It is not the ministry that makes me angry. It’s me that makes me angry.
— John Ortberg
Henri Nouwen has put his finger on something that for a long time I did not realize about myself:
“Anger in particular seems close to a professional vice in the contemporary ministry. Pastors are angry at their leaders for not leading and at their followers for not following. They are angry at those who do not come to church, and angry at those who do come for coming without enthusiasm.
“They are angry at their families, who make them feel guilty, and angry at themselves for not being who they want to be. This is not an open, blatant, roaring anger, but an anger hidden behind the smooth word, the smiling face, and the polite handshake. It is a frozen anger, an anger which settles into a biting resentment and slowly paralyzes a generous heart.
“If there is anything that makes the ministry look grim and dull, it is this dark, insidious anger in the servants of Christ.”
I have anger in me. This realization was somewhat unexpected: I don’t see myself as an angry person. I have always thought of myself as a peacemaker by nature. I don’t explode. I have never been a screamer. I’m a Baptist, but emotionally I’m really more of a Presbyterian.
And yet I have anger in me. I know this because it surfaces when I don’t expect it.
I remember a hurtful thing a deacon said to me a long time ago. Years have passed; surely I’m too big to be bothered by such a little thing, yet there it is. The scene gets replayed in my mind, only with alternate endings. I find myself fantasizing about how to get even, how to hurt back. Where does this come from?
I’m driving home after a long and pressured day of ministry. I inadvertently cut someone off; he catches up and honks and gestures. Suddenly I find myself trembling with rage; I want to cut him off again; I want to hurt him. Where does this come from?
Learning from my anger and acquiring the skill to manage it well have become lifelong goals of mine. I have found a number of questions that help me achieve them.
What is Anger?
Whole forests have been cut down to provide paper for the books that seek to answer this question. I think the best answer is that anger is physiological arousal — heart-racing, adrenaline-pumping, blood-pressure raising arousal — along with my own hostile or indignant interpretation of what caused the arousal.
One of the most common anger problems among pastors is to deny or misread our experiences of anger, which also guarantees we will express it in destructive ways.
Let’s say there is a part of my job that I should be doing more effectively, a part I’ve simply been neglecting. A member of the ministry team tells me this, appropriately, graciously, but quite candidly.
I know that he is right, yet I feel hurt. This tears at the myth of my ability to be a “super pastor,” makes me feel quite ordinary and somewhat embarrassed. His observation is obvious enough that I cannot deny it, but my response is not healthy either. For the remainder of our conversation, I go into withdrawal. I am polite and make no direct complaints. Without thinking about it, I avoid direct eye contact and physical touch and do not smile genuinely; my tone of voice says, “Stay away.”
After you’ve known somebody long enough, you learn how to gauge this withdrawal precisely: clear enough so that the other person unmistakably feels it; subtle enough so that if he asks, “Have you got a problem?” I can respond, “No. Why do you ask? You got a problem?”
For I am Scandinavian, and we don’t get mad. Hurt, sure. Offended, often. Wounded so that we can never recover and never forget — you bet. But not mad.
What Makes Pastors Angry?
The earliest discussion I can remember having with my parents about church was when I asked them, “Why is the pastor always mad at us?”
As I’ve grown older and wiser and learned the subtleties of human behavior, I’ve realized my naive childhood perceptions were right on target. There’s something about pastoral ministry that produces (or attracts) angry people. Why?
Is it because we serve an angry God, as in Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”? Okay, at least God’s anger can be trusted; it is just another facet of his love — “Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it,” C. S. Lewis wrote. But sinners in the hands of angry pastors? That’s another story. That’s murder in the cathedral.
One reason we’re angry is because we are constantly being reviewed. Pastoring is a strange job. We are called to shepherd sheep. But the sheep in our charge are also our bosses. And sometimes they act like it.
Perhaps the most obvious and vulnerable area in which we’re reviewed is preaching. It’s helpful to be (tactfully) critiqued. And it is right for pastors to want to do well. But it is painfully tempting to allow Sunday morning to become a kind of spiritual performance on which my emotional well-being hinges. When I succumb, I feel trapped, and trapped ministers are angry ministers.
Sometimes the negative reviews are relatively easy to dismiss. At one church, an attender regularly informed my wife if I failed to button my coat while preaching. (As a passive-aggressive response, I considered preaching without buttoning my shirt.)
Other critiques dig deeper: “I’m not being fed.” For most pastors, this is tantamount to waving a red flag in front of a wounded bull. The not-so-subtle message is “You’re just tickling people’s ears.”
In addition, vision, leadership, interpersonal skills, the general state of the church — all of these are fair game for the congregation’s evaluation — and dry tinder that sparks into pastoral anger.
Thomas Merton wrote somewhere that the false self is fabricated by social compulsions. “Compulsive ministry” is the kind of ministry that produces angry and resentful ministers. Compulsive ministry is when I base my worth on satisfying the standards that define success in my little world. Budgets must be met, attendance must be raised, people must be happy, programs must thrive. Compulsive ministry is in the deepest sense being “conformed to the world.”
