Pastors Struggle With Mental Health Too

September was national suicide prevention month.  There is a reason that I am drawing attention to this; more on that in a moment.

This post has been a while in the making.  I have thought about what to say and even how to say it for months.  I know the risk that comes with a post like this. While pastoring, I would often hear people say they would never share some of the things that I have been willing to share openly.  I guess in my life, I have never been one to hide things or pretend to be someone I am not.  I often think when reading some of the Apostle Paul’s letters about how vulnerable and open he was to anyone who would read what he had written. I believe that to share what I want to share, I have to also share about the past.  I have no desire to go over in detail every little thing about my past, but I do have a desire to share some things that perhaps will help others or give clarity to others.

I learned how to hide my emotions as a young child, being the youngest out of four boys by a pretty good margin. I learned not to cry, or at least not to allow others to see me cry.  Therefore, hiding my emotions became a coping mechanism. I won’t say that my childhood was terrible, but it had its struggles.  My father was an alcoholic who would get drunk and be abusive, never towards me but towards others. Eventually, my mother divorced him. We never had money; my mother was a single mom doing the best she could to support us.  I had an incident where a family member molested me a single time. I started to steal from my family and others so that I could ditch school and do what I wanted. I learned early to tap into my emotions and make every emotion anger. When my mother finally rremarried,my life straightened oout,but not my emotions. Anger was still the emotion that ruled my life.  Add that to the fact that I could not stand if I felt something was an iinjustice,and you had a bad combination.

I remember I was thrown in jail because I got caught breaking into a house, and the judge let me off because my mom was marrying my stepfather. We moved to Missouri, and one of the first things that happened was a bigger kid was picking on a smaller kid, and so I felt the need to fight him. Welcome to Missouri in the sixth grade.  Everything was taken to the extreme in my life. Emotions were constantly bottled up and turned into anger. When my stepdad kicked be around the brush pile because I was not working hard enough, it turned into anger, and I decided I would never be called lazy again.  This would be repeated throughout my life.  I would rebel against common thought or authority, which would lead to something negative, which would lead to me justifying my anger.

I was in high school when I heard a sermon on “gentle Jesus.” The pastor said that if we were struggling with anger, we could give it to gentle Jesus, and he called us to be gentle like Jesus.  I desired to be gentle. I thought I had surrendered my anger to Jesus to become more gentle, but I only learned to hide it better.  My anger did not come out physically, but it came out in other ways.  I could use my mind and tongue to dice you up very quickly. Nevertheless, I felt God calling me into ministry even though I did not know Christ as my savior.

I became a student pastor at 19 years old I had the opportunity to watch God do amazing things in my ministry. I could recall story after story of watching the Lord get a hold of teenagers lives and seeing their lives changed by the gospel.  My life was also changed because, as a student pastor, I believe for the first time the gospel made sense to me and I gave my life to Christ. When I started ministry, I was also attending Bible College at Hannibal LaGrange University. As a young student pastor I did not know much and was an arrogant punk, but I can remember clearly one time someone went up to a person I had been witnessing to and proceeded to speak poorly about me.  This man came and told me this and said he would never step foot in a church that treated one of their pastors that way. Early on I saw how ugly ministry could be. I never had the desire to go to seminary, so I knew that when I graduated, my desire would be to try to go straight into ministry. The Lord saw fit to bless me with that.  My first exposure to full-time ministry was not terrible. I can remember when interviewing sitting down and picking out things for a modular home we were told was going to be built for us, but it never actually but it was not without major issues either.

I can remember sitting down and picking out things for a modular home we were told was going to be built for us. Needless to say we were surprised when we showed up and had to try to find a place.  We were at the church for less than a year when the pastor resigned. From there, we had to navigate the challenges of finding a new pastor to lead our church, and this took roughly 3 years.  My early years in ministry, I was putting in crazy hours between coaching basketball or volleyball, teaching Bible at the Christian school, and being the student pastor. There were weeks I had put in over 80 hours.  This eventually took its toll on my body and landed me in the hospital.  In our time in PA we saw the lord bless in many ways we had kids from all backgrounds in our student ministry, and we were reaching kids that I am sure many thought were never possible to reach.  However, I let my guard down, and the enemy used the opportunity to sift me. During a long-drawn-out process, I had met with the elders of our church numerous times and was asked to read a statement that really was not entirely forthright nor completely true but I agreed to it in order to “keep the peace”. This was supposed to end in giving me a 5 week sabbatical.  However, in the middle of a business meeting where I read my statement and was supposed to be given a sabbatical, an untrue accusation was made against me from the stage that I knew I would not be able to recover from.  It became clear that the only way forward was to resign. I had people that I thought were my friends walk into elders meetings and say things about me that were not only untrue but cruel.  I had letters read about me that were hit pieces that were untrue and cruel.  I was accused of many things from making decisions that were only about drawing attention to myself (because I purchased items with money I made outside of ministry) to the one that stung the most: I didn’t love my own child.  I would endure comments that were meant to hurt and not build up.

