The Mid-Life Crises of a Minister

THE MID-LIFE CRISES OFA MIMSTER RAY "W. RAGSDALE WORD BOOKS PUBLISHER 4800 WEST WACO DRIVE WACO.TEXAS 76703

T H E M I D - L I F E CRISES O F A M I N I S T E R

Copyright © 1978 b y W o r d , I n c o r p o r a t e d 4800 W. Waco Drive, Waco, Texas 76703 All rights reserved. N o p a r t of this book m a y b e r e p r o d u c e d in any form whatever, except for brief quotations in reviews, without ,. written permission from t h e publisher. Scripture quotations identified RSV are from t h e Revised Standard Version of t h e Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952, © 1971, 1973 by t h e Division of Christian Education of t h e National Council of t h e Churches of Christ i n t h e U.S.A., used by permission. I S B N 98499-0068-9 L i b r a r y of Congress Catalog N u m b e r 77-92457 Printed

in the United States of

America

Contents Acknowledgments Preface 1. The Minister in Mid-life Crisis 2. The Minister As Loner 3. The Physical Crisis 4. The Career Crisis 5. The Marital and Family Crisis 6. The Crisis of Meaning 7. The Mid-life Crisis of the Minister's Spouse 8. Making the Most of the Middle Years

13 20 31 40 54 72 83 97

Acknowledgments Many people have contributed to this book. I have interviewed scores of friends and have counseled numerous others, some of whose experiences have been recorded here in disguised form to protect identities. My wife of more than forty years has been extremely helpful. She has listened patiently to my ideas and has made thoughtful suggestions. Several close friends in ministry have read portions of the manuscript and have given encouragement to complete the task. Mary Myers has struggled through all my manuscript revisions in good spirit as she typed the final copy. To all who have helped, I express my gratitude.

Preface This book germinated for more t h a n a year before I started to write it. W h e n I finally began to p u t words on paper, I had to ask myself why I should write a book like this. I came up with two quite elemental reasons. I have lived through mid-life and have known the crises at first hand. I stand on the other side of it now like one who has fought the rapids of a wild river and from an island downstream looks back at others coming through and shouts, " Y o u can make i t ! " I n addition, I care deeply for my brothers and sisters and their spouses in ministry. It grieves me sorely when I h e a r of a colleague who has left the ministry u n d e r mid-life pressures. And for those who have given u p on their marriages after ten or twenty years, whether clergy or spouse, I have a deep heartache. Somewhere between young m a t u r i t y and the elderly state of life lies middle age. To use r o u n d figures, middle age might be tagged as the years between, thirty-five to fifty-five, give or take a few years. T h e crises of mid-life for ministers come in four areas: physical, career, marital/family, and meaning. These are all intertwined so that each affects the others. So often, for ministers, the adjustments to mid-life crises are worked through in indescribable loneliness. F o r example, I recall hearing of one of my younger brothers in ministry who had left his wife. I tele-

phoned and invited him to lunch. A few days later I visited his estranged mate. In both cases I assured them I had no desire to probe into their private affairs but just wanted them to know that I cared and was standing by. In both cases they told me I was the only person who had offered that kind of friendship in their time of agony. This, then, is the purpose of my writing. If you are a minister or clergy spouse in mid-life, I want to encourage and help you through what can be a perplexing and traumatic time. If you are one who has yet to know mid-life, I would like to help prepare you for what is to come. If you are a friend of a clergy person who is caught up in a mid-life crisis, I hope to give you a bit of understanding to equip you to fill the role of "life-support" for your friend. I suppose I should tell you that I am writing out of more than thirty years' experience as a pastor and several years as superintendent of a metropolitan district of a large Protestant denomination. Though I have had little formal training in counseling, I have listened to many people who needed someone to talk to. I have read widely in psychology, but I do not presume to be a Psychologist spelled with a capital P. It is my hope, therefore, that in writing this book I will neither mislead those who know less nor offend those who know more. Other books, or chapters within books, have been written on the subject of the mid-life crisis generally, but to my knowledge none has focused on the minister and spouse. Clergy mid-life crises are not unlike the crises of others but they are notable enough to warrant special consideration. Thus, this book. Someone has said that books are friends. I would like very much for this book to become your friend. Ray W. Ragsdale

