Monthly Archives: February 2012

Once we have acknowledged the challenge of loneliness in the pastorate, we need to identify some additional steps in coping with this loneliness. As was mentioned yesterday, one unfortunate tactic for coping with the pain of loneliness is to build a shield around you so that though outwardly you are interacting with others, inwardly you are shutting down. To counter that, it is important that a pastor intentionally build some community experiences that touch feelings of joy, nurture, and pleasure. If you are married, you need to deliberately schedule with your partner some fun experiences and some nurturing of each other. Life is an intricate web and sharing feelings with one person can nurture our capacity to be sensitive to feelings among others. For single pastors, the need is no less real but needs to be pursued in another manner.

A second step might be to find a colleague, perhaps in another denomination or even another faith community with whom you can occasionally share your challenges and your joys. Several times during my ministry, I found that type of kinship with a Jewish Rabbi or a Muslim Imam. Being outside my particular faith but sharing similar challenges within his or her faith allowed us to care for each other in special ways.

I have already mentioned the value of a Spiritual Director or counselor with whom you can meet regularly.

Given our modern technology, one might find a value in establishing a skype relationship with a clergy who shares a similar position in another part of either this country or another country. A regular scheduled conversation by such a means could have mutual benefits.

A focused discipline of prayer and Scripture study that made use of the psalms of lament and others laments such as shared by Jeremiah could also help you wrestle with the challenge of loneliness in a spiritual context.

The critical issue is not to deny the burden of loneliness and to seek out means to keep centered in the community that can restore you.

As a basis for this reflection, let me tie together two separate passages. The first is from Genesis 2:18, “Then the Lord god said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone;’” This passage at the beginning of the Bible reflects the foundational need of humanity for community. We were meant for relationships. The first sin recorded in Scripture was a breaking of that essential relationship, first with God and then with neighbor. Now, relate that passage to Paul’s statement about Jesus in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ took on the burden of our brokenness that he might reconcile us to God and each other. A rather simple translation of righteousness is restoring us to right relationship.

At another point, when asked to sum up the essence of the faith, Jesus identified the two essential commandments that focus on relationships — love of God and love of neighbor. As any pastor knows, when you reach out in community to one who experiences the sin or brokenness of community, you take on those feelings in your own being. Christ took on the sin, or brokenness of community of the whole world. Pastors do the same for their congregants and often others.

The first part of a pastor’s coping with that loneliness, is acknowledging its reality as part of the nature of his or her own calling. You do not defeat that loneliness by drugs, alcohol, sexual experiences, etc. In fact the danger is that some pastors try to escape that burden through such destructive behavior. Others seek to dull the pain by separating themselves from what they are feeling with the result that they lose the capacity to feel any feelings at all.

One of the great values of having a spiritual director is that that person can help you re-engage in feeling those feelings and place them in a spiritual context. You are reconnecting with community in a way that doesn’t violate confidentiality. Its a first step but a very valuable one. We will consider others tomorrow.

What most members and society do not recognize with respect to the role of clergy is the sheer loneliness that is part of a good pastor’s life. When our faith speaks of Christ bearing the sins of the world, it is identifying an often neglected aspect of the role of pastors of the Body of Christ. It is, of course, at a level far below that of Christ, but good pastors do absorb the wounds, pain, fears, angers, and sins of their neighbors. In a way that always astonishes me, people will entrust to a pastor some of the most private secrets in their lives. Even non-members will often come to a pastor of a church to bare their souls. Frequently there are no answers to the crisis, tragedy, shameful secret, or fear they bring to the pastor and often they don’t even expect a solution but they need to share it with someone. Sometimes that revelation reflects traditional definitions of sin but at others it simply reflects the brokenness of the world. It is not unusual for a pastor to look out at the congregation on a Sunday morning and be struck by the many forms of woundedness arrayed before him or her.

In many cases, we are entrusted with other people’s burdens but are not free to share them and process our own feelings with others. In that sense we bear the sins of the world in our own being. We are in the season of lent. It might be a valuable discipline for a pastor to meditate on the incredible loneliness of Christ as he traveled to the cross and how Christ handled that loneliness as a basis for reflecting on how we are to respond to our own sense of loneliness in the ministry.

In light of that loneliness, Matthew 11:28 through 30 might be a good passage for reflection. How can Jesus say, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Over the next few days we will look at how pastors can cope with the loneliness and not let it defeat them.