"I'm not sure what I'm doing," he said.
I'd never met him before, but the air of fragile confidence was familiar, this sense of being lost in the house you grew up in.
"I've been a pastor for 15 years, and most days I have no idea what I'm doing. It makes me nauseous," he continued.
He seemed like a man struck with malaise, a chronic illness in which the source is hard to pinpoint.
He's not alone. I find myself talking with more and more pastors stricken with uneasy nausea and fatigue that they can't name. It's as though their calling has been stripped of meaning.
This man could do a good job with the regular activities of being a pastor, he went on to say, but he wasn't sure whether they meant anything to his people.
Of course, there have always been pastoral struggles, and they've shifted as time has unfolded. But throughout time, from Augustine to Thomas Becket to Jonathan Edwards, pastors and priests have at least served against a cultural backdrop with the shared understanding that the transcendent is real and our lives must interact with something beyond what we can see and touch.
Today, things are different.
We now live in a time where the very idea that God is real and present in our lives is no longer accepted. Indeed, it's widely contested. Belief has been made fragile -- for the pastor as much as for those in the pews.
Read more from Andrew Root » |
| | UPCOMING CHURCH NETWORK WEBINAR |
FIVE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR CHURCH BOARD MORE EFFICIENT AND CONFIDENT August 15, 2019 at 2:30 p.m. EDT
Do you think something's amiss when volunteer parking attendants for church services get more training for their work than the volunteer board members who govern the church? Does your board receive the information it needs in a format that facilitates understanding and decision-making? Join us for a session in which we discuss five ways to help your church board be more effective and confident. The outcomes could have a lasting and positive impact on the accomplishment of your church's mission.
Learn more and register » |
In the search for a new enemy, religious leaders may rally in opposition to "the secular." But that's a trap. Not to mention a theological mistake.
Read more from Michael Jinkins » |
Our faith is sometimes better represented by the despair of Holy Saturday than the confidence of Easter Sunday, says a writer and Christ seeker.
Read more from Jean Neely » |
| In this interview, an icon in Christian philosophy talks about the wonder, growth and pain in his professional and personal life. Wolterstorff's most recent book is In this World of Wonders: Memoir of a Life in Learning. Read more from Nicholas Wolterstorff » |
| | NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER |
Flourishing in Ministry: How to Cultivate Clergy Wellbeing by Matt Bloom
Pastoral work can be stressful, tough, demanding, sometimes misunderstood, and often underappreciated and underpaid. Ministers devote themselves to caring for their congregations, often at the expense of caring for themselves. Studies consistently show that physical health among clergy is significantly worse than among adults who are not in ministry. Flourishing in Ministry offers clergy and those who support them practical advice for not just surviving this grueling profession, but thriving in it.
Matt Bloom, director of the Flourishing in Ministry project, shares groundbreaking research from more than a decade of study. The Flourishing in Ministry project draws on more than five thousand surveys and three hundred in-depth interviews with clergy across denominations, ages, races, genders, and years of practice in ministry. It distills this deep research into easily understandable stages of flourishing that can be practiced at any stage in ministry or ministry formation.
Learn more and pre-order the book » |
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