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Subscribe to CommentsYour job, young pastor, is to maintain a non-anxious presence within the church you pastor. Knowing that we live in a time when anxiety is everywhere–a time when religion, in particular, has been whipped into a paralyzing frenzy of anxiety by those who are served by fear. Easier said than done, maintaining a non-anxious presence. Where to begin? Befriend the book of Psalms.
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Here’s a myth about pastoring that will crush you if you mistake it for truth: when a pastor is doing his or her job, the church will be calm. Like any myth, this one endures because it distorts a truth: that good pastoring helps a church manage conflict, tension, and turmoil better than bad pastoring. (And that bad pastoring can generate enormous turmoil in a church.) The myth hides the reality that we pastor now in an age of very high anxiety, owing to a rapid pace of change all around us.
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Consider, young pastor, the word “reformation.” We inherited one. For 500 years, it’s been the ground beneath our feet. Assumed perspectives that shape the pastoral landscape. But the theological-pastoral ground beneath our feet isn’t a brass dance floor built on reinforced concrete anchored in unmovable moorings It’s more like, well, the ground beneath our feet: a set of plates that shift in response to subterranean forces. Like the bones of a newborn’s skull, subject to, admitting of, allowing for reformation as needed.
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Maybe you’ve notice that pastoring seems to be a near occaision to mainline anxiety. I’ve been battling anxiety for the past year myself, thank you, but I seem to be on the mend. Thanks in no small part to the best book on leadership I’ve read in years: A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. Stop, drop, and read this book if you are a young pastor battling anxiety.
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One of the reasons you don’t pray more has nothing to do with your dedication to God or your capacity for self discipline or your forgetfulness in matters spiritual or your busy life. It has to do with your need to learn how to calm your praying brain. Too often you close your eyes to pray and it’s an unpleasant experience. You become more aware of your underlying anxiety. You become more subject to your grinding thoughts. You put up with it as long as you can, then open your eyes and move on to the next distraction. There are ways to calm yourself. Thankfully many ways. Here’s one: a way to present your embodied self to God, and it goes like this….
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