I recognize my compulsivity when someone says, “Why don’t we have a … (fill in the blank: singles ministry, stronger missions program, social awareness committee, American flag in the sanctuary, greater commitment to our community, old-fashioned revival with a traveling evangelist and good accordion music).” I don’t think I ever hear that without feeling a twinge of guilt. This sets me up for resentment: Why don’t they do it themselves? Why do I have to keep everybody pumped up? In my compulsivity, I feel like a circus performer who keeps plates spinning on top of sticks; if I ever stop, they’ll all come crashing down.
This pattern of behavior leads me to another insight: it is not the ministry that makes me angry; it’s me that makes me angry.
Because anger is such a powerful emotion, it feels as if it is being caused by something “out there.” My experience tells me that it’s rude drivers and surly deacons. Instead, I have to admit that it is not events but my interpretation of events that makes me angry.
It is nine o’clock at night. My four-year-old gets out of bed and cautiously, tentatively comes down the stairs, in violation of curfew. However, I have nothing to do, nowhere to go; I am relaxed and at peace with the world. Look at the little tyke, I think. Only a few more years to enjoy Kodak moments like this, and then he’ll be grown. How brave and adventurous he is, risking punishment to explore the unknown world of the night. He’s just like his father.
Another night, same hour, same child, same father. But this time I have reached the end of a long and stressful day, and I have to finish a chapter on anger before I go to bed. The little tyke walks down the stairs, but my mind plays a different tune: Only a few precious moments to get my work done, and Eddie Munster here can’t stay in bed. Sure, sneak down the stairs, kid. Go ahead, make my day. The question you’ve got to ask yourself is, “Do I feel lucky?” How rebellious and disobedient he is, defying parental authority ordained by God because of his relativistic narcissism. He’s just like his mother!
Notice that the external event was identical in both situations. But one time it led to joy, the other time, to anger. The critical variable was my interpretation of what was happening. This is universally true. It is not what other people say or do but the way I think about it that gives rise to anger.
Lots of people have the power to hurt or frustrate me. Only one has the power to make me angry. Me.
If it is true that no one else can make me angry, it is even more true that no one else can make me respond aggressively or inappropriately when I feel anger. It often seems that way because my response to feeling anger has become so routine that it seems “automatic.” It feels as if the person or event triggered my anger and caused my response.
The truth is my response is learned behavior. I learned it long ago, from people I grew up around, learned it so informally that I was not aware that I was learning anything.
Tommy Bolt has been described as the angriest golfer in the history of a game that has stimulated the secretion of more bile than any other single human activity outside of war and denominational meetings. One (possibly apocryphal) story recalls a time he was giving a group lesson on how to hit a ball out of a sand trap. He called his 11-year-old son over.
“Show the people what you’ve learned from your father to do when your shot lands in the sand,” he said. The boy picked up a wedge and threw it as high and as far as he could.
The good news is what can be learned can be unlearned. It is possible for me to manage my anger in a God-honoring way: to “be angry and sin not.”
How Do I Handle Anger?
Anger is an inescapable fact of life. But the experience of anger is different from the expression of anger. What I do with that anger, how I express and manage it, is another matter.
It’s helpful to identify how I usually express my anger. In Make Anger Your Ally, Neil Warren outlines four common profiles of anger management, which I have adapted for pastors.
The first might be termed pastors who blow up. You never have to wonder when these people are angry. They have a little sign on their desk that reads, i don’t get ulcers, i give them. Their sermons are illustrated with stories of General Patton, Woody Hayes, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mount Saint Helens. Peter Cartwright, the nineteenth-century circuit-riding preacher who bodily threw out inattentive or distracting attenders, who publicly said to a deacon, “Brother, one more prayer like that, and hell will freeze over,” would fit in this category.
The second group is pastors who burn up — who somaticize their anger. These people hold it in, conceal what they feel. They are often unaware of being angry, but inside it eats at them the way acid corrodes a battery.
They may not recognize their anger, but they can’t escape its effects. One author identified over fifty illnesses affected by unprocessed anger. Pastors who burn up are often found on the prayer chain, victims of one sickness or another. Because of their nonconfrontive style, they often find themselves surrounded by openly aggressive types (like the pastor lying in the hospital who received a note from the board, “Dear Pastor, the board voted to wish you a speedy recovery, seven to five with two abstentions”).
The third type are pastors who pout. They retaliate though not aggressively; they prefer to inflict guilt by suffering unfairly. Pastoral ministry is especially attractive to these ministers because it offers such rich opportunity for martyrdom, yet without the nuisance of actually having to die.
The Bible is full of them: Jonah, calling for Dr. Kevorkian because Nineveh was spared and a worm had eaten his shade-vine. The prodigal son’s elder brother: “Sure, Dad, you go have a party. I’ll just stay out here and work the fields just as I have my whole life without anyone even saying thank you. Don’t worry about me.”
Of the four, this is probably my tendency. I pout pretty well. Number one sounds like more fun, but I’m a pastor. I do number one in my heart, but on the outside I do number three.
