By Pastor Ron Klok
(First appeared in the December 18, 2006 issue of the Christian Courier)
Pastors are like SUVs. They require copious amounts of fuel and regular servicing. The picture in the newspaper only underscored this fact. A pastor was at the crash sight where a boy had died, walking beside the parents, car parts strewn about the intersection, a police cruiser resting in the background. The pastor looked a solitary figure, in close proximity to the father and mother, yet far enough away to allow for the space and silence the parents needed. As a pastor, I have been there myself---walking alongside others through the valley of the shadow of death---and I know what will be required of that solitary man.
In the days following a fatal crash, a pastor will sit beside the family on their mourning bench for many hours; will agonize over the tragedy and feel its sadness in his bones; will be involved in the logistics of funeral planning; will stay up late and struggle with God, seeking to hear a word for the church, the parents, himself; will be compelled to search his soul. And all the while, regular church life will carry on, and he may find himself having to think about future sermons he will preach, other people he will meet, classes he will teach, meetings he will attend, and unresolved feelings he has in relation to words spoken by some unhappy elder or parishioner. What will be required of the pastor is energy, copious amounts of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy.
Regarding energy consumption, what we oftentimes don’t see is how the events and experiences of ministry affect the pastor’s soul, her interior life, and her relationship with God. We might readily understand the taxing nature of the visible work of a pastor---things like visiting, teaching, preaching, funerals, and meetings---but it is much more difficult to see, understand and measure the energy required for the pastor’s unseen and hidden work, the interior work of soul that comes as a result of ministry. Every ministry experience (of course, some more than others) affects the pastor herself, her personhood, soul, faith, capacity, and ability to love and lead, her life with God. These interior, unseen, by-products of ministry, are both wearing and energy sapping.
At any point in time, any given pastor is probably managing several and varied ministry related experiences and their affect on his or her soul. The confidences of a rape victim will fill the pastor with sorrow. A tragic death may raise a deeply personal struggle about the meaning of prayer and providence. A hard-driving elder may open old family-of-origin wounds. In my first year of ministry, a young man got up one April morning, left his wife in bed, wrote a note, walked through darkness and rain, and jumped from a trestle bridge. The man’s suicide death put me in a personal crisis regarding my understanding of ministry. I was compelled to deal with several matters of soul: anger about perceived injustice---it wasn’t fair that God would ask such a young pastor to do such an impossible work. I felt deep disappointment---this was not the kind of ministry I had hoped for. And, finally, I felt completely inadequate to the task---I prayed Jeremiah’s words: “I do not know how to speak. I am only a child.” Most people did not see this interior work, nor did they necessarily need to, but it still took energy. In fact, this hidden work required as much, if not more, energy than the work that was seen. Sorting out one’s soul and the wear and tear of ministry is a demanding task.
So pastors are like SUVs. They require copious amounts of fuel and regular servicing. The energy that pastors consume goes to both their exterior work, work we can see, and their interior, soul work, work that is largely hidden and unseen. Because of the considerable energy required for ministry, and its corresponding interior wear and tear, soul-care for the pastor becomes paramount.
Soul-care comes in two parts. First, the pastor needs to refuel. We can call this refueling soul-rest. But the pastor also needs to process interior dynamics, interior responses to the events and experiences of both life and ministry. This second part we can call soul-work. Soul-care is, then, both soul-rest and soul-work, and both are critical to the health and well-being of the pastor.
Soul-work has to do with the awareness and sorting out of one’s interior life, especially as it relates to God. Soul-work is a conversation with one’s soul, done best in the presence of someone who can listen, someone like a spiritual director. Pastors need to articulate their interior life. And they need someone who can hear. Pastors need to articulate not only the experiences and events of ministry, but how these experiences and events are affecting them. They need to articulate both their emotions, and what is going on beneath the emotions. How did that conflict, or that death, or that success affect you? What is your joy or anger or envy or fear or gratitude trying to say? What information do your feelings have for you about your relationship to God, your church, and your calling? What might God be trying to say in your experience? These are the questions of soul-work.
John Calvin described the Psalms as the “anatomy of all the parts of the soul.” In the Psalms we hear people having conversations with themselves in the presence of God. “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” In the Psalms we hear the expression and articulation of every kind of emotion possible, from extreme joy to utter despair. In the Psalms we hear ourselves. Pastors do well to pray as the Psalms do, articulating the anatomy of their souls as accurately as possible. This articulation of soul is essential to health because it brings into awareness engine sludge like envy and anger and pride and loneliness—sludge that left un-serviced, can cause serious damage. Conversely, without prayerful articulation we will miss the depth and wonder of positive emotions like gratitude and joy. Soul-work is much like changing the oil on an SUV. It is the work of keeping one’s interior clean.
Soul-rest is different from soul-work in that it is more passive. You could think of soul-rest as doing nothing—and pastors need to do a lot of nothing. They need silence and stillness in order to rejuvenate. Soul-rest may include getting lost in some kind of creative, wonder-filled activity not at all related to work; activity like pruning and pollinating pumpkins in the garden, or building sandcastles on the beach, or driving a golf-ball down a fairway. But soul-rest ought also to include personal getaways, spiritual retreats, in order to intentionally place oneself in the presence of God in silence and solitude. This, of course, is what Jesus did. He withdrew to be alone in the presence of God. It is where he found his strength.
The gifts of retreating in silence and solitude are many. Silence helps us to listen to our souls. Solitude allows us to be fully present to God. A place away gives uncluttered freedom, an undistracted space. In silence and solitude, Scripture becomes clearer and fresher. Prayer is slower, deeper, richer, more relaxed. Most precious, of course, is the presence of God himself. It is a wonder how much health and strength come by doing nothing. But that is the essence of a retreat, the essence of soul-rest.
Harry Emerson Fosdick reminds us that our power, our spiritual energy, “is not self-produced but assimilated.” “Every living creature,” he says, “exists by assimilating and releasing power from beyond itself…our power is not fabricated in us but released through us.” It takes real spiritual energy from God to do the work of pastoral ministry. A pastor’s energy is assimilated, and both pastors and churches must see and understand the pastor’s re-fueling and servicing as integral to ministry. Without this re-fueling and servicing the SUV pastor will quickly find himself stalled at the side of the road, and I’m afraid that we are beginning to see far too many broken down pastors.
This spring, along with five other pastors, I arrived at a retreat centre in Los Altos, California. Our retreat was made possible through the Christian Reformed Church’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program. We had already been on a 1 ½ day, silent-directed retreat, a 2 ½ day retreat, and now we were going to spend five days in silence. All of us were ready for some refueling and servicing, and God did not disappoint us. If I had my wish, I would see every single pastor in the denomination do a retreat at least twice, for three to five days, every year. The reason is that I know what is required of that solitary man I saw in the paper, the man walking beside those parents through the valley of the shadow of death. That pastor—and every pastor—requires the energy and renewal that come only from God through soul-rest and soul-work.
Ron is serving a CRC congregation in Edmonton, AB
