rather than doctrine, I think, though I've not delved too deeply) and they seem to attract some people who might not be comfortable in a "traditional" church setting, and they quietly provide a lot of help for those in need, buying washing machines, providing gifts and supermarket vouchers for those in need, all under the radar, which they're able to do because they're not funding a building or a minister.
When I was senior warden of my Episcopal parish years ago, I once had a dream about the whole thing burning to the ground -- church, parish hall, classroom buildings, everything leveled to ash. In my dream I asked the interim priest what we were going to do, and she cheerfully replied, "Pitch a tent." When I woke up it didn't feel like a nightmare.
When I was senior warden of my Episcopal parish years ago, I once had a dream about the whole thing burning to the ground -- church, parish hall, classroom buildings, everything leveled to ash. In my dream I asked the interim priest what we were going to do, and she cheerfully replied, "Pitch a tent." When I woke up it didn't feel like a nightmare.
I've ruefully noted on a number of occasions that it's a shame our 120 year old stone edifice is too damp to burn - the £2.4 million it's insured for would go a very long way. A priest in a parish where I used to live said she prayed for a similarly convenient landslide (it being a steep valley with a history of such events).
We've been told that our building has to be "disposed of" in the next 3 years, either by leasing it or selling it. The sale value is miniscule, because it's a huge draughty pile of stone. The only saving grace is that it's not listed. There will be opposition (mostly from people who don't attend regularly) to any proposal that might make the building pay its way as a community building, and even more opposition to selling it on the open market. Our current plan it to tell everyone loud and clear that if they want to keep the building they're going to have to step up and make a viable plan (bearing in mind just the heating is ~10k a year). The flip side of it is that if they can't make it work and reach the same conclusion we have that it's non-viable then no-one can turn around later and say they didn't have a chance.
A rather depressing prospect @Arethosemyfeet - and IIRC you have a new Minister, who will presumably have coping with the building as a major agenda item...
I don't know, I thought most house churches and other independents were made up of people who'd left other churches.
I get the impression they are, but I also get the impression most claim that they are making all things new and so can reach the places that the boring old churches don't reach.
I think that was certainly the case back in the '70s and '80s - with some going further and seeing themselves as having a key role in bringing about the Parousia.
My impression is that generally speaking around 2000 most began to accept they weren't the only game in town and began to work alongside other churches more positively.
That's not to say that there aren't new groups and networks that have emerged since who are effectively replicating what was going on with such groups late last century.
It was certainly the case when I was involved that we picked up people who wouldn't otherwise or ordinarily become involved with church life - as well as people who'd left other churches. It wasn't all transfer growth.
Unless one has been involved in a group like that oneself, it's hard to convey the sense of close fellowship, excitement and purpose that in both confers and conveys. And I'm not knocking that. If I meet anyone from those days I feel a deep sense of connection to them I've hardly felt towards anyone else before or since - other than close friends and family.
I imagine people who have served in the armed forces or worked together in intense conditions or close proximity would feel something similar.
I'm not knocking that, but it does come with side-effects - a sense of claustrophobia and insularity very often.
We've been talking about clerical and ministerial burn-out. Groups like this can suffer from collective burn-out too particularly when over-egged expectations aren't realised or so-called 'prophetic words' remain unfulfilled.
It gets harder to keep going when God apparently keeps changing his mind.
As someone insightfully observed, you have to have a short memory to remain involved for any length of time.
I've often wondered whether it would be possible to combine the kind of grassroots, entrepreneurial energy found in such settings - and they attract many talented people - with the kind of 'ballast' found in many traditional settings.
Many people involved in such groups do end up in more traditional or mainstream churches but others drift because they can't settle for anything else. I won't say 'anything less' because I don't think there is actually 'less' on offer elsewhere, just something different which may not meet their particular expectations.
Whatever the case - and as Ruth's dream may indicate (a 'prophetic dream', glory be!' ?) - with the steady erosion of Christendom I think we are all headed towards greater fluidity and simpler structures.
