A Conversation About American's #1
Health Problem
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IN THIS
ISSUE:
Lessons From Rock Bottom
by Philip Yancey
Does Ministry Fuel Addictive
Behavior?
by Sally Morgenthaler |
Philip
Yancey
Lessons From Rock Bottom
"If I were writing a natural theology today, I think I would
start with recovering alcoholics…. It staggers me that
psychiatrists, pharmacologists, and scientific reductionists
cannot improve on a spiritual program devised by a couple of
Christian alcoholics 60 years ago.” (more)
Does Ministry Fuel Addictive
Behavior?
by Sally Morgenthaler
"... (The Pastor had) better not have any serious bouts of
depression, credit issues, children who get caught selling ecstasy,
or a wife with a drinking problem.”
Most church leaders know me as the woman who writes and speaks about
worship. What only a few know is that I have spent the last decade
experiencing the effects of my spouse's sexual addiction, an
addiction that began in late childhood and was never treated. What
an unspeakable tragedy. This young woman is still living with her
parents, afraid of men, incapable of living a normal life. And the
damage didn't stop there. As untreated addictions go, my husband's
escalated… (more)
Philip
Yancey
Lessons From Rock Bottom
The church can learn about grace from the recovery movement.
By Philip Yancey
In earlier times, some theologians wrote "natural theologies" by
first explicating the wonders of nature and then gradually moving
toward theism, revelation, and Christian doctrine. If I were writing
a natural theology today, I think I would start with recovering
alcoholics.
It staggers me that psychiatrists, pharmacologists, and scientific
reductionists cannot improve on a spiritual program devised by a
couple of Christian alcoholics 60 years ago.
Anthropology, original sin, regeneration, sanctification--the
recovery movement contains within it seeds of all these doctrines.
As an alcoholic once told me, "I have to publicly declare 'I am an
alcoholic' whenever I introduce myself at group. It is a statement
of failure, of helplessness, and surrender. Take a room of a dozen
or so people, all of whom admit helplessness and failure, and it's
pretty easy to see how God then presents himself in that group."
The historian of Alcoholics Anonymous titled his work Not-God
because, he said, that stands as the most important hurdle an
addicted person must surmount: to acknowledge, deep in the soul, not
being God. No mastery of manipulation and control, at which
alcoholics excel, can overcome the root problem; rather, the
alcoholic must recognize individual helplessness and fall back in
the arms of the Higher Power. "First of all, we had to quit playing
God," concluded the founders of AA; and then allow God himself to
"play God" in the addict's life, which involves daily, even
moment-by-moment, surrender.
Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, reached the
unshakable conviction, now a canon of twelve-step groups, that an
alcoholic must "hit bottom" in order to climb upward. Wilson wrote
his fellow strugglers, "How privileged we are to understand so well
the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that
humiliation goes before resurrection: that pain is not only the
price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth." The Apostle
Paul could not have phrased it better.
The need for humble dependence continues throughout recovery.
Although an alcoholic may pray desperately for the condition to go
away, very few addicts report sudden, miraculous healing. Most
battle temptation every day of their lives, experiencing grace not
as a magic potion, rather as a balm whose strength is activated
daily by conscious dependence on God.
One alcoholic wrote me,
I know that I can go out and start drinking today and. … have all
the sex I want with all the women I want and live in a state of
continued drunkenness for quite some time. But there is a catch. I
know firsthand all the misery and guilt that comes along with it.
And that is something I want no part of. I have experienced guilt
and misery so extreme that I didn't want to live anymore at all--and
that, my friend, is why I would rather not have to take advantage of
God's generosity in being willing to forgive me once again should I
go that route. … Plus, in my present life, every now and then I
think I do manage to do God's will. And, when I do, then the rewards
are so tremendous and satisfying that I get kind of addicted to that
closeness to God. There is a common saying in AA: "Religion is for
people who believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been
there."
In correspondence with Bill Wilson,
the psychiatrist Carl Jung remarked that it may be no accident that
we refer to alcoholic drinks as "spirits." Perhaps, suggested Jung,
alcoholics have a greater thirst for the spirit than other people,
but it is all too often misdirected.
Early in the AA program, two groups
divided over the issue of perfectionism. One, an offshoot of the
Oxford Group, insisted on "Four Absolutes" and required its members
to commit to a strict Christian creed. The other, led by Bill
Wilson, started with a dependence on grace, an acknowledgment that
its members would never achieve perfection. Absolutes, said Wilson,
either turned alcoholics away or gave them a dangerous feeling of
"spiritual inflation." Over time, the perfectionist Oxford Group
shriveled up and disappeared; grace-based AA has never stopped
growing.
We in the church have as much to
learn from people in the recovery movement as we have to offer them.
I was struck by one observation from an alcoholic friend of mine.
"When I'm late to church, people turn around and stare at me with
frowns of disapproval. I get the clear message that I'm not as
responsible as they are. When I'm late to AA, the meeting comes to a
halt and everyone jumps up to hug and welcome me. They realize that
my lateness may be a sign that I almost didn't make it. When I show
up, it proves that my desperate need for them won out over my
desperate need for alcohol."
