A Christian Leader Opens His Heart and Sets an Example for Us
With thanks to Mark D. Roberts for this post, I want to pass along my appreciation and share my respect for John Piper for his openness and humility about what triggered his eight-month sabbatical and offer a few additional thoughts.
I once was part of a leadership group with renowned CEO Max DePree. Someone made the comment about how hard we pastors work and someone else chimed in that pastors work harder than anyone. Max wisely and calmly chided us, saying that from his experience pastors don't work harder than any other executive or mid-level manager in most companies he knows. I wholeheartedly agree. I don't travel nearly as much as most of the men my age in my congregation. And while I work hard, I also get lots of support to balance family and personal time with work time. (I am even taking a few days off this week to recuperate from Holy Week.)
However there are two ways, that both collude very negatively and demonstrate how pastoral work is at least a bit more COMPLICATED than other professions. And it is that complexity that is potentially very dangerous to souls, relationships and, yes, ministries of pastors and other Christian leaders.
- We work in what Ed Friedman calls "an emotional field". That is that our work, by it's very nature, is work that demands that we constantly negotiate and monitor our own emotional issues while at the same time navigating the emotions and anxieties of other people and the church system. We not only preach, teach, lead, administrate, counsel and consult, we do it while also attending to the emotional health of the church system, tending to (mostly unspoken) projections and expectations of a community that is by nature filled with confusing boundaries. The church is a "family" and a "business" at the same time. People want us to be both "professional" and "personal". We get criticized for not knowing everything there is to know about the mystery of God and not knowing every person's name in our congregation when we run into them at the grocery store. Our congregation is both our "customer" and our "client" and our "partners" and our "bosses" all at the same time. Again, we don't work harder. It's just really complex and emotionally really demanding.
- Ministers are very prone to confuse our "self" with our "roles". In our "roles" we are admitted into the holy ground of people's personal lives and literally into every setting in the church life. (And in the church itself: I have a coveted "#1 key" that can open every door in our church. An apt symbol for the role of a pastor.) We are often asked to pray at OTHER people's family gatherings, we get
welcomed into hospital rooms that even family members can't go in.
People trust us with family secrets. I can walk into any meeting, any classroom, any conversation on the patio at our church and they will literally stop what they are doing to welcome me and listen to whatever I want to say. But that is because I am the "PASTOR". ("Tod" can't do any of that. Because when I try that at home, my 13 year old daughter says, "Daddy, you're interrupting!" ) And the respect and affirmation we get as pastors is heady stuff and often in great contrast to the "normal" lives we live outside the pulpit and away from the congregation. As a pastor, when I preach a sermon, people literally tell me they "LOVE
me." And I think, at that moment, they really mean it. When God works
in people's lives, they genuinely feel something of love toward the
messenger. And since most of us who go into ministry do so as "wounded healers" who are working out their own brokenness, it is really tempting for ministers to work out their personal foibles in
the church setting and neglect their emotional, relational and spiritual lives. It is very tempting to believe that because others are being saved, sanctified and comforted through you, that you MUST really be as secure, holy and solid as WISH you were. Most Christian leaders problems come from confusing the "role" that God gives us and equips us to play with the "self" that is always in need of grace, community, and truth to be whole.
We pastors must indeed bring our real "self" to our roles, but we must keep clear that we are NOT our roles. We are children of God in need of discipline by our heavenly father, we are spouses and parents and siblings and friends. We are saints in need of sanctification and sinners in need of forgiveness. We may pray eloquently and preach passionately, but we also snore and swear and have hurt feelings and very humble foibles and fears. If we only play the role all the time, not only do our families and relationships suffer, our souls will die, too.
In the famous story, Narcissus is cursed for being cruel to another. The curse is that he will fall hopelessly and helplessly in love with the next face he sees. He sees his own face in a reflection in a lake and then can't take his eyes off of his own reflection, so he sits by the lake pining in sadness until he dies. We tend to think of narcissists as ego-maniacs who "love themselves". But as the best psychology will tell us, narcissism is a wound that comes from not getting enough love and care for our "real" selves. We narcissists (and pastors are in the same category with actors, politicians and business executives here) are those who have learned to get affirmation for our "image" that we can't seem to get for our "selves." We must never forget that in the myth, Narcissus, dies of starvation. He can't pull away from attending to the image in the lake to feed his genuinely hungry self.
Four years ago, my congregation gave me a three month sabbatical. The Lily Foundation offered me a most generous grant and I had told them, "I am not burned out or discouraged, at all, but I want to avoid being so. I want to spend some time away from my congregation thinking and learning about what it takes to be both 'healthy' and 'faithful.'" I was so pleased that both the Foundation and my congregation saw fit to give me the time away. I was thrilled that I didn't need to have a crisis to have a reason to attend to my "self" away from my "role" for a time.
I offer my congratulations, kudos, respect and appreciation for John Piper and his congregation. Hopefully more pastors and congregations will do the same.
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