How this will 'look' will depend on our particular theologies or traditions.
My current vicar is in a situation ripe for burn out. Five ancient rural village churches, grouped into two parishes. Two church schools. Some good lay support, but not enough. Few younger people, and they have lots of commitments outside of church as well.
She is sensible and takes a regular day off and frequent short breaks, including an annual retreat. I think it also helps that she came to ministry after years in career of responsibility, but within fixed hours.
In a clergy role there is, for some, an almost irresistible temptation to try to do everything and not put limits of time on work, sacrificing family life or marriage to do “God’s work”.
Do we see burn-out among other church employees (secretary, janitor, organist) as well?
It can certainly happen, with volunteers as well as paid employees. In fact, it may be that in the UK, at least, it's the volunteers who burn out most...especially when you get clergy who take such people for granted.
Even more if the volunteers are taking on more than one significant role - which is common.
Having just one organist, and no alternative arrangements for church music, is a sure recipe for burnout unless you have a lot of said services.
Our Place is blessed with two organists/pianists, plus another person who fills in from time to time, and until I had to give it up back in 2018, we also had yours truly operating a PC on which all the music in our default hymnbook had been ripped!
Latterly, though, we've been without any churchwardens, but that has now changed with the appointment of two retired but active persons who have both acted as churchwarden in the past - one at Our Place, and the other at Another Place.
Many churches are, however, finding that their *pool* of such people is much diminished, and it may be that the various safeguarding courses - rigorous, but very necessary - also deter otherwise willing folk from even offering to lend a hand. All this adds, alas, to the burden carried by the clergy.
Exactly re. safeguarding. Again I know whereof I speak. The problem is that volunteers are treated like employees which inevitably alienates them. The church needs to find a better solution than drowning everything in bureaucracy. That is in realistic danger of killing everything but the largest and most corporate congregation before anyone makes any conscious decision.
I gave up my PTO (Permission To Officiate) last year, when I found that there were yet more safeguarding hoops to jump through, so to speak, if PTO was to be renewed.
I might have continued with it, were it not for the fact that Our Place is currently in the capable hands of FatherInCharge and an active (and supportive) PCC, but many churches are struggling with over-burdened clergy (if they're lucky enough to have a clergyperson), and ageing volunteers...
I saw burnout in a building maintenance manager - she was a long-time church member who had desperately needed a job, so out of gratitude and commitment she put in a lot of time off the clock when she first started, creating expectations she came to regret.
I learned early on that organists in small congregations are tied more to Sunday Services than the minister. At my first congregation we had an organist who had been playing for many years. She had started when she was a teenager. She was now a grandmother.
We had a teenager taken organ lessons from the organist at another congregation. I had mentioned to the council maybe we could ask this young woman to play at least one Sunday a month. Everyone said don't do it, we would not want to offend the current organist. But I asked the current organist how she felt about it. The current organist thanked me profusely for suggesting adding the young woman. She had been waiting for someone to bring it up for some time.
In other matters.
I had said I would discuss why I burned out after nearly fifteen years of ministry.
There is an old story of two neighboring congregations. One congregation seemed to change ministers every two to three years (I know some denominations do rotate their ministers that often, but Lutheran congregations don't). The other congregation seemed to have ministers that spent their whole career in service there. Finally the council at the first congregation asked the council at the second why the second congregation had such good ministers. The reply was the second congregation just made the ministers good.
My last congregation was like the first one in the story. I was the third pastor to have served there. Shortly after I was installed, I found out the first one left after only three years because of all the infighting in the congregation. The second one left after three years because of a failed stewardship drive. I lasted five years, but they were the most difficult years of my life.
The first two years were fairly good. It seemed the council liked what I was doing. But my salary was below synod guidelines. Finally, the bishop told the council I should be paid at at least guideline level. All of the sudden everything I was doing was wrong.