THE MID-LIFE CRISES OF A MINISTER

1 The Minister in Mid-Life Crisis

Let us call him David. He was late in entering the ministry. A tour of duty in the army had delayed him. As a teenager he had felt the faint stirrings of a call, but there wasn't much to encourage it, and before he knew it he was in the army. His experience in youth work in the church at home and a mild attraction to the ministry caused him to gravitate to the army chaplain. It was natural that he should become the chaplain's assistant. Through this experience he was encouraged to think seriously of the ministry. He developed another interest about this time—in a nurse at the base hospital. She wasn't pretty, but she was warm and friendly. Her strong personality drew David to her. Soon they became sexually involved. They could hardly wait for the times when they could go off base and spend the night at a motel. David had some guilt feelings about this, but he repressed them, throwing himself more completely into his duties as assistant to the chaplain. 11

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David and

Nancy

W i t h i n three m o n t h s after they had completed their service time, David and Nancy were married. David worked for a b a n k and Nancy found a job at a nearby hospital. They became active in a couples group at the church, and once again David began to t h i n k about the ministry. H e discussed the possibility with Nancy who evinced only a mild interest, b u t she said, "If this is what you really want to do, David, it's okay with m e . " David was twenty-seven when he entered theological seminary. Living on Nancy's salary, he attended full time and accelerated his course. T h e i r two children were b o r n during David's first pastorate. Nancy found the life of a minister's wife galling at times, b u t all in all, she didn't m i n d it as m u c h as she h a d thought she would. She continued to work except for a short time before and after the children came. T h e n she began to notice a restlessness in her husband. They quarreled more frequently. David kept an eye cocked for a better church, b u t better for h i m m e a n t best. H e was an able preacher, and he saw no reason why he should have to serve any further apprenticeship. David was ready for the Big Church. H e talked to his ecclesiastical supervisor about it without encouragement. T h e r e were other m e n who deserved advancement, too, the good doctor said. But David couldn't see it. H e r e he was at thirty-six and he felt the pressure to get established on a high job plateau before he hit forty. Career anxiety was eating at his vitals. About this time a move came, b u t it was not the

THE MINISTER IN MID-LIFE CRISIS / 13

Big C h u r c h he wanted. It was a modest advancement. David felt crushed, b u t he dug in and worked fifteen to sixteen h o u r s a day hoping for a dramatic success t h a t would bring h i m to the attention of the denominational authorities. T h e children needed time with h i m , b u t he neglected t h e m . Sex h a d lost its c h a r m and the t e m p e r a t u r e dropped to a near-freezing point in his relationship with Nancy. One of the children developed allergies. T h e r e were m o r e and m o r e arguments in the h o m e . T h e manse became a war zone. T h i n k i n g it would benefit the health of their sick daughter, Nancy pressured David to take a c h u r c h in another climate. T h e change took place, b u t for David, it was another career frustration. Again, he threw himself into his work with t h e zeal of a workaholic b u t whenever a Big C h u r c h would open u p somewhere in the nation, he would call Joe, his only close ministerial friend, and ask h i m about his chances of being considered. But nothing ever happened. Joe was five or six years older t h a n David a n d was a b o r n listener to other peoples' troubles. This must have been the reason David t u r n e d to h i m . David was filled with peer fear, b u t somehow J o e was different. H e wasn't a career threat. H e was just a steady " J o e , " solid as a rock, and for David he was a person to lean on. T h e i r pastorates were some sixty miles apart, and David would call Joe once or twice a week, especially when he was depressed. Joe was impatient with David's insatiable ambition. Still h e listened. A n d David drew strength from his older friend over the telephone wires. It was vacation time and Joe and his wife, Ethel, drove 600 miles to visit their relatives. During this

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m o n t h there was n o contact with David. Joe thought of his younger friend and considered calling him, b u t time passed and he d i d n ' t do it. H e recalled David would be having his forty-third birthday in about six weeks, and he told himself h e would do something special for h i m at that time. Vacation over, Joe and Ethel headed for home. They talked about going by to see David and Nancy, b u t decided against it. T h e r e would be a stack of mail waiting for t h e m and Joe needed to get back to the c h u r c h to finalize plans for the c h u r c h leaders' retreat. So they drove home by the shortest route. W h e n they arrived home, they found a note on the screen door. It was about David, and it was tragic. How tragic it was we will see later. *

