June 10, 2002
Counselor to troubled ministers hears it all--on call 24 hours
___By Terri Lackey
___LifeWay Christian Resources
___NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--When Barney Self gets a call in the middle of the night, his heart doesn't thump out of his chest. He figures it's a distressed pastor, and he knows he must remain calm.
___"When a person actually picks up the phone and calls the 1-888 help-line number, he or she has exhausted all the other resources out there," said Self, a licensed family and marriage therapist and counselor for LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.
___Self works in LifeWay's LeaderCare unit, a ministry to ministers and their families. Among the services it offers is a 911-type help line--(888) 789-1911--for ministers and their families.
___Many of the calls Self gets are from pastors who have been forcibly terminated.
___"But I get calls from pastors' wives, education ministers, deacons from time to time, even support staff people at church who have to deal with autocratic leaders," he said. "I get calls from all manner of church staff people."
___And, Self, who is on 24-hour call, answers each of them.
___In the eight-month period from September through April, 383 people called LifeWay's help line asking for some kind of mental relief. Of the calls, 65 were from pastors who were forced out of their jobs; 101 were from people suffering from depression; 98 wanted more information about LifeWay's Wounded Ministers retreat; 62 had marital problems; 22 had addiction issues; and 35 had some other type of church conflict.
___By far, Self said, pastors who have been forced out of their positions are among the most traumatic cases he hears.
___"It's just awful" when a pastor is forced out of his job and "encounters massive amounts of trauma," Self said. "They don't just lose a job like you or I would. They don't just lose their ministries; they lose their house, their church, their friends. Often their families are uprooted."
___Even in the best situations, when they are treated well by state convention officials and find another job in a short amount of time, "they get the 'reject' stamp right on their forehead, and it doesn't wash off easily. There is a negative component to being forcibly terminated."
___In the worst circumstances, Self said, the move is life-altering "in the negative sense that causes people to go into all manner of traumatic outcomes that include physical problems as a result of massive amounts of stress. Some people leave the ministry. Some leave by taking their own lives."
___Pastors are terminated for many reasons, Self said, including affairs, embezzlement, mishandling of church resources, mishandling of their own lives that keeps them from functioning effectively as a minister and personality conflicts.
___And many deserve to be fired, he acknowledged.
___"But even if church members conclude they can't live with their pastor, they still need to be redemptive," Self said. "There are some vindictive churches out there who will pollute the pastor's chances of getting another church"
___In fact, if a church body is to heal from the wounds of forcing out their pastor, forgiveness and redemption are part of that process, Self said.
___"Healing comes from being able to get along, so that calling the next minister becomes a part of the healing. A church has to be a safe place for worship to take place unfettered."
___Self's biggest task, he said, is to get the pastor to forgive himself.
___"I think if they forgive themselves, it honors God. When we ask God for forgiveness, we get it. Bang. It's a done deal for him. But for us, it's a process. There is no place for condemnation. God doesn't do it."
___A minister's wife, Self noted, does not escape the situation of forced termination unscathed either.
___"We've discovered the wives of ministers are very often wounded more deeply than the ministers," he said. "The wife can't talk to anybody. She can't talk to her friends because her friends are still at church; she can't talk to her co-workers because if they are not a part of her church, she doesn't want to throw rocks at her church.
___"So she's stuck. She can't talk to her husband because he's flat-out overwhelmed already and she sees him about ready to crash and burn. So she puts a cork in the bottle and life shakes it vigorously."
___Depression is also a huge problem among ministers and church staff, Self noted. Because about 30 percent of the calls he receives are from people who are clinically depressed, Self must convince them depression is not a man-made malady, but a clinical illness.
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