Dispelling Some Myths About Depression

November 21, 2008

Anne Jackson, author of the soon-to-be-released Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic, and blogger-extraordinaire at Flowerdust.net, wrote about depression in words that are more than adequate.

I REALLY encourage you to go there and read it.

Posted by Paul | Filed Under Anxiety, Brokenness, Burnout, Depression, Emotional health, Pastor, Physical health, Spiritual health | Leave a Comment 

Distractions Extraordinaire

October 1, 2008

You don’t have to be in ministry to know both the rush and frustration of distractions. We want to know how we can avoid them, when the truth is that we can’t. Tasks we haven’t thought of, crises that we didn’t anticipate and disasters that no one could ever predict come upon us. They just do. Let alone the distractions we allow for one reason or another.

I am an email fiend if there ever was one, love Twitter, and think you should follow me for the fun of it. At the same time, I try to have some semblance of availability as a Pastor that doesn’t border on or cross the line of neuroticism. There are some distractions that are controllable, if we so choose. I know I must work at limiting them for the good of my own soul.

Thanks to my friend, Bob Hyatt, I quote Ruth Haley Barton, from her book, Sacred Rhythms, as follows:

“It’s not that I am averse to technology; I too have a cell phone, an office phone, a home phone and an email address, and they are much needed. However, I am aware of longings that run much deeper than what technology can address. I am noticing that the more I fill my life with the convenience of technology, the emptier I become in the places of my deepest longing. I long for the beauty and substance of being in the presence of those I love, even though it is less convenient. I long for spacious, thoughtful conversation even though it is less efficient. I long to be connected with my authentic self, even though it means being inaccessible to others at time. I long to be one who waits and listens deeply for the still, small voice of God, even if it means I must unplug from technology in order to become quiet enough to hear.

Constant noise, interruption and drivenness to be more productive cut us off from or at least interrupt the direct experience of God and other human beings, and this is more isolating than we realize. Because we are experiencing less meaningful and divine connection, we are emptier relationally, and we try harder and harder to fill that loneliness with even more noise and stimulation. In so doing we lose touch with the quieter and more subtler experiences of God within.

This is a vicious cycle indeed.”

Well said, don’t you think? If you’re NOT thinking about it or can’t grasp it, therein may lie the problem of which we speak. Just a thought!

Posted by Paul | Filed Under Anxiety, Burnout, Church life, Creativity, Emotional health, Leadership, Life, Margin, Message Preparation, Pace of life, Pastor, Personal Pace, Rest, Sabbath, Sabbaticals, Things that add life | 6 Comments 

What Else Would YOU Do?

August 28, 2008

I enjoyed a lunch appointment today, catching up with a Pastor friend who has just come off of his first Sabbatical that lasted about three months. We got to talking about an aspect of vocational ministry that I have come to believe over time can be unhealthy and disruptive to the full life God intends for even Pastors to live.

The concept is this …. if you were NOT in vocational ministry, what would you do for a living?

There was a time that I couldn’t think of anything else I could do. I didn’t believe I had any transferable or marketable skills. Vocational ministry can become a “trap” in a sense, leaving you to feel as though there is literally nothing else you can do to make a living.

Honestly, not only was there a time I COULDN’T think of something else I could do for a living, but I WOULDN’T. If I talked about it, people would be nervous, wondering how serious I was. If I spoke it out loud, God would hear it, and He would NOT be happy. I am, after all, following HIS call on my life. To talk about doing something else would be an insult to Him, wouldn’t it?

Um, folks ….. that kind of thinking was actually a piece of my burnout experience. Both leading up to it AND recovering from it.

Leading up to burnout, I didn’t realize the importance of being free to talk to someone about how I felt about this. I didn’t need to, and still don’t, talk to anyone and everyone. But you gotta talk to SOMEone. Find a person who is not going to condemn you, judge you, doubt you or rebuke you for thinking that there may actually be other things you could do with your life.

