Healthy Clergy Make Healthy Congregations
This nine-volume series supports the thesis that Healthy Clergy Make Healthy Congregations (HCMHC). Each volume equips clergy with the tools needed to nurture the spiritual health of the entire congregation. The series is rooted in the firm belief that God has called people together in congregations and called individuals to the ordained ministry in those congregations. All nine volumes are available on Amazon.com.
God calls the church together for a purpose. Healthy clergy enable congregations to listen to God and respond in a healthy manner with a ministry that can feed the spiritual hunger of a fractured world.
Details on Each Volume
A Company of Pastors
A Company of Pastors offers a fresh approach to overcoming the type of loneliness that seems inherent in the lives of religious leaders. The book offers a two-year framework for a clergy support group among pastors. It invites them to practice fun, food, and fellowship as a prophetic witness against all the pressures that seek to set them one against another. It invites clergy to rediscover the support of the beloved community as an antidote to the toxic isolation so frequent among clergy, many of them both like and admire him or her.
The Unique Loneliness of Pastoral Ministry
Clergy have the privilege of being present at some of the more tender and most intimate moments in people’s lives. Most pastors experience great satisfaction in being able to contribute to people’s lives. Yet a pastor experiences a significant moment of loneliness. Why?
Clergy are entrusted with intimate and often painful secrets about other people’s lives that they cannot share. As very public figures, they are frequently subject to a variety of often conflicting criticisms, but rarely have an opportunity to respond.
They experience painful trauma, tragedy, and the death of many people whom they care about. They are expected to assist these people in their grief and confusion, but rarely have others to help them respond to their own personal grief. They continually try to balance the tension between what they believe to be true and what will please their main constituency. Frequently, they are caught between the needs of their family and the needs of the congregation. They work long hours, experience a roller coaster of emotions, and receive modest pay.
The Lack of Genuine Connection
Joining with other clergy who understand the complexity of ministry can be a source of support. Sadly, many pastors lack the bonds of trust among their colleagues that would allow them to probe the depth of what they are experiencing. For a variety of reasons, such as ego, competition, theological differences, jealousy, time constraints, geography, and exhaustion, many clergy rarely have “a company of pastors” with whom they can truly share.
A Guide to Overcome the Stress
Like parables in the Bible, this book offers stories drawn from the lives of clergy that can enable pastors to analyze together the stresses and challenges of their calling. I have a passion for all the brave souls who have heard God’s call to the ministry. Even though we still wonder at times where ministry will take us, like Abraham and Sarah, we set off on a journey trusting that God knows where we are going.
There is no shame in feeling the pain of loneliness in our profession. In fact, the better a pastor we are, the more we will absorb the pain in other people’s lives and be sensitive to the deeply fractured nature of our society. However, it is important to discover ways that we can process these feelings and not allow them to become toxic in our lives. Whether it is with two or three or even a dozen other clergy, I invite them to make use of this book as a guide for supporting each other in this God-initiated adventure of being a pastor.
An Interim Pastor’s Gift
Interims can shape healthy churches. An interim pastor can offer a creative possibility for how the congregation can make use of this transition time to encourage their next chapter of ministry to be strong and healthy. An interim pastor is in a better position than anyone to help the congregation both understand and be supportive of good ministry.
This book is designed to assist an interim in leaving the congregation with an intentional plan for a healthy partnership with their new pastor. It offers specific steps that an interim can take to educate the congregation about the stresses and challenges of ministry.
God Laughs—Why Don’t You?
God Laughs—Why Don’t You? introduces the art of humor as a healing antidote to the toxic aspects of ministry. Written to support colleagues who have responded to God’s call, this volume serves as:
- A guide introducing laughter into various ministerial responsibilities
- A resource to restore energy to a pastor exhausted by the demands of ministry
- A refreshing laugh when you think about the craziness of ministry
- A perfect gift for a clergy member you care about
Clergy Physical Health
This volume addresses the physical aspects of health that are affected by stresses and challenges in ministry. The book can help various groups.
