Leadership Journal

Standing at the Denver airport, Peter and Barbara Jensen decided to splurge and rent a convertible. Their next stop was Wal-Mart, where they bought a John Denver tape. With the car top down, they popped in the cassette and headed into the Rockies to let the wind, the mountains, and Marble Retreat bring some healing.

Barbara, the talker of the two, could hardly wait to get to Marble, a center "for ministers in crisis." She knew she had a number of issues to work through, and she was anxious to "get fixed." Peter didn't know what to expect.

"I wasn't apprehensive," said Peter in a recent interview. "I didn't know what was going to happen, but based on what little I knew, I wasn't fearful."

Peter is unusual. For many exhausted, struggling, strung-out pastors, the idea of going to a retreat center for pastors is even more stress producing: What exactly goes on at those places? Will it help someone like me? Is it the touchy-feely sort of thing that makes me so uncomfortable?

LEADERSHIP often features articles by specialists in ministry to pastors, as well as periodically listing some of the leading clergy-care ministries (see here). Here we go deeper and accompany one couple through the experience. The Jensen's story is not "typical." Each pastoral couple is unique. Still, hearing one couple's story (identifying details have been changed to protect their privacy) at one retreat center (here details have not been changed) will let you know what to expect.

When I interviewed the Jensens, Peter had just moved to a new church six months earlier. What had prompted them to go to Marble? It wasn't adultery or embezzlement or a dramatic scandal. It was a common case of a church betraying its pastor.

At Peter's previous church in Indiana, things went well the first four years, with budget and attendance rising.

The first sign of trouble arose shortly after the church worked through a master plan, which included purchase of new property and construction of a Sunday school wing. All the committees and eventually the congregation approved it overwhelmingly.

"Then reality set in," says Peter. "It's one thing to put something on paper; it's another to take steps toward that becoming reality."

A few months later, the church council asked permission of the congregation to raise funds. About a fourth of the congregation voted no. Peter and the church council felt it best to put the project on hold pending more unanimity.

Though the building project went forward two years later, the same thing happened when Peter and the council proposed that Sunday school go to two morning sessions. Again, after months of study and planning, two weeks before the new schedule was to be implemented, Peter sensed significant opposition.

At a church council meeting, Peter wondered if they should postpone the change. "There was a collective sigh of relief," he remembers, with several deacons chiming in, "That's a great idea!"

A pattern of shying away from decisions was becoming ...