*

*

J o h n was black, and he was p r o u d of it. W h e n h e first entered the ministry t h e r e was only one place for h i m to go, even though he did not live in the deep south, and that was a black church. Only t h e n the word " b l a c k " h a d not come into its own. T h e word was negro. Some people used the word " c o l o r e d " and he h a d felt the sting of it. B u t that was fifteen years ago. Now there was a new openness and most of the leadership in his church had accepted the new identity and dignity of the black clergy. J o h n ' s abilities had been recognized early in the mid—western area where he h a d served after graduating from seminary. H e was one of the first blacks to be n a m e d a district supervisor in his denomination after the segregated structure went down. J o h n ' s t e r m in this office had come to an end just last year. H e was well aware that people in his position, com-

T H E MINISTER IN MID-LIFE CRISIS / 15

pleting their terms, normally went to status churches, b u t none had developed for him, though one h a d been open. Instead, he had been n a m e d to another black church, similar to the one he had left to enter district work. John and

Gloria

Gloria, J o h n ' s wife, was a teacher, and a good one. She received deep satisfaction from her work with children. At first it was necessary for h e r to work because J o h n ' s income as a minister was so low they couldn't live on it. T h a t was before the big change in the church. Now he could expect a decent salary and pension just like his white brothers. Still, Gloria liked working, and she continued to do so. It bothered J o h n that he had not been given the same treatment others received in the a p p o i n t m e n t process. " Y o u owe it to the Conference to go t h e r e , " his ecclesiastical boss had said. "If you say I owe it, t h e n let m e ask you a quest i o n , " J o h n replied. " W h e n you were making appointm e n t decisions, did you consider m e along with everyone else? Did you consider m e as a p a r t of the system in which I have worked now for eight years as a pastor and six years as a supervisor? T h e fact is, you don't consider m e along with everyone else. Don't tell me I owe it. I d o n ' t ! " T h e m o m e n t was heavy with embarrassment. B u t in the end, J o h n swallowed another of a long series of disappointments related to the color of his skin, and he headed for his new pastorate in another ghetto. I n some ways, this was h a r d e r on Gloria t h a n it was on J o h n . She had discovered a m o r e ready accept-

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ance of her in the school system than John had in the church—or so she felt. One day she came right out and said, "John, why don't you leave the ministry and get into something else? You are a good administrator, as the last six years have proven. You could get a good job, at twice the salary, in management or personnel work." John said nothing and applied himself to his work. One day, he read in The Century that a staff position was open with the National Council of Churches. He knew blacks were being considered favorably for national leadership jobs, both denominationally and ecumenically, so he applied. To his surprise, he was accepted. His ecclesiastical chief was reluctant to let him go, but he finally gave his consent. Thus, John traveled the country in his new job, much stimulated by international and interracial contacts. Secretly he still dreamed of a parish of his own where his people would be color blind and he would be free to pursue the ministry for which he was called. Little did John know what was ahead for him. This, too, like the story of David, will be revealed later. *

*

*

Sharon and Steve I am sitting across from Sharon. The year is 1976. Sharon and her husband Steve are a "clergy couple." They have been in ministry together for several years, which is rather rare for a couple in a mainline denomination. The liberation movement is bringing a flood of women into the seminaries and in due time a third to one—half of the parishes of this particular denomination may well receive their pastoral leader-

THE MINISTER IN MID-LIFE CRISIS / 17

ship from women clergy or clergy couples like Sharon and Steve. Since there is little hard data on the mid-life crises of women clergy, I am talking to Sharon about her present feelings and future expectations. Sharon and Steve have three children. They have been married for twelve years. Sharon is the pastor of a small church. Steve is minister to students at a nearby college. It is a good arrangement for them. They are able to live in the parsonage provided by Sharon's church, and Steve can commute to his work at the college with little inconvenience. The children are quite happy in the schools not far from their mother's church. Mid-life crisis? "I haven't felt it yet," says Sharon. At thirty-nine she has felt no lessening of energy; the menopause is still at a distance; she and Steve enjoy their home and in ways that are possible share their work. There is sexual satisfaction in their marriage and their children are a delight. "We know there will be teenage problems later. Ours are normal children. But right now, everything is great. We share family responsibilities. Steve cooks and cleans and runs errands. So do I. We have worked out home duties compatible to each of our work schedules. The children are very flexible. Also very healthy, which is nice for us. They tend to move into our life style, which has a lot of freedom and movement and space. It is not structured like other parents' lives seem to be structured. The children feel pressure usually around Christmas and Easter, when we are very busy, and if they are ever sick, it is usually then. Sometimes we take the children out of school for a few days and go away together so the time is totally theirs."

