How can pastors take care of their mental health?

On this episode of the ERLC Podcast, we discuss how pastors can take care of their mental health while exploring the challenges they face and how it impacts their ability to help others.

Pastoring and shepherding a church comes with both rewards and challenges. A recent Lifeway Research study shows that stress, discouragement, and loneliness are listed among the top mental challenges for pastors. Similarly, a recent Barna study shows that U.S. pastors, overall, are feeling lonelier and more isolated from others than in years past. 

While struggling with loneliness and burnout themselves, pastors are often the first ones people in their congregations turn to when they are struggling with mental health issues. What is attributing to these struggles? And how can we encourage pastors to prioritize their own mental health in order to be able to help their congregations?

Today’s episode on how pastors can take care of their mental health

Joining us on today’s episode is Mark Dance, director of pastoral wellness for Guidestone Financial Resources, and Kristen Kansiewicz, who serves as an assistant professor and program director of the graduate counseling program at Evangel University.

Links mentioned in the episode can be found here:

• Mark Dance’s piece in Newsweek sharing his personal struggle with depression.
• Resilient Pastor Cohort – Barna Group
• For Pastors | Care for Pastors
• Home – Flourishing in Ministry
• Clergy Coaching Network | Coaching for Pastors
• School of Emotionally Healthy Leadership – Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
• The Emotionally Intelligent Pastor (wesleyan.org)
• Pastoral Wellness – Baptist Resource Network (brnunited.org)

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Episode transcript

Narration: In our last episode, we discussed why mental health is a human dignity issue and should be prioritized. Mark Dance discovered this in a personal way when he experienced a struggle with mental health while a pastor. Here he is recounting that time and how it led him to do the work he does today to help pastors. 

Mark: You know, mental health, just one of the many components of health. It’s as old as the Great Commandment where we were told by Moses, and then Jesus, the most important thing we can do every day is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, which is every part of us. And so mental health is just a normal part of health. It has always been a normal part of my life as a pastor for 30 years. As I’ve done this pastoral ministry for the last 10 years, it really became personal when I experienced a season about 15, 16 years ago of clinical depression. I was a recipient of help from mental health professionals who happen to also be believers and also happen to be members of my church. And that turned into a story that has been of interest to you and others that wanna also advocate for pastoral health.

Mark: The fact is that I enjoy blowing the stigma out of the room about a touchy talk that most of us have really no experience over. I took a counseling class at seminary, but that didn’t make me a mental health professional. I was in the middle of a major historic relocation of a church in central Arkansas, Second Baptist Conway. And I noticed I was different. You know, I had no moral meltdowns and I had no suicidal tendencies. I was just really completely depleted, burned out.

Mark: Well, typically people say, which isn’t that common? People get down, even depressed, but that doesn’t make them clinically depressed. And so the first person I mentioned it to was my wife, Janet. And, we’d watched a show, it was actually sitcom that had the character being diagnosed as clinically depressed. And so I asked her after it was over, you think I’m clinically depressed? And she said, no, probably not. You know, we had lots going on, had, uh, two teenagers at home. You know, life is tough sometimes, and you have those seasons. And I said, you’re probably right. Next day I realized something: she’s not a mental health professional, and neither am I. Here we are kind of self diagnosing, which is a monumental waste of time. I thought, well, maybe I should ask somebody who knows a little more than we do.

Mark: So I did something radical and counterintuitive for a pastor who’s a caregiver; I asked for help. I started with my family doctor, who, I mentioned earlier, is also a member of our church. We’ve been on a couple of mission trips together. And so we met for coffee, and they asked me the questions that doctors and mental health professionals ask about how you’re eating, how you’re sleeping, thinking, and all these questions. And it was pretty casual. And he diagnosed me as being clinically depressed, and I made it clear that I really didn’t have time for that, whatever that meant. And he explained that I needed to change my habits, my routines, my rhythms, because I’d been playing hooky on Sabbath, neglecting myself, which is different than denying yourself and, you know, using the God card to do it.

Mark: And so he also gave me a prescription. He said, this may or may not work, um, but you know, you’ve depleted all your serotonin, this happy hormone, which explained why I hadn’t been happy for a while. And so, uh, within a week, a different person, a mental health professional also in our community, she and her husband were new to our church, she set an appointment with me, came to my office, and she only had two questions. One is, do you know that you’re clinically depressed? And I said, yes, ma’am. And, are you taking anything for it? And I said, yes, ma’am, I am. She said, oh, good. I said, well, you know, I don’t know if it works. I just picked it up Wednesday, but I’ll do anything, you know, to get back to normal. And so I connected those two, they hadn’t met, and they became part of what I call a dance team, excuse the pun, of helping me get to be the healthy pastor that I had been for 20 years.

