Does Ministry Fuel Addictive Behavior? - Continued
Published: July 20, 2009
Maintaining ministry patina
Religious culture has a hard time with pastors and pastor’s families who have flaws. Of course, the healthiest congregations do not expect their pastors to walk on water, do not put their pastors on pedestals. But in my experience, such congregations are not the norm.
Thousands of pastors serve congregations that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, expect their leaders to maintain (at least for public viewing) near-perfect marriages, near-perfect families, and near-perfect lives.
While it may be fine that their pastor forgets to take out the trash, is hyper-addicted to football, burns the toast, or consistently forgets his wife’s birthday (all endearing foibles that make good fodder for sermon jokes), he’d better not have any serious bouts of depression, credit issues, children who get caught selling ecstasy, or a wife with a drinking problem.
Granted, certain kinds of church attendees are attracted to “bad-boy” clergy: those who tell and re-tell their stories of wild living, knowing that they will draw certain kinds of people simply because they have lived life on the edge. When a pastor is vulnerable for the right reasons, not just to entertain the masses, but to humbly demonstrate the power of the gospel, it is a positive step.
But let’s not be fooled into thinking that “having a past” gives a pastor permission to be human in the present. More than a few congregations function with this unspoken proviso: “Pastor, we love the fact that you’ve walked on the wild side. It makes you fun to listen to. You’re down-to-earth, we’re not afraid to bring our neighbors. But your past is just that: the past.” Even former bad boys get stuck living on pedestals at altitudes inhospitable for anyone less than angelica.
And it is not only congregations that build pedestals. Many pastors paint unrealistic pictures of themselves. This kind of leader carefully crafts a leadership icon, rather than presenting his God-given, multi-faceted self. This kind of leader sets himself up for failure. The heat of congregational stress, or simply the wear and tear of the mundane, will wear through the veneer to what is really there.
Image building is a dangerous game. And it’s at the core of addictive behavior. Addictive family systems are built on image, from the practice of keeping secrets (the “no-talk” rule), looking good to the community at all costs, to living a double life. If a pastor comes into the ministry with an addictive family background or has otherwise developed addictive tendencies, a congregational system that requires him to uphold an impossible, squeaky-clean image is going to function like a match to gasoline.
Whenever pastors try to hide behind this patina, the chances of latent addictive behavior escalating is extremely high. The more impossibly perfect the pastoral image, the greater the need to engage in taboo behavior.
Where addictions begin
Sexual addiction takes root most often in family environments where parental-child bonds are weak or non-existent; where development of normal intimacy among family members has been blocked or interrupted.
Family environments that lead to sexual addiction are also often sexually repressive, viewing sex as dirty and not discussing normal, developmental sexual questions within the family. It may also include a history of “sexual secrets,” particularly abuse and incest.
When such an environment is combined with extreme parenting styles-authoritarian on one end or non-involved on the other-the chances of sexual addiction developing are even higher. The odds increase even more when parents vacillate unpredictably between the extremes. (My former husband’s family fits this category.)
While family-of-origin factors are not directly related to ministry practices, there is a conspicuous connection: many pastors grew up in highly religious homes and experienced more than the average share of suppressed intimacy and sexual repression. Many also experienced extremely authoritarian parenting styles as well. As a result, pastors (as a group) could be more predisposed to sexually addictive behavior than the general population.
Getting what they owe me
Entitlement is the sense that one deserves preferential treatment for one’s position or class. We normally don’t think of pastors as having a strong sense of entitlement. Pastors are seen as givers, not a takers. They’re shepherds, counselors, who visit the sick and weep with the bereaved. If someone dies while the pastor is on vacation, he comes home.
But here is reality. Well-meaning pastors can work 80-hour weeks and still not be able to please their flocks. When a pastor work so hard, only to be rewarded with conflict and dissatisfaction, the unrelenting disappointment can push even the most idealistic, well-balanced clergy to believe he deserves better.
