They rambled into the room, talking, laughing, swapping stories, and slapping each other on the shoulder as men do when at ease.
As the deacons took their places, I cleared my throat. I was discouraged, I told them, because of dawdling attendance, lagging finances, and chronic fatigue. Our facilities needed renovation, but money was lacking. Our small staff was at odds, but I hadn’t the energy to deal with it. Our growth had slowed, but I couldn’t help it. My voice conveyed no anger, just weariness.
I noticed their smiles gradually dissolved like the fade-out of a poignant movie scene. Shoulders sagged. By the end of our meeting, they listlessly filed from the room like Job’s comforters.
Well, at least I was transparent and honest, I thought. I lowered my mask and let them see what was really in my heart. I enabled them to peek through the window of a pastor’s soul.
Ha!
All I did, I soon realized, was infect them with discouragement as effectively as Typhoid Mary unwittingly spread her dreaded disease earlier this century.
A biblical principle of management, often neglected in the Be-real-be-transparent philosophy, is this: Emotions are more contagious than typhoid fever. A leader’s negative emotions can infect followers like the plague.
Consider 2 Samuel 18 and 19. Despite an astounding, come-from-behind victory over Absalom’s coup, David wept pitifully and publicly because his handsome son had perished. His citizens, hearing his sobs, were crestfallen; his troops were demoralized. “They were like an army that has been defeated in battle and has run away.”
Joab spoke severely to David: “I swear by the Lord that if you don’t go out and encourage your men, not a man will be left with you by nightfall.”
David pulled himself together and stepped from the palace to rally his troops.
All this, of course, hands those in leadership a dilemma. If we’re honest, we’re in danger of infecting our congregations with gloom. But if we mask our feelings, we’re apt to become insincere. Where’s the balance between disclosure and discretion?
Since Christian leaders are communicators, a couple of communication principles, well applied, can keep Typhoid Mary out of the ministry.
RIGHT PROPORTIONS
In disclosing pain and sorrow, wisdom dictates that the degree to which we open our hearts should be in inverse proportion to the size and scope of the group we’re addressing.
The One. With God, we can say anything. He’s the Wonderful Counselor, and following biblical models, we can ventilate our feelings to him with abandon. Consider Moses: “If you are going to keep doing this to me, then kill me now.” Or Jonah: “I am so angry I could die.” Or Elijah: “I have had enough, Lord. Let me die.” Or John: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for someone else?”
The psychology of the past twenty years has nudged us toward premature sharing, forgetting the line of the old hymn that says, “I must tell Jesus, Jesus alone.” Most of my discouragements, I’ve found, are best resolved in a quiet room with a Bible, a hymnbook, my journal, and some old books.
I recently found I was fretting about my ministry. How many people was I reaching? Then I found an old volume by William Secker called “The Nonsuch Professor in His Meridian Splendor,” with the more appealing subtitle, The Singular Actions of Sanctified Christians. The author, a seventeenth-century British clergyman, wrote:
“Some persons are like hens which no sooner drop their eggs than they begin to chatter, but he that desires honor is not worthy of it. Saints should resemble a spire steeple, smallest where it is highest; or those orient stars, which the higher they are seated, the less they are viewed. Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. He that trafficks in God’s services to fraught himself with man’s praises suffers shipwreck in the haven and loses his wages when he comes to receive pay for his works.”
When do we have time to read Secker and company? One secret, I think, to keeping up one’s morale is a monthly twenty-four-hour period of retirement—time with an audience of One.
The Few. The second audience is composed of a few. I’m never quite as honest and open with my few as I am with my One; but close friends can shoulder deep disappointments. Recently an editor indicated great excitement about a book I’d written, pumping me with expectations. When she later told me the book had been “passed over,” I called a friend and unloaded my disappointment. His laconic reply restored my courage: “Rob,” he said, “you’re not a writer until you’ve been rejected many, many times. Just keep hitting the keys.”
We need an audience of one or two or three such people—and if we’re married, one of them should be our spouse.
The Team. My third audience is the church staff and lay leaders with whom I work side by side. Here, I’m more cautious, for my leadership role implies a responsibility to encourage them, boost their morale, and refresh their vision. I can share my sorrows and sins with them, but too much toxic dumping will contaminate the very ones I’m responsible for encouraging.
Harry Truman knew this. Having successfully driven Communists from the south of Korea, he decided to press beyond the 38th parallel and liberate the entire Korean peninsula. But on the day after Thanksgiving in 1950, China launched a furious counterattack, sending over a quarter-million troops against American forces. As Truman gathered his advisers at the White House, the mood was silent and grim. The president began to speak, and suddenly his mouth drew tight, his cheeks flushed. It appeared to the men that Truman would sob. But when he spoke again, his voice was strangely calm and quiet. He said, “This is the worst situation we have had yet. We’ll just have to meet it as we’ve met all the rest. … Let’s go ahead now and do our jobs as best we can.”
