Deal with Your Stuff…Before it Deals with You (by Mike Glenn)

By Mike Glenn

In a great movie, there’s always something that’s about to explode. The nuclear reactor in the sub, the boiler in the train engine, the engine on the airplane…the scenes in the movie jump from a rising pressure gauge, the sweating engineers, and the tense lip biting by-standers. While great in movies, these pressure cooking scenes are horrible ways to live and unfortunately, the scene I just described is the inner life of most pastors I know. If we could see the drama going on inside them, I’m afraid we’d see a rising pressure gauge and a sweating engineer trying to keep things from blowing up. 

For all of the discussion on mental health in our culture, I’m not sure we’re paying enough attention to the mental health of our pastors. The recent pandemic and the resulting choosing of sides afterwards has tipped the pressure valve too close to the red line. It hasn’t let up. The growing anger in our society, the politicization of our pulpits and growing expectations from membership have continued to push the pressure higher and higher within our pastors. 

Since I’ve stepped down as senior pastor, people have asked me again and again how I was able to keep doing this as long as I did. First, I tell people, get a great church to call you as pastor. 

After that, here are a few things I learned.

First, take your time seriously. For some reason, when you are a pastor, people want you on every committee in town. From denominational institutions to civic organizations, everybody wants you on their boards that “only meets a couple times a year.” First, nothing meets a couple times a year. There are always specially called meetings and sub-committees for special projects. Before you know it, every night of your week is booked. In my experience, being the pastor of a church, husband and father was more than enough to fill up my life. I didn’t have time for much else. Neither do most pastors I know.

One more thing – boards are expected to raise money. Any organization or institution is going to want you to talk to your members about giving their money to their work. I don’t know about you, but I never wanted my members confused as to why I was talking to them. If I was talking to them about money, I was talking to them about money going to our church. 

The fact is we need rest. We need 7 to 8 hours a night and we need a day for Sabbath. The constant exhaustion most of us live with gradually begins to exact a toll on our quality of life. Our mental health is one of the areas most affected by our lack of rest. Remember, sleep deprivation is a type of torture.  The first thing you can do is say “no” and say it a lot. 

Second, keep a journal. Our thoughts keep walking around in our heads because they’re afraid we’ll forget them. When we write them down, our thoughts will relax. As David Allen of Getting Things Done has noted, our brains are for generating ideas, not storing them.  So, get a pen and any kind of notebook and start writing. Yes, it has to be pen and paper. It can’t be done on your computer. Our brains respond very differently to writing things out long hand and typing them. Read your Bible. Think. Write. Pray. Take as much time as you need. 

Third, get a band of brothers (or sisters). Find a group that knows you and loves anyway. It could be friends you meet with for coffee or golf. Grill dinner together or explore different hobbies – whatever brings you together, be sure to find a group where you can be emotionally and spiritually safe. You need a place where you can talk openly about your church and your family, about your last doctor’s visit and honestly, talk about how you’re doing. From all of our research, we keep discovering over and over again how lonely pastors are. There are a lot of reasons for this – our members have unrealistic expectations of who we are as human beings. In fact, many of our members  are disappointed when they find out we’re very human in the first place.  The nature of the calling means we’ll never have a lot of friends, but we can still  have friends who matter and matter deeply. They aren’t easy to find but they can be found. It just takes a little prayer and patience. 

Lastly, get a counselor or therapist. Find someone you’re comfortable talking to and set up a session once a month, once a quarter, or once a week. You can schedule the appointments as you need them, but keep them regular. Let’s face it. All of us are broken. We come from dysfunctional families and we leave home to set up our own dysfunctional families. It’s always only a matter of degrees. Our marriages are always adventures as we try to work out living with our spouses. This challenge is only intensified as we add children.  Then, add a couple of hundred people around you constantly dumping their baggage on you and you have a recipe for an emotional collapse. 

I had an old professor, as we walked down the hall of my esteemed seminary, say to me, “Mike, you have to deal with your stuff or your stuff will deal with you.”

Only he didn’t say “stuff.”

Working in a local church can make you crazy. You owe it to yourself to be as prepared as possible to deal with the situational madness local congregations can be. You owe to your ministry to be as clear headed as possible. You owe it to your family not to let the unrealistic demands of being a pastor rob them of a parent or spouse. 

You owe it to yourself to be the best version of yourself you can be. Get your rest. Protect your boundaries. Keep your journal. Find your brothers and sisters. Get a good therapist. Slow your pace to match the demands of this marathon we call ministry. 

Deal with your stuff before it deals with you. Or worse, before your stuff deals with your congregation.