It has been in the news
recently about a high profile American pastor who has committed
suicide. Andrew Stoecklein of Inland Hills Church, California was
younger than I am when he took his own life. Many of my friends in
ministry have been sharing his story on social media and it has
provoked discussion online. Without venturing into the specifics of
his families loss, it reminded me of other ministers I know who have
been suspected of committing suicide, or attempting to. And I would
like to address that issue.
It is a difficult thing
to find figures on. Most families don't want the world to know what
has happened to a loved one. As one minister told me recently: if
you say someone has died of cancer the next question is never 'how'
or 'why'? When you say someone has committed suicide...
It just places the
family in an uncomfortable situation, often news will be released to
others as a heart attack or another ailment which delivers sympathy
rather than questions.
What we do know is that
men are far more likely to die by suicide than women, somewhere in
the region of three or four to one. Ministry is still male
dominated, by a far higher margin (although that is changing
according to more recent figures). And then there is what ministers
have to do.
People who counsel
others are rarely unaffected. It is estimated that almost sixty
percent of counsellors will themselves struggle with mental illness
personally. One recent study has shown that approximately a quarter
of all clergy have mental health issues.
And this is where
things becomes different for clergy than for counsellors. For a
start, we are not counsellors. We have a different skill set and a
different agenda. We are here to equip and encourage you
spiritually. Yes there is crossover, if someone is struggling with a
big issue in life it is hard to get to a place of spiritual calm and
reflection, and sometimes people might think that they are in a dark
place spiritually when really they need to see a mental health
professional.
But as clergy, we don't
have access to the same services counsellors do, we don't have that
chain of accountability, we aren't compelled to meet with someone
else monthly or quarterly to discuss how we feel.
Ministry is also
lonely. It is lonely in a way few people realise. We spend hours in
prayer, in reading, writing homilies and studies. We don't have that
work place camaraderie that others do, our offices are usually at
home or in an empty church. The only time we see others at work is
when they need to see us, or we are performing a service.
The loneliness of
ministry has been long recorded, take a read of the Dark Night of the
Soul, the longing to be with a God who is often just out of reach.
All bar one minister I have spoken with about this has experienced
this severe separation from God at some point in their lives. God is
there, we just sometimes can't feel that, the same way you sometimes
can't. And this can last for years in some cases.
I recount one meeting
with a young minister who admitted that he was tempted to pay a woman
for an hour just so that he could have some company. He wasn't
interested in sex (and I believe him), he just wanted to be held and
not have to face the realities of ministry for a short while.
So we support others,
and our support is said to come from on high, and that often isn't
the case. While it is true that we are sometimes afforded a
sabbatical, trying to find the time, or the finances to take one is
an uphill struggle.
We put a brave face on
things, we carry on, and we do it because we love you.
We often aren't just
lonely, we are isolated. I have friends who work in city churches
and they have regular coffee shop meetings. I have friends who work
in churches in rural communities where the next nearest minister is a
good ten miles away. Add to that our lack of supervision and
accountability, add to that our ability to recycle sermons and
studies from two years ago (it happens) or that we can just download
talks from the internet... It becomes very easy for a minister to 'go
missing' for months at a time without the church ever noticing. I've
had months where I have been too busy to prepare new material so I
have just grabbed a book from my shelf and 'borrowed' a sermon, no
one noticed.
Even when we set aside
our role as ministers, the job is depressing. Church attendance is
down. You may not notice this if you're part of a large church, but
trust me, when you leave the cities you find many fellowships with
single digit membership. Even those with healthy numbers are faced
with an ageing population and diminishing financed. We have to keep
churches open while living often on or beneath the poverty line,
because we genuinely love the people and communities we minister to.
Finances are huge cause for concern. None of us enter ministry to
get rich, but when you have to give up a job, study for a degree,
sell your house to move to a church on the other side of the country,
and then be told that there is no money in the pension scheme, that's
a huge burden you've placed on your family. And that is a sad
reality of ministry.
None of this is to say
that we would change what we do. Ministry is a calling and we would
do it all again. We love people with the love of God, there is no
greater calling than that, and it is everything that we are.
The great grief comes
when we feel the same stigma Jesus did, Physician heal yourself.
We help others through some real
tough times in life, and yet we rarely get adequate help ourselves.
Partly through stubbornness, we need a certain level of self
confidence in order to present publicly every week, but also because
the nature of ministry is to be professionally detached. We deal
with all sorts, issues you don't want to think about, the families
behind the headlines in your paper.
People
come to us for answers and expect us to have them. We can't heal
ourselves, and it does at times feel like God can't either. We are
people, human just like you.
Our
lives sometimes get ahead of us. We also need help.
I
have encountered other stories of ministers committing suicide, ones
that don't make the news. One possible reason this most recent one
is newsworthy is because the minster was seen as successful, that
somehow having a large church shelters us from the reality of our own
humanity. I know that some people attend these types of churches
because it grants them a level of anonymity they don't find at a
smaller fellowships. Even in a large gathering, we are still people,
and we still have to deal with issues. Without taking anything away
from the grief the Stoecklein family are feeling right now, theirs is
not the only ministry family with these issues. My heart goes out to
them right now.
So
please, do go see your pastor when you need to, we really love that.
Go see them even if you aren't sure you need to. But just remember
there's a person wearing that dog collar. Look out for your pastor.
We can be a-holes at times, often actually. But we deal with things
you will never know about. And encourage us to get help, we need it.
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