The slaughter of the innocents in both Bethlehem and Newtown Connecticut are real pain even as we celebrate the birth…

In recent blogs I’ve tried to identify some dimensions of ministry that can cause pastors to feel like hypocrites. Sometimes…

I think I have shared an earlier version of this exercise before, but here is an updated version. An Examination…

If you want to know why you sometimes feel overwhelmed and exhausted, take a moment to reflect on the emotional…

In the last blog, I asked you to name some of your own hypocrisies. I suggested you try to identify…

The first step in following the Hypocritic Oath for Pastors, is to name some of the times when we are…

I once saw a sign outside of a church that read: “The church is full of hypocrites; You too are…

While it is understandable that we will have periods of anger and doubt, as expressed in Psalm 22, it is…

Psalm 22 provides a biblical template for responding to the emotionally stressful atmosphere around us in a spiritually healthy way.…

We have just passed through the season of Thanksgiving. The power of praise and thanksgiving as an antibody to the…

In my last blog, I spoke of the importance of naming your feelings and begin to place your emotional experience…

When you have had a traumatic experience, or sympathetically shared in the trauma of another person, the feelings can be…

A key antibody that resists the toxic atmosphere in which we must live is the maintenance of a sense of…

A third part of developing your antibodies, is developing some clarity as to the limits of your ministry. The integrity…

A challenge for ministry is that frequently you are asked to hear and respond to other people’s pain, then drink…

When you are listening to another person intensely while they are sharing their pain, it is natural that your own…

While there are certainly traumatic events that a pastor experiences in exercising the ministry, a less obvious but very real…

We have heard a lot about PTS or Post Traumatic Stress among those who have returned from serving in the…

One of the intriguing and challenging statements that I heard at the recent Compassion Fatigue Conference was that “Disease is…

Tomorrow is All Saints Day. Many churches choose the Sunday nearest to that day, in this case probably November 4,…