In order to save face, I was given a choice: either resign and not have any pay or insurance for my pregnant wife, who was due in a few weeks, or let them fire me and keep my insurance and get paid.  I trusted in the Lrod, held my ground, and made it clear that I would be resigning.  Again, to save face, the announcement was made that they “asked for my resignation”. This was my first taste of spiritual manipulation and abuse. For the first time, I felt the sting of those that I thought loved me, and it felt awful.  I did not know what to do with these feelings, so I did what I always did: I bottled them up and said I “gave them to the Lord”, and secretly they became anger.

I had nowhere to go, no job, and did not know what to do. I loved in with my mother and our two children.  For 3 years, I heard people doubt my call to the ministry, people telling me to just quit, others shocked. I had not quit, but I was convinced God had something in store.

During this time, I got involved in our church, started helping in the student ministry, and once again saw the Lord bless.  I watched students confess sin to one another without prompting and witnessed them love one another in profound ways.  One night I delivered a message and watched as kids again confessed sin and served one another for hours. God was doing work. I was not the student pastor; I was the intern student pastor, but had the joy of watching the Lord work.  Once again, it would all come to an abrupt end.  Our lead pastor left and came to illinis, our student pastor that we had eventually hired left and came to Illinois; and when it was time to hire a new lead pastor, it was clear I would not have the opportunity to be the student pastor.  (I do not hold this against anyone; these were not my decisions to make.) I knew the Lord would lead, as he always had.

Sure enough, he did. I received a call from a church in Illinois asking if I would be interested in being their student pastor.  After interviewing and meeting the church, I was brought in as their student pastor. I and my family have never been loved on like this church loved on us.  They showed me so much grace; they consistently sought ways they could help.  We were so blessed. Again, I watched God do some really amazing things in the lives of students and even adults.  But again, it would not last.  I began to receive calls from a church in central Illinois.  I was asked to submit my resume numerous times, and eventually I reluctantly did so.

I knew the Lord was leading, but I did not want to go.  I did my homework, which made me not want to go even more. I knew it was going to be hard ministry, and I struggled to find any positive reason to pack up my family and move them.  I can still recall saying these words: “if you think I am going to pack up my family and leave a church that loves us greatly to come to a church that will not love us then I do not want to come.” Needless to say, the vote was overwhelming, and I ended up here. However, during that time, I had asked someone in leadership at my former church to keep it quiet until I could make the announcement, and I was very hurt when I found out they had already told the personnel committee. What did I do? Once again, I bottled it up.

From the beginning, I began to pray that God would send me the help I needed to get the job done.  Before I even came to the church, I was pulled aside by a church member and told “You better watch those deacons; they run the church”. One of my first battles was when I was shown a pastoral agreement after I had already agreed to come.  The agreement was repeatedly revised because I would not sign it.  Eventually we got to the point where I stated something to the effect that I would sign it but that I would not be held to it nor should they expect to hold me to every part of it.  I was here a week when someone walked into my office proud of a scathng letter they had sent to the Chamber of Commerce that only made our church ridiculous.   I was not even the pastor a few months ago when I had to call someone into my office for gossip about their pastor in the hallway.  I endured endless jabs that called into question my credibility, my faithfulness, and my ability as a pastor, over and over again, things would be said and played off as jokes. Countless times gossip would be heard directly or get back to me to the point where I had to ask my secretary to just start telling people she was going to share everything people were saying with the pastor. However, even in all of this, the Lord was faithful; he did send me encouragers. Though we were not growing by huge numbers, we did add members year after year and some of them became my strongest encouragers.  It finally got to the point where others began to notice that something was wrong.

