#5 Mental Health in Ministry

Michael:
Welcome to the Peculiar People podcast and today we have Dr. Rodgerson with us and so glad you’re here. This is an important topic, but not everybody who knows you, and that’s unfortunate, everyone should know you. We love you. We’re thankful for what you do. I’m thankful for the few parts that I’ve been able to share my life with you and you poured into my life. But why don’t you tell people who you are and what you do?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Yep. I’m Tom Rodgerson and I do a variety of things. I am counselor with Center Point Counseling. I started with Center Point back in 1990. I was the executive director for a number of years. I’m no longer the executive director. I’ve been a professor of pastoral counseling at Loyola University and teaching there since 1996, but recently retired from that. And I have also been a consultant with BCMD helping with pastors and churches and I am no longer officially a consultant but still doing counseling with the ministers, primarily clergy, here at the BCMD office.

Michael:
Awesome. I know I invited you to come to talk about pastors and their mental health, but what made you decide to come in and talk about this?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Well, trying to honor the request first of all, but this is my ministry. It’s my life call. I’ve been a pastor, but I found that I have a more strategic role to play in the Body of Christ. Many ministers on the front line can probably do that job better than I can. My job is to try to help them be as healthy as possible and congregations to be as healthy as possible. The phrase I sometimes like to use is that I’m a missionary to the unconscious. That is probably a psychological term, but if you wanted it out of theology, David talks in Psalm 51:6 about teach me wisdom in my secret heart and also talks about the inward man or woman, and that’s my ministry. I’ve been doing that as my life work, so this is a part of my life work.

Michael:
We’re so glad you’re here today. What challenges do you see pastors having with mental health?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Well, there’s a challenge to even accept the fact that a pastor might have mental health issues and that they’re susceptible to that. We’re fortunate I think to live in a time where it’s not quite so looked down upon anymore. Pastors, they’re challenged like anybody else in society. Certain percentages of people have mental health problems and pastors are not immune. And some of that is biologic, and that’s sometimes hard for people to accept, that there’s a biology going on here and sometimes you need a biological solution. But it’s not simply biological, and I think ministers and their environment have unique challenges. These challenges are vicarious traumatization is a term that’s very real. You hear lots of people’s problems and it’s going to affect you and there’s also the complication ministers have of their own call. I always remind ministers, you’ve probably heard me use this term before, that there is a purity and a pathology to your call and you need to know which is which. We bring issues. There’s a study that said about 90% of pastors were hoping that the church would meet their needs.

Michael:
Wow.

Dr. Rodgerson:
And it isn’t going to happen. But something is working mentally or spiritually in that call. The other thing is that since pastors are on a pedestal or in a fish bowl, they tend to suffer from repression more. They push things down, they ignore them until they grow sometimes to the point where you can’t ignore them any longer.

Dr. Rodgerson:
There’s a great story that Carl Jung told commenting on Caligula, who was an emperor in the Roman Empire, who was sailing back to Rome and the remora fish came out of the depths. It’s a sucker fish and attached itself to the rudder of the boat so the boat couldn’t be steered and couldn’t move. And because of that, Caligula showed up late and they had plotted his murder and he died. It gave them enough time to plot his murder. And Jung says that the unconscious, or the preconscious, there’s often things like a remora fish lying there that’ll come up and attach itself to something significant in your life. And if you’re not in touch with what’s going on in the depths of your life, it can create a disaster.

Dr. Rodgerson:
So those are some of the unique things that I think that I would put in the category of challenges for pastors around the issue of mental health.

Michael:
Those are amazing. You’ve been doing this for a while. I think for some younger people and Christians coming up in this age of social media, it can seem like more pastors than ever are struggling with mental health. A lot of us know that Jarrid Wilson took his life. Is that your perspective? I mean you’ve been doing this for a while. Have you seen an uptick in the struggle or is it the same?

Dr. Rodgerson:
I think we hear about it more, but there are increasing pressures in society. And I think, whether you put that in terms of the challenges or why so many are struggling with mental health issues, is that on the one hand we are in a time of high stress in society and the job is high stress. They’re not paid equivalent to what their education is, which adds stress. There are unreal expectations put on people. But then you have the societal piece. The society is in high stress, technology informs us of that more than ever, and sometimes people almost piggyback on that news cycle and it adds additional stress to life of ministers. So there’s probably more of it, but it’s also less hidden now. I think ministers are in a unique place in the society in which they carry not only the anxiety of the church, but the anxiety of the society where people are divided, they’re fragmented, from the government down to families, to schools, to everything.

Dr. Rodgerson:
And we’re not even clear about solutions. For instance, 95% of professional counselors don’t have a good definition of what mental is or what health is. So we’re talking about mental health without clear definitions. What’s mental? The mind is bigger than the brain, and certainly there’s a lot in scripture about the mind, which is also entrained with the heart and we don’t have a good concept of what mental is, and we definitely don’t have a good concept of what health is. Mental health is often a problem-focused exercise in the training of counselors, which I’ve done. But I’ve also tried to say, “What’s your assumptions about what health even looks like?” There’s a line from T.S. Eliot, one of his plays in which he says, “What you call health is merely the incubation of another malady.” And that’s a pretty good definition of what we’ve got going on in behavioral health that’s so symptom-focused but does not get at what’s pushing the symptom. It’s symptom reduction. But what about changing it so the symptoms aren’t there?