Recovering from burnout, I came face to face with the reality that I just might HAVE TO do something else to make a living. If I didn’t have the courageous leaders around me at our church, who stood beside me and allowed me to recover and get well, I would not be writing this blog to Pastors today! I happen to know that my story of recovery is the minority. MOST Pastors who experience burnout lose their “jobs”.

It was during the long journey back to stability and greater emotional and spiritual health that I began to learn that God’s call on my life is irrevocable, REGARDLESS of what my vocation is! It took a while, but today I can actually talk pretty freely about a handful of jobs I think I would enjoy trying.

I’m too old for my first choice these days. I’d be out patrolling the streets and fighting crime with the finest!

How about you? If you were NOT in vocational ministry, what would YOU do?

Posted by Paul | Filed Under Anxiety, Burnout, Emotional health, Expectations, Failure, Life, Pastor, Spiritual health, success, Things that drain life, Things that give life | 1 Comment 

Leadership In Its Right Place

July 11, 2008

I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, Russ Veenker. He and his wife, Kandy, are the DIrectors of Mountain Learning Center. I am NOT exaggerating when I say that God used this couple to help save my life, marriage and ministry!

It was in June Lake, CA, at Mountain Learning Center, where I began a special journey to the center of myself. It was there that God met me in a special way and began to show me how much He loves me in spite of myself.

Russ has agreed to contribute to the Pastor For Life blog, so you’ll be hearing from him regularly. As with ALL posts, please feel free to comment or discuss what he has to say!

Leadership

For the past 25-30 years our culture has been engaging in a crisis of leadership. Whether in government, business, or church, the topic of leadership has been the mainstay of reading, study, seminars, and academia. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. One doesn’t have to look very far to grasp this: my internet search engine listed over 35 million items/topics/references/books/seminars when I typed “leadership into the little search engine box – lots of good stuff for sale. My library bookshelf is filled with books on the topic of leadership. A recent issue of Leadership Journal had sixteen new books on te topic of leadership advertised; five of the furteen Bible Colleges and Seminaries who advertised had something to say about preparing church leaders. We are consumed and obsessed with leadership theories, models and practices.

In the not-so-distant past when I was an “Operations Leader” in Search and Rescue, I had a baseball cap with two bills sewed on to each side of the hat. For comic relief I would wear the cap to the monthly team meetings that I presided over as president. On the front of the cap it said, “I’m their leader…which way did they go?”

The humor releases a certain underlying anxiety tha comes with the role of being a leader. And all the talk about “leadership” does reveal certain anxiety – particularly in the church. Sometimes I get the feeling there’s a mythical ghost in the shadows of our churches whispering weird messages when it comes to all this leadership stuff. It goes something like this: if we get our leadership RIGHT (whatever THAT means), the church will be “right” …. or “OK” …. or “fixed” …. or “on track” …. or __________________ (you fill in the blank). Leadership is often touted (or blamed) as the answer to what lacks in the church today. And yes, leaders have been and are the easy targets – they’re easily spotted on our radars!

I believe the anxiety with regad to leadership issues runs very deep into the fabric of our souls. The church (along with government and family) for many centuries in western civilization was a central pillar to our modern society (1500-2000 A.D.). However, we are laving modernity and its philosophical presuppositions behind, and as a consequence, the church has been displaced and marginalized. Simply put, for most of the populace in our culture, nobody cares about who the church is and what it does. FOr those of us in the church, particularly those of us in leadership, that experience of being marginalized by culture at large creates a lot of anxiety. Why? Because we are no longer significant (as a central or important and valued part of culture). So perhaps all the hub-bub about leadership is really about us attempting to move back into the mainstream of culture – to have value and significance, to re-capture our special place we’ve had in the past. And we all know that repeating the past usually doesn’t work too well in living out the future.

