The healthiest pastors - the healthiest people - I know either are currently in or have been in counseling, or they have a plan for whom they would call if they experienced a mental health crisis.

To me, health - mental or otherwise - is not indicated by a lack of vulnerability. Instead, health begins with an awareness of and willingness to engage vulnerability.

Looking health issues squarely in the face is easier said than done, of course. There’s a lot of fear around admitting that one is not well, especially when we’re talking about mental well-being. What will this acknowledgment and treatment of vulnerability mean for my quality of life? My work? My relationships? Others’ opinions of me?

These last two questions in particular can create a fog of shame through which it is hard to see the path forward and to reach out to those who could be grounding companions - even those closest to us. That’s why Rev. Dr. Sarah Griffith Lund’s new book Blessed Union: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness and Marriage is so important. In it she shares stories about marriages impacted by mental health struggles and the ways those couples dealt with them. She gives short, easy-to-understand definitions of the diagnoses included in the anecdotes. She notes available resources. And, most noteworthy, she bookends each chapter with verses from and interpretations of 1 Corinthians 13 at the beginning and a plain-spoken prayer that acknowledges God’s love and asks for God’s help at the end.

Since I am a clergyperson, a clergy spouse, and a clergy coach, however, the aspects of the book that most grabbed me were the stories about mental illness in a pastor or a pastor’s family, including the author’s own. It is time for the church to recognize that ministers are human, that we might have treatable mental illness in ourselves or in our families, that church support (or lack of) can have a big impact on leaders’ wellness, and that the vulnerability of mental illness can - if managed well - can open up important discussions and ministries in the faith setting around mental health.

These conversations are all the more crucial right now, as study after study shows that navigating the pandemic has adversely affected everyone’s mental well-being. Not only that, some research is indicating that having Covid-19 can cause psychosis.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of Blessed Union and to work through the reflection questions and journal pages that allow you to make the content personal. Let’s make it ok to talk at church about mental health, a subject that affects us and so many of our loved ones and people in our care.

As a child, I was an avid reader. In fact, I read my eyesight into oblivion and required glasses (and later contacts) from second grade on. They would have been Coke bottle thick if not for the compression technology that prevented me from looking like Stephen Root’s character in Office Space.

Reading, then, has been a constant in my life, and it was a great comfort and companion to me last year throughout all the change and challenge. (Thank goodness for e-books during stay-at-home orders!) Here are some of my favorite books that I read:

Fiction

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale was formative for me from the summer I read it by the pool as a teenager, my mother having given me her well-worn copy. The sequel did not disappoint, filling in some of the other characters’ points of view and advancing the story with surprising twists.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. This the story of a Black young adult woman finding her place and voice in the world among several well-meaning white people who are unable to examine their own bias and condescension (which is to say, it prompted some soul-searching). I highly recommend the audiobook version.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. The author explores race and identity through Black twins who make very different life choices.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. This book is a delight, which is unexpected since death and suicide are ongoing themes. It is woven through with grace, humor, quirky characters who capture your heart, and a surprise you won’t see coming.

Non-fiction

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. The bulk of this book is a much-needed primer (for me) on the problems - not just for those in prison, but for entire communities and for us all - caused by the War on Drugs and related initiatives. But the background Alexander gives on race relations and the various iterations of slavery over the course of four centuries in America was especially important context for me.

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Finally, someone has made it all make sense - how politics, patriarchy, militarism, racism, growing communications capacity, the entertainment industry, and conservative Christianity together have brought us to where we now find ourselves culturally.

White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones. Jones shows how racism is strongly tied to the theology, practice, and roots of the Southern Baptist Convention, among other denominational bodies.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. The Nagoski sisters explain burnout and its effects and offer practical tips for women - and really all those geared toward helping - to combat it.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. I read this as I waited (and still wait) for my turn in the library queue for Caste. I’m glad I did. I knew ridiculously little about how so many southern Black people ended up in other parts of the United States and what kind of welcome they found there. Wilkerson tells this history largely through the stories of three individuals who made the journey north and west.

