Recently I wrote my one thousandth missionary-candidate evaluation for the Lutheran Church in America. The majority of the candidates were clergy and spouses. Based on the psychiatric and psychological evaluations I prepared, I am able to say the large majority of these clergy are well-adjusted, happy individuals who find satisfaction in their profession and have a positive outlook on life.
So much for the good news. The bad news is that not everything is copacetic in the ranks of what the Wall Street Journal calls “the Balm Squad.” If I were to generalize on the basis of the pastors and priests I counsel, I’d be tempted to say most or all clergy experience professional dissatisfaction or have emotional problems. But that, fortunately, isn’t so.
A little over a decade ago, Herbert Freudenberger coined the term burnout to describe a condition that occurs in members of the helping professions, including the clergy. In simplest terms, burnout was thought to occur when a professional works too hard for too long in a pressured environment. The burnout victim is drained on all levels-physical, emotional, attitudinal, and spiritual. The condition knows no age limits. It can strike a struggling young intern or vicar as easily as the veteran pastor.
Cary Cherniss in his book, Staff Burnout, describes three stages in the burnout process:
1. The honeymoon stage, in which enthusiasm, commitment, and job satisfaction eventually give way; energy reserves begin to drain off.
2. The “fuel shortage” stage, characterized by exhaustion, detachment, physical illness, anger, sleep disturbances, depression, possible escapist drinking or irresponsible behavior.
3, Then crisis-pessimism, self-doubt, apathy, obsession with one’s own problems, disillusionment with one’s career.
Job stress, however, does not invariably lead to burnout. Working in a slaughterhouse removing hair and fat from hog carcasses is as physically draining and mentally numbing a job as one can find, as I personally can attest. Yet one worker I knew took pride and pleasure in his ability to clean a hog carcass in forty-five seconds.
Burnout as a concept has its limitations. It is like a declaration of bankruptcy-necessary at times, but not always responsible. It may be, as Freudenberger suggests, “a demon born of the society and times we live in,” but it may also be a sign we are trying harder, though not always successfully, to meet the needs of the people to whom we minister.
But why do some pastors and lay professional leaders seem to thrive in stressful situations, find satisfaction in their work, and weather the ups and downs of personal and professional life with equanimity, while ones in the next parish burn out? There must be other factors-within each individual-that account for the difference. These factors include the attitudes, wisdom, and faith the individual uses to handle the stresses in his or her ministry.
Three candidates for burnout
Burnout candidates are often, but not always, Type A personalities: hard workers who set high goals for themselves but suffer from “hurry disease.” A Type A person, for example, honks the horn when the car ahead doesn’t move when the light turns green, interrupts the speech of others or finishes sentences others have started, makes a fetish of being on time, has the sermon for the next Sunday done on the preceding Monday, places great emphasis on making the budget and increasing the membership, plays nearly every game to win, some times even when playing with children.
Let me give an example. A fine pastor who had been in a New York parish for fourteen years came to the office with a number of physical complaints: shortness of breath, panic reactions, feelings of faintness, diarrhea. A physician he consulted could find nothing wrong. The family doctor thought his problems might stem from some emotional base.
When we first talked together, there seemed nothing to support the doctor’s hypothesis. The pastor got along well with his wife, had lovely children, and served a congregation that was going well. He was conscientious, capable, and concerned. When we began to review his daily activities, however, he listed a schedule a yard long: an active parish, Rotary, several synodical committees, part-time VA chaplaincy, community preservation committee, many outside speaking engagements, plus an active counseling program.
As he finished listing these, he put his hand to his forehead and complained of a headache and not feeling well.
I asked, “Do you think there may be a relationship between what you’ve just been describing and the headaches?” He hadn’t really thought of it.
“Do you think you might be overloading yourself?” Not really, there was so much that needed to be done, and this was his calling.
I commented that he seemed very busy looking after the needs of others, but who took care of him? His wife, for the most part, but then she had a fulltime job looking after the kids, running the house, and being involved herself in the parish and community. Did he have a hard time saying no? That he admitted.
I am happy to report it didn’t take too long for him to see the tail was wagging the dog, that his life had gotten out of control. He didn’t have enough sense to cut back, so his body had cried out in protest and forced him to slow down. I am not suggesting that hard work hurts a pastor or anyone else. What causes problems is allowing work to become a compulsion.
A second type of burnout-prone person is the one who bases personal worth on the results obtained in ministry. She plays the numbers game and is exhilarated by the throngs on Easter and depressed by the drop-off on Low Sunday. He feels good about himself if the budget is raised and bad if the goals are not met. Now it’s normal to feel good if things go well and disappointed if hard times fall on the parish, but it is extremely risky to feel good about yourself if the numbers are up and bad about yourself if the numbers go down. We need to remember that God has not called pastors to be promoters; he has called them to be witnesses. The increase is God’s responsibility.
A pastor in the office not long ago told me he was feeling miserable about himself. “How come?” He felt the sermon the Sunday before had bombed. “What happened?” The time he had set aside for preparation had been usurped by a crisis-a member’s husband had committed suicide, requiring the pastor to spend the day with her and the children. He knew this was the right thing to do, but felt torn. I reminded him that any professional had to set priorities, and the needs of the traumatized family were of top order even if the sermon suffered. His error was in feeling guilty and letting the lukewarm response to the sermon affect his self-esteem.