Mark: And they helped me significantly to get back on track. And eventually God would use that testimony to help other pastors at the events I get to speak to, or write, or podcasts like this where I can share what to do when you think you or someone in your family might have a mental health challenge. And that, honestly, there’s only two takeaways. One is if you’re not sure, ask somebody who knows what they’re talking about. Ask for help, and that’s hard. But secondly, don’t self-diagnose, because we tend to do that with physical and spiritual relational help as well. If we have a problem, we’ll look it up on the internet, try to figure it out ourselves. And you know, that ends up, uh, being a bit of a boomerang at times.

Narration: Though many of us are more aware of mental health and the need for counseling than in past years, there is still misunderstanding, debate, and maybe some fear among Christians regarding how to go about it. Here’s Kristen Kansiewicz sharing about about her journey into counseling and how she is working to raise awareness and destigmatize conversations around couseling, mental health, and the church. 

Kristen: The church setting was foundational to my entire sense of calling. I actually, as a teenager, felt called into ministry. Essentially, um, there was some counseling that was happening in the church by the pastor, or actually one of the assistant pastors. And so, I was aware of counseling in the church setting from the beginning. So I didn’t really actually know that much about counseling outside of a church setting until I kind of started studying in my bachelor’s degree. So it was kind of an interesting way that ultimately I watched even as an adolescent how people come to the church when they need help. And so this idea of having counseling in a church was very natural.

Kristen: It made perfect sense to me that that would something people are seeking. In fact, Lifeway Research has also, um, among others provided documentation for the fact that most people who do go to church go to see their pastor first. So there is a sense of people are seeking help from pastors when they have mental health issues. So for me, one of the things that I saw as a little bit of a gap was just the need for greater training on psychology and mental health, which has been a contentious debate. 

Kristen: We recognize that there are complicated reasons for its onset and that there are biological things happening. And so I think there’s more openness now overall across the American church to say we do need to, you know, know more about mental health. We do need to refer to licensed professionals in certain cases. And so that was kind of my journey through kind of becoming a counselor that was primarily operating in a church space, was seeing the need, but also seeing the need for more training.

Kristen: I think as I studied more about psychology, and, you know, even now we know even more about neuroscience and things, I realize like it’s not always that easy to boil it down to if we just follow biblical principles, we won’t have, you know, depression or anxiety. There are clinical levels of these things that we need to be able to assess and treat. And so that’s where I really felt called into ministry first and then into counseling in the church space. And by 16 years old, that was the articulation of my calling that I was gonna be a counselor in the church. I went to Wheaton College and fell in love with what I was learning there about how psychology and Christian faith can go together and they don’t have to be in opposition. 

Kristen: Really, when we boil it down to all truth is God’s truth, we can study that just like medicine or anything else without a fear that we are adopting a secular philosophy. So that has been my journey into that and really being a bridge builder to Christians who are kind of maybe skeptical or afraid of mental health counseling, maybe they’ve been told to be suspicious of it or that it’s worldly or things like that. And so I really have a heart for decreasing the stigma of mental illness to help Christians access care. And that was the whole idea of embedding clinical mental health care into church settings.

Narration: As Mark mentioned in his testimony, it’s often hard for pastors to identify if they are depressed, anxious, or have some kind of mental health struggle. And when it comes to their personal lives, it’s challenging to take care of themselves by asking for help. Both Mark and Kristen have advice for pastors who might be struggling to slow down, evaluate their lives, and get the help they need.

Mark: If pastors listen to this, they’re like, I’m not sure what’s wrong. I’m not sure if anything’s wrong. First of all, if you’re a male, you’re assessing your situation better than it really is. It’s called the halo effect. And if you’re a pastor, even more so, uh, things probably aren’t as good as you think they are. But at the same time, you might be wondering if there’s any hope. And so what I would encourage you to do is look at your life as a total stewardship of what we answer to God for instead of the Western approach of categorizing every part of your life—I have a physical health, which is different than mental health, which is different than spiritual health. And you know, the Bible doesn’t do that, right?