If Then: How the Simulatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore. I have developed a fascination with all things Cold War-era related, but I narrowed this year’s books down to one for this list. Lepore tells of the origins of Big Data, which has had huge repercussions for politics and global conflict, not just advertising.

Ministry-related

Dynamic Discernment: Reason, Emotion, and Power in Change Leadership by Sarah Drummond. Drummond not only gives tools for discerning a new thing but also helps the reader understand burnout and how it comes about, conflict and how to navigate it, and power and how to unearth it.

Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy by G. Jeffrey MacDonald. The church is headed toward more multi-vocational leadership. This book is an exploration of what is possible from someone who embraces part-time pastoring and who has talked to other pastors and churches who flourish under this model.

What were your favorite books that you read last year, and what’s on your bookshelf for this year?

Photo by Susan Yin on Unsplash.

Advent and Christmas are hectic - for pastors and their families, for everyone. All of us want to experience the meaning of the season, not just rush from one activity or event to the next. And yet, it can be hard to know how.

Author and Presbyterian pastor (and all-around amazing human being) Traci Smith shows us the way in Faithful Families for Advent and Christmas: 100 Ways to Make the Season Sacred. In this more liturgically-focused riff on her book Faithful Families: Creating Sacred Moments at Home - which I also highly recommend - she offers accessible descriptions of the seasons and its themes and a range of prayers and activities that can be used with all ages. What I love most is that Traci designs these moments to take as little or as much time as you like and to be very low-stress and low-prep. She holds her offerings lightly, encouraging families to tailor them. And she gives the reader permission not to try all of the suggestions, modeling her advice to streamline the season overall.

Faithful Families for Advent and Christmas would be a handy guide for ministry leaders and caregivers in any year. The book is especially timely for 2020, when it seems certain that Advent and Christmas will look a lot different and much of its observance will be home-based. (There’s even a section on acknowledging big feelings during the holidays, which might come in very handy.) Traci gives permission for churches to use a certain number of selections in its communications, though if your congregation has the resources, the book as a whole would be a boon to families.

I will be using this book when the church calendar flips over. Some sections will be for our family of three. Others I will undertake on my own, because the simple beauty of the language and practices speaks to me in a time when everything seems so complicated.

It was not always a given that I’d become a mom. After eight years of marriage, my spouse and I still shrugged at each other every time one of us brought up the topic of parenthood. That is, until God dropped a vision-bomb of me setting down a toddler, who then ran so gleefully to a man - my husband - that the parent-child connection was obvious.

It was almost two years until that child I’d seen in my mind was born. As an interim minister, I was between calls, but I knew I’d want to work again soon. The kind of position I was looking for was different than pre-baby, though. I wanted to go part-time while Levi was so young, and I needed a congregational context that would welcome his presence rather than resent it. (In fact, I turned down one job offer when it seemed the senior pastor didn’t really want my kid around.) I hit the jackpot, accepting the call to be minister to youth at a church I had previously served as interim associate minister. The search team chair bent over backwards to make the situation work for Levi and me. She found us a spot at the church’s early childhood ministry for the days that I worked. She arranged for childcare on Sunday evenings when I would be leading youth group. The senior minister and my immediate supervisor, the associate minister who followed my interim, were also generous with their support.

I loved that I could utilize my gifts as minister while my baby was across the hall from my office, being cared for by people who adored him. I loved that his teachers could ask me questions or grab me about concerns at any time. I loved that when he refused to take a nap in room full of active babies (the FOMO has always been strong with this one), I could lay him down in my office, turn off the lights, and work by computer monitor light while he slept. Sunday mornings, though, were my favorite. Since I served a Disciples of Christ congregation, there was communion every week. As youth minister I rarely presided at the table, so I slipped out the back of the sanctuary, picked Levi up from the nursery, and joined the end of the communion line. At first I carried him facing out in a wrap, his smile and others’ big as we walked down the aisle. As he began to walk, he teeter-tottered forward, and people on the end of the pews clutched their chests in joy. In front of the communion table, he regularly heard that the bread and juice meant that Jesus loved him.

