Of POWs and Pastors

What is worse for a person, to be a POW or a Pastor?

This is not some random question.  It is not an attempt to make light of being a pastor or a prisoner of war.  It is a real question that is born from a real concern for pastors.  First, let me offer my credentials.  I am a PK and saw my dad experience high levels of stress in ministry.  I am a minister and spent over 25 years in the located ministry and on more than one occasion almost lost it.  I have talked with many, many preachers who have been through the mill and for a short time I served as a volunteer board member for the Stressed Clergy Association.  I have never been a POW. 

Those of us in ministry or close to those in ministry are well aware of the stress of the life of ministry.  Many books are available on the subject and on how to deal with the sometimes misguided and sometimes evil people, who create the stress.  There is a feature-length film on the subject I highly recommend, Betrayed: Clergy Killers DNA.  In the United church of Christ Canada there is even a ministers’ union; actually it is part of the UAW.  There is no need to argue that ministers have stress that sometimes even leads to PTSD.  In fact, PTSD among pastors is a growing concern.

POWs with almost no PTSD

When the POWs who were held at the infamous Hanoi Hilton were returned home it was expected that they would be overwhelmed with PTSD.  Because the Navy was so sure that these men would suffer dramatically they followed and studied these prisoners for 20 years.  In 1996, the Navy revealed the results of this study.  The findings revealed that these prisoners experienced rates of PTSD of about 4%, which is equal to the rate of PTSD in the population at large.

Stop and think about this for a moment.  The 566 POWs from the Hanoi Hilton who were held against their will for up to 7 years, arrived there after a massively traumatic experience (like being shot out of the air), suffered relentless torture physically and mentally, beaten ruthlessly, starved to the point that some men lost 100 pounds, forced to live with maximum uncertainty and minimum control (the real source of stress), were less likely to have PTSD than pastors.  What gives?

In his excellent book Nerve, Taylor Clark addresses why the residents of the Hanoi Hilton were able to survive emotionally intact.   He sights four factors/attributes in the prisoners’ lives that contributed to the mental toughness and resilience in that little corner of Hell on earth.  As I look at my ministry colleagues and friends, I notice that, by and large, we only have two of those four factors.  I believe that the two we are typically missing are the two that are most important to our mental, emotional and spiritual survival. 

What we have in common!

First: the two traits that POW’s and Pastors have in common: 1) Intelligent, highly motivated individuals  2) A strong personal faith in God. 

The POWs were, for the most part, pilots, officers in the US military who were bright, gung-ho types, deeply committed to their country and their mission. Additionally, in interviews, the POWs spoke of the importance of their faith in God.  In these two ways these two groups are a lot a like.  Pastors love God, Jesus, the Church and have tackled Greek, systematic theology, and many have advanced degrees.  Most continue their education either formally or informally, so they can be more effective.  Pastors, by and large, have a real sense of calling to their ministry and the church.  While the phrase gung-ho might not be the best description of a pastor’s calling, they hold a profound understanding that they are on earth for this purpose.  I believe that in these two ways the POWs and pastors are a lot alike.

The Critical Differences

Communication/Community

The desperate situation of being in the Hanoi Hilton caused these POWs to develop two characteristics that are often absent in the lives of most pastors. 

The first of these is that the POWs had a high level of communication.  The POWs were able to communicate with each other through secret tap codes, even when in solitary confinement.  They were there to encourage each other and remind each other they were not in this misery alone. 

Most ministers are lonely, having few, if any, close friends with which they can honestly share their heart.  We feel we can’t be close to church members-it might be seen as playing favorites.  Many times we can’t be close to our church leaders.  Like it or not it is often more of a business relationship than a friendship.  We are reluctant to be friends with Christians from other congregations-we don’t want to appear to be stealing sheep.  We can’t be friends with non-Christians-there is an undercurrent of evangelism at work.  We are reluctant to be friends with other pastors for a whole host of reasons.  There is some truth in all of these excuses.  But many pastors are lonely and when circumstances become difficult they become painfully lonely.