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Career feelings? "The opportunities are so many, I just feel my career line is straight up," Sharon says. "Because there are so few of us women clergy right now, opportunities for conference and committee work are limitless. If there is a crisis for us it is in this area. Steve tends to get overlooked while all these opportunities are coming to me. It won't always be this way. It's just that we are at that point in history." Future work? "We've thought about that and it doesn't worry us. Clergy couples have to be flexible. We hope to share a full-time situation before long. This may mean church authorities putting together two or three small churches which we can serve as co—pastors. We hope the time is not too far off before we can co-pastor a large church. This is an early point in our denomination's experience with women clergy and clergy couples, and we don't lose any sleep over it. It's really pretty exciting!" What about women clergy whose spouses have a separate career? Sharon has a ready answer. "Same as it is now the other way around. The couple will have to be flexible. But when the spouse has a career that roots him to one spot, unless he can get a transfer or practice his profession in different places from time to time, she will have to be limited in where she can serve. Church administrators will have to be considerate at this point. They are now, in many cases, where the male clergy is subject to appointment change, but his spouse's career or profession limits the range." Sharon's pause is reflective. "Then, we mustn't rule out the possibility of house husbands. I know a couple," she says, "in which the husband does not want a job outside the home for several years. He is quite happy being a house husband. And he is very good at it!"

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/19

As I t h i n k about the house h u s b a n d idea, Sharon continues. " A m a n has to be pretty secure to choose being a house husband. H e will get a lot of criticism from his male friends. F o r that reason he has to k n o w who he really is. I t h i n k m y h u s b a n d suffers some from that k i n d of identity crisis now. T h e r e is a k i n d of unspoken 4 Who are you to be m a r r i e d to a woman like t h a t ? ' T h e r e is a n a t u r a l fear of emasculation. A n d we'll have to deal with t h a t . " I have thought a great deal of all this since I talked with Sharon. How will it be ten years hence? Or fifteen? Or twenty? But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. As we look back on these stories (which are t r u e b u t are disguised to protect identities) we can begin to see some of the crises which are common to all people in mid-life b u t special for ministers. They are special in their particularity, though not different in kind. All people are subject to the mid-life crisis of body changes affecting energy and health. Likewise, career crises come to most people in business and professional life. Marital and family crises touch all married people with varying degrees of seriousness. A n d beneath, through, and after all these lies the crisis of meaning. W e will meet David and Nancy, J o h n and Gloria, and Sharon and Steve elsewhere in this book. I n addition, we will meet Mary, "Minister's W i f e , " and R a l p h , "Minister's H u s b a n d , " before we are through. With these persons (again real b u t disguised) we will explore the depths of loneliness, physical changes, career crises, marriage and family problems, and meaning searches that we may identify these life experiences for you and suggest some positive ways to deal with them.

2 The Minister As Loner Here is one area where ministers in mid-life are different from other people; they are not as free (or they think they are not) to seek help as others are. Who do ministers turn to when they are in trouble? Much, if not most, of the difficulty here lies in attitude. Of course, ministers are free to get help if they need it. They are as free as anyone. The problem lies in an unreal role image sometimes fostered by lay persons and accepted by many ministers. Ministers are helpers. They are not supposed to need help. People go to ministers to receive counsel. Ministers know all about these things. They know how to deal with problems, for they work with peoples' problems all the time. Surely, if anything goes wrong in their own lives, they know what to do about it. It's their job to know. Many lay people, while accepting their ministers' humanity, still reason like this. If ministers are not careful they come to believe it, too. This was David's problem. Remember David, the ambitious one? People looked up to him and he loved 20