Does Ministry Fuel Addictive
Behavior?
Certain approaches to ministry lead to
self-destruction.
by Sally Morgenthaler
Most church leaders know me as the woman who writes and speaks about
worship. What only a few know is that I have spent the last decade
experiencing the effects of my spouse's sexual addiction, an
addiction that began in late childhood and was never treated.
As untreated addictions go, my husband's escalated. In the 1990s,
his secret life overtook his life as pastor and resulted in a felony
sex offense: molestation of a child by a person in a position of
trust. The girl was my daughter's best friend who lived next door; a
special needs teen who was eight years older than my daughter, but
her exact mental age: eight.
What an unspeakable tragedy. This young woman is still living
with her parents, afraid of men, incapable of living a normal life.
And the damage didn't stop there. My daughter's childhood was
shattered. She entered her teens without a father, the memory of
what father she'd had tarnished beyond recognition. At thirteen, my
son assigned himself the role of man-of-the-family, and has carried
way too many burdens into his adult life.
Image-driven pastors learn how to edit their real lives for public
consumption. In the heat of stress or in the wear and tear of the
mundane, the veneer will wear through to what is really there.
I never imagined such a nightmare.
Since the offense had actually been a series of about fifty
molestations over a two-year period, and since the victim was an
underage, special needs child, my spouse's bail topped that set for
some murder suspects. He was convicted, incarcerated, and
subsequently sentenced to eight years in a halfway house for sex
offenders. To date, he has served five of those years.
I became a separated (and subsequently divorced) parent; a single
woman with baggage the size of a small continent, and sole provider
for my children. What had looked to outsiders like television's 7th
Heaven somehow morphed into film noir: American Beauty.
Addiction of any kind leaves its marks. Yet the mark we carry
that is more embossed than any other is that of God's faithfulness.
Over the past eight years, my children and I have been healing.
Much of that healing has come through loving family and friends.
More has come through a marvelous local congregation, giving me a
new reason to hope about the church in a broken world. Most
significantly, however, our progress into wholeness has been the
result of an intentional re-shaping of who my children and I are as
a family: consciously deconstructing unhealthy family patterns (we
are a no-secrets, truth-telling family), as well as adopting a
practice of radical presence: being there for each other at
unprecedented depth and levels of sacrifice.
Another component of my own healing has come from studying the
addictive process (its precursors and effects). Reflecting upon our
family's bizarre journey in light of recent research on sex
addiction, I began realizing that others may benefit from what we
have experienced. Redemption and transformation are at the heart of
the gospel. God is in the process of redeeming our family's journey,
our descent into addiction's vortex.
And God never wastes a journey.
Going public
My first "out-of-the-closet" step came a year and a half ago at a
national pastor's conference. When the conference organizers heard
my story, they were immensely encouraging. They agreed: my
experience as a church leader, wife, and mother in the grip of a
spouse's sex addiction needed to be told, and it was time for the
telling.
Even though there were a dozen other classes they could have
attended, they came to this one. Whether it was the subject of sex,
a woman teaching about sex, or a woman who usually teaches about
worship teaching about sex, something got them in the doors; 150
attendees tried to fit into a room meant for 60. It was a
standing-in-the-side-aisles, spilling-into-the-hall scenario.
I had three goals for that day:
1. That pastors acknowledge their humanity and love themselves in
the midst of their struggles. (After all, grace doesn't just apply
to others. It applies to ourselves.)
2. That they gain a basic understanding of the addiction cycle and
dysfunctional sexual behavior. (What we don't understand controls
us.)
3. That they identify some of their own ministry realities that are
toxic, undermining emotional and spiritual health. (Just because we
put a "ministry" tag on certain church leadership norms doesn't make
them good.)
The last concept seemed most provocative: the way ministry is set
up, idealized, and practiced may actually fuel addictive behavior.
Some of these ministry dynamics are described below. This list is
not exhaustive. This is merely an introductory treatment.
(Also note that I use male terminology for pastors in this
article. It is not because I am ignoring female pastors, nor because
female pastors are immune to addictive behavior. It is because I
have not had opportunity to observe female clergy in their settings.
Consequently, I would not pretend to be knowledgeable about their
particular contributing dynamics.)
As we enter 2006, peoples' lives are fracturing to a degree that
would have been unimaginable even ten years ago. Given this
environment, care-giving institutions and their leaders are at a
much higher risk for escapism.
We must face the realities of our current contexts, attitudes,
practices, and dysfunctions as pastors. Ministry practiced in
unhealthy ways leads to destructive life patterns, especially
clandestine, escapist addictions.
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.
Sally Morgenthaler consults with pastors and staff on
collaborative leadership strategies. Her book on co-creative
leadership will be published this year by InterVarsity Press.
Copyright © 2006 by the author or
Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal. Click here for
reprint information onLeadership Journal.
Winter 2006, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, Page 58