At the time we had an organist who was not Lutheran so he was trying to understand the role of a pastor in the church polity. I explained the pastor was like a CEO of a small organization. When some of the council heard about that, they went through the roof. They felt they were the boss of me. I pointed out the congregation's constitution said the council was to assist the pastor in carrying out his ministry. Grumble, grumble.
They got picky about the mileage I was submitting. Problem was we were pretty distant from local hospitals. They thought I was spending two much time at hospitals. I explained that could be solved if people stopped getting sick.
They complained about phone expenses. This was at a time when people actually paid for long distant calls. The church covered my landline as part of the package. It was before cell service. We always reimbursed the congregation for personal calls, but it was not relfected in the financial report. I really got chewed out for that.
I more than made up for it, though, by suggesting they point electric timers on the water heaters on both the church and the parsonage which cut the utility bills by more than a third. BTW--they never gave me an allowance in lieu of equity I would have gotten if I had owned the house--this grated my wife quite a bit.
Some people complained about the service going longer than an hour. Okay, it went 70 minutes from time to time, but that was because of special events. I reduced the special events and they complained about that.
Then my boys who were quite young were accused of fondling a young neighborhood girl. To this day they deny ever doing that. But this was really hard on the family.
We were going to have a Thanksgiving Day Service with a special offering going to missions. Some people said they were going to be out of town but wanted to contribute to the special offering. I said all they had to do was send in the offering in a special envelope we provided for the service. The treasurer, though, disallowed it on her own authority. You can imagine the sparks that flew at the next council meeting. Some people resigned from the council and stopped coming to church.
From the beginning, I was told never to talk about money. Well, if a pastor is told not to talk about something, guess what? I tried to do a rather mild stewardship sermon I had used elsewhere and people walked out.
There were a number of John Bircher people in the congregation--they were like the current MAGA people now. To mention any type of social ministry was like a red flag to them.
I once told a fellow minister of my difficulties. He pointed out it was his experience the people in the community had retired at the mid level from the aerospace community. Therefore, many of them were imbittered about not having progressed in their careers, and they tended to take it out on younger people.
It did seem young ministers came and went very quickly in that community.
I was getting little support from the bishop. The bishop resided in San Francisco. As I said, we were a remote congregation in the southern Sierras.
Finally, after five years, I resigned.
The next pastor after me lasted just three years himself. He resigned for health reasons.
Now the congregation is being served by a lay minister from the congregation. They are still functioning but at much less capacity.
I moved on to a mental health position for another fifteen years.
I eventually found a book entitled Generation to Generation: Family Process in the Church and Synagogue by Edwin Friedmann which helped explain what I was going through. In one of the chapters, it had a series of questions a minister should ask before accepting a call to a congregation. These questions are designed to show where the red flags are. Had I known the questions, I likely would not have accepted the call there.
The book is still listed on Amazon and I continue to recommend it to young ministers who are considering a call.
Thank you for sharing all of that, @Gramps49. It sounds painful.
I was on the search committee for our current pastor. The previous pastorate, though it had been good for many years, had ended very, very badly. In fact, we came to recognize that was a pattern over the last three pastorates—many good years with a not-as-good ending, though the last one was by far the worst ending. Our interim pastor worked hard on healing in the congregation and on leading us in some real reflection. (As a result, we didn’t even start the process of looking for a new pastor until a year-and-a-half after the previous pastor left.)
When we started talking with candidates, we felt an obligation to be as open as we could be about the history. We gave candidates the names of references who were familiar with what had gone on so they could get an outsider’s perspective. We attempted to be honest about the congregation’s role in the breakdown, as well as about what we’d learned. And the what-we’d-learned part prompted questions to the candidates about self-care and what they’d need from the us to help them care for themselves and their families. We felt that doing anything less would be unethical and would set us all up for failure.
I’m very sorry you went through what you did, and I’m sorry the support system wasn’t there for you and your family.
