Resilient Leaders Needed

Dr. Packiam writes about the late Rabbi Jonathon Sacks who went in for a Medical Check-up after being named Chief Rabbi in the British Commonwealth. Part of the exam involved a treadmill. As the doctor kept increasing the pace Sack’s was curious about the end goal. He asked his doctor “What are we testing? How fast I can go or how long?” The doctor responded with “Neither”

The doctor would inform his curious patient that he was being evaluated to see how quickly his pulse would return to normal after coming off the treadmill. This is one of the key markers of health: the rate of recovery. The goal of a stress test is to see how someone deals with it.

Wisdom For The Weary

Sometimes leadership can feel like more than a human can humanly bear. Rabbi Sacks suggested to review the lives of what we might call Biblical Giants, Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Jonah. These all prayed that God take their life rather than to continue their task.

If you are struggling with mental and emotional health, understand it is OK to step away from ministry to heal. When you cannot bounce back or carry on understand this is not a flaw of Christian character. The wound is perhaps deeper than you realized.

If I am speaking to you, please seek a counselor. If married take time away in a guided retreat. Ask for a sabbatical. Understand it is not your Christian duty to soldier-on; it is your Christ-like calling to be whole. 

What is Differentiation?

There is a life beyond “the ministry.” There is a world beyond the church. There is a “YOU” beyond your vocation. This is called differentiation. This is the ability to know the difference between you or your church or non-profit enterprise. Differentiation is usually applied to a relationship between a couple. If one side is swallowed up other or the two have become inextricably tangled and lost in each other, this is called enmeshment. This leads to a detachment in which one refuses to be affected or moved by another. Differentiation is being close to another person while remaining yourself.

A healthy differentiation allows us to love our churches, to care for our people, to find joy in exercising our gifts for the glory of God and the good of others and to know that the ministry is not our identity. We are not the churches we lead or the sermons we preach. We are beloved children of God.

Resilience

Inconsistent intimacy takes a toll. It requires what sociologist Arlie Hochschild referred to as “surface acting”—where we change the emotion that we display—or, more often, “deep acting”—where we summon up the actual feelings from within. Work in service industries, like being a flight attendant (whom Hochschild studied) or waiting tables or dealing with customers, requires surface acting. But empathy work, like counseling or ministry, requires deep acting. We must meet people where they are emotionally. By the time we’re done for the day, we may not have much left for other relationships.

A second challenge for pastors is the time it takes to cultivate relationships. Friendships are usually formed in leisure hours. In two groundbreaking studies from the University of Kansas published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in 2018, communication studies professor Jeffrey Hall found that it takes “between 40 and 60 hours to form a casual friendship, 80–100 hours to transition being a friend and more than 200 hours together to become good friends.” According to Hall’s study, the hours spent at work together don’t count as much. There’s no getting around it, however. We need meaningful friendships if we’re going to last in ministry and if we’re going to stay fully human, and cultivating those friendships takes time.^[1]

In 2 Corinthians 7 of the Bible, Paul the Apostle seems to allude to an amalgamation of people that supported and cared for him. This would suggest that you and I need a constellation of lives to help us navigate life’s storms and ministry responsibilities. We need a collection of sages to advise us, leaders to direct us and hold us accountable, peers to remind us that are not alone, healers to dress our wounds, and companions to carry us when we are not able to carry on. Resilience is reinforced by right relationships. Ministry is illusionary in terms of deep relationships. Take the time to cultivate your constellation of people that will help you navigate life and ministry.

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^[1] John Packiam. Start By Cultivating Resilient Leaders. The State of The Church Research by Barna.org. ACCESSED 8 March 2022.