The Christian leader’s chief occupational hazards are depression and discouragement.
John R. W. Stott
When it comes to spotting hidden snares in the ministry, Carl F. George demonstrates a practiced eye. Now director of the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth after more than a decade of pastoring, he spends major blocks of time with individual churches and pastors who request his help.
He especially watches for things most people miss. For example, public success on Sunday morning doesn’t tell the whole story of a ministry, he says. “Almost all ministers are well educated theologically. Most seminary graduates have more to teach than anybody wants to learn. If we spend any time at all preparing for a given sermon, we will meet the needs of the listeners. As Dan Baumann, author of a widely used preaching textbook, says, ‘Anyone who simply sets forth the text and gives its meaning distinctly will be accused of freshness.’
“Meanwhile, the serious deficiencies are in management and leadership skills. This is a decision that goes unmade.”
In the following chapter, Carl George puts his finger on a life management skill that is badly needed following a transition.
Pastors who change churches sometimes get more than they bargained for.
They naturally have become comfortable with a set of familiar faces in a church. Although the demands of preaching, leading a staff or committees, visiting parishioners, and counseling are at times overwhelming, the old church is still basically an affirmative setting. The pastor is needed and valued. He or she has many opportunities to offer help, encouragement, appreciation, and to receive expressions of appreciation (“strokes”) in return. The people have come to a place of trust.
When the pastor shifts to another church, the relational network has to be rebuilt with strangers. This reduces, for a time at least, expressions of appreciation. The period of fewer strokes often triggers a mood alteration now termed clinical depression.
This is not necessarily harmful or threatening. Depression is a normal human response to stressful life changes, a reaction to the loss of something valued and familiar or to an uncertainty about the future. (Even success—the accomplishment of a long-sought goal—can sometimes lead to feelings of depression.) A job transition that removes a person from familiar people who are loved is exceedingly stressful, though new challenges may mask this stress for a time.
Clinical depression can occur in two forms.
1. Acute depression is felt immediately after a change in life situation; it often hurts deeply, but its cause can be readily identified (another example: the sudden death of a spouse).
2. Sometimes the depressive reaction is delayed, perhaps because the person is preoccupied. When the actual depression (known as the chronic form) sets in, it occurs at such a distance from the causative event (as much as two years later) that the person does not connect the two. He wonders why he should feel so bad for no apparent reason.
The transitional minister often finds himself plagued by this question. The following symptoms, though occurring without obvious cause, should be considered indicators of depression stemming from the job transition. (Note: No one is likely to experience all these symptoms, and some of them can be experienced in different ways by different people.)
• Sleeplessness (or sometimes oversleeping)
• Loss of appetite and weight (or sometimes compulsive overeating)
• Loss of sexual desire (or sometimes the temptation to take a fling)
• Lowered self-esteem; feelings of uselessness
• Hurting all over inside, wanting to cry (and perhaps being unable to)
• Apathy; losing interest in the things you used to care about
• Difficulty in making basic decisions you normally make quickly
• Unexplainable shifts in mood, unconnected to daily events
• Withdrawal from people, even though you desperately want company
• Physical tension: headaches, pains, muscle cramps
• Inability to begin important projects
• A sense that time drags on, passing very slowly
• Unresponsiveness to events and people
• Decline of spiritual life (or sometimes increased fervor)
• Occurrence of suicidal thoughts
• Hypersensitivity to rejection
• Inability to concentrate
• Loss of spontaneity
• Fatigue
• Increased sickness
Underlying these behaviors is the fact that the depressed person has lost perspective on life and doesn’t know how to regain it. Not recognizing the depression, he does not see that it is only temporary and will eventually subside. The new pastor in particular may tend to misread his troubles and unhappiness, explaining them instead in one of the following terms:
Being out of God’s will. Either he was presumptuous to accept the position (for which he now thinks he is unsuited), or denominational officials made a mistake in recommending him for it.
Personal spiritual shortcomings. Since Christians “aren’t supposed to have these kinds of feelings,” either he has backslidden or is lacking faith.
Satanic oppression. (There may in fact be some of this, but it is probably not the entire explanation.)
Family unhappiness. His family may be experiencing changes and stress, too, and the pastor may see his blues as a response to the family’s struggles.
Slipping health. These symptoms “must be” the first foreboding signs of a serious, debilitating illness.
Ten Ways to Cope
Once depression is recognized as depression, what can be done to overcome it? Mostly we endure it as a necessary process of grief, knowing it will eventually end. But certain steps can be taken to help cope with the experience in the meantime.
1. Remind yourself that in time, this too shall pass. Christian mystical writers in centuries past have referred to these crises as “the dark night of the soul.” Nights do not last forever.
2. Realize that depression, like any change, offers an opportunity to grow. You will be a fuller, more mature person, with godly personal qualities refined and basic values intensified, for having gone through the experience.
3. Realize you are not alone. Others experience similar struggles, too.
4. Remind yourself that God has not abandoned you and that you are where he wants you to be.
5. Rebuild your “stroke level” at home: touching and holding your spouse (with or without sexual relations), touching and being touched by your children.
6. In your work, reinforce the sense of team participation whenever possible. Share your schedule with your staff; have office prayer meetings; assign team work projects.
7. Seek inward healing through God’s Word and from his Spirit; sing (aloud or silently) favorite hymns or worship choruses.
8. Re-read the biblical accounts of leaders, paying particular attention to their emotional upheavals. Your experience is not so different from that of Elijah, Moses, David, or Paul.
9. Seek ways to offer verbal affirmation and appreciation to others, especially at the collegial level. The Golden Rule applies to compliments, notes of appreciation, and words of encouragement, too.
10. Seek help. Although transitory in nature, depression may be an acutely serious problem. Medical and psychiatric professionals are finding many new ways to treat depression. Utilize their gifts.
Selected Bibliography
Albrecht, Karl. Stress and the Manager: Making It Work for You (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979). An application of stress theory to the manager’s role and work environments.
Feinberg, Mortimer R., Gloria Feinberg, and John J. Tarrant. Leavetaking: When and How to Say Goodbye (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978). Popular-level anecdotal work with suggestions for responding to life crises.
Flach, Frederic F. The Secret Strength of Depression (New York: Bantam, 1975). A thorough and balanced treatment of the subject, written for the lay reader by an eminent psychiatrist.
Hart, Archibald G. Coping with Depression in the Ministry (Arcadia, Calif.: Cope Publications, 1980). Discussion kit with tapes. Available from Charles E. Fuller Institute, Box 989, Pasadena, CA 91102.
Hart, Archibald G. Depression: Coping and Caring (Arcadia, Calif.: Cope Publications, 1981). Book and kit with tapes. Available from Charles E. Fuller Institute.
Copyright © 1985 Christianity Today