Our interim pastor worked hard on healing in the congregation and on leading us in some real reflection. (As a result, we didn’t even start the process of looking for a new pastor until a year-and-a-half after the previous pastor left.)
When we started talking with candidates, we felt an obligation to be as open as we could be about the history. We gave candidates the names of references who were familiar with what had gone on so they could get an outsider’s perspective. We attempted to be honest about the congregation’s role in the breakdown, as well as about what we’d learned. And the what-we’d-learned part prompted questions to the candidates about self-care and what they’d need from the us to help them care for themselves and their families. We felt that doing anything less would be unethical and would set us all up for failure.
This is a credit to your congregation. It's unfortunate when a congregation views an interim pastor as a temporary inconvenience, imposed by an external authority, and refuse to do serious reflection... merely biding their time before the "real" pastor arrives. (At which point they unload their grief and baggage on that clergy.) I hope the reflection process created self-awareness in the congregation and some mechanisms to avoid future breakdowns.
Our interim pastor worked hard on healing in the congregation and on leading us in some real reflection. (As a result, we didn’t even start the process of looking for a new pastor until a year-and-a-half after the previous pastor left.)
When we started talking with candidates, we felt an obligation to be as open as we could be about the history. We gave candidates the names of references who were familiar with what had gone on so they could get an outsider’s perspective. We attempted to be honest about the congregation’s role in the breakdown, as well as about what we’d learned. And the what-we’d-learned part prompted questions to the candidates about self-care and what they’d need from the us to help them care for themselves and their families. We felt that doing anything less would be unethical and would set us all up for failure.
I hope the reflection process created self-awareness in the congregation and some mechanisms to avoid future breakdowns.
It did.
I could add an aspect that may have some relevance in the bigger picture of the thread. Part of what we were dealing with at the end of that last pastorate was a pastor who had some very real issues. The Session (read church council) had tried numerous ways of getting help and/or support for him, but he constantly fought back against any suggestion that there was a problem, other than that some people were out to get him. And that just led to other problems, including staff resigning because they couldn’t work with that pastor, until it reached the point where a continued relationship was untenable; presbytery had to step in and say it was time to end the relationship.
I’m not going to say the congregation bore no responsibility. There were things we could and should have done differently, and we have (I hope) learned how to do better. But a large part of the problem was a minister who needed help, and who we could see needed help, but who refused to acknowledge he needed it.
I wonder to what extent our systems encourage an expectation among at least some clergy themselves that clergy shouldn’t need help and support.
... or an inability for them to access that help and support, particularly without putting their livelihood in danger. It isn't helpful when your church hierarchy is set up in such a way that a pastor in difficulties is obliged to apply to the same people who supervise him in order to get help on a sensitive issue.
Comments
I don't understand.
There are different forms of work, and in all kinds of professions some people work hard and some don't.
Some priests might just deliver the necessary services. Most will be very active in pastoral work and community roles, and some also take on additional work - like leading retreats.
In addition (at least in the CofE and other UK denominations) many priests and ministers are self-supporting - they work full-time somewhere else (or use their pension) to support their ministry.
In Bruges a few years back my late wife and I visited the Beguinage and were struck by how much 'agency' the Beguines had in late medieval Flanders.
They could kick ass when it came to rejecting unwanted suitors or even lobbying civil authorities.
But we are still getting into the 'work pattern' thread territory - interesting though these things are to discuss in relation to church ministry and clerical/ministerial burn-out.
@chrisstiles - quite agree. It's one of the reasons I started the thread about work practices and patterns more generally.
First, you divide your whole week into four-hour blocks, that is 24 x 7 = 168/4= 42 blocks. 10 of those blocks devote to work. The rest of the blocks are yours.
However, if you end up working in one of your private blocks--say you were called to the hospital at night for an emergency---you take compensatory time off from your scheduled working blocks.
Learning that little trick helped me stay with it for at least another year.
There was more to my burnout. I will address that later.
Clergy are burned out because they trapped between sets of competing, incompatible expectations, and indeed between their own ideas of how things should be and what they can achieve under current conditions.