T H E MINISTER A S L O N E R / 2 1

it. His ego needs were great. H e didn't realize it b u t this was one reason why he was drawn to the ministry as a profession. H e loved those complimentary rem a r k s he received from the people in his audience following his first sermon. H e still loved adulation and it always h u r t h i m and m a d e h i m defensive w h e n someone criticized something he said or the way h e said it. W i t h o u t realizing what they were doing to h i m , some of David's people h a d reinforced a false image he had of himself. H e was somehow different from ordinary people. This was why David h a d such guilt feelings. H e lost his temper, swore when n o one could hear him, and felt lust for some of the women who came to his study with tales of unattentive husbands. A minister wasn't supposed to have such weaknesses! At times, David became extremely anxious about himself. Some days, w h e n things h a d gone well at c h u r c h and at home, or when the needs of people kept h i m on the r u n so he hardly had time to think, h e felt like an astronaut orbiting the earth. At other times, when people seemed indifferent to h i m and the kids were sick and Nancy was too preoccupied to respond to h i m sexually, he felt the compulsion to r u n — j u s t anywhere, to get away—everything closed in with a sickening depression. Was something wrong with h i m , he would ask himself. W h y did he have these feelings? God h a d called h i m to this work. W h y didn't he help h i m when he felt like this? I n these moods, David would t u r n to his books for comfort. Dag Hammarskjold's Markings was one of his favorites. H e read, identified, and wept within himself.

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The longest journey Is the journey inwards Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest For the sources of his being (Is there a source?) He is still with you, But without relation, Isolated in your feeling Like one condemned to death Or one whom imminent farewell Prematurely dedicates To the loneliness which is the final lot of all. 1 His forsakenness u n b e a r a b l e , David would sometimes go to a nearby lakeshore and look morosely over the water. Once, while doing this, he was frightened by the thought of self-destruction. It was t h e n he decided to call his friend, Joe. Ministers

in

Trouble

W h o do ministers t u r n to when they are in t r o u b l e ? Not to an ecclesiastical superior! H e is the individual who holds one's career future in his hands. A minister wouldn't dare let a superior k n o w about his or h e r emotional instability. Maybe he would understand, b u t maybe he wouldn't. After all, in m a n y denominations he is responsible for one's recommendation or placement in the next church. T h e plain fact of the m a t t e r is t h a t m a n y ecclesiastical supervisors have a pastor's heart. They are, of course, involved daily with institutional demands, b u t only one who has been in this position knows how deep is the yearning to be helpful to the pastors 1

Dag Hammarskjold, Markings Knopf, 1965) p. 58.

(New York: Alfred A.

T H E MINISTER A S L O N E R / 2 3

who serve u n d e r them. One such c h u r c h m a n with responsibility for more t h a n fifty churches and their clergy determined from the outset to m a k e it his first priority to be a pastor to the pastors and families assigned to him. Admittedly, it was difficult to balance institutional pressures with clergy/family needs, b u t h e worked at it. As we discussed this subject one day, another form e r administrative leader said to m e , " I t is possible to share where I am with my ecclesiastical superiors, b u t I do it with my eyes wide open to the risks. It is easier to do if you trust them. It is h a r d e r w h e n the trust level is low. W h e n I was an administrator," h e continued, " I spent too m u c h time in innovating, problem solving, and masterminding the new style of the church. Finally, when I was about halfway through my t e r m I began to realize this was not the way to go. T h e pastors and their families are the heart of it all. I tried to communicate my concern, b u t for some of them it was too late. If I were doing it again, I'd do it differently. I would do more listening and be more supportive." This is what ministers and their spouses n e e d — someone to listen to t h e m and to be supportive. W h y not t u r n to a colleague in ministry? T h a t is what David did. Not fully, b u t some. H e would telephone Joe, b u t he never really let down his hair. J o e was a good listener when David was overwhelmed by career anxieties, b u t h e could only guess at some of the other things bothering his friend. H e was careful not to talk about himself and his own accomplishments or successes. If he did, h e could feel David grow cold and distant over the telephone. David needed an ear, not a voice. Above all, he didn't need

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anything to r e m i n d h i m t h a t he wasn't as good as he thought he was. The Minister

