You spend extra hours preparing a particular sermon. But no one notices.
You make six visits to a parishioner in intensive care. When he recovers and returns to church, he points out how much his wife wished you’d seen her while he was in the hospital.
A woman in worship stands during prayer requests and notes, with just a touch of hurt, that her Aunt Lizzie’s name isn’t printed in the prayer list. Of course, this woman doesn’t mention publicly-or privately-that you recently took most of a day to drive out of town to visit Aunt Lizzie.
Such experiences are not unique, nor is the pastor’s resulting discouragement. It hurts when people don’t notice or appreciate our efforts. Ministerial banter often touches on blue Mondays and the resignation letters we mentally compose. Discouragement is no stranger to ministers.
What discouraged ministry looks like
How we deal with discouragement impacts both the minister and the church. It can prompt some ministers to leave their churches. It can lead others to abandon ministry entirely. Before discouragement runs its full course, however, it entices us to dilute our ministry. Here are a few symptoms.
Preoccupation with money. When we are discouraged, we’re more likely to fix our focus on our relatively lower salary. Our paychecks seem to shout on behalf of the congregation, “We don’t appreciate you!” Working alongside church members who earn twice or three times my salary, I’ve sometimes wondered if they respect my leadership. Certainly, many churches ought to pay their ministers more. But in times of discouragement, ministers can let such thoughts skew their perspective.
Letdown. Some days discouragement can lead us to walk away from the office at noon, fully knowing how many lessons and sermons need preparing and how many people need visiting. A discouraged minister doesn’t give a hoot if any of it ever gets done.
Bill, a ministerial colleague, could be found at the local donut shop most mornings until 9:30 or later. His elders had questioned him about it, as he laughingly told me once, but he’d convinced them it was coffee-shop evangelism. I knew better. Neither evangelism nor sweets pulled Bill there. It was low self-esteem brought on by an unappreciative church. Bill’s response was to let down.
Feverish activity. While discouragement some times prompts us just to get by, other times it drives us to work harder than we should.
Jim left the ministry because of his divorce, but the heart of his problem was his absorption with work. He worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day, and never took a vacation. Why? Because, among other reasons, his church rarely showed appreciation for his work. The less they noticed, the harder he worked. When the church finally got around to celebrating his fifteenth year as their pastor, it was too late.
Distracted by extracurriculars. Some ministers respond to discouragement by developing new skills and by using their abilities outside the church. We lead seminars. We pursue educational degrees. We become writers (I’m certainly not writing this because I have run out of things to do around the church!). We open up new avenues, finding fulfillment and reward apart from the church. This isn’t necessarily bad. It may add to our longevity in ministry. But if it’s simply avoidance, then our ministry may be diminished.
I remember hearing one popular seminar leader talk about the importance of putting family before career. He emphasized how he had told his church leaders never to expect him to be out of his home more than two nights per week.
As a young minister, I was impressed. But since then, I’ve reflected on his advice and, more significantly, his attitude. Ministry, as I know it, cannot be packaged neatly into two nights a week. I don’t argue with his message that family must come first, but I now suspect he was motivated by discouragement. His tone of voice and stories suggested that he was, in part, using his speaking career and family to get away from a discouraging church.
Turning the tide
In some sense, discouragement always will attack those in ministry. But I’ve discovered a number of things I can do to hold it back, and sometimes send it running.
Practice what I need. We fondly call it the Golden Rule, doing for others what we would like them to do for us. I teach it to my children and preach it from my pulpit. In fact, I’ve often passed out advice like, “When you’re feeling down and blue, do something for someone else, and you’ll forget all about your own troubles.” Good advice. I need to hear it myself occasionally, since I’m not consistent about putting it into practice.
One new practice I’ve begun has helped. Three years ago someone in our church introduced the congregation to encouragement postcards. We keep them in abundant supply in the pews, and our people use them to send notes of encouragement to one another during the week.
After I received my first one-and so thoroughly enjoyed it-I decided to send out three or four of those cards, myself, to different people every week. Usually, I send out twenty cards for every one I receive, but I continue to derive deep enjoyment out of it. And I can’t begin to recall all the words of appreciation that have been sent me because of the postcards I’ve sent. That’s gone a long way toward helping me defeat bouts with discouragement.
Enlist the help of colleagues. Usually I’m up emotionally the day after Sunday. But one Monday I was down. I didn’t feel like seeing anybody or answering the phone or dictating a letter or attending a meeting. I just wanted my office door closed with the DO NOT DISTURB sign squarely in place.
But when the phone rang, I dutifully took the call.
“Good morning, Andy. How are you doing? Have a good day yesterday?” It was a pastor friend.
I responded in the usual less-than-honest fashion: “Doing fine. We had a great day. What about you?”
Immediately, I wished I hadn’t asked. He’d had a great day, and he was ready to tell me all about it. Biggest attendance since Easter. Seven additions; four coming for baptism. The spirit of unity and enthusiasm was never better. And the elders had met to propose a midyear salary increase.
I endured it. I think I was polite. But after he hung up, I wondered why I was even more depressed than I’d been before his call. It wasn’t jealousy or envy, because I usually find it easy to rejoice when others are blessed. I just felt hurt and neglected.
Frankly, many of us don’t like to be asked, “How was Sunday?” or “How are things going at the church?” If things are going poorly, it only adds to our discouragement. And if things are at record levels, I don’t need additional temptation toward pride and self-righteousness.
What I need are colleagues in the ministry with whom I can share my struggles, pressures, and discouragements. I need friends to encourage me.
To that end, I’ve begun to use the telephone or an encouragement postcard at least once each week to express my appreciation of a ministerial colleague. “I appreciate your service to Christ and the ministry of your church,” I’ll say or write. It’s beginning to reap the same results as do my postcards to my church family.
I’ve begun also to pay more attention to my conversations with colleagues, and I’ve encouraged them to do the same. Instead of asking questions that measure our ministries, we try to ask questions that show concern for the individual. The technique isn’t difficult; we use it all the time with our parishioners. Now we just apply it to one another. Instead of asking about attendance and ministry success, we ask, “How are you?” or “How is your family?” and listen attentively to the reply.
The steps I’ve taken to battle discouragement haven’t been easy. When discouraged, one doesn’t feel like doing anything, even taking steps to overcome discouragement, especially if it entails encouraging others! But my own discouragement reminds me that others feel the same way.
There are moments when I encourage others only because that’s what I’m called to do. It’s only when I remember agape, God’s self-giving love, that I’ve been able to make progress. Agape feels like a thin string of support sometimes, but it’s been enough to carry me between the experiences of overt encouragement, to the point that I find, once again, that ministry is the most rewarding thing I can do.
-L. Andrew Pryor
First Christian Church
Glen Ellyn, Illinois
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