Pastor, you must, (let me put it this way MUST!!!!!!) develop relationships that will allow you to communicate and be a part of a supportive community.  Maybe your church is healthy enough that it can happen within your congregation.  Maybe you will need to make those connections outside of your church.  That matters little.  Being a part of a community is almost as important as O2 for your life.  It would be all but impossible to list all the benefits that you gain by being a part of a community of communication with pastors.  It is so important that it needs to be written into your weekly plan.  You should block off time with Jesus, your spouse, and your colleagues in ministry.  Put it on your day planner-a 2-hour meeting every two weeks that is set aside for this priority.  If you need help, contact me and I will help you.  If your leaders ask about this, tell them your councilor (that would be me) insists on your group development time.

The Secret Fourth Ingredient

The fourth finding as to why the POWs of the Hanoi Hilton survived so well was the most important.  It was their strong sense of humor.  When the researcher Linda D. Henman interviewed 50 of the surviving POWs, she discovered this secret fourth ingredient to their survival.  I highly recommend reading   http://www.henmanperformancegroup.com/articles/humor-resilience.pdf.  For the POWs, humor was a vital ingredient in their survival.  Humor was so important that prisoners would risk being tortured to tell a joke to a fellow prisoner who needed to be cheered up.    One prisoner, in order to cheer up his fellows, began riding a pretend motorcycle around the compound complete with sound effects and occasional crashes.   He was taken into solitary confinement and had his motorcycle confiscated because it wasn’t fair for him to have one while the other prisoners did not, the captors explained.  In solitary confinement he invented an imaginary, invisible chimp that went with him to interrogations.   The prisoner and Barney Google the chimp would, among other things, debate on how to answer the questions.  Almost all of their humor was an inside joke sort of humor.  It would not be funny to anyone else or anywhere else.  The prisoners were able to stick their proverbial “finger in the eye” of the impossible situation by use of humor. 

Most ministers I know have trouble laughing at a personal level.  Some are wound so tight that every little thing is a matter of eternal consequence.  Some have been so wounded that every reaction seems to be either fight or flight.  This is more than simply taking our roles seriously.  Let me say that I do believe the Gospel is the most important message in the universe and is to be taken seriously.  The problem is that we take everything, our churches, our people, and ourselves too seriously.   In difficult times that consistently serious approach to ministry turns every little thing into a matter of salvation or damnation.  This distorted view is too much for a pastor to bear.

Joking about a serious situation allows us to look at it from a different perspective.   That is what humor is!  There is nothing literally funny about a chicken crossing the road, unless you format the idea in terms of humor.  When you are trapped in a bad church or a difficult ministry situation, you tend to think, this is terrible I have to get out of this mess.  But if you can find some humor in it, you are looking at it from a different perspective.    By poking fun at a stress-filled moment we take away the poison it offers us.  In humor a different part of the brain is at work.  The old processes that are stuck and troubled are put on pause and a whole new process is engaged.  That doesn’t make the situation objectively better, but it allows you to think differently about the situation and in thinking differently you may find an actual solution.   At worst, it will help keep you sane.

Those who don’t understand ministry will not understand this humor and it shouldn’t find its way into the sermon.  It may be in another context considered to be in bad taste.  But I strongly recommend that both in your own soul and in the company of your fellow ministers, you find a way to laugh at the difficulty of your situation. 

Now, if you will excuse me Barney Google and I are going for a motorcycle ride. 

The Eve Initiative, being like God.

You will recall, that in Genesis 3 the last comment by the serpent before Eve decided to take the forbidden fruit was; “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  That sentence by itself is loaded with discussion starters.  As we know, Eve’s plan to become God-like did not play out as she expected.   That desire to be like God has never left us.  Created in His image and His being our Father draws us to be like Him.  We still want to be like God-to play God.  Virtually all the problems in the world are a result of our trying to be like God and doing such a poor job of it. 

The problem is not that we want to be like God.  The problem is that we are trying to do so in the wrong way.  We can be like God; indeed we ought to and should try to be like God, but in one specific way.  When we love, we most resemble our heavenly Father.  Now, before you imagine this will be another sappy devotion about the wonderful, gushing, feeling of love, hold on to your theological horses.  First Corinthians thirteen is decidedly the least romantic passage written about love in all of literature, sacred or secular!

