In the NY Times this weekend, G. Jeffery MacDonald, a UCC pastor in Massachusetts, responded to an article reporting the high incidence of burn-out among ministers. This report, based on a recent Duke study, will be unsurprising to anyone who has spent any time in the trenches, but what MacDonald calls into question are the causes and solutions to the problem. The original article speculated that most clergy were simply overworked and that frequent time off was the key to avoiding the stress and depression that ministers often cited as reasons for burn-out. MacDonald, however, argues that it is the pressure placed on ministers to forsake their "higher calling" in the name of providing an entertaining, self-help ministry that is the "sickness unto death." He writes:
...Clergy have seen their job descriptions rewritten. Theyre no longer expected to offer moral counsel in pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay dearly. A few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Ariz., when their respective preachers refused to bless the congregations preferred political agendas and consumerist lifestyles.I have faced similar pressures myself. In the early 2000s, the advisory committee of my small congregation in Massachusetts told me to keep my sermons to 10 minutes, tell funny stories and leave people feeling great about themselves. The unspoken message in such instructions is clear: give us the comforting, amusing fare we want or well get our spiritual leadership from someone else.
As I mentioned in a recent post on Stanley Hauerwas's new memoir, I sympathize with many protestant pastors who have to play the dual role of minister and marketer of the faith. A while ago, I reflected on my time working with a youth group at a UCC church in Connecticut and the self-help approach to ministry that was successful at getting people in the door, but perhaps less-than-effective at starting someone on the lifelong journey of "discipleship" (whatever that means). Yet, at the same time, I can picture not a few smug priests and bishops reading MacDonald's piece, nodding with a self-congratulatory smirk, and thinking, "Ah, you see, this is why we don't let the laity set the agenda."It seems to me that there must be some middle ground between the democratized, consumer model that seems to reign in mainline protestantism, and the top-down, take-it-or-leave-it approach that, as Cathy Kaveny pointed out, leaves so many well-meaning Catholics feeling as if they have no voice.