Their congregations expect more of them because those congregations are becoming needier. They are getting older, and the younger members are often more stressed than they used to be ,and therefore have less surplus resilience than they used to.
The hierarchies of churches are seeing diminishing congregations and panicking. As with unity (which to my mind is a total chimera, and a naked insertion by the early church of their liturgy into the biblical narrative, literally putting words in Jesus's mouth), no (arch)bishop wants to oversee decline any more than they do division, and they enjoin more and more activity of the clergy "within their care". It seems to be more a matter of management than care at the moment, which strikes me as another reason behind the burnout. The world is mostly indifferent or hostile, and their congregations are exhausted, so the law of diminishing returns sets in. Less money then means fewer clergy and less support, further accelerating clergy burnout.
Clergy have their own callings - to pastoral work, to liturgy, to theological enquiry, to a life of prayer - none of which has to do with being a replacement social worker/child/parent to their congregations or assuaging the guilt of those above them in church hierarchies.
None of this seems to me to have a solution until churches - just about all churches - collapse and sink into the ground in their current form. Only when the landscape is cleared and resources released (as they are by the decay of plants into compost) can anything really new arise. Until then, we endure - all of us in our various positions - until we are ourselves part of the decay, in one form or another.
Would a putative present day national service necessarily exclude women? Israel calls up both men and women, for example.
With respect the majority of the people I've heard advocating for national service in the UK have been firmly in category 2, with category 3 restricted to a few columnists working in places like the Telegraph/Spectator.
Yes, but that's not the goal of reintroducing national service. Its aim is to beat young people into submission and turn them into people who'll habitually lick the boot that kicks them in the workplace and at the ballot box. Plus the idea helps the gammonatti get it up.
It was the sort of thing some of the older teachers used to chunter when I were a lad.
'All these hippies and dippies ... they ought to bring back National Service. That would sort them out!'
Or 'All these hooligans and hobbledelhoys ... they ought to bring back National Service. That would sort them out!'
Or even, 'They ought to bring back the birch ...'
I wasn't advocating any such thing myself, you understand just riffing with the idea of mendicant Franciscans skanking off people like a bunch of hippy-dippy layabouts. They should have got on their bikes and gone looking for work ...
We wouldn't have put up with that kind of behaviour in Poona.
We'd have given them a dashed good thrashing.
A few of us here are old enough to remember that sort of talk. There were equivalents in the US and other Anglophone countries of course.
John Wayne telling hippy students that if Washington had them at Valley Forge America would never have won its independence.
That sort of thing.
Franciscans? Get them to do a proper job like everyone else.
Hmmm ...
I used to be part of a church grouping that believed it was part of a divine initiative to 'restore' the Church to its imagined original pristine purity and power and initiate revivals that would ultimately result in the return of Christ.
It's mostly folded up now.
So I'm not convinced about a kind of Pol Pot slash and burn Year Zero approach or one that says, 'Let it all decay and let's see what re-emerges from the mulch.'
Chances are, it ain't going to look that much different to what we have now.
I'd rather 'strengthen the things that remain', or encourage organic growth and development within that footprint where possible.
But what do I know?
All this sounds about right, to me at any rate.
Sometimes, even a very small congregation - elderly, maybe tired, and burdened with a huge money-gobbling barn of a church - can still have the desire to serve the local community, and to provide an ongoing opportunity for the faithful few to worship.
However, it is true that, sometimes, starting again from scratch (without the money-gobbling barn) is the best option.
Yes, ISWYM, and agree.
It isn't to be hated. My current congregation is a little more diverse that your description implies, but it absolutely doesn't have the resources to make any other provision, and that has to be OK in order for that congregation to survive. It's that simple.
Much the same applies to Our Place, I think, where the congregation is now much more diverse than it was some years ago, when closure loomed. Resources are still very limited...