Mark: It’s a very comprehensive covenant that we enjoy in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so whether we’re dealing with mental health, relational health, financial health, whatever it is, it’s all part of the stewardship of managing our life, which we know as pastors and ministers in our job description in first Timothy one, uh, first Timothy three, and in Titus one is that we have to manage our lives before we can manage our homes. And we have to manage our homes before we can manage our church. And part of managing, which is translated “lead” in Romans 12, is us taking responsibility, to be, not perfect, but healthy because our health is intrinsically tied to the health of our church and our ministry. And so self-care is strategic, not selfish. The strategic part of managing, stewarding, owning our role as leader and making sure we put that oxygen mask on our face first so that we can help other people. For me, the self neglect was poor stewardship.

Mark: And so the worst thing I could do is ignore it or just try to plow through it. So getting healthy means letting people help you spiritually. That’s called discipleship. That means let helping somebody grow physically. That means letting your doctor help you take care of your temple mentally.

Kristen: It’s interesting, even when you think about a local community, if a pastor has made strides and, okay, I refer my congregants to these various Christian counselors in my community. Well now that pastor is really not able to go access those services for himself because all of his congregants are going to those. You have now a different set of relationships with those counselors.

Kristen: And so it’s almost like the pastors kind of gave away their opportunity to actually like, just need something. And so I think that telehealth has opened up some doors where you can look at your whole entire state, and so maybe you are able to see a counselor outside your community, but obviously pastors also tend towards a role of caregiving and kind of putting on that superhero cape; I’m fine. I’m the leader, I’m the helper. I don’t really need anything.

Narration: As we mentioned, in order for pastors to take care of their flocks and flourish in ministry, it’s important for them to first prioritize their own overall health. But there’s one area in particular that’s important. Here are Mark and Kristen with the significance of relationships in the health of pastors.

Mark: The best resource that any pastor can have to help them to start well, to stay well and to finish well, if they’re married, is your spouse. The greatest pastor advocate in the world is your spouse, right? Nobody knows you better, loves you more, is committed to you doing well than your spouse. So, and you can’t fake them out, but your spouse doesn’t need to be the only person. You need to have some ride or die in there. And everybody that finished well in the Bible had somebody. Paul had a bunch of them, and he got lonely sometimes, but he always had at least Luke there or Onesiphorus, you know, that those kind of ride or die friends who will, uh, Onesiphorus, when he couldn’t find him, he sought him out. He said, and refreshed me. How many times the Bible talk about that? Uh, the House of Stephanus refreshed me. The house of Onesiphorus refreshed me. Philemon refreshed me. The church in Rome refreshed me. That’s like refreshed five, six times, he says that, which is like a cool breeze on a hot day is what that word means. And so I wanna just ask the pastor right now, who have you invited into your life to refresh you?

Mark: Who, when you get down and you turn on that pastor on button that I’m fine and you smile real big, who can read through that besides your spouse? And so, you know, some of you listening are introverts. You don’t need a bunch of friends, you just need a couple of really good ones. But all of the the pastoral meltdowns that we see, one thing they have in common is that they have faked everybody out. They surprised everybody because they’ve held them at arms length.

Mark: And if you do that, there’s no one else to blame. But you need somebody that you can go, this was the best Sunday ever and I need to celebrate that. Or this was the worst Sunday ever. Somebody, uh, that cares for you as a person, whether you’re successful in ministry or not. And that’ll ask you hard questions. And I’ve had people like that in my life who contact me every week and vice versa. And, those are treasures, but I can’t fake them out. When I was hurting the most, you know, 15, 16 years ago, those people a mentor, two accountability partners in particular, and my wife and and these mental health professionals and eventually church leaders, as they found out I needed help, and I continued in that church. We not only finished the relocation, but I stayed another five years as their pastor. The best five years of the 27 full-time years I did it. And God will use your testimony too, but you’ve gotta let somebody help you out of that pit. 

Kristen: One, finding that was especially surprising to me is asking how many friends do you have, not including your spouse, that you could talk about things that are important to you?

Kristen: The connection between mental health and the number of close friends that a pastor has was significant, like at every level. I have charts that are just absolutely incredible to look at where you see mental health decline as you have fewer and fewer friends. And so people who have three or four friends are in every case doing significantly better. There are some measures where the significance started at two friends, so that would be a starting point, but some of them, it wasn’t significant until three friends. So it really has spoken to me about the need that pastors have for friendship, but it’s not just as easy as okay, pastors, go make friends.