Truman knew the last thing he could afford in a crisis was to demoralize his team. That sometimes limits our freedom to “let it all hang out.” In my case, I can exercise some liberty because of a long tenure. After fifteen years of laboring shoulder-to-shoulder, a lot of love and trust has been deposited in our joint account. This gives me certain freedoms in baring my soul, and the returning sympathy and counsel often restore my spirit like a tonic. But it isn’t a bottomless supply of elixir, and I don’t want to drain the bottle.
The Congregation. With my fourth audience, I’m more cautious still.
My congregation isn’t just my flock and my mission field—it’s my constituency and my employer. Few churches enjoy seeing their leader emotionally undress. Some church leaders have lost their jobs because their constituents lost confidence in them.
A friend suffered an emotional breakdown on an Asian mission field. Returning to the States, he was hospitalized with severe depression and was, at times, suicidal. He said, “I shared it with my family, but with few supporters and constituents. Not that I didn’t want to, because I’m transparent to a fault. But I feared my support would dry up if people knew too much.”
He added, “It’s easy to ask for prayer if I have hepatitis or malaria. But people have a hard time understanding a missionary’s emotional illness, and I felt it wiser to be discreet.”
There’s nothing wrong with occasionally telling an audience, “I’m tired today. I’m a little discouraged now. This has been a tough week.” Nothing wrong—and everything right—with saying, “My heart is breaking for our nation.” Far from being detached and dispassionate, a leader needs to have an emotional investment in the message and ministry.
Bob Thomas served during the mid-1980s in an area of Papua New Guinea that has been visited by missionaries from various agencies for a hundred years. Some time after Bob’s arrival, he attended the funeral for someone’s father. Remembering his own dad, he found himself moved, and a tear ran down his face. Suddenly the villagers nearby pounced on him, wrestled him to the ground, and knocked off his glasses. They peered into his eyes.
Later he asked the men why they had attacked him.
“We were shocked!” they said. “We didn’t think white people could cry.” As Bob further questioned them, they explained, “We’ve seen missionaries for many years, and none of them ever had tears in their eyes.”
“From that day,” Bob later said, “I was able to share with them more intimately than ever before.”
RIGHT TIMING
My second rule of self-disclosure is this: The more lapsed time since a trauma has occurred, the safer it is to discuss. Nothing disheartens a church like a leader who broadcasts his darkness before he has discovered the source of light.
Eight years ago, I encountered dark depression in ministry, but only recently have I began to share it openly. The reason? Only recently have I felt I could build others up rather than cast them down by relating the experience.
Terry Eagleton grew up in Brazil and dreamed of returning there as a missionary. His grasp of the language, his love of the people, and his fascination with the culture merged into a driving passion. He thought of little else during college, and within days of graduation and marriage, he boarded a south-bound plane.
Arriving in Brazil, he worked eighteen-hour days and seven-day weeks. The churches under his charge began growing rapidly, and their growth further fueled his zeal.
He didn’t notice that his neglected wife was traumatized by the move. She didn’t know the language, didn’t understand the culture, and had neither friends nor occupation. Within months, she suffered a breakdown. They returned to the States depressed, full of bitterness and embarrassment.
I provided some spiritual and occupational counsel for Terry, and he and his wife received marital support from qualified friends. Otherwise, they didn’t tell their story, and Terry never spoke of it publicly—until recently.
I was surprised, while attending a minister’s conference, to see Terry’s name on the program. I slipped into the back and listened as he told the whole story. He confessed his insensitivity, his rashness, and his hurt. He spoke of the counseling he and his wife received; and he told of God’s grace that had restored him to ministry in an American pastorate.
Afterward, I asked him if he had been sharing his story often. “No,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve spoken of it. It’s exactly ten years since it all happened.”
“Why now?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “it took time for my wife and me to fully understand what had happened and to move beyond it emotionally. Now I’m ready to share my mistakes because I think I can be of help to other ministers.”
Few leaders suffered more deeply than Winston Churchill from chronic depression, a malady that he called his “Black Dog.” In his first address over the BBC as prime minister, he minced no words:
“The Germans, by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks, have broken through the French defenses, and strong columns of their armored vehicles are ravaging the open country.
“They have penetrated deeply and spread alarm and confusion in their track. Behind them there are now appearing infantry in lorries, and behind them, again, the large masses are moving forward.”
His gravelly voice cracked through the national gloom to admit a determined ray of hope:
“Hitler knows that he will have to break this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: ‘This was their finest hour.’ “
Sometimes I don’t feel like preaching or cheering my leaders. I don’t feel like uplifting the spirits of my listeners, for my own spirit is enveloped with fatigue, hurt, or hopelessness. What can I do?
I can stand, set my jaw, fix my eyes on Christ, and use my frail voice to communicate hope and optimism that may rise beyond my immediate emotion.
Is that deception?
No, not necessarily. It’s knowing my audience, watching my timing, and thereby doing my duty.
It kept the Communists from South Korea, Hitler out of England, and it can keep Typhoid Mary out of the ministry.
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Rob Morgan is pastor of Donelson Fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee.
1996 Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP Journal