- Clergy can create strategies to nurture religious leaders’ health, evaluate their own health, and take specific steps to maintain or improve their health.
- Congregations can develop a strategy to nurture the health of their staff.
Regional bodies can engage congregations and clergy in conversations and actions that promote healthier clergy and congregations.
Clergy Emotional Health
This volume focuses on how ministry can affect a person’s emotional health and contribute to behavior that weakens the ministry. Clergy, as well as other leadership positions in a church, experience emotional stress in many forms. Clergy Emotional Health offers strategies and actions that not only clergy but also other church leaders, congregations, and judges can take to support healthy leadership.
Use this book as a guide to:
- Evaluate the emotional health of clergy, churches, and judicatories.
- Recognize how an honest evaluation of spiritual leadership can provide an opportunity for faithful growth.
- Identify some specific steps that can be taken to support healthy leadership.
- Work in relationship with others who share your goal for a healthy church.
- Begin with a few steps and evaluate what your experience suggests as a next step.
Clergy Family Health
This volume recognizes that the nature of ministry is often hard on other family members and relationships. Clergy Family Health addresses the unique dynamics experienced by a pastor’s family. It recognizes that all pastors have families, but there are a variety of forms to the family. All these relationships are affected by the unique perspective of being called to the ministry. The tension between the demands of ministry and responding to the interests and needs of the family, regardless of its configuration, can be either positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy.
Clergy Family Health provides a series of strategies and suggestions to assist families in both examining the stresses and celebrating the benefits of being in a clergy family. This book follows Jesus’ teaching that we are all family to those who join with us in seeking to be faithful to God’s word. It enables clergy, churches, and judicatories a practical perspective on how to attend to those relationships in a healthy manner. Act now to buy this book and begin to establish a family-friendly perspective on ministry.
- Evaluate the emotional health of clergy, churches, and judicatories.
- Recognize how an honest evaluation of spiritual leadership can provide an opportunity for faithful growth.
- Identify some specific steps that can be taken to support healthy leadership.
- Work in relationship with others who share your goal for a healthy church.
- Begin with a few steps and evaluate what your experience suggests as a next step.
Clergy Financial Health
Managing Financial Stress
This volume focuses on recognizing the stress that finances and low salaries can add to a pastor’s health. It offers different approaches to examining and responding to the effect of finances on one’s ministry. Discover a variety of strategies and suggestions for the clergy, clergy families, congregations, and the larger church to nurture a healthy response to the temptations and blessings caused by money in our lives.
The Impact of Money on Spiritual Leadership
This volume focuses on recognizing the stress that finances and low salaries can add to a pastor’s health. It offers different approaches to examining and responding to the effect of finances on one’s ministry. Discover a variety of strategies and suggestions for the clergy, clergy families, congregations, and the larger church to nurture a healthy response to the temptations and blessings caused by money in our lives.
Clergy Spiritual Health
Are you having trouble breathing in the Spirit of God? Like stale breath, a stale spirit can be suffocating. When you take in a fresh breath of air that fills your lungs, you feel physically revitalized. Read Clergy Spiritual Health to learn how to take in God’s breath and fill your soul. You will experience spiritual revitalization.
This guidebook addresses how we can avoid having the various challenges and stresses of ministry damage our spiritual health. The hidden temptations of a call to ministry are examined. It can offer an opportunity to refresh our spirits as clergy and church by breathing in the Spirit of God.
Clergy Vocational Health
How do we hear god’s call? Clergy Vocational Health looks at both our understanding of God’s call and how to nurture that call, even when we have negative experiences. This guidebook will help the reader explore these questions and many other aspects of God’s call in our lives:
- What do we mean by God’s call?
- How do we discern God’s call?
- How do we stay in touch with God’s call?
- How do we nurture our relationship with God?
- How does God call us in special forms of ministry?
- Does God’s call include a call to retirement?
- Does God call churches?
- What is God’s call in an age of anxiety?