A large percentage of pastors enter the ministry because they want to give people what God wants them to have. However, there is a dark side: when a pastor gauges this primarily by the admiration and esteem he receives in return. To the congregation, he intimates: “I will overwork to emotional and physical exhaustion; I will deplete myself and my family; I will be everything you expect me to be if you give me the requisite status, appreciation, and financial compensation in return.”
This unwritten contract is often the people-pleasing pastor’s demise. He receives little appreciation and instead ends up depleted and resentful. The reason is simple: no pastor can fulfill all of a congregation’s expectations. Congregations by their very nature are filled with sinful, unrealistic, needy people who will take whatever the pastor gives and still keep coming back for more. When these people in positions of power begin doling out helpings of criticism instead of admiration, the unwritten contract is broken. The pastor begins to simmer in a potent marinade of entitlement.
Entitlement is not an attitude becoming of a pastor, so he doesn’t express it openly, not even to his spouse. It is his little but oh-so-acidic secret. Gradually, the acid eats into his motivation and into his soul: “I’ve given the best years of my life to this congregation. I have no time for family, much less myself. My kids are growing up without me. I’m at church 70-plus hours a week, and I still make 25 percent less than the average Joe in my congregation. If no one is going to take care of me, I’m going to care for myself.”
At this juncture any addictive behavior begins to look really good. After everything he’s done for his congregation, the people-pleasing pastor gives in to the feeling that he more-than-deserves the little piece of pleasure he’s beginning to nurse on the side.
Co-dependency has its price, and it isn’t cheap. When a pastor gets tired of giving and not getting back, he’ll find some way to make up the difference. It is only a matter of when.
Unrealized dreams of success
Researchers at TheAmericanChuch.org studied attendance trends in 120,000 congregations between 1990 and 2000. Half were mainline, half evangelical. They found that the fastest growing churches were those with attendance between 1,000 and 2,000 (a 13.2 percent growth rate in 10 years.) In other words, American churchgoers were voting with their feet, and increasing numbers voted for big. The congregations that declined the most were those with between 50 and 300 attendees.
If that’s true, that’s not so good news for the small to medium-sized church. And it can be absolutely devastating to the pastors who lead them.
For over two decades, the entrepreneurial, multi-programmed church has been altering what people expect out of a church. The music they hear when they settle into their auditorium seats must compete with what’s on their iPod. High-end visual technology during the worship service is, for many attendees, a given. In short, churchgoers expect a Sunday morning worship service to match their aesthetic experiences in the broader culture.
It doesn’t stop at worship. It extends to the quality of childcare, children’s and teen’s programs, and adult education. The consumer-driven, felt needs-based ministry has redefined what church is and does. The concept of the church leader has also changed.
Entrepreneurial church wisdom is that pastors must be visionaries, risk-takers, and innovators, as well as spiritual guides. They are expected to be top-of-the-heap speakers as well, their stage skills honed to the highest cultural standards.
Realistically, very few pastors are cut out for this kind of leadership.
The average pastor may be at his best as teacher, coach, or theological guide. He might shine as a catalyst: a convener of collaborative vision and process; a facilitator of deep community. If he tends toward the empathetic and intuitive, he may excel as a nurturer, counselor, wound-dresser, or heart-holder.
But he is not megachurch material.
Still, he makes the trek each year to the mecca-church of his choice. He takes copious notes in workshops, hoping to find the secret passage to “church success.” He leaves these multi-million-dollar facilities with eyes big as saucers, telling himself that he, too, if he tries hard enough, can take his church of 90 or 200 and make it a 2,000-attendee destination point.
And what if he doesn’t have the assertive, sole-visionary style? He’ll learn it. He’ll even fake it. He’ll become someone else, invalidate and dismiss his own gifts, his own unique, God-given leadership style and strengths and passions, all in order to emulate the large church pastor he’s admired from afar.
The profound irony is that, in the past decade, the wider culture has been steadily moving away from its love affair with power and authoritarian leadership personas. The toppling of Dan Rather by a rag-tag group of bloggers was not an anomaly. In the same spirit of organizational deconstruction, corporate America is accelerating its shift out of 1980s, hierarchical systems toward collaborative, webbed approaches to decision-making.