Alvin Rogness points out that faith allows us freedom from the judgments of others. We are judged by God in Jesus Christ and found righteous. Such faith is a powerful antidote to burnout.
A third candidate for burnout is the twenty-four-hour-a-day pastor. This personality can be found in every profession.
In the doctors’ dining room at the hospital there are usually two clusters of physicians. On one side of the room are the full-time diagnosticians. Even during lunch hour, they discuss the morning’s surgery or the probable significance of the laboratory findings for the baffling medical problem on their floor. They talk with intensity, their brows furrowed, often leaving food on their plates. They seldom have dessert.
On the opposite side of the room, their colleagues are discussing the New York Knickerbockers or telling about a play or movie they have seen. They laugh a lot, scrape their plates clean, and are more prone to indulge in goodies. I prefer to eat lunch with them. Their medical skills are every bit as good as those of the first group, but they have learned the art of compartmentalizing. They are not physicians twenty-four hours a day. They don’t wear their stethoscopes in bed. Their lives are in balance.
Some clergy overidentify with their profession. A number of years ago, a pastor’s wife said she admired her husband’s dedication but protested the endless amount of time he spent in parish duties. She felt neglected; they seldom went out, and she was being left to rear the children virtually alone. I don’t know what happened to this couple, but I suspect that unless the husband got his life in balance, his round-the-clock involvement in his parish eventually led to fuel exhaustion and put his engine and marriage in real trouble.
Stress or distress?
I have described these cases of burnout in some detail for a reason: If we have a problem, we need to know it; if we are doing things correctly, it is good to know that, too. Many authorities claim stress is the reason for burnout. I do not believe that. Most work-in the church and elsewhere-is done by people under stress. Stress is not the issue. The problem is rather distress. Distress is the product of frustration and repeated disappointment. In order that the clerical collar not become the hangman’s noose, we must address the conditions that produce distress in the ministry.
Distress can result from a wrong chemistry between pastor and congregation. There are many examples of fine congregations and fine pastors who just don’t work well together. If this is the cause of the distress, then the solution may be another call for the pastor.
Sometimes the source of distress may be bad internal chemistry: unrealistic expectations, poor stewardship of one’s resources, relating one’s worth to results in the congregation, and the like. If we can identify the correct causes of distress, the first step in preventing or correcting burnout has been taken.
To avoid the distress that leads to burnout, maintain control over your life and work. Determining your agenda are both your assets (and limitations) and the needs of your congregation. If the congregation unilaterally determines your activities, burnout is the likely consequence. There is no way you can do everything that needs to be done in your parish. Only you can determine the order of priorities.
Professional church leaders should strive to keep their lives in balance. Get away from parish responsibilities at regular intervals. Become good at something else-it doesn’t matter what-music, butterfly catching, automotive repair, carpentry, golf, you name it.
If you can’t get away from the parish physically, you can always do so in your imagination. Many times during the week, I travel mentally to our little place in the country where I fish, or build stone walls, or finish the inside of the cabin.
A voluntary change of activity is as good as, or even better than, rest when completing a particular task becomes impossible. For example, if the ideas for Sunday’s sermon won’t gel because of fatigue or enforced interruptions, it is better to go for a walk or sweep the basement than to sit around stewing. Hans Selye says, “Stress on one system helps to relax another.”
Learn how to regress. Countless phenomena run in cycles, such as the recurring needs for food, water, and sleep. There is no way we can function at peak efficiency all the time. Damage is done if the cycles are not allowed to run their course.
One way to handle the emotional cycles is to regress, to stop acting your age temporarily, to let your hair down. You married folk, court your spouse the way you did when you were first going together. It will do wonders for your psyche and your marriage. A seventy-five-year-old priest I know plays basketball a couple afternoons a week with grade-school children. He is one of the youngest seventy-five-year-olds I know. Dipping in and out of the regressed state from time to time is a good antidote for burnout.
Develop a support system. Roy Oswald, in an article distributed by the Alban Institute of Washington, D.C., notes that pastors engaged in difficult work over a long period of time need a small group of people telling them they are on the right track and are loved and cared for. Oswald feels fellow clergy are potentially an excellent source of support, but his experience is that peer groups of clergy usually don’t work too well. He favors a group composed of individuals within and without the congregation.
Finally, I refer to the missionary candidates mentioned at the beginning of this article. One of the things we try to evaluate, although it is sometimes difficult to do so, is commitment to Christian service. Missionaries, like most pastors, experience periods of discouragement. They wonder what they are doing overseas. During these difficult periods they often find themselves sustained by their faith and gain strength to go on. In Acts 1:8, Christ promised the apostles power from the Spirit as they became his witnesses. The Greek word for power is dunamis, from which we derive our words dynamite and dynamo. Kehl observes that the former goes off with a big explosion and then is all burned out, but the dynamo continues to produce day in and day out. For the pastor, as for every Christian, the daily walk in faith is made possible by Word and sacrament; through them we receive spiritual renewal. If, by his grace, we learn to look on ourselves as God’s instruments, a lot of the distress that brings burnout will be avoided.
-Paul A. Qualben
director of psychiatry
Lutheran Medical Center
Brooklyn, New York
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