It was a gift for both of us to spend two years in an environment that supported my ministry and nurtured my budding parental identity and my son’s faith development. It reinforced for me that I was called both to ministry and motherhood, and that in the right context, I could do both imperfectly but well. I believe - hope - that our presence also reassured the congregation of the same to the benefit of other clergywomen who might serve there.

Above all, though, I gained insight into who God is as holy parent. God does not compartmentalize when it comes to Jesus - God is Creator/Sustainer/Redeemer of all humankind as well as Jesus’ own parent at all times, even when the overlap gets messy. God wishes to affirm all the parts of us as well. That is part of what it means to be made whole.

As I transitioned from ministry in the congregation to the ministry of clergy coaching, making space for my two calls has been the priority. As Levi got older and started school, I started to divide up my life into work and family tracks. During the pandemic, those lines have slowly been erased. I’ll admit - it was rough at first. It’s still hard sometimes. But once we found our groove, I remembered how wonderful it was to be able to snuggle my baby (now 7 years old) anytime during the day while still living fully into my pastoral call. Thanks be to God for the chance to pastor and parent.

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This post is part of the book launch blog tour for Embodied: Clergy Women and the Solidarity of a Mothering God. Embodied includes reflection questions at the end of each chapter, to instigate conversations that lead to support and new perspectives. The book is available this September from Bookshop.org, Amazon, or Cokesbury.  Check out all the stops on the blog tour, and buy the book!

I treasure my ecumenical work. I have learned so much from serving in Disciples of Christ, PCUSA, and United Methodist settings and from working with pastors and churches in at least twelve denominations. My primary identity, however, is as a Baptist. I grew up in Southern Baptist churches, at first because there was no Alliance of Baptists or Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I was a senior in college before I learned that I had those options. (I wasn’t convinced, though, that I wanted to take them until I started attending an Alliance/CBF church full of the inclusive Baptists I aspired - and still aspire - to be.)

If you’ve grown up in the Baptist world or any other evangelical tradition, you know that the emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is strong. That’s what preaching and spiritual formation are primarily geared toward, and the altar call is the culmination of any worship service. Now don’t get me wrong - loving Jesus and spending time with him is a crucial aspect of my faith. But it wasn’t until I attended Candler, a seminary in the United Methodist/mainline Protestant tradition, that I heard of social holiness. It turns out that Jesus isn’t just a good guy to hang out with and that salvation isn’t just about our baptism or private prayer practices. It’s also about living like Jesus and advocating for his values at the systemic as well as the interpersonal level.

In his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Robert P. Jones makes the case that American evangelicals’ laser focus on personal salvation is not simply a matter or polity or theological difference from other Christian expressions. It in fact propped up slavery - the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, was formed out of a commitment to slaveholding - and still undergirds racism in insidious ways. Among other problems, this individual focus blurs vision of the larger cultural landscape and allows believers to shed responsibility for working for equity too easily. (Jones notes that mainline Protestants and Catholics are not immune to the mutual reinforcement of theology and racism either. In fact, Jones’ research shows that holding white supremacist attitudes and church attendance parallel each other across all varieties of white American Christendom.)

There’s a lot of theological reflection and repentance - meaning sustained action, not just a quick reach for forgiveness - required for the ways that American Christianity and white supremacy have become so intertwined. In particular, Jones’ book helped me understand why so many Christians leaders I know have been left scratching their heads about their inability to diversify their congregations. There are not simply differences in ritual or worship style or service length, as have long been held up as the reasons that Sunday morning at 11:00 remains the most segregated hour of the week. The very roots of our theology are preventing white people from fellowshipping with and learning alongside people of color. How do our core beliefs let our BIPOC siblings know they are right to keep us at arms’ length? How much work are we willing to put in to examine ourselves and make amends? It won’t be easy. After all, we’ve been white too long as the book title (taken from a James Baldwin quote) says. But if we love Jesus like we say we do, it’s time for us to roll up our sleeves.

