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CONGREGATIONS KILL
THEIR CLERGY From THE NEW YORK TIMES: 1st
August 2010. The findings have surfaced with ominous regularity
over the last few years, and with little notice: Members of the clergy now
suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most
Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while
their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could. Public health experts who have led the studies
caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a
profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so
unhealthy and unhappy. But while research continues, a growing number of
health care experts and religious leaders have settled on one simple remedy
that has long been a touchy subject with many clerics: taking more time off. As cell-phones and social media expose the clergy to
new dimensions of stress, and as health care costs soar, some of the
country’s largest religious denominations have begun wellness campaigns that
preach the virtues of getting away. It has been described by some health
experts as a sort of slow-food movement for the clerical soul. In the The church, the nation’s largest mainline Protestant
denomination, led the way with a 2006 directive that strongly urged ministers
to take all the vacation they were entitled to — a practice then almost
unheard of in some busy congregations. “Time away
can bring renewal,” the directive
said, “and help prevent burnout.” FOLLOW-UP
IN “THE TIMES” THE American clergy is suffering from burnout,
several new studies show. And part of the problem, as researchers have
observed, is that pastors work too much. Many of them need vacations, it’s
true. But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and
relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest
calling. The pastoral vocation is to help people grow
spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more
compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and
entertain them. It’s apparent in the theatre-style seating and giant
projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more
sightseeing than listening to the local people. As a result, pastors are constantly forced to
choose, as they work through congregants’ daily wish lists in their e-mail
and voice mail, between paths of personal integrity and those that portend
greater job security. As religion becomes a consumer experience, the clergy
become more unhappy and unhealthy. The trend toward consumer-driven religion has been
gaining momentum for half a century. Consider that in 1955 only 15 percent of
Americans said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood,
according to a In this transformation, clergy have seen their job
descriptions rewritten. They’re no longer expected to offer moral counsel in
pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable
uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay dearly. A
few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit I have faced similar pressures myself. In the early
2000s, the advisory committee of my small congregation in Congregations that make such demands seem not to
realize that most clergy don’t sign up to be soothsayers or entertainers.
Pastors believe they’re called to shape lives for the better, and that
involves helping people learn to do what’s right in life, even when what’s
right is also difficult. When they’re being true to their calling, pastors
urge Christians to do the hard work of reconciliation with one another before
receiving communion. They lead people to share in the suffering of others,
including people they would rather ignore, by experiencing tough
circumstances — say, in a shelter, a prison or a nursing home — and seeking
relief together with those in need. At their courageous best, clergy lead
where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that
concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed. Ministry is a profession in which the greatest
rewards include meaningfulness and integrity. When those fade under pressure
from churchgoers who don’t want to be challenged or edified, pastors become
candidates for stress and depression. Clergy need parishioners who understand that the
church exists, as it always has, to save souls by elevating people’s values
and desires. They need churchgoers to ask for personal challenges, in areas
like daily devotions and outreach ministries. When such an ethic takes root, as it has in
generations past, then pastors will cease to feel like the spiritual
equivalents of concierges. They’ll again know joy in ministering among people
who share their sense of purpose. They might even be on fire again for their
calling, rather than on a path to premature burnout. THOUGHTS FROM THE REV. DR. PAUL
ROBERTS FORMER DEAN
OF NON-RESIDENTIAL TRAINING, ST MICHAEL’S COLLEGE, LLANDAFF: Many non-ordained people struggle to believe that
being a priest can be stressful. Some even still believe that we work for one
day a week, visit a few people and spend the rest of the time reading
theology and collecting butterflies. However, in many cases, particularly
those who are responsible for one or more churches, a working week well in
excess of the legal working time directive is the norm. The other factor behind clergy stress is the lack of
the work/life boundaries which most people would take for granted. Two things
illustrate this. Despite trying my best to keep my working time within
bounds, since the start of November, I have been working roughly 70 hours per
week. This is achieved by having four days which begin at 7am with the email
and end with the closing of a meeting around 9.30 or 10pm, then a lighter day
(8 hours), a day off, then a 12-hour Sunday. I live in my work environment,
in the house and outside the house. Every time I go into the supermarket, I meet
people I know for whom I carry pastoral responsibility. A chance meeting
inevitable bridges the boundaries – I ask them how they are, I may be aware
of issues that it would be appropriate to ask after. To do otherwise would be
churlish and bring something false or unnatural into the relationship. Like
most parish priests, I have an office at home and I also use the house for
meetings. I am immersed in my work context. I don’t have a place to go ‘home’
to which is outside of those work responsibilities. Normally this is all fine. I like people. I wouldn’t
have gone into this job if I didn’t. But the lack of boundaries and the long
hours are inherently dangerous to parish clergy. It’s fine when all is well.