Quite what will happen in a year or so, when our active and much-loved FatherInCharge retires, remains to be seen. That may well be the time and opportunity for something of a sea-change, on which I have some thoughts and ideas, but this is perhaps not the place to discus them!
That's going to vary across the board and according to circumstances.
The scheme could well have worked, although planning issues may have scuppered it, but we would at least have been better able to serve the parish, and to provide opportunities for worship, without the worry - yet another burden for hard-pressed clergy! - of financing buildings much too large for purpose in today's post-Christian society.
It doesn't seem to occur to them that the congregation they have already got is the one that God has given them to care for, work with and in due course to get into heaven.
A lot of the free-lance, house church people seem to have the same view simplified by leaving out altogether any notion that there might be existing faithful in the neighbourhood that they are called to care for.
I don't know, I thought most house churches and other independents were made up of people who'd left other churches.
And that wouldn't be a bad thing if they were genuinely successful at it. If people find their way to Christ through a house church who wouldn't have found it through their parish church then that's positive. We have a house church locally formed after a row among the local Baptists (financial management rather than doctrine, I think, though I've not delved too deeply) and they seem to attract some people who might not be comfortable in a "traditional" church setting, and they quietly provide a lot of help for those in need, buying washing machines, providing gifts and supermarket vouchers for those in need, all under the radar, which they're able to do because they're not funding a building or a minister.
I've ruefully noted on a number of occasions that it's a shame our 120 year old stone edifice is too damp to burn - the £2.4 million it's insured for would go a very long way. A priest in a parish where I used to live said she prayed for a similarly convenient landslide (it being a steep valley with a history of such events).
We've been told that our building has to be "disposed of" in the next 3 years, either by leasing it or selling it. The sale value is miniscule, because it's a huge draughty pile of stone. The only saving grace is that it's not listed. There will be opposition (mostly from people who don't attend regularly) to any proposal that might make the building pay its way as a community building, and even more opposition to selling it on the open market. Our current plan it to tell everyone loud and clear that if they want to keep the building they're going to have to step up and make a viable plan (bearing in mind just the heating is ~10k a year). The flip side of it is that if they can't make it work and reach the same conclusion we have that it's non-viable then no-one can turn around later and say they didn't have a chance.
I think that was certainly the case back in the '70s and '80s - with some going further and seeing themselves as having a key role in bringing about the Parousia.
My impression is that generally speaking around 2000 most began to accept they weren't the only game in town and began to work alongside other churches more positively.
That's not to say that there aren't new groups and networks that have emerged since who are effectively replicating what was going on with such groups late last century.
It was certainly the case when I was involved that we picked up people who wouldn't otherwise or ordinarily become involved with church life - as well as people who'd left other churches. It wasn't all transfer growth.
Unless one has been involved in a group like that oneself, it's hard to convey the sense of close fellowship, excitement and purpose that in both confers and conveys. And I'm not knocking that. If I meet anyone from those days I feel a deep sense of connection to them I've hardly felt towards anyone else before or since - other than close friends and family.
I imagine people who have served in the armed forces or worked together in intense conditions or close proximity would feel something similar.
I'm not knocking that, but it does come with side-effects - a sense of claustrophobia and insularity very often.
We've been talking about clerical and ministerial burn-out. Groups like this can suffer from collective burn-out too particularly when over-egged expectations aren't realised or so-called 'prophetic words' remain unfulfilled.
It gets harder to keep going when God apparently keeps changing his mind.
As someone insightfully observed, you have to have a short memory to remain involved for any length of time.
I've often wondered whether it would be possible to combine the kind of grassroots, entrepreneurial energy found in such settings - and they attract many talented people - with the kind of 'ballast' found in many traditional settings.
Many people involved in such groups do end up in more traditional or mainstream churches but others drift because they can't settle for anything else. I won't say 'anything less' because I don't think there is actually 'less' on offer elsewhere, just something different which may not meet their particular expectations.