Behind

the

Mask

Actually, David was afraid to open himself u p to his friend, Joe. This is not unusual. Most ministers want peer-approval, b u t they are full of peer-fear. Many ministers are petrified with anxiety if they are called u p o n to speak before an audience of their colleagues. Recently, I observed a pastor (a m a n with years of experience) giving a devotional talk for a group of ministers and spouses. Not only were they his peers b u t some of them were his closest friends. T h e r e was no career risk, for he was secure where he was. Still, h e was so fearful that his m o u t h was dry and his h a n d s trembled t h r o u g h o u t the discourse. If t h e r e was no career risk, what was it t h a t caused this experienced preacher to react so emotionally? Doubtless it was pride and the desire to please his peers—to have their approval. People of other professions may have this same problem, b u t I t h i n k it must be worse for ministers. Clergy persons without at least one good friend in ministry with whom they can be utterly honest about their deepest feelings walk a lonely road. Many persons in ministry find their greatest support from their spouses. It is perfectly natural. H e r e is our deepest relational intimacy—or it should be. W h e t h e r the spouse is supportive or not, however, depends on t h e way he or she normally responds to life's crises. I recall a m a n who came to see m e one day. H e was bruised and bleeding in spirit. One of his parishioners had given h i m a terribly h a r d time.

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Following this abrasive event, he sought solace from his wife. She was angry at the man who had hurt her husband. "I knew we shouldn't have come here," she said bitterly. "I don't know why you put up with it." As she talked on and on her husband began to wish he had said nothing to her. She had done what so many do—she had talked when she should have listened. When this happens often enough a marriage partner will withdraw into isolation or seek help elsewhere. Listening, of course, is a two-way street. To feel support is a mutual need. Two people who want to help each other must avoid like poison what Paul Tournier calls "dialogues of the deaf," when both talk and neither listens. Marriage partners who listen to each other with loving understanding constitute the best support system a couple can have. Blessed is the minister (or anyone) who has found this to be so. A Ministry to Ministers Fearful of ecclesiastical authorities and of peers, a minister may turn to one or more parishioners. John, whom we met in the first chapter, said to me, "For me and my wife our friends are not among the clergy. Our closest friends are some of the people in our church." In nearly every church there are those who become dear friends to a pastor and spouse. It is the natural magnetism of common interest and mutual attraction that brings them together. To be accepted as a human being with faults and frailties and to be clothed in a climate of trust is a saving thing.

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Sometimes this is experienced through a small group in the church. Many ministers have discovered warmth of understanding and strength of support from a miniature growth group wherein they have been willing to be honest and to reveal themselves to be just like any other human being. Others have been afraid and have isolated themselves from this healing ministry performed by lay people. Ministers who have trusted their congregations and have been willing to risk their own pains and struggles before them, have been amazed at the capacity for compassion which emerges. One of my friends did not discover this until he was past forty. "I finally learned," he said, "that a congregation who understands and can participate in this way can be a supportive community." Another of my friends has a way of saying to his people, "You have ministered to me." With all this, a warning is appropriate. Robert A. Raines, who has witnessed to the values we have mentioned here, expressed that caution in a recent book. He said: There is a lot of pressure in society today to be a warm, intimate, self-revelatory person. It is good, of course, to be more personally available to each other, and I am one of those who in recent years has been grateful to be broken up and made more human, more vulnerable, more real. At the same time, the Kingdom of God is not to be identified with a constant encounter group. There continues to be value in privacy, in discretion, and in the appropriateness of the time and place and persons involved in self-revelation. 2 2

Robert A. Raines, Success is a Moving Target Word Books, 1975) p. 28.

(Waco:

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The 'Elder Brother

Ministry

A relatively new concept has come to the fore in recent times that offers help to the lonely minister. It could be called the "elder counselor." This is the kind of role I have sought to fulfill since my retirement from being a local church pastor. I was speaking of this to a small group of ministers and their spouses not long ago and a man who was present took me aside afterward and said, "When can I see you?" A time was set for later that evening and this forty-one-year-old pastor took nearly an hour to pour out his career frustrations to an elder brother in ministry. I listened and suggested some alternative courses of action for him to consider that might improve his situation. He weighed the alternatives and discovered a course that had not occurred to him before. When we parted, his handclasp was warm and strong. "Thanks, friend!" he said as he went out the door. Admittedly, not every retired person can be a counselor for his younger colleagues. The good Lord blessed me with a good listening ear, and I am thankful. Some ministers, retired or otherwise, are quick to give advice and deliver a homily based on their own experience. These are to be avoided like mosquitoes. But, with many ministers retiring early from their local church pastoral roles and with social security and church pensions providing them a reasonable income, there is an increasing possibility of the development of elder counselors who may help mid-life ministers and/or spouses and perhaps their children through or over some hard places. An elder counselor has no institutional demands