Kristen: That’s what you need for your mental health, because there’s all these barriers to making friends and keeping friends. If you’re in the community, then you kind of feel like you need to be ministering to like the lost people, right? Or if you’re in your own church, then it’s like, well, all of these people are my congregants and I can’t really open up to them. Or if I do, it might come back at me like let’s say in an elder meeting and I’m getting kicked outta my own church. I’ve heard plenty of stories like that as well. So there’s just a lot of caution that pastors have, I think, when it comes to who to trust and who how to open up, and they would rather deal with it internally. So other studies have shown that pastors are more likely to use internal coping skills or even things like prayer rather than actually talking to another person about it.

Narration: Pastors bear heavy burdens. Day in and day out, they seek to serve the needs of their congregation, minister to the lost in their local communities, and take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Here’s Mark with an encouragement and some advice for pastors to take care of their mental health so that they can fulfill the ministry given to them.

Mark: Very encouraged by the fact that younger ministers are so, so open and even eager to hear what I’m talking about right now. There’s an appetite for it among the, not just the pastors, but the pastors advocates that they’re accepting the fact that there’s, we don’t know everything, but we have this whole life discipleship model and scripture and the mental health is just one of those aspects of it.

Paul told Timothy twice to pay attention to his life. First, in Acts 20, he says, pay attention to your life and your flock. And then in one Timothy four 16, he says, pay attention to your life and your teaching or doctrine. Both times he says life first.if you read the rest of, uh, one Timothy four 16, persevere in these things. And in doing this, you save not only yourself, but also your hearers. Not saving from their sins, of course, but saving from their stupidity.

Mark: So Timothy pay attention to your flock, to your doctrine and all that stuff, but pay attention to you, make sure you’re leading you well and that others are helping you. And I think that the younger pastors and spouses are more open to this. An important part of stewardship discipleship is we have to lead ourselves before, you know, we can lead other people.

Mark: Because I serve pastors and speak mostly to pastors, I know that they already know the answers. Everything I’m saying, not only do they know it, they have preached it, they’ve taught it. And so I’m encouraging you to do what you already know. Number four on the top 10 list is the Sabbath . It’s the one with the most commentary. And it’s the one we probably ignore the most. In fact, people will applaud us for ignoring, uh, the cease and desist order that was initially enforced by the, uh, death penalty. That’s how serious was God was about it. And I’m not saying that we should enforce that today. I’m just saying that stop means stop. And that’s all Sabbath has ever meant. It’s not just for our church members, it’s for us. So take your cape off, look yourself in the mirror and say what John the Baptist said a couple of times, I am not the Christ.

Mark: I am not the Christ. That’s the best, most practical prevention of burnout is just to stop every week and not work. So that might be what somebody needs to hear is don’t ignore burnout. Don’t think it’s a badge to wear. I don’t think it’s a cape to just carry it’s actually poor stewardship.

Mark: Make changes, which is what I had to do and what I’m still having to do. I still fight this because I’ve been given, uh, in my DNA bias towards action. I don’t wanna stop every week, but every day I stop before the Lord invest about an hour with just him. When I’ve got a jillion things to do, and I sabbath every day in what we generally call a quiet time. And, you know, every week I will unplug. And Sundays don’t count. For those of us who preach on Sundays, that’s not a Sabbath, right? So just find the right time, make it happen. Whether you’re bivocational or full time, do it, um, imperfectly, but do it otherwise. Burnout will be inevitable. And burnout can lead to more dangerous things like depression. And there’s different levels of depression. Uh, and in my case, my depression was preventable and treatable.

Mark: And it may not be that you’re clinically depressed, it might just mean somebody can help you find out what the problem is so that you can get, uh, healthy again, and that you can finish the race that God called you to run.

Closing: 

God has made us holistic beings, with our mental and physical health affecting our spiritual health, and vice versa. Pastors and ministry leaders aren’t an exception to this, nor are they immune to mental health struggles. Stress, burnout, depression, anxiety, and loneliness are all real experiences and don’t have to be ignored. Jesus urged us in Matthew 11: 28-30: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Not only are we encouraged to roll our burdens onto Jesus, we can invite others to come alongside us to help carry the weight of them, too.  Together, we can run our races well so that God may be glorified. 

Thanks for listening to the ERLC Podcast. Join us next time as we continue our series take a closer look at social media and its effects on our mental health.