Agape is completely, absolutely, and eternally disconnected from the worth, the value, or the desirability of the beloved.  The object of this love is, as far as lover is concerned, without merit.  The one being loved can make no claims on the love of the lover whatsoever.  That is why the serial pedophile is as much an object of God’s love as the faithful, saintly, prayer warrior.  That is why you and I stand in the same position as a suicide bomber who is planning to attack a day care full of toddlers.  The dedicated mother who sacrifices so much of herself, her energy and her dreams for the benefit of ungrateful toddlers and a distracted husband can make no greater claim on the Agape of God than the street thugs that gang rape innocent girls.  At this moment, Glen Rogers, aka the Casanova Killer, waits his turn on death row here in FL.  Glen, at one time, claimed to have killed 80 women.  In terms of merit, Glen and I have the exact same claim on God’s love.

Here is how we can be like God.  We can love without the consideration of merit.   But, like all the great teachings of the Christian faith, the rub comes with the application.  Here is what I see in my life and in some of the Christians around me-a distinct absence of meritless love.  I see that both liberal and conservatives are hateful in their speech about the other side.  I see those on the left who demand tolerance passionately intolerant and I see those on the right who would make claims about grace being ungracious.  I see that in response to the hate we see in some Muslims, a few Christians want to engage in a crusade that offers what might be called a final solution.  I see that rivals are enemies to be destroyed in the most literal sense of the word.  I see growing polarization not viewed as a problem to be overcome, but rather, a dividing line to be exploited.  I see this and other anti-agape attitudes and dispositions in my journal, mirror and own heart.

I understand the importance of law and order, the danger of not confusing good and evil, and in giving into empty-headed sentimentality of singing Kum-Ba-Yah around a campfire and thinking that is enough.  Agape is not soft, simple naivety. 

One thing Agape is, it is deeply personal.  It is not mandated by law, proposed by council or instituted via education.  It is radically individual and deeply personal.  It is the confrontation that I am not like God in that I do not love. In the one way I can be most God-like, I am very unlike God.  When my life and faith are marked by the absence of love, I could speak the language of the courts of heaven and it would be a one-note song played on a tin can.   If I do not love without merit, I could be so inspired that I could write the 67^th book of the Bible and I would be a zero.  In the absence of Agape, I could be be-headed by Isis while preaching the gospel and it would do me no good.

Lord, help me to love. 

Help me to be like You.

Losing faith, regaining hope.

If you have ever lost faith in someone, you know what a painful experience it is.  We have all experienced this in the context of our first crush, unless of course you married and are still married to your first crush.  Sometimes it happens in a more serious romantic relationship.  Losing faith in a friend ends that friendship.  It happens sometimes when we are betrayed; sometimes faith is lost in us when we are the betrayer.  Some times the loss of faith is so huge that it ends marriages.  On earth, few things could be more devastating than that loss of faith.  On one occasion, my wife and I were counseling a young lady who was going through a divorce.  Both of them had lost faith in each other, with due cause, and the loss was so great that they settled on divorce as their least objectionable option.  At the same time, a young lady in our church lost her husband in a freak accident.  The divorcee confessed one day, “I think it is easier for her (the girl whose husband died).  At least for her it is over.  This is a pain that doesn’t end; it just keeps dragging out.”  If you have ever lost faith in someone you can relate to that pain.

I recently confided to a friend being a church consultant exposes you to the very best and the very worst of the church. 

I have in many ways lost faith in the church.  Let me hasten to clarify!  I have not lost faith in The Church the bride of Christ, which is the company of all faithful people, the army of God that overcomes persecution and will one day stand in victory along side of Jesus.  I have lost faith or am losing faith in the church in many of its contemporary expressions.  Let me offer an example.  A friend of mine along with his wife visited a very hip, ultra contemporary church.  It was the kind of church that is long on marketing, image, the right look, cool music, and ‘dynamic worship’.  They visited just before Christmas and the pastor summed up the incarnation by saying, “It was like God became a dude and lived with us for a while.”  I am currently reading St. Athanasius’ On The Incarnation.  And while he is completely understandable, he shows that the incarnation is so much more sublime than “God became a dude and lived with us for a while”.  I fear cool and relevant has replaced holy and reverent.  I wish the stories of sloppy teaching were rare; they are not.  And it is not just sloppy teaching that makes my heart break in many places for the church.  I am losing faith in the institution.

