“Even when people do need specialized mental health treatment or even psychiatric hospitalization, the pastors still have a very important role that nobody else can fill in the lives of people.”
“Really nobody else is relating to the whole person the way that pastors do. We need other helping professions. They’re certainly important and helpful. But nobody else is engaged in all of life from birth to death.”
“When the church is at its best, it’s inherently therapeutic.”
“I encourage pastors to think about helping to create a web of care around a given person that includes them. And they’re in a unique position to sort of help facilitate that web.”
“There is no greater joy, in my opinion, than being in ministry and being a pastor. And there are also very unique stresses that are often hidden, even for ministry leaders themselves. And then the impact of the stresses is off the radar until it hits a threshold of severity and then it can really catch people unaware in a very painful way.”
“There are, as you know, so many incredibly faithful people out there doing amazing, fruitful work day in and day out, and we want to just help them sustain that. How do we do that for as long as possible, as effectively as possible?”
“What we’re finding is that small steps done frequently and consistently really do accumulate positively over time and make a difference.”
“What the research seems to tell us is that regardless of the size of church, it only takes four to six people if they’re networked the right way and are toxic enough in their behavior and subversive of a pastor to really subvert and destroy a church, regardless of the size.”
“Pastors who don’t do the hard work of getting to know themselves as a person, cultivating self-awareness, emotional intelligence kinds of competencies, if they don’t do that work, they tend not to flourish long-term in ministry, regardless of church size.”
“There is no more complex job description than being a pastor, according to our research. And the number of hats pastors have to wear, the breadth of competencies and switching rapidly between those on any given day, it just is unlike any other job.”