It’s far from fine when things are not – there is no place of complete escape
from the responsibility. No boundaries of time or space which are safe enough
to hide behind when one is feeling wounded, exhausted, or in need of space to
recuperate. For married clergy, this lack of boundaries
inevitably affects the spouse, and hence bears upon the marriage
relationship. Any children are also, to some extent, affected too. Most
children don’t see their dad (or mum) at work. My children do. Quite a lot of
the time. Including time when most families are spending time together. For
some clergy children, this is also quite damaging. (I try my best to minimize
the effects of my job on my kids, but I’d be fooling myself if I believed
that I was able to shield them completely from being affected by the fact
that their dad is the vicar.) It’s easy to say that such a lifestyle is, in part,
the fault of the clergyperson themselves. After all, we are ultimately
responsible for our own diaries. We are only ‘timetabled’ on Sunday. The
simple answer, surely, is just to carve out more time for ourselves and our
family. But there are many things which bring about a 70-hour week. The first factor is that we are normally the only
full-time paid person in the outfit. This means that not only do we know more
factual stuff about the situation (and therefore are called upon to make
decisions more than anyone else), we are also often the only ‘desk’ that work
can pass onto or across. Whilst I can delegate predictable, routine things, a
good many things in the life of a parish and church are one-offs, requiring a
flexible and informed response and the kind of joined-up consistent thinking
that only full-time teams can achieve. In addition, Anglican church law places the
incumbent in sole responsibility for a good many things – many, many bucks
stop at the desk of the vicar, but there are very few other desks to pass
across before arriving there. I can quite easily use up a 40-hour week with
administrative-related business alone, before even touching the pastoral,
liturgical, teaching or missional work. Yet it is these latter areas where my
primary gospel responsibilities lie. Like many self-employed people, clergy dread
holidays because they know that they will face all the administrative work
that they would have done during the holiday period when they get home. It
normally takes me about three weeks to shift a week’s backed-up work, to the
point where the workload returns to normal, so holidays come at a high
personal price. This work isn’t imaginary. If it is ignored, there are consequences.
People show up at meetings to find that inadequate preparation has been made.
People are discouraged when they send an email to the vicar and nothing is
returned. The phone messages are not answered. The letters, forms and
references not replied to or completed. Just having pastoral chats with
people isn’t enough. Ministerial faithfulness in human relationships involves
administrative faithfulness too. Meetings are also necessary. Churches are
places which revolve around voluntary activity. People are stakeholders in
the life of their church community. They have a right to have a say, and to
engage with me in decision-making. Although email has helped establish shared
communication in a context other than ‘the meeting’, it also comes at the
price of needing further time to read and respond. So the hours are filled. And what about boundaries? It is possible to set stricter boundaries. Some
clergy actually leave their area on their days off. But I like my home – I’ve
only got one! I like going around the shops and places in my neighbourhood. I
don’t want to wander the land on my time off like Cain. I want to relax in
the familiar surroundings of home and locality. So I have to realise that to
some extent I am rarely completely ‘off duty’. And when I do go away, there
is also the cost of not being there when someone needed me. Guilt. Recently, after Christmas I took a few days’
solitude by going away on my bicycle. Whilst I was away, someone dear to me
in one of my parishes called me in great distress. That person had never
called me in such a state of need of a pastor before. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there for completely good, if
self-motivated, reasons. But it was the one time that person had called me in
need. And I wasn’t there for them. However much you rationalise that kind of
thing, you still feel guilty of not being the thing you’re called to be, even
though you know you’re not really. The whole life of a parish priest is
filled with the nagging sense of letting people down. It’s because you cannot
be always there, always available, always saying the right thing, being the
flawless priest that you, and they, so desperately want you to be. COMMENT
FROM A CofE PRIEST PRESENTLY UNEMPLOYED AND SEEKING A NEW POST: Of course, clergy should take regular vacations and,
no doubt, doing so brings refreshment. However, such reinvigoration will not
last long as the real problem is the amount of time clergy spend working each
and every week that they are not on vacation. In the Church of England the clergy are expected to
