Sometime in the spring, Rev. Fred Stewart will get in his car and drive for hundreds, even thousands of kilometres, stopping as often as he is invited to do so to have a coffee or a meal with a minister or a prayer group, participate in worship, or all of the above. He’s been doing this for a while. In 2014 he went to points west meeting as many people as he could from Ontario to British Columbia. In 2015 it was to the east, to the Maritime provinces. Over the years he has clocked more than 30,000 kilometres by air and road, met more than 100 ministers and heard a lot of stories.
“I’ve met with some men and some women together and then a lot of one-on-ones. I found that in the one-on-ones, if it’s not somebody in my close circle, not somebody with whom I had any role in governance or through any committee work, all of a sudden, there was this willingness to open up and to share at incredibly deep levels,” he tells me. We are sitting in a restaurant that has been converted into a church—The Silver Spur is now Woodville Community, not far from Lake Simcoe in the Kawarthas in Ontario.
Stewart is minister at Woodville, along with St. Andrew’s, Bolsover, a 15-minute drive directly north on County Road 46. He is also the executive director of the Renewal Fellowship within the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and a columnist in this magazine.
Stewart started his role with the fellowship in the fall of 2011. Part of the call process was an examination of his gifts and passions for ministry. A key component from day one was a passion for encouraging ministers. In the first two years there were quite a few opportunities to do so as he travelled on behalf of the fellowship. It became a bigger and bigger part of his vocation and purpose. In 2014 he pitched an Encouragement Road Trip to the board, members and friends. Emails, prayers and donations broadly supported the initiative.
“It allowed me to go to many places with this message: ‘There are people all over the country that have sponsored this trip so that I could come and speak words of encouragement to you. You are loved and are prayed for.'”
With the additional blessings of his congregations, he has travelled to every province, just to have coffee, often with people he’s never met before. “The average life of those meetings is somewhere over two hours. Because the minute the conversation is entered, something happens.
“I think it’s something redemptive that happens. But there is this freedom that just pours out of people and it has nothing to do with where they come from theologically, has nothing to do with what they think of the Renewal Fellowship, nothing to do with male or female, rural, East Coast, West Coast, Central Canada. There is this commonality of ‘I can talk to somebody; this is a situation where I am free to actually talk.'”
“You talk most often of loneliness?, I ask him in the café church.
“Yes, isolation, loneliness, or sometimes mistrust of peers and distrust of presbytery. Often a story of, ‘They’ve done me wrong,’ either the congregation or the presbytery. Often a hurt that hasn’t been addressed or healed. But even people who are very active in very active churches in very active parts of the country often tell me how lonely they are and how they would do almost anything to assuage the loneliness except take enough time and risk to initiate a meaningful relationship.”
Presbytery! I can’t think of many conversations I’ve had with ministers who speak of presbytery with fondness. Individuals feel crushed; initiatives seem thwarted. Most express dissatisfaction, a few indifference and virtually none appreciation. It is discussed constantly as one of the greatest stresses in a minister’s life, let alone career.
“There is a definite difference between ministers talking about individuals in the presbytery and The Presbytery,” says Stewart. “All across the country, when a minister talks about presbytery, often it’s with reservation, it’s with suspicion, and it’s with the sense, ‘I would never, ever open up to them …’ because it reveals weakness. The very thing a minister is trying to accomplish in his congregation, to get people to be a real community, which means being transparent, being vulnerable, taking chances in relationship. There is no depth to a relationship if people are not prepared to risk.”
So, I ask him the obvious question: “You’ve spoken to about 100 ministers.
“Do you sense about half of them are whiny, victimy people?”
“No,” he replies. “No, that would be a real minority. I would say the vast majority are sincere; they are unhappy; they are discouraged. They’re often stuck in feeling they’re limited in terms of what they can do in their ministry. Feeling they’re limited in terms of what changes they can make. More and more are feeling trapped in that there are no moves that are available to them. Not feeling fulfilled in their ministry. So, it’s hopelessness that permeates more and more of their life.”
There are many different studies on clergy health and each of them has the same sort of statistics to report. One done in 2006 by the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development lays out some of the often repeated details: 90 per cent of pastors stated they were frequently fatigued; 89 per cent have considered leaving the calling; 57 per cent said they would if they could find a better job; 77 per cent said they did not have a good marriage; 75 per cent said they were unqualified or poorly trained; 71 per cent said they felt burned out, or depressed; 23 per cent said they felt happy or content in their life and their work.