Whatever the case - and as Ruth's dream may indicate (a 'prophetic dream', glory be!' ?) - with the steady erosion of Christendom I think we are all headed towards greater fluidity and simpler structures.
How this will 'look' will depend on our particular theologies or traditions.
She is sensible and takes a regular day off and frequent short breaks, including an annual retreat. I think it also helps that she came to ministry after years in career of responsibility, but within fixed hours.
In a clergy role there is, for some, an almost irresistible temptation to try to do everything and not put limits of time on work, sacrificing family life or marriage to do “God’s work”.
It can certainly happen, with volunteers as well as paid employees. In fact, it may be that in the UK, at least, it's the volunteers who burn out most...especially when you get clergy who take such people for granted.
I know whereof I speak.
Having just one organist, and no alternative arrangements for church music, is a sure recipe for burnout unless you have a lot of said services.
Our Place is blessed with two organists/pianists, plus another person who fills in from time to time, and until I had to give it up back in 2018, we also had yours truly operating a PC on which all the music in our default hymnbook had been ripped!
Latterly, though, we've been without any churchwardens, but that has now changed with the appointment of two retired but active persons who have both acted as churchwarden in the past - one at Our Place, and the other at Another Place.
Many churches are, however, finding that their *pool* of such people is much diminished, and it may be that the various safeguarding courses - rigorous, but very necessary - also deter otherwise willing folk from even offering to lend a hand. All this adds, alas, to the burden carried by the clergy.
I might have continued with it, were it not for the fact that Our Place is currently in the capable hands of FatherInCharge and an active (and supportive) PCC, but many churches are struggling with over-burdened clergy (if they're lucky enough to have a clergyperson), and ageing volunteers...
We had a teenager taken organ lessons from the organist at another congregation. I had mentioned to the council maybe we could ask this young woman to play at least one Sunday a month. Everyone said don't do it, we would not want to offend the current organist. But I asked the current organist how she felt about it. The current organist thanked me profusely for suggesting adding the young woman. She had been waiting for someone to bring it up for some time.
In other matters.
I had said I would discuss why I burned out after nearly fifteen years of ministry.
There is an old story of two neighboring congregations. One congregation seemed to change ministers every two to three years (I know some denominations do rotate their ministers that often, but Lutheran congregations don't). The other congregation seemed to have ministers that spent their whole career in service there. Finally the council at the first congregation asked the council at the second why the second congregation had such good ministers. The reply was the second congregation just made the ministers good.
My last congregation was like the first one in the story. I was the third pastor to have served there. Shortly after I was installed, I found out the first one left after only three years because of all the infighting in the congregation. The second one left after three years because of a failed stewardship drive. I lasted five years, but they were the most difficult years of my life.
The first two years were fairly good. It seemed the council liked what I was doing. But my salary was below synod guidelines. Finally, the bishop told the council I should be paid at at least guideline level. All of the sudden everything I was doing was wrong.
At the time we had an organist who was not Lutheran so he was trying to understand the role of a pastor in the church polity. I explained the pastor was like a CEO of a small organization. When some of the council heard about that, they went through the roof. They felt they were the boss of me. I pointed out the congregation's constitution said the council was to assist the pastor in carrying out his ministry. Grumble, grumble.
They got picky about the mileage I was submitting. Problem was we were pretty distant from local hospitals. They thought I was spending two much time at hospitals. I explained that could be solved if people stopped getting sick.
They complained about phone expenses. This was at a time when people actually paid for long distant calls. The church covered my landline as part of the package. It was before cell service. We always reimbursed the congregation for personal calls, but it was not relfected in the financial report. I really got chewed out for that.
I more than made up for it, though, by suggesting they point electric timers on the water heaters on both the church and the parsonage which cut the utility bills by more than a third. BTW--they never gave me an allowance in lieu of equity I would have gotten if I had owned the house--this grated my wife quite a bit.
Some people complained about the service going longer than an hour. Okay, it went 70 minutes from time to time, but that was because of special events. I reduced the special events and they complained about that.
