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.