“The progress that women ministers have made in the Southern Baptist Convention since 1980 has been encouraging, but many problems persist which prevent women from becoming accepted by the conservative-controlled Convention as church leaders called by God. The rift between conservatives and moderates is the primary barrier, and this division is the result of political and theological differences so intertwined that they are often indistinguishable. Conservatives have been phenomenally successful in their attempts to control the SBC hierarchy. They have a well-defined ideology based upon biblical inerrancy and pro-traditional family values (conservatives are able to play very effectively upon Baptists’ fears that the family is in decline), and they have productively utilized the pulpit, increasing exposure and influence in the national political forum, and a well-organized network of conservative leaders to communicate their views and mobilize support.”

I wrote these words in 1999 as part of my undergraduate thesis, in which I examined the obstacles and possibilities for Baptist women in ministry before leaping headfirst into seminary the following fall. After reading the excellent book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez on white evangelicals and the culture war, here’s what I’d go back and tell myself as a college senior:

1) It’s going to get more fraught, not less, within all of white Christian evangelicalism. Buckle up, because the culture wars will greatly impact your life long after you shed the evangelical label.

2) You don’t yet have the whole picture. The culture wars are about so much more than politics and biblical interpretation. (Spoiler alert: it really has little to do with the Bible.)

Jesus and John Wayne filled in many of the gaps for me. In the past few years I have become particularly fascinated by the geopolitics of World War II and, even more so, the Cold War. Evangelical leaders utilized Americans’ fear of the Soviet Union coming out of WWII, the military ramp-up around multiple wars in the mid to late 20th and early 21st century, a growing and well-utilized communications network (including publishing houses, radio stations, and mailing lists), increasing influence over elections and policy resulting from that communications empire, complementarian ideology that established a rigid chain of command in the home and in society, and white people’s fear of cultural erasure to divide the citizenry and claim power. Anytime it seemed that the white evangelical influence was on its way out, even sometimes due to its own financial and sex scandals, power brokers stoked that sense of embattlement to get out the vote and encourage evangelicals to make their opinions felt in other ways.

If you want to know why childcare is so expensive while women still make less money than men, why certain segments of Christianity are pro-gun and pro-war (while also often being pro-life when it comes to abortion), how white supremacy has continually been nurtured, why poor whites often vote against their economic interests, and how politicians who thumb their noses at “family values” ride waves of white evangelical support into office, read this book. It might not make you feel hopeful, but it did help me feel like I had a better grasp of this bizarro world.

According to a 2018-2019 National Congregations Study, 43% of mainline congregations in the United States do no have a full-time (paid) clergyperson.

43 %.

That’s almost half, and the number is rapidly increasing.

The default perspective is to see a church’s lack of a full-time pastor as a step toward closure. But in the newly-published Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy, UCC minister G. Jeffrey MacDonald makes the case for revitalizing a congregation by distributing the traditional workload of a full-time pastor among part-time clergy and laypeople. Drawing on his own experience as a part-time minister and on research he conducted among various mainline denominations, MacDonald asserts that intentionally claiming this distributed model does not just save a church money. It also allows the pastor to explore other facets of vocation and the laity to reclaim the fullness of the priesthood of all believers, all the while tapping back into a leadership approach that was the norm pre-Industrial Revolution.

For the move to a part-time, paid pastorate to take deep root, MacDonald says that a church must have the courage and creativity to choose it before finances necessitate it. The congregation must develop clear expectations of both staff and members. Laypeople must have access to practical, low-cost training to draw out and build upon their gifts, and pastors must understand how to unleash the strengths of these laypeople. MacDonald calls upon denominational leaders to shift their mindsets from “part-time as a prelude to death” - which is rooted in fear and scarcity - to “part-time as an opportunity for innovation and vitality.” He also urges seminaries to re-think how they offer education, to whom, and at what price tag in order to support a distributed pastorate.

MacDonald’s premise might cause heartburn those of us who trained and planned for a full-time career in ministry - and have the debt to show for it. But for pastors who are looking for a steady (if not lucrative) income that frees them up to parent, create, work in another field, or keep a hand in ministry without burning out or feeling the burden of others’ unrealistic expectations, part-time as plenty might be very good news.