Dr. Rodgerson:
And so I’m also committed to a dialogue in terms of helping define what these things are going on. Where I think you need a dialogue between science and faith. Faith has a lot to add about what is health, what is mind, what is the heart, mind entrainment? But at the same time, the science, social sciences in particular can also tell us something about faith and how we’re doing with faith. Because what we call faith sometimes is nothing other than spiritual bypass in which we’re using our faith as a defense to guard against the inner work. And if you want scriptural reference for that, the apostle Paul was pretty on track with, okay, what about circumcising your heart? Which is essentially saying get beyond your defenses, get beyond your religious defenses that are causing you to bypass the work of the heart. Probably a longer answer than you wanted for that, but there’s a lot of that going on in society. Clergy, that ends up on their shoulders in many ways and there’s a lot for clergy to try to understand.

Michael:
That is a great answer. What do you wish churches knew about the pastor and his mental health?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Well, they know it but they choose not to know that the pastor is human and to remember that the pastor is human, susceptible not only to mental issues, but to all of the stresses that anybody else would. They have bodies. They’re biological beings as well, and the stress impacts that. I would like them to know that.

Dr. Rodgerson:
I’d like them to know and try to understand the 24/7 wind tunnel effect is what I would call it. You put something in a wind tunnel as a model and you turn on the wind in order to show up the fractures in the wing of an airplane for instance, 24/7 with clergy. It’s like being in a wind tunnel and the weaknesses, the flaws, the imperfections, the needed sanctification work is just going to erupt. So I’d like them to understand that it’s a 24/7 wind tunnel effect and that clergy really need Sabbath time, not just sermon preparation time. And I think churches often are saying, “What are these guys doing with their time?” They need Jesus time where you go up in the mountains and you get away from it and it’s not doing nothing. It’s wasting time for God, but it’s also the place where you meet spirit and you’ve got to have it to just be nurtured.

Dr. Rodgerson:
I’d also like churches to understand that we’re not talking in isolation about a person, we’re talking about families. The spouses of clergy often feel the anxiety even more than the clergy person.

Michael:
Yes.

Dr. Rodgerson:
And the children pick up on all of that. John Gottman made a statement saying, “If you want to measure the stress in the life of a family, take a urine sample of the children because the cortisol levels will show up in the children.”

Michael:
Wow.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Because they’re picking up on the stress, so it’s not just a clergy person, it’s a clergy family that churches need to understand.

Michael:
That’s powerful. Yeah, it’s so much to digest. It’s very, very good. I liked the phrase wasting time for God.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Yeah. William Clements came up with that term back in the ’80s. He wrote a book about it. He was at Southeastern Seminary at the time and he said, “Pastors really need to learn how to waste time for God.” Because the culture will always say you’re wasting time. Let’s waste time for God.

Michael:
I love when Christians redeem everything. You know what I mean?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Absolutely.

Michael:
Where they say there’s nothing outside of God. God’s overall.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Yeah, absolutely.

Michael:
So no matter what, this has to come into obedience to Christ. So if I’m wasting time, let me do it for Jesus. I love that type of thinking.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Indeed.

Michael:
One of the reasons why I wanted to do this is because obviously all the things you said, oftentimes we don’t talk about it enough. Pastors start feeling like they’re alone, and inevitably because of my own struggles with this from my past and even up to the present, I don’t believe in accidents and I believe we can actually help people. So there may be a pastor watching this right now and they’re saying, “Yep, yep. Wife, yep. Yeah. I hope you don’t take the urine sample of my kids, I don’t know what’s going to come out.” And he’s sitting there and he’s going, “You know what? I’m struggling.” What would you say to him?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Well, I would say get help, obviously, and I obviously have a bias about professional counseling, but I think you can get help also with good mentors. I think you can have good friends. So it’s not simply limited to professional counseling, but get help and get it sooner rather than later. Most couples who come for counseling come 10 years too late.

Michael:
Wow.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Because it’s so embedded. So get it sooner rather than later and many ministers are in the same category. They’ve done that repression thing, denial thing. I shouldn’t… If I’m really doing well spiritually, I shouldn’t have these issues. Go talk about that and get some help on what you can do and what’s biological and what’s emotional and what’s environmental. If you can get that from a mentor, get it from a mentor or a friend, get it from a friend. But sometimes it might be helpful to have professional counseling. So get help.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Isolation and self-sufficiency are the biggest downfalls in ministry as I think you well know. And I would also say that when one doesn’t get help, there’s something embedded in the creation even in the psyche that will eventually produce a crisis so that you don’t have any choice. Sometimes that crisis is a crossing of a boundary or doing something inappropriate, or sometimes it’s a complete breakdown of your system. Catch the signals early because it becomes harder and more complicated, the kind of help you need, the longer you wait.

