Every morning, the Rev. Karna Moskalik goes through a “grounding” routine that involves prayer, Bible reading, positive affirmations, and meditations about the very best outcomes for the day’s tasks, in addition to lighting a perfumed candle and walking through each space of her Lutheran church.
“I at all times feel like work never ends, but at the identical time I beefed up grounding because without it, I feel absolutely ineffective,” said Moskalik, who grew up a pastor’s daughter and has led the 700-member Our Savior’s congregation for 4 years on this small riverside town.
That level of faith-based self-care is just what many clergy should practice to avoid the burnout and deteriorating mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression that experts say are affecting religious leaders at a worrisome pace.
“Mental health needs are only overwhelming faith communities,” said Jamie Aten, a professor at Wheaton College and the co-founder of Spiritual First Aid. He helps organize a free one-day, online “church mental health summit” on Tuesday that already has about 9,000 registrations from over 100 countries. Participants can access 60 pre-recorded expert talks.
Faith leaders have increasingly stepped into the frontlines of take care of growing mental health distress across the U.S., from college campuses to the military and rural communities.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. The national suicide and crisis lifeline is accessible by calling or texting 988. There can be a web based chat at 988lifeline.org.
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But being always on call to share other people’s trauma is considered one of the unique stressors that makes being a pastor so difficult and may result in burnout symptoms, which some studies estimate affect one third of clergy, said the Rev. Chris Adams, who leads the Mental Health and the Church Initiative at Biola University.
“Pastors attribute spiritual significance to their work, so it’s a whole-life, whole-self thing,” said Adams, considered one of the summit’s speakers and an ordained Methodist minister in addition to a clinical psychologist. “People expect them to be omnipresent, giving pastoral care within the grocery aisle at 10 pm.”
And congregants are likely to feel entitled to guage what a faith leader’s family is buying on the food market, too, said Kay Warren, who along with her husband, the Rev. Rick Warren, founded Saddleback, the evangelical megachurch in California, and has been a vocal mental health advocate since her youngest son died by suicide.
“We live in a glass house. You’re at all times on and everybody is in your enterprise,” said Warren, who began experiencing such scrutiny in childhood as a pastor’s daughter.
That leaves many clergy feeling they’re expected by some means to nail all tasks, from administrative ones like growing churches at a time of widespread financial and attendance decline to pastoral care that doesn’t leave space to process their very own response to traumatic events.
“I’m now not Alex Lang the person whose job is a pastor, I’m Alex Lang, the pastor,” said Lang, whose post about why he quit being a Presbyterian pastor touched a chord amongst many burned-out ministers this summer.
He said therapy helped him discover a “secure place to unload” and work through unresolved trauma. But many clergy still feel a stigma in searching for mental health care, fearing that admitting to struggles means they’re failing their caregiving mission or they might lose their congregations’ respect – and even their job.
“I believed everybody would hate me,” the Rev. Katie O’Dunne recalled of the time she told the varsity where she worked as chaplain that she had began searching for treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Instead, parents asked her advice on share similar struggles with their very own children’s faith leaders.
A United Church of Christ minister in Atlanta, O’Dunne has since began a task force on OCD and faith, whose insights she’s going to share on the summit. She encourages searching for treatment and well-being strategies as a part of a faith mission that may encourage congregants.
“Self-care is strategic, not selfish,” said Mark Dance, considered one of the summit’s speakers, who was a Southern Baptist pastor for nearly three many years and struggled with depression before healing through medication and therapy. “There’s no challenge that’s greater than God.”
Developing strategies to tackle mental health distress is crucial when research suggests a 3rd of leaders from Abrahamic faiths suffer from traumatic stress, a rate even higher than within the military, said Steven Sandage, a Boston University professor of psychology of faith and theology.
Compassion fatigue can develop from the constant exposure to other people’s trauma without taking time to process one’s own grief, based on Laura Howe, a clinical mental health social employee near Toronto who organized the primary summit in 2020. It can lead pastors in charge themselves for feeling numb, jaded and resentful, she said.
For people of religion, a way of belonging, hope and purpose all help overcome these challenges, she added. Churches may leverage ongoing clergy formation and traditional spiritual exercises to present ways to metabolize that suffering, get grounded and nurture self-compassion.
“Priests who’ve a really sound prayer life do well, that’s their primary love relationship,” said Paul Ruff, a licensed psychologist and director of counseling services at Saint Paul Seminary in Minnesota. He’s been increasing workshops and retreats for Catholic seminarians in addition to priests to assist overcome the isolation that many clergy feel, especially as their numbers decline.
In her research about United Methodist ministers, Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, who leads Duke University’s Clergy Health Initiative, also found that making specific, Scripture-centered every day plans for mental, physical and spiritual health helps them flourish.
So does what she calls “alignment with God” – or evaluating criticism based on how relevant it’s to the mission pastors feel God has entrusted to them.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many faith leaders say they’ve develop into unwitting lightning rods as they’d to make polarizing and politicized selections, such when to shut and re-open their church. That has subjected them to increasingly aggressive criticism from their flock.
“That’s the No. 1 thing I hear day-after-day. The vitriol is abusive in lots of cases,” said Adams, who has spent greater than a decade studying hundreds of pastors.
Left unaddressed, the anxiety and even depression from these encounters can paradoxically find yourself hurting such warring communities even beyond the pews.
“If our religious leaders are higher supported, those congregations are higher equipped to serve their communities,” said the Rev. Thad Austin, who began the Common Table Collaborative to assist integrate mental health resources for mostly Protestant clergy.
One shared take-away from experts, including the upcoming summit speakers, is that clergy should draw deep from their calling – nourishing their spirituality, holding onto the enjoyment of seeing lives transformed – while also finding healthy ways to be an individual, not only a pastor.
“Faith leaders have to simply accept the responsibility to take care of yourself, because frankly no person else goes to do it,” Warren said. “Take control of the controllables and leave the uncontrollable to God.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely answerable for this content.
