• Contact
  • Return to IBSA
  • Advertise Through Us
  • Subscribe
  • E-Reader

IBSA News

Illinois Baptist State Newspaper

  • Quick Links
    • E-Reader
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Resource
  • News
    • IBSA
    • SBC
    • Culture
    • Illinois Churches
  • Stories
    • Thriving
    • Church Planting
    • Mission
    • Next Step
  • In Focus
  • Columns
    • Nate Adams
    • Eric Reed
    • Meredith Flynn
    • Table Talk
    • Reporter’s Notebook
    • Encouraging Words

Pastors need safe spaces

September 13, 2019 By Eric Reed

Depression often goes unshared in isolating vocation

My mother, a fine Christian woman, committed suicide just before the Fourth of July in 1991. When that anniversary came around this year, less than a year after my wife died from cancer, it hit me pretty hard. It was almost like going through the events of those days and weeks for the first time—where I was when I got the phone call, what I found when I got home, planning her funeral, consoling her friends, trying to go back to work and back to life afterward. I’m thinking about that now because of the recent suicide death of a popular young Southern Baptist pastor in California.

Everyone who knew him will be asking why. How could a Christian and especially a pastor kill himself? They will be wondering for years why they didn’t see the signs, if there were any, and why they didn’t know how to intervene. For years.

I wrote about this topic four years ago when an acquaintance who was a well-liked seminary professor found his life unravelling and chose to end it. His struggle with depression was known but not very public. I could have addressed it when Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren’s son took his life in 2013, causing his parents to ask the same questions all survivors do. Why? Why didn’t I see it? How could it get this bad?

The former CEO of the Southern Baptist Executive Committee, Frank Page, was brave enough to go public with his daughter’s suicide as part of an effort to encourage the church to address mental health. He formed a task force to study how the church handles mental health issues, especially for people such as his daughter, the Warren’s son, and my mother who suffered long with mental illness. Generally speaking, it was apparent going into the study that the local church isn’t really a safe place for people with mental or emotional instability to be public with their troubles. People don’t know how to handle it, and pastors aren’t trained in it unless they take extra effort to expand their counseling courses. LifeWay found only 27% of churches have a plan to assist families affected by mental illness and only 13% have someone trained in the field.

But the death of the young pastor puts a finer point on the issue. How could a pastor take his own life? And would a pastor ever tell his own church he was wrestling with such a dark temptation? Would they ever respect him again? Or might his admission of brokenness mean disqualification?

This young man in California had officiated at the funeral of someone who committed suicide on the same day he took his life. That was his trigger. He had spoken about mental health issues during his ministry. He sought to create an environment that welcomed admissions of need from the depressed and the struggling. Even so, no one saw the depth of their pastor’s pain. So, a young man with a lovely family and a promising future chose to leave earth early. His wife characterized it as choosing instead to go to Jesus. But he couldn’t have known the agony in his wake.

How could a pastor do such a thing? That really isn’t the question. The pastorate is often a lonely and isolated vocation. The pastor has few, if any peers in his church, and rarely a safe relationship in which to unload his burden. Pastors have a higher rate of job-related depression than other professions, except dentists. A 2013 LifeWay survey shows 35% of pastors admit they have been depressed, and 58% say they have no close friends—so there’s no one to tell. On top of that, 48% of evangelical Christians say prayer and Bible study alone should fix mental illness, with the implication that pastors, of all people, should be able to fix themselves. But overall in American society, the suicide rate continues to rise, especially among teenage girls and men ages 45-64.

The pastor is in a pickle.

A friend of mine admitted that he had considered an early death, as he put it. Sitting by a hotel pool one night, he wondered what it would be like to slip under the water and wake up in heaven, free from all things in ministry weighing so heavily on him. He was glad to confess it. And he promised to call me if the thought crossed his mind again.

I was glad he told me. I just wish that we all—and pastors especially—had more and better relationships where such confessions were allowed. Even welcomed.

Eric Reed is editor of Illinois Baptist media.

Share This Story

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Featured Columns

Meredith Flynn

Breaking the fourth wall

Meredith Flynn

A recent study by Barna had good news and bad news for increasingly polarized Americans. More than 90% of U.S. adults say they welcome different ways of thinking about important topics. But 51% also say their ideas are usually better than other people’s ideas, up from 31% who said so in 2015. And 36% say […]

Nate Adams

Grateful words

Nate Adams

Recently Beth and I joined a group of Baptist pastors and leaders and their spouses for a tour of biblical sites in Greece. For a week we followed the footsteps of Paul from Philippi, through Thessaloniki and Berea, and on to the ancient world crossroads of Athens and Corinth. It would be difficult to briefly […]

The force is with us

Meredith Flynn

Our family’s recent Covid quarantine finally provided my husband an opportunity to introduce our daughters to Star Wars. Over several days, they dug into the space saga until we were all well-steeped in the story of good versus evil. A few days later, we were rushing around the house scrambling to leave for a much-needed […]

More Columns

What happens when church leaders encourage mentoring relationships with their team members

Ben Jones

If the church is going to have leaders tomorrow, it’s going to take a new wave of mentoring from existing leadership today. This reality drove organizers of the 2023 Illinois Leadership Summit (ILS) to ask those coming to the annual event, “Which younger leader will you bring with you?” The evidence that many pastors took […]

News

Miles Mullin

ERLC trustees elect Mullin as chief of staff

ERLC Staff

Veteran Southern Baptist academic Miles Mullin is the new chief of staff and vice president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. The ERLC’s trustees elected Mullin unanimously upon the recommendation of Brent Leatherwood, the commission’s president, in a special called meeting Thursday (Jan. 26). Mullin became the first addition to the ERLC’s senior staff […]

Why gambling is getting riskier in Illinois

Security training offered March 11

More News Stories

Mission

Sallateeska baptism demonstrates SBC connections

Baptist Press

(Ed. Note—In our July issue, we reported that Illinois’s very own Sandy Wisdom-Martin told the story of her brother’s recent baptism during her WMU presentation at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Anaheim. We thought we you would appreciate this longer account that shows God’s fingerprints through multiple SBC connections. It’s too good to miss.) […]

A first-time ministry to migrant workers is very fruitful

FIRST-PERSON: A once-feared tribe now spreads the Gospel

More Mission Stories

  • News
  • Mission
  • In Focus
  • Columns

Copyright © 2023 · Website by Megaphone Designs