This certainly challenges the common impression of the lives of ministers. Several generations grew up under the concept of the minister as earthly embodiment of the Kingdom—a concept that was helped along by many ministers who believed their own mythology. Those days are gone. The supports a minister could take for granted—a stay-at-home spouse, a large team of paid and volunteer workers, a common cultural language, centrality of church in society, in short, Christendom—are gone. What we have instead is a simple understanding that we are all travelling together on our journey with and towards God.
To be fair, this may more accurately be called a professional syndrome than limited to those working in ministry. School teachers across Canada, for example, who are represented by the collective power of a union, have long highlighted overwork and stress as issues. The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario has a checklist on its website which lists hours and workload and includes “unreasonable expectations.”
It’s not an easy job being a minister. I don’t know of a single job where one person is asked to wear as many hats—to be a teacher, a pastor, a preacher, a guidance counsellor, a therapist, a spiritual adviser, a friend, a comfort, a manager, an administrator, a visionary, a moderator, and much more. And in these years of declining memberships there is additional congregational anxiety which is placed on the ministers.
It’s not a nine-to-five job, either. Between the congregation’s and the presbyter’s expectations, a minister can be out of the house more than 40 hours a week, and that may not include Sunday worship preparations. This puts pressure on family. And let’s be honest, the pay’s not great. For the stress and education, other careers have better financial returns.
Is the health of our ministers a metaphor for a larger crisis?, I ask Stewart.
“Absolutely,” he replies. “The health of our congregations is certainly limited by the health of our ministers. And the health of our denomination is inextricably tied to the same thing. The text that is heard across this country is that the churches are dying therefore we don’t have any options open to us. We’re accepting a text of hopelessness. It’s a dangerous generalisation because it’s a) not true, but b) by actually recounting it, it actually becomes true.”
And so the Road to Encouragement, and as successful and valid and vital as that ministry is, Stewart is aware it’s not the solution. “People need one person other than their spouse and outside of their church, or part of their governance, with whom they can be absolutely real; that they’re not wearing a mask, they’re not putting on a drama. One person with whom they’re actually willing to say what they fear and what they seek.
“That ideal is tough to reach, but there needs to be an opportunity at least monthly to sit with people who share the same kinds of challenges and the same kinds of ups and downs.”
Stewart likes the colleague covenant group grants (a well-kept secret he calls them) offered by national offices. The grant site says a covenant group is a safe place for ministerial colleagues to “pray together … to tell it like it is.”
Last year Rev. Matthew Ruttan wrote in this magazine of a clergy care committee at Westminster, Barrie, Ont., where he is the minister. (Stewart suggests congregations have a “human relations committee.”) That too sounds like a great idea; along with ministers being honest with each other, it seems to me, the congregation also needs to understand its role. All three of our theological colleges have various clergy care programs. There are mentoring groups in some presbyteries.
There are obvious limitations in all of these approaches—safe environments that are neither vapid nor antiseptic are very difficult to maintain; a covenant group needs strong and fair leadership; mentors need to be matched with extreme care to mentees—but they are great starts. This is not the first article the Record has published on this theme; previous articles have been received well but also elicited harsh backlash.
Thinking of those articles, and my own conversations with dozens of ministers over the years, I think the story is bigger than a covenant group issue.
“I think there is a crumbling idea of call; I think there is a crumbling idea of job versus ministry; I think there is a crumbling idea of what are the things that the minister could do that would make a difference,” says Stewart.
I would add, there is a crumbling idea called Christendom. Not so long ago, though further back in time than most think, the church sat in the middle of the main thoroughfare and all who travelled through the town had to pass through the church. You can still see some of those churches around the world, towering over the central square. Over time, though, the main road moved, not just around the church but often to a whole other part of town.
Many inside those echoing buildings, in a trance of their idolatrous glory-days memories, are still waiting for the townsfolk to walk through their cobwebbed entrances. A lot of those expectations have been placed on their one remaining employee, the person they’re paying to do something. The minister, in turn, doesn’t want to disappoint; they tend to be pleasers, and this is their livelihood. There’s the cycle.
A study done at Knox College, Toronto, published about a decade ago, concluded: “At the very core of the crisis among clergy is the question of identity. ‘Who am I—as a person—as a minister—as a religious leader in a culture in transition?’ This is a question that must be an ongoing area of enquiry for the minister. … The neatly defined person of the early days of ministry may now seem a seething bed of conflicting ideologies causing the person to raise questions of one’s own integrity and belief.”
Fred Stewart’s encouragement tour is a welcome respite for many. It needs follow up; and that is in everybody else’s hands.