Michael:
Yeah, that’s good stuff. Have you seen pastors who have taken some of those steps, mentors, professional counseling, friends, have you seen them do anything else outside of those things that has helped them?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Well, certainly their own spiritual life helps. And the kind of counseling I do, that’s one of the first things I’m asking. When’s your Sabbath time? What’s your prayer life like? And so I think as one takes seriously the journey of sanctification, but also deepen one’s prayer life, long before we had professional mental health counselors, we had spiritual direction and praying that went beyond just giving thanksgiving and praise and things like that, which is good, I’m not denying any of that, but the kind of prayer that changes the heart and the mind. And taking your prayer life seriously is doing research on that, practice of that, and it takes practice.

Dr. Rodgerson:
But there is a kind of praying that not only within scriptures but early Christianity, the desert fathers and mothers, they tried to understand what praying without ceasing meant and they developed a style of praying that was called being watchful and sober. Coming out of First Thessalonians 5 and First Peter, in which one continuously watched what was going on in the mind and the heart and kept bringing it back to something as simple as the Jesus prayer that said, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me, a sinner.” Or back to a verse of scripture, study the prayer and don’t be limited by what’s on the bookshelves today.

Dr. Rodgerson:
There’s long, centuries long, history of prayer that was focused on what we now call mental illness. We know a bit more about the biology of it, but mental health didn’t start in the 20th century. It’s got a long history and lots of prayer that can focus. So yeah, work on your prayer life, and get help there. Get a mentor there, get a spiritual director. It doesn’t have to be a professional counselor. And do that in advance of problems. Do that as a part of your sanctification work. That’s one of the things that I would say.

Michael:
That’s really helpful. I think one of the things that’s probably hard for a pastor is this issue of hope. If you’re 10 years behind and you’re in repression because you’ve got to do your job and you’ve got to perform, you got to do all this stuff and now it’s kind of caught up with you maybe in your marriage and your kids or just in your mental health. There’s a sense in which people can get really hopeless. Our paths are going to be very hopeless and feel like, “Oh, this is just… I don’t see a way out.” And they can hear some stuff and it can just sound like this is just platitude-ish. Like I know these things are true, but I’m feeling hopeless. Is there anything you could say to the pastor right now who feels hopeless?

Dr. Rodgerson:
Well, I would start with simple biology of what we know now is that there’s a neuroplasticity to the brain. So whatever has been wired in your brain, it can be changed, and it’s never too late to start with that.

Dr. Rodgerson:
The other thing that I would say is that, and I think the apostle Paul says, you’re not suffering anything that is new to humankind. That doesn’t necessarily make you feel better, but since you’re not unique in this, there’s an arrogance in hopelessness that says, “I’m so unique that God’s mercy can’t reach me.” Come out of the arrogance of that and say, “I’m human. People have found a way.”

Dr. Rodgerson:
And also I would even have them look back at their own lives. They’ve found a way before. Well, why don’t we go back and get in touch with that? And then just ruminate on or pray over a scripture like that comes out of Romans 4 where faith is defined as hope beyond hope. What is that? Just sit with that for a bit.

Dr. Rodgerson:
I usually ask people to start with just catch what’s going on in your mind and do so with nonjudgmental awareness and curiosity. Take the arrogance off it, take the judgment off of your own thinking, and just be curious, non-judgmentally. Wow, look at those thoughts going through my head and my heart. What’s that about? Where does that come from? But you’ve got got to do it non-judgmentally. You can do it non-judgmentally and you can be curious. Nobody in the mental health profession would say this, but spiritually you’ll get the Spirit revealing something to you when you’re in that kind of a state of let’s look at this and see what’s happening. And my experience is something is always revealed. And getting one insight into like where did that come from? Then you can build on that and you start building a life of hope. That’s what I would say.

Michael:
Wow. I knew it would be like this. I knew it would be full, I knew it would be encouraging. I knew it would be challenging, insightful. And as I said, I believe that God doesn’t bring people together on accident. And may He use this technology, may He use our lives, may He use your words to get into the hearts of some men, some pastors.

Michael:
One of the things I love about you, Dr. Rodgerson, is that we work together and we send men to you and sometimes their wives come too. I just want to say once again I’m grateful and I’m thankful for your investment in pastors and our convention and church planters. We always say this to our planters, at least we try to at our cohorts and our events, you’re not alone. If you need help, reach out. If you need resources, because counseling costs money, a lot of pastors won’t go see professional counselors. They’re like, “It’s expensive.” We want to do whatever it takes to put a pastor in a place where they can get the help they need to be who God’s called them to be. And more importantly, to just be a child of God. And we’re grateful for your role in that.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Thank you.

Michael:
Thanks for joining us today.

Dr. Rodgerson:
Great. Thank you.

Michael:
Grace and peace.