As the trend toward flattened hierarchies escalates, pastors who now consider themselves misfits in the world of entrepreneurial ministry may be dumping the very skills and personality bents most needed in the new landscape of engagement and empowerment.
Tragically, some of these so-called misfits will turn to an addiction, an escape out of what they see as a no-win proposition: become someone else, fit the mold, or fail. Instead of pushing back on leadership stereotypes that have long deserved questioning; instead of focusing on their strengths and becoming who God crafted them to be, they cave in.
Addiction, whatever the substance or behavior, then becomes a welcome oblivion, especially to those who have visited that oblivion before.
Diagnostic questions
Although we can’t explore them here, there are other ministry dynamics that can function as catalysts to addictive behavior:
• Marriage and family relationships that are consumed by ministry issues, stunting essential relational development and intimacy.
• Simplistic, just-stop-doing-it attitudes toward addiction. Legalistic attitudes within religious communities prevent pastors from seeking expert help and training to address their addiction problem(s).
• Pastoral narcissism. When a pastor believes he is the center of the universe, accountability is a foreign concept. Impervious to fault and openly hostile to examination and correction, this type of leader is most likely to fall into the entitlement trap.
Perhaps you’re thinking, I can relate to almost every one of the scenarios here. Does that mean I’m going to become a sex addict, an alcoholic, or a drug abuser? No, the point of examining these dynamics is to prevent addictive behavior from developing.
You may not have been able to choose your family of origin, but you can choose to get help for the negative, emotional legacy still operating in your life. You may not be able to prevent some church members from putting you on a pedestal, but you can begin to hold yourself to a new standard of honesty: whatever expectations others may have of you, you will refuse to be something you are not.
You may be a people-pleaser, ignoring healthy boundaries and depleting yourself into resentment.
Yet, you can choose to define your identity by God’s grace and the gifts God has given you, not what others think.
Finally, you can choose to redefine success the way Jesus does: whatever talents, whatever innate wiring God has given you, developed to their utmost potential. Yes, learn from other ministries, but in the end, you will be your most effective and thus, healthiest, when you pastor incarnationally: digging deep into your own setting, allowing your unique leadership bent to flourish in the never-to-be-repeated context of your community.
Will you need professional counseling and/or mentoring to make healthier choices? Quite possibly. Will the ability to establish healthier patterns come overnight? Not likely. Re-programming lifelong patterns may be a longer process than you think. You only need to take one step right now, and that is to acknowledge that the process needs to begin.
If you have read this article and recognize yourself as a sexual addict (or any other kind of addict), you need to seek help immediately. Your problem is not going to go away by (a) convincing yourself that you don’t really have an addiction; (b) telling yourself that your addiction isn’t really that bad or (c) escalating your addictive behavior out of a sense of guilt and powerlessness.
You need to explore what in your past or ministry or other lifestyle dynamics might be driving you into destructive behavior. You also need to identify specific events, scenarios, or feelings that tend to trigger an acting-out episode. Most important, you need to get crucial tools for living in healthier ways.
Is it possible that your addictive patterns are severe enough that you will need to leave the pastoral ministry altogether? Yes. My former husband is a prime example of a person whose addictive behavior was at such an advanced, severe stage, he was incapable of managing himself, much less a flock.
Whatever your situation at this point, however, it is a fact that you are cherished by your Maker, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
You are loved beyond your ability to fathom. The emotional baggage you are carrying as a pastor and/or the addiction that is holding you captive this very moment may actually be the opportunity for you to experience God’s love more tangibly than you’ve ever known.
Known best for her book, Worship Evangelism, Sally Morgenthaler helps missional congregations innovate ministry that begins in neighborhoods and workplaces. She also helps congregations craft corporate worship experiences that reflect this key shift. Morgenthaler teaches on culture and leadership at Fuller, George Fox, and Asbury seminaries.
Copyright © 2008 Sally Morgenthaler. All rights reserved.
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Does Ministry Fuel Addictive Behavior?
Published: July 20, 2009
Sally Morgenthaler shares why certain approaches to ministry lead to self-destruction.
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