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checkmating the desire to help a younger friend in ministry. He or she is free to give full attention to the hurts and frustrations of another who must live and work within the ecclesiastical framework. Nevertheless, just as in other cases, the minister must use good judgment in determining who should be a confidant. Lest we begin to look upon church authorities as "bad guys," let me hasten to state that many churchmen have seen the need to arrange, within the church structure, the means for meeting ministerial needs. Boards of ministry are providing professional counseling with confidential safeguards. Others have found financial support for area or district counseling centers. They have recognized the reluctance of ministers to seek help from the authority figures who are over them. So they have brought in skilled persons and set them up in special offices apart from central church headquarters in order that ministers with problems might receive professional help. Other Ministries to Ministers In addition, formal and informal structures have developed within and outside the church to offer assistance to the minister suffering with growth pains or crisis problems. There are informal ministerial groups that meet weekly or monthly. Some are denominational; others are ecumenical. Some study together. Some just talk and share. Some do a little of everything. If the trust level is high, fellowship groups such as these have been a source of strength and sanity for their members. Sharon and Steve, the clergy couple we met previously, have deliberately

T H E MINISTER A S L O N E R / 2 9

p u t together a support group of this kind. They k n o w they need it! Nationally, there are retreat and study centers such as K i r k r i d g e , near Bangor, Pennsylvania, and Interpreters House at Lake J u n a l u s k a , North Carolina. T h e r e are marriage and family enrichment programs available in growing numbers. 3 These and other sources of help will be outlined in m o r e detail in chapters to come. T h e r e is still another source of help for ministers in crisis, and that is the professional counselor outside of the c h u r c h structures. It was this k i n d of a counselor who helped m e t h r o u g h a major mid-life t r a u m a . I was fortunate, for not all professionals in psychiatry or psychology are helpful to professional religionists. Some of m y colleagues have been h a r m e d far m o r e t h a n they have been helped by such persons. Psychotherapists and psychoanalysts who counsel ministers need to have an appreciation of religious attitudes, to be trained in dealing with religious conflicts. They must know something about their patients' theology and deal with t h e m as religious persons. Concerning this, Professor Charles William Stewart says, " I would argue that the psychotherapist need not belong to the same faith group as the minister . . . b u t . . . ( h e ) should not attempt to analyze the clergyman out of his religious faith or h e does an injustice to h i m as a p e r s o n . " 4 Neither, in my judgment, 3

Herbert A. Otto, Marriage and Family Enrichment: New Perspectives and Programs (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976). 4 Charles William Stewart, Person and Profession: Career Development in the Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon, 1974) p. 71.

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should a psychotherapist attempt to analyze t h e clergy person out of a character-value system that is i n h e r e n t to his faith. Ministers who are careful in their referrals of lay persons for counseling would do well to t u r n to these same thoughtfully chosen professionals for referrals for themselves when needed, bearing the above criteria in m i n d . Clergy persons in mid-life crises do not need to suffer alone. T h e r e are m a n y sources of help, not the least of which is one's own faith. Often, however, this is blocked by strong subjective attitudes, and not until these are seen in perspective (perhaps with the help of a clergy friend, one's spouse, a trusted and u n d e r s t a n d i n g church authority, a small disciplined group of parishioners or ministers, a congregation as a supportive community or skilled professionals) can one receive the grace so freely offered by God.

3 The Physical Crisis

When you don't rush the net as you used to in a game of tennis it may mean that you are terribly out of shape, or it just might indicate that the physical changes of middle life are beginning to show. If after you complete a typical pastoral day of sermon preparation, general administration, counseling, hospital calls, and a late night meeting or two, you drop into bed exhausted at midnight, it could mean that you have had a long hard year and you need a vacation. Or it might be a signal that you're not as young as you used to be. When your eyes are no longer able to make out fine print in the phone book and you begin to think about using Grecian Formula to hide that creeping gray in your hair, it's a pretty good sign that you have hit mid-life. If it takes erotic fantasies to rev you up for sex, it could mean that you are bored with the same old routines, or your hormones may be trying to tell you something. When your pre-ulcer condition turns into a real ulcer and you are beginning to wonder if those strange feelings in your chest might be a warning that your heart is taking on too heavy a load of stress, 31