People would come to me about comments that were being made that were not biblical or encouraging; sometimes they would ask me questions that showed me they were searching the scriptures, like “Why don’t we have elders”, I had comments made from people that they had “learned more from me than any other pastor they have had I was greatly encouraged when I knew the people were searching the Scriptures. Through the years I got to see people come to faith in Christ, and I got to baptize people.  I got to see amazing things, and unfortunately, I had to endure the attacks of the enemy.  How did I handle this? I bottled it up.  When people would ask, “Why don’t you defend yourself?” I always said the Lord is my defender.  I would say that if I am faithful to preach His word, he will take care of the rest.  He always did and that was easy to say but hard to live.  As attacks were ramped up and as I began to catch people either talking about me, or my family, things began to get back to me that were outright lies and as a small minority began to plot for ways to get rid of me I began to reach my breaking point.

I called a meeting to address some of the issues and to call out sin.  That meeting did not go well.  I then watched a meeting get called without me being present, and I received a call from one of my deacons that he was resigning and leaving the church. This wasn’t because of me. I was told point blank, “Pastor, they are going to fire you and they will not stop until they do.” I was crushed. I sat in another meeting and watched someone say they had done nothing wrong and had nothing to repent of and I walked out of the meeting with another deacon, who then walked back in and resigned. I received emails and letters filled with false accusations and unfounded statements.  Telling me that I was in a dark place of my own making.  Accusations that I wanted elders so I could be in control when it was clear I wanted elders so I was no longer in control I experienced gas lighting for the first time in my life and I watched as one of our church members sat out front and gossiped about their pastor and how sometimes the best thing for the church is if they get rid of their pastor and that the church would grow if they only got rid of him.  Despite my repeated warnings that people would leave, they pushed forward.  I could write pages on pages of everything; these things only touch the surface to get me to the point of pastors struggling with mental health.

When I knew there was no way forward and I had to resign, the only thoughts in my head were, “you are a failure. I watched as one of my close friends was called a liar in the middle of a business meeting. I could not help but think, is this what these people have learned after 10 years of your teaching? Over and over again, like a beating drum, “you are a failure; you are failure as a pastor, a failure as a husband, a failure as father. You moved your family here for what? To be abused for 10 years, then quit.”  I was overcome with darkness. The harder I tried to escape, it seemed, the worse it got. To add to it my close friend was dead.  I felt alone and abandoned. Even now, I ask myself, where are all those people who called you friends? No one calls; no one says anything; I am just invisible. You see Pastors are not supposed to think like this. They are not allowed to think like this and they for sure can’t admit it. Pastors are not allowed to have depression or bad thoughts. I know the risk of writing this I know someone is going to tell me “no one will ever hire you to be a pastor now”, I realize I probably have said some hard things and even some things that no one knew, but if I help one pastor or one person, is helped I don’t care.

Listen carefully. I allowed the opinions of men to dictate my worth.  I allowed the opinion of those few people who did not even know their scripture anyway to send me to a dark place. I allowed their comments, their feelings, their words, and their hatred to cause me to not want to take another breath. I started experiencing dissociative behavior, and the hardest day for me as a husband and father was the day I had to go home and ask my wife to hide my gun from me. Why? Because I no longer wanted to live.  I had never struggled with depression before. I was good at hiding those emotions, bottling them up and turning them to anger. However, in those moments, my will to die was outweighing my will to live.  I began to experience things that I never experienced before.  Hours would go by and I had no clue what I had done or accomplished. I had moments where I would be frozen in a thought and be unaware of my surroundings, and if I did not have a counselor that pushed me to be honest, who knows what would have happened?

You see, I know it’s not just pastors that play this game, but pastors bottle things up.  No one knows their struggle, their pains, their heartaches.  They are afraid that if they share those things, they will lose their job. If they confess their sin, they will no longer be pastoring. So they hide it.  They put a smile on their faces, and they carry on. The problem is that they carry on until it’s to late, and there is nothing to carry on. They get to the point where they can no longer go on and they end their life. Sucidal thoughts are real and they are real dangerous.  Thoughts of wanting to end it all should not be taken lightly.  My counselor asked me “how far is to far, how do you know when you have reached the limit?” Unfortunately, we don’t know until it’s to late. That is why there are stories all the time of pastors taking their lives.  Pastors struggle with mental health too. I write this so we would wake up. I write this so that we would stop and think about how we treat our pastors, that we would allow them the freedom to be who they are, and that instead of saying we would be there for them, we would actually be there for them.  I write this so that maybe just maybe one pastor would read it or one person would read it and understand that there is a way out of the darkness, that you do not have to remain there, and that your worth is not determined by the parishioners in your church, who can be cruel, but by the Lord, who sent His own son to die for you.