work for 60 hours a week over 6 days. But most conscientious clergy will put
in far more hours. For this they are paid about £23000. Employed persons, in
other occupations, would expect to work no more than between 35 and 40 hours
a week for such a wage and, importantly, this would be over a 5 day week,
giving them 2 full days off to recuperate and give time to their own
concerns. Clergy have to shop, paint the spare room and take their kids to
football practice like everyone else. Cramming such mundane things into just
one day off a week leaves you permanently knackered and the lack of time
available to spend with ones partner can lead to all sorts of relationship
stress. Basically, nobody else would accept such working
conditions. Such long hours for such low wages have been regarded as unjust
in Most congregations in At almost every interview I have attended in my
search for another post I have been grilled about how much time I spend on my
Internet diary (blog). The answer is about 3 hours a day. When I am working I
tend to spend about an hour on it before Morning Prayer and then more time in
the evening and late at night (I'm not one for watching much TV and I don't
have any other hobbies). In any other line of work you would not expect to be
interrogated about the amount of time you spend on your hobbies during your
own spare time. The truth is that congregations do not allow their
clergy any spare time. They expect them to devote every spare moment of their
waking lives to them and assume the right to wake them up if they are
sleeping. Of course, there are other occupations where this is also true to
some extent, certain parts of the medical profession for example. But such jobs tend to be financially
rewarded at a far higher level than clergy pay and usually last for a
relatively short amount of time during the person's career. Although clergy in the Church of England have always
been poorly paid (at times, in the past, far more poorly paid than they are
today), previously their ministry was not viewed by the congregations as a
job, but as a way of life. Clergy would work their own land, study, pursue
other interests, do academic work alongside their parish commitments, and in
a relaxed manner. Unfortunately, the people of the church have now bought
into the capitalist ethic and see their clergy as their employees whilst at
the same time not buying into the fair wage for a fair day's work ethic. In
this they are like the unenlightened mill owners of the early industrial
revolution or Nike today. Unless clergy hours are reduced to no more than 8 a
day and their working week reduced to 5 days, clergy working in modern,
Western, capitalist countries will continue to burn out, no matter if they
take regular holidays or not. At the moment most congregations are killing
their clergy and they don't appear to give a damn about that. And to say that clergy should work long hours
because members of the laity give up their spare time to work for their
church is like saying a bartender should not be paid because customers
voluntarily come into the pub. Or, perhaps, more accurately (if you are
English) like saying a working men's club steward should not be paid because
the club committee members are all volunteers. COMMENT FROM YOUR RECTOR There have been numerous responses and comments on
this Report on the Internet. Some came
from clergy who either wrote off the study, denied the fact there is clergy
burn out, or suggested that we ought to just get on with the job. Unfortunately the latter is a prevalent
attitude amongst many clergy, which I believe adds to more clergy
stress. “You aren’t man/woman/faithful
enough to take it,” so to speak. Clergy burn out is a very real thing though. From the people I trained with 25 years
ago, two didn’t make it through the Course, three committed suicide within
the first four years, several others have had extended sick leave, and a
couple have taken early retirement on medical grounds. I know of two others in multi-parish
Benefices who have also had extended leave due to stress. Many are overweight and have related health
problems. There is also the emotional
stress that comes with the calling – yet clergy are the ones who have to be
the “unanxious presence.” If at times I appear to be so “laid back” that I’m
horizontal, it’s only my defence mechanism for dealing with all this. My work for the church (and the depth of my
Christian faith is a separate issue from my work) is not going to kill me. Here’s the main benefit of having the
"living" as opposed to the "Common Tenure" that is being
forced upon its clergy through the "Terms & Conditions of
Service" - that those with the "living" are not in thrall to
the whim of their congregations. With
the “living” you have the freedom to operate your ministry as you feel
called, even if it ruffles a congregation’s feathers at times. If I took the “Common Tenure” option I would
have to write a “Role description” and be regularly assessed over my
performance. I shall be your last
Rector – with the next appointment the “Licence” to this Benefice will be
replaced by “Common Tenure”. Richard Thornburgh |
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