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it probably means you are a full-fledged candidate for a mid-life crisis. There is no way to escape the aging process. If you will take a little notice your body will tell you when you are into the middle years. It used to be said that a woman's work is never done. This certainly is true of a minister—woman or man. There is no way for the hours of the day (and night) to see a clergy person's work fully completed. The best description of this I have found is in a book called The Stranger in the Mirror. Writing under a pseudonym, the minister-author said, "At the end of every day, instead of a record of tasks performed in which I could take pride, I saw a mass of unfinished business as untidy and full of loose ends as a magpie's nest." 1 And this in spite of the fact that it was this minister's practice to begin his work before his family rose for the day, and he frequently ended it after his long-suffering wife had gone to bed. Facing the Facts Some ministers never come to terms with this frustration, and if they don't it takes a terrific toll in the middle years—especially for those nurtured in the tradition of the Protestant work ethic. The plain fact of the matter is that you can't get as much work done at fifty as you could at thirty. A virile minister of forty-five with whom I talked recently told me, "I've always been one who worked long hours, seldom finishing my day before 12:00 or 12:30, usually reading or studying or watching television at the last part of 1

James William Russell, The Stranger in the Mirror (New York: Harper and Row, 1968) p. 38.

T H E PHYSICAL C R I S I S / 3 3

the day. Just within the last year I found I began to conk out about 10:30." It has been said that work won't kill anyone. Perhaps not, but overwork maims a lot of ministers in their forties when they fail to take into account the lowering of physical energies natural to their age. Ulcer scars and heart damage often mark those who cannot accept the limitations of lost vigor. The ruins of broken marriages lie along this route also, as we will see later. One of the changes aging brings is the reduction of male sexual powers. After the menopause, a woman's sexual energy is likely to increase. But for the male it is a different story. In The Sexually Active Man Past Forty Stanley Frank says, "No man is immune from the organic changes that gradually impair all his physical processes, particularly his sex drive, as he grows older. The steady decline of the male's potency after the age of twenty is one of the straightest lines in the statistics of human behavior. It is a consequence of aging that eventually overtakes every man. . . ." 2 As sophisticated as male ministers are in counseling, 1 am convinced that most of them do not understand what is happening to them personally with regard to their sexuality during the middle years. The decline of sexual powers is gradual and is complicated by mid-life career and family pressures. These complications will be considered fully in the next two chapters. The physical changes affecting sexual activity is the subject of our interest at this point. It is a matter of hormones. 2

Stanley Frank, The Sexually Active Man Past Forty (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1968) p. 16.

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W i t h o u t question t h e female better u n d e r s t a n d s what is h a p p e n i n g to h e r body t h a n does the male. F r o m p u b e r t y she is taught to expect a "change of life" in the middle years. T h e end point of this change is t h e menopause. Males go t h r o u g h a "change of life," too, b u t it is likely to be m o r e gradual. Indeed, it can h a p p e n without notice u n t i l some mom e n t in mid-life when one's private world seems to be going to pieces. P e r h a p s it is because male clergy usually counsel m o r e women t h a n m e n t h a t they have m o r e u n d e r standing of the menopause t h a n they do of the male climacteric. F o r personal self-understanding and facility for coping with middle life problems, m e n need to m a k e a study of t h e endocrine glands. This is not to say that the climacteric in m e n is entirely physical. Mental and emotional factors play a p a r t as well. T h e mystique of masculinity is one factor. T h e degree and quality of self-esteem is another. Male sex knowledge (or lack of knowledge) is a third. Stanley F r a n k says, " T h e male's sexual education is such a conglomeration of half-truths picked u p at r a n d o m t h a t he does not know what is h a p p e n i n g to him. . . . " 3 I n spite of all their reading, I suspect this is just about as t r u e for m e n in the ministry as it is for m e n in other professions. T h e effect of h o r m o n e s on the male libido was illustrated dramatically for me when I was hospitalized and treated for a collagen disorder in my late fifties. I was given massive doses of steroids (sex h o r m o n e s ) a n d I found my sex interest was increased sharply. 3

Ibid., p. 100.

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T H E PHYSICAