Pastors

We talk a lot about mental health within the Church, but what about the mental health of leadership and pastors? Being spiritual leaders, working 40-60 hours a week, and many times working with broken people can be hard. Pastors face exhaustion, may struggle with their own pastoral anxiety, and experience pastoral burnout. If we are wanting to truly make church a place for healing, we ourselves need to take the first steps as Christian counselors, pastors, elders, and leaders. Church Communications, the people who put on the Thrive & Cultivate conference, along with Faithlife, together a survey for pastors about mental health, burnout, and leadership.

If you want to download the results, you can get them here. It’s a quick read but I feel is also telling of our current situation. Three points that I pulled out from the survey? Pastors are feeling burn out more than they should, pastors have a broad set of emotional regulation techniques (some I don’t agree with), and happily, many pastors are going to see a counselor.

Pastoral Burnout

Pastors work a lot. Sometimes boundaries are hazy, sometimes they don’t exist. Many times your roles include youth pastor, technician, and janitor. Senior pastors are in charge of leadership, sermons and prep, as well as leading the compassion and hospitality ministries. And while the chart below says that under 25 have not yet experience burnout compared to 25-60, they may be single without children, and still hoping to work “hard enough to get kids to come” which is part of that poor boundaries. The 60+ population are definitely those who are tried and true and it would make sense they have better rates of burn out.

Pastoral Coping Skills

Let me define up front that a coping skill is a way to regulate your emotions. It is not a way to distract yourself from your problems. While I did not create this survey, I read “how do you unwind” not as a coping skill, but will look at the results in a similar vein.

When I look at the chart below, I love that prayer is a coping skill used along with being with people, hobbies/reading, and exercise. Because it says unwind, I understand television and internet being on here, but in a clinical setting, this is a poor long-term coping skill as it’s only a distraction. I will say as a clinical counselor, the 9% of people who put alcohol, it’s more concerning as this is where people can end up using alcohol to deal with their emotions.

Pastors Seeing Counselors

I’m going to be honest, 27% of pastors seeing counselors is a great percentage as the general population “[i]n 2019, 19.2% of adults had received any mental health treatment.” [CDC] I don’t have any research to support this claim but pastoral work is more stressful emotionally than many other careers so I’d love to see that percentage even higher if it is is needed. (For my counselors out there, the same is true for us)

So having read through the survey, what are your thoughts?

This year has been hard on everyone, especially pastors. Whether because tithing is low and so needing to let go of staff, people not showing up and having to re-strategize evangelism and discipleship, or the religiosity-political arguments dividing congregations, many pastors are stressed and leaving ministry due to being burnt out.

[Read more…] about What To Do On A Sabbatical

[This article is part of a youth ministry series we have been writing about for years. Click the link to check out all of the other articles we have here.]

If there is one thing I hold our teenagers up as doing better than any generation still alive, it is their openness, willingness, and ability to talk about mental illness and good mental health. While they do not have it all figured out, we do not as adults either. So I want to make sure we educate ourselves with 12 facts to know about teens and mental illness, so we can have more educated conversations and better empathize with them about what they are going through.

[Read more…] about 12 Facts To Know About Teens And Mental Illness

[This article is part of a youth ministry series we have been writing about for years. Click the link to check out all of the other articles we have here.]

The phrase, “It’s okay to not be okay” is becoming one of the biggest phrases for mental illness and those who have stigma about mental health. We actually did our own devotional post on this phrase, but for pastors with anxiety.

For pastors, do you know how your teenagers are doing? They have never been a teenager at their age, let alone through a pandemic. They don’t have answers to this, just like it seems most adults do not have a working solution either. So check in with your teens frequently about their mental health.

[Read more…] about It’s Okay to Not Be Okay: Teenager Edition

[This article is part of a youth ministry series we have been writing about for years. Click the link to check out all of the other articles we have here.]

As with all substance use, you need to know the facts of the substance and unfortunately many of these facts are specific to teenagers.

1. 3.6% of adolescents (ages 12-17) reported misusing opioids over the past year. This percentage is twice as high among older adolescents and young adults (ages 18-25). [SAMHSA]
2. 153,000 of adolescents have an opioid use disorder versus 392,000 young adults with the diagnosis.
3. Opioids come in many different forms, including oxycodone (OxyContin®), hydrocodone (Vicodin®), codeine, morphine including others that are prescribed but can be misused or overprescribed. These are the same general chemical compounds as heroin. All can get you high and overdose.
4. 57% of 12- to 17-year olds who misused prescription opioids got them from a friend or relative. [SAMHSA]
5. 20% of 12th graders said they could easily get heroin if they wanted to. [The University of Michigan]
6. Teens are more likely to abuse prescription opioids if their parents do so, according to a new study. The connection is similar to those seen in parent-child use of cigarettes, marijuana, and alcohol. 14% of adolescents misused prescription opioids if their parents did compare to 8% if their parents did not. [AAP Journals]
7. Every day, 115 Americans die from an opioid overdose. Nearly 15,000 people died from a drug overdose involving heroin in the United States [CDC]
8. Opioid use can affect every area of your life. Using drugs, especially early in life, can lead to poor grades, worse performance in sports, and bad relationships with friends and family. Opioids also alter judgment which can cause you to do risky things you wouldn’t ordinarily do, like having unprotected sex or getting into a car crash because you drove while under the influence of opioids.
9. In some communities, heroin is cheaper and easier to get than prescription opioids. Because of this, people who are addicted to prescription opioids sometimes switch to using heroin instead. It is estimated 4 to 6% who misuse prescription opioids switch to heroin.
10. overdose deaths have almost tripled in the last 15 years and the majority of these deaths involve opioids. One of the ways opioids works to relax your body is by slowing down your breathing. When misused, opioids can slow your breathing too much. This can cause you to stop breathing entirely and lead to an overdose. For some people, just one dose is enough to make them stop breathing. Because of this, opioid misuse is generally recommended to head to treatment right away.

List in the comments what other questions or concerns you have.

A research report came out in March that at the time we were talking with several other ministries about the validity of the test, and then the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic happened where we wanted to help pastors reduce stress and thrive in this new social distancing world, so reviewing it was put on hold until now.

The research is by LifeWay Researched, titled “Churches Believe They Are Welcoming to Those With Disabilities” that surveyed over a thousand pastors across the United States and found that 99% of pastors agree and 97% of churchgoers feel they are welcoming at our church.

[Read more…] about LifeWay Research Says Churches Welcome Persons With Disabilities