I am losing faith in the systems that we have created.  I am losing faith in all the fads that seem to sweep over the church like waves on the seashore.  I have seen the promise of a new day of ministry in everything from bus ministry to seeker-driven, multi-site churches.  Each new revolution is supposed to propel the church to a new golden age of ministry.  Each only becomes a flash in the pan.  All these great innovations are like the revolution of the mimeograph machine; give it a few years and you only laugh at it.

I am losing faith in the church, but I am regaining hope.  I am regaining hope as I see people focusing more on being disciples and less on being at the coolest church.  I see signs of hope as people are seeking Christ more than a congregation or a denomination. 

Last week, I witnessed this hope as a preacher challenged his leaders to focus on the vast majority of people, especially young people, who haven’t found the answers to life because they have not yet encountered Christ.  There was no appeal to the new, coolest, hip ministry method; it was an appeal to be Christ’s body in the community.  The incarnation of God to hurting people.   He spoke of a very shy, young lady who with absolutely no faith connection except one friend in youth group decided to attend Bible study even when her friend could not attend because something in the Bible study resonated with the questions she has.  He asked how many other lonely, isolated people were in the community that had questions for which the church had answers.

I hear it as I talk with preachers who tell me how they want to return to the pattern of the early church for community, evangelism, and discipleship.  A church where focus is not on large meetings and events, but in learning deeply the trues of Scripture and living in such a way that people know Christians are different.

I got the picture from a church administrator who told me, “We believe the church is people, so we don’t have buildings.  We want to put our resources in people not real estate.”  This didn’t come from some crackpot, home church on the fringe of society, but a church with 100s of disciples meeting in homes and rented spaces.

Admittedly these examples are a minority.  In some cases they represent a glimpse of light in other wise dark situations, congregation or denominations.  But they are there.  I want to have my heart stirred by such moments so that as I lose faith in the institution, I can regain hope in the Church, the body of Christ. 

The church is dead

Long Live the CHURCH.

Naked Preacher and Cheap Grace

In the spring of 1982, I was standing in a mall in Atlanta.  I was with several friends from Atlanta Christian College.  We were at the Atlanta-wide Goodwill, used book sale.  We were skipping class so we could be among the first to sort through the books.  We were hoping to fill our fledgling libraries on the cheap. As we thumbed through the titles a friend handed me a book and said, “I’ve got a copy of this, if you don’t, you should buy it.”  At 50 cents a book, my five dollars went pretty fast, so while my richer friends continued to search, I found a bench and began with chapter one: “Cheap Grace is the deadly enemy of our church.”  The Cost of Discipleship remains one of my favorite books, one that I read over and over.

Bonheoffer’s battle against cheap grace is a little different from the battle we fight, but his words are hauntingly true for us today.  Later in that opening chapter Bonheoffer wrote: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.  Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

Those words came to my memory this week when I heard news of a pastor from a very large church that was caught having sex with a woman from his congregation.  The woman’s gun toting, enraged husband chased him naked from the home.  News of the event spread across the city rapidly.  We might expect that in such a situation the church might require a season of repentance, counseling, church discipline and accountability.  Rather, the next Sunday (two days later) he informs the church:

“What I want from God I’ve already received it ― and that’s his forgiveness.  If I stop preaching, if I stop doing what the Lord called me to do over this, it presupposes that I was qualified to do it in the first place. ... We will move forward.”  A video of his statement is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CzdZc3ymMs.  He apparently has no plans to step down.

The grace we bestow on ourselves is forgiveness without any consequence for sin or the hurt caused by it.  It covers the cancer with a Band-Aid, but never seeks to root out the disease.    This grace allows us to return to “normal” as quickly as possible without considering that “normal” is grossly wrong.  In self-applied forgiveness, we do not hear the heart wrenching sorrow we hear from David in Psalm 51. We have been warned by Bonheoffer, “Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner”.  Cheap grace is completely incapable of changing the heart; it will only make the sinner more careful to cover his tracks.

Maybe we have lost sight of the awfulness of sin.  Maybe we have forgotten what was required for our forgiveness.  Maybe we are just too cavalier with forgiveness and we are ready to “forgive ourselves” (a concept fraught with theological problems) in a moment.

My heart breaks for this minister, his wife, the other woman, her husband, all their kids, the local congregation, and the church universal.  But we must not assume that a huge covering of generalized “forgiveness, forgetfulness and now we move on” will make things better.  Cheap Grace will only sicken the local congregation and the church universal.