By G. JEFFREY MacDONALD, Published: August 7, 2010, Swampscott, Mass.
THE American clergy is suffering from burnout, several new studies show. And part of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that pastors work too much. Many of them need vacations, it’s true. But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.
The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing than listening to the local people.
As a result, pastors are constantly forced to choose, as they work through congregants’ daily wish lists in their e-mail and voice mail, between paths of personal integrity and those that portend greater job security. As religion becomes a consumer experience, the clergy become more unhappy and unhealthy.
The trend toward consumer-driven religion has been gaining momentum for half a century. Consider that in 1955 only 15 percent of Americans said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood, according to a Gallup poll. By 2008, 44 percent had switched their religious affiliation at least once, or dropped it altogether, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found. Americans now sample, dabble and move on when a religious leader fails to satisfy for any reason.
In this transformation, clergy have seen their job descriptions rewritten. They’re no longer expected to offer moral counsel in pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay dearly. A few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Ariz., when their respective preachers refused to bless the congregations’ preferred political agendas and consumerist lifestyles.
I have faced similar pressures myself. In the early 2000s, the advisory committee of my small congregation in Massachusetts told me to keep my sermons to 10 minutes, tell funny stories and leave people feeling great about themselves. The unspoken message in such instructions is clear: give us the comforting, amusing fare we want or we’ll get our spiritual leadership from someone else.
Congregations that make such demands seem not to realize that most clergy don’t sign up to be soothsayers or entertainers. Pastors believe they’re called to shape lives for the better, and that involves helping people learn to do what’s right in life, even when what’s right is also difficult. When they’re being true to their calling, pastors urge Christians to do the hard work of reconciliation with one another before receiving communion. They lead people to share in the suffering of others, including people they would rather ignore, by experiencing tough circumstances — say, in a shelter, a prison or a nursing home — and seeking relief together with those in need. At their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed.
Ministry is a profession in which the greatest rewards include meaningfulness and integrity. When those fade under pressure from churchgoers who don’t want to be challenged or edified, pastors become candidates for stress and depression.
Clergy need parishioners who understand that the church exists, as it always has, to save souls by elevating people’s values and desires. They need churchgoers to ask for personal challenges, in areas like daily devotions and outreach ministries.
When such an ethic takes root, as it has in generations past, then pastors will cease to feel like the spiritual equivalents of concierges. They’ll again know joy in ministering among people who share their sense of purpose. They might even be on fire again for their calling, rather than on a path to premature burnout.
G. Jeffrey MacDonald, a minister in the United Church of Christ, is the author of “Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul.”
[A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 8, 2010, on page WK9 of the New York edition.]Email Subscription:
My, how the devil and all of his evil henchmen, disguised as people we know and people we call or called friends, are busily, pervasively, and insidiously working in our churches attempting to overthrow and undermined God by blinding congregations to the urgency of and the necessity for their spiritual enlightenment, instruction, and growth.
Blinded and deaf, congregations fail to recognize that telling God what they do and don’t want in a sermon and/or a church service is attempting to control God — the God “Who called Creation into being in seven days,” the God “Who made the heavens and the earth,” the God “Who not only parted the Red Sea but caused it to crash in on the mighty and thought-to-be-invincible Egyptian warriors, sparing not one, not even one horse and/or one chariot.” How dare we, mere mortals, presume to be bigger than God, to be mightier than God, to control God!
God is God; read the Old Testment, especially the first five books, and see how God demands, expects, and commands the Israelites to worship Him. Read the Old Testament to learn how when God told Uzzah not to touch — just touch — the Arc of the Covenant, and he did, he fell dead immediately at its base.
God is God, not we humans; and the more we tell Him what we want and what we will and won’t do, the more we increase our chances of SPENDING OUR ETERNITY IN HELL in eternal isolation from this God Who loves us unconditionally and this God Who chooses to share His endless grace with we mere mortals when we, unequivocally, have done nothing — nothing — to deserve it!
And how dare we, in the heighth of self-centeredness and self-righteousness, enable the devil and his evil henchmen to be successful in either altering or ignoring God’s unalterable Truth by not only demanding that “pastors give us the comforting and amusing fare we want, or we’ll get our spiritual leadership from someone else” but also by presuming to compromise, impugn, and question the integrity and spiritual epicenter of our pastors, causing them to “become candidates for stress and depression.”
…oh, woe betide such self-centered and self-righteous hypocrites!
…consider…God’s warnings in both the Old and New Testaments…it’s not “comforting and amusing fare”; irts really quite unnerving, if you think about it…but it is the Truth, God’s Truth, that you will hear on Sunday mornings and that you will learn in Bible study classes, if…and when…pastors are hindered and are allowed and encouraged “to help people grow spiritually.”
“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.” [Isaiah 5:21]
…and…
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” [Matthew 23:13]
Waiting for Heaven to Open — CONNECTION! (Devotions for Every Day Life)
Posted: 01 Feb 2012 11:00 PM PST
“The Word of God is the one indispensable tool for waiting on God. If we are to meditate on God’s character and works, we must have a clear understanding of Who He is and what He has done. If our view of God is incorrect, then we will have weak and perverted prayer lives. A thorough study of history shows that the church becomes ineffective when she forsakes Scripture. Scripture is a testimony of Jesus. Therefore, it is necessary to spend time daily in the Word.
“Andrew Murray stated, ‘Little of the Word with little prayer is death to the spiritual life. Much of the Word with little prayer gives a sickly life. Much prayer with little of the Word gives more life, but without steadfastness. A full measure of the Word and prayer each day gives a healthy and powerful life.’
“We need to come into the presence of God with a Bible in our hands and praise in our hearts. As we wait quietly before the Lord, heaven will open. Prayer has the ability to deeply touch the soul of man. It is as timeless as eternity. Prayer reaches back into history and moves the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into the present. It leaves its impact on future generations. It transforms tragedy into triumph. Prayer has the Word of God as its only limitation.”