The fourth group consists of pastors who catch up. These are the sneaky ones. They’ll jab and needle and dig with words funny enough to get away with but designed to do damage. Elders get frustrated with them because these pastors “forget” to return phone calls, or they show up late for appointments. They are masters of (often unconscious) sabotage.
At least with the first group, you know where you stand. With this group, after one of their zingers, you ask, “Where is all this blood coming from?” And then you look down and realize it’s coming from you. If you call them on it, will they admit they’re acting out of anger? Noooooo — the gutless little wimps. Of all anger styles, this is the most infuriating. They make me so angry, I could pout.
How Do I Manage Anger with My Children?
Maybe the most accurate gauge to read on how and why I manage — or mismanage — anger is to examine how my anger comes out with my children. For with them, my anger has few external constraints. They can’t yell back. They can’t get offended, withdraw their pledges, and start attending other families. So I can see what my anger will do unimpeded.
We went to Kinderphoto to have a family photo taken for the holidays. I don’t know who invented the idea of little kids getting dressed up, sitting still, and smiling for some stranger behind a huge camera. This was a nightmare. We put our kids on the giant rocking horse, and our youngest daughter was terrified. She sobbed uncontrollably. We made funny faces, bribed her with sugar cookies — to no avail.
So I got mad and threatened to spank her, not an effective way to get a smile from a two year old. Soon her sister was crying; the photographer was crying; other families were waiting to take their turn, and their kids were crying. They began to chant 1 Timothy 3:5, “If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?”
So I pulled our youngest child off the horse and said to her gently, “Do you wish you had Baby Tweezers right now?” Baby Tweezers was her favorite doll.
With big tears in her eyes, my daughter answered, “Yes.”
“Well,” I continued, “if you ever want to see Baby Tweezers alive again, I better see your face radiate with mirth until that big man behind the camera says we’re done.”
Only later did I realize what was going on. My concern was not for the picture. I needed to look as if I was in control. I was more concerned with my need to look like a good parent, to convince people I was the right kind of father, than I was about the well-being of my children. And if they don’t turn on the obedience to create that appearance, I’ll take my anger out on them.
I don’t want to be that kind of father. I want to be a memory-making, life-affirming, magic-moment-creating kind of daddy. Sometimes I convince myself that I am. But moments like this show how hurry sickness and self-absorption block that goal and fuel so much of my anger, at home and at church.
Do I Enjoy Being Angry?
I must enjoy anger because I work so hard to keep it alive. A grudge is like a baby; it has to be nursed if it’s going to survive. Anger is inevitable. Resentment is optional.
Frederick Buechner writes, “Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll your tongue over the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
I need to be careful about preaching out of anger, precisely because it can be fun. Once I was preaching about the prodigal son’s elder brother, and my eyes landed on a man who was legalistic and who resisted change in the church. Suddenly I was filled with righteous indignation. I didn’t stare at him — no one there could have known about this — but in my heart I was saying to him, “This is you. The elder brother is you.” This made my delivery pretty passionate — probably helped the sermon out. But for me it was a spiritually destructive practice. It’s a form of pulpit abuse.
Certainly at times preaching will be done with anger. The words of the prophets were often spoken directly out of their anger. If Martin Luther King, Jr., hadn’t given voice to prophetic anger, our society would be immeasurably poorer. But he always taught that words of judgment must be filtered through love before they can be safely pronounced: “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force.”
How Do Healthy Pastors Manage Anger?
How can pastors, who are supposed to model patience and love, express anger appropriately in the church setting (meaning, without losing their credibility, jobs, or sanity)?
Three strategies help me: (1) clarify what it is I really want (and value) when I’m angry, (2) create a strategy that is more likely to achieve it, and (3) find a trustworthy person outside the church to whom I can freely, fully express my anger.
I once heard from a third party that a former deacon had criticized the church and me. My first impulse was to criticize the former deacon, by way of defending my reputation and harming his.
Ventilation for ventilation’s sake may feel good at the moment, but it almost never brings about what I really want. If I can identify what I clearly want (as opposed to a reflexive desire to hurt), I can choose a strategy that will help me get there.
I recognized what I really wanted was a church where this kind of communication did not go on. I wanted to be the kind of person who could confront this honestly and in love. So I called the former deacon to arrange an appointment.
At this point, it got more complicated. He said (I know this sounds hard to believe) he refused to meet with me until I changed the church motto.
The motto printed on church stationary seemed to me fairly innocuous: “Reaching up and reaching out.” I found myself getting angrier. This is so stupid! The only just solution entailed having him shot, and this didn’t seem practical at the time. So I called on another resource I think is indispensable for pastors: a person outside the church with whom I can talk openly about all details of my life.
Pastors need an outside “ventilatee” because there are aspects of our church-directed anger that are unfair to burden any church member with.
After I had dumped the whole load of my frustration and hurt with my friend, we were able to devise a plan together that would best lead toward reconciliation.
Effective anger management, then, has become a lifetime goal for me. Because if I don’t become the kind of husband and father and pastor that I dream of being, that will make me really angry. And eternity is a long time to pout.
Copyright © 1994 by Christianity Today