Then my boys who were quite young were accused of fondling a young neighborhood girl. To this day they deny ever doing that. But this was really hard on the family.
We were going to have a Thanksgiving Day Service with a special offering going to missions. Some people said they were going to be out of town but wanted to contribute to the special offering. I said all they had to do was send in the offering in a special envelope we provided for the service. The treasurer, though, disallowed it on her own authority. You can imagine the sparks that flew at the next council meeting. Some people resigned from the council and stopped coming to church.
From the beginning, I was told never to talk about money. Well, if a pastor is told not to talk about something, guess what? I tried to do a rather mild stewardship sermon I had used elsewhere and people walked out.
There were a number of John Bircher people in the congregation--they were like the current MAGA people now. To mention any type of social ministry was like a red flag to them.
I once told a fellow minister of my difficulties. He pointed out it was his experience the people in the community had retired at the mid level from the aerospace community. Therefore, many of them were imbittered about not having progressed in their careers, and they tended to take it out on younger people.
It did seem young ministers came and went very quickly in that community.
I was getting little support from the bishop. The bishop resided in San Francisco. As I said, we were a remote congregation in the southern Sierras.
Finally, after five years, I resigned.
The next pastor after me lasted just three years himself. He resigned for health reasons.
Now the congregation is being served by a lay minister from the congregation. They are still functioning but at much less capacity.
I moved on to a mental health position for another fifteen years.
I eventually found a book entitled Generation to Generation: Family Process in the Church and Synagogue by Edwin Friedmann which helped explain what I was going through. In one of the chapters, it had a series of questions a minister should ask before accepting a call to a congregation. These questions are designed to show where the red flags are. Had I known the questions, I likely would not have accepted the call there.
The book is still listed on Amazon and I continue to recommend it to young ministers who are considering a call.
I was on the search committee for our current pastor. The previous pastorate, though it had been good for many years, had ended very, very badly. In fact, we came to recognize that was a pattern over the last three pastorates—many good years with a not-as-good ending, though the last one was by far the worst ending. Our interim pastor worked hard on healing in the congregation and on leading us in some real reflection. (As a result, we didn’t even start the process of looking for a new pastor until a year-and-a-half after the previous pastor left.)
When we started talking with candidates, we felt an obligation to be as open as we could be about the history. We gave candidates the names of references who were familiar with what had gone on so they could get an outsider’s perspective. We attempted to be honest about the congregation’s role in the breakdown, as well as about what we’d learned. And the what-we’d-learned part prompted questions to the candidates about self-care and what they’d need from the us to help them care for themselves and their families. We felt that doing anything less would be unethical and would set us all up for failure.
I’m very sorry you went through what you did, and I’m sorry the support system wasn’t there for you and your family.
This is a credit to your congregation. It's unfortunate when a congregation views an interim pastor as a temporary inconvenience, imposed by an external authority, and refuse to do serious reflection... merely biding their time before the "real" pastor arrives. (At which point they unload their grief and baggage on that clergy.) I hope the reflection process created self-awareness in the congregation and some mechanisms to avoid future breakdowns.
I hope it didn't leave lasting scars.
I could add an aspect that may have some relevance in the bigger picture of the thread. Part of what we were dealing with at the end of that last pastorate was a pastor who had some very real issues. The Session (read church council) had tried numerous ways of getting help and/or support for him, but he constantly fought back against any suggestion that there was a problem, other than that some people were out to get him. And that just led to other problems, including staff resigning because they couldn’t work with that pastor, until it reached the point where a continued relationship was untenable; presbytery had to step in and say it was time to end the relationship.
I’m not going to say the congregation bore no responsibility. There were things we could and should have done differently, and we have (I hope) learned how to do better. But a large part of the problem was a minister who needed help, and who we could see needed help, but who refused to acknowledge he needed it.
I wonder to what extent our systems encourage an expectation among at least some clergy themselves that clergy shouldn’t need help and support.