Now I realize I’v made some sweeping generalizations with the above assertions. However, if you are, or have been in a leadership role in the last twenty years of the church, what I’ve written will make a great deal amount of sense. And that prompts an old, modern question: So what do we do now? Well, because I’m a romantic, modern, “old-fashioned” kind of guy, I think the ancient writings of God are a great place for wisdom. And a great verse to deal with anxiety is Philippians 4:6-7:

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Maybe leadership in the Church is more about praying for healthy anxiety management than technique. Perhaps it’s more about humility before God than knowing the right direction to take. May prayer be the central hallmark of leadership in Jesus’ Church.

© 2008 Dr. Russ Veenker

Dr. Russ Veenker has over thirty years of formal ministry experience having served as a youth minister, interim pastor, church-planting pastor, chaplain, church and para-church consultant, and conference speaker. Some of these ministry positions have been concurrent with his work at the Mountain Learning Center.

He is a graduate of both Dallas Theological Seminary and Fuller Theological Seminary where the special emphasis of his doctoral studies has been the care of clergy. Russ’s academic and clinical expertise is comprehensive to theological anthropology: balancing the human condition midst the stresses and hazards of vocational ministry is his passon. He is a frequent speaker at clergy gatherings and is known for his competency discussing and equipping ministry leaders in addressing areas of personal health with such topics as stress and burnout; depression; anxiety; sexuality; psycho-social developmental transitions; marriage/family development; and ministering to troubled individuals with personality disorders.

Posted by Paul | Filed Under Anxiety, Church life, Expectations, Leadership | Leave a Comment 

I Might As Well Admit It ….

July 8, 2008

I am not nearly as put together as I may seem. My penchant for being articulate in my speech often covers over my insecurity about being thought of as slow or stupid.

Whenever someone asks me if we can get together sometime soon to talk about “something”, I struggle with wonder about if “something” is me. Or something I did. Or something I said. Or didn’t say.

I want everyone to like me …. no, if I am going to demand honesty here, I want everyone to love me. Accept me. Approve of me. I am not always convinced that happens on the basis of who I AM instead of what I DO.

It’s true. I am a broken, messed up person. At the bottom of my heart is a real desire to serve Jesus with all I am, but too often, the crud above what’s at the bottom of my heart gets in the way. I have to work to push past all that so I can focus on Jesus and what He really wanst to do in and through me.

I love the way my wife succinctly states this truth …. “We’re all so twisted, it’s a wonder any of us can get out of bed in the morning!”

Anyone else? How do you state it?

Posted by Paul | Filed Under Anxiety, Expectations, Failure, Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

One Thing I Always Said Would Never Happen To Me

January 28, 2008

We all have things we observe happening in other people (especially leaders) that we quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, declare will never happen to us.

  • “I would never leave my wife for another woman!”
  • “I would never steal from the church!”
  • “I would never misuse my authority!”
  • “I would never … (fill in the blank)!”

My “never”? I would never BURN OUT! That is the one thing that would never happen to me for a number of well-considered reasons:

  1. I think things through well and am very level-headed, calm, non-anxious.
  2. I love to sleep, napping whenever I can and sleeping in at every opportunity.
  3. I love my days off (when I take them).
  4. I am not even sure burnout is real; maybe it’s just a lazy man’s way of getting out of work.

I could go on and on. Burnout was the one thing that would never happen to me. Until it did.

I couldn’t understand what they meant when they said they couldn’t focus or concentrate like they used to. They must be getting old or something. I’m only 35!

I had no comprehension (and probably even less compassion) when it came to hearing someone say they didn’t have the energy to get out of bed in the morning. THAT is laziness!

I was at a loss when some of the strongest people I knew in my church would sit in my office in a pool of tears that they couldn’t explain. They would try to describe how the emotions were out of control and they couldn’t keep from crying for no reason. Inside, I would think, “That’s just plain weird! You need some help, but I don’t think I can give it. Pull up your boot straps and move on!”

Not in my wildest or scariest dreams did I ever think I would be in that same place. But I was.

What is the “one thing that will never happen” to you? Share it in the comments, if you dare be so honest!

Posted by Paul | Filed Under Anxiety, Burnout, Depression, Failure, Pastor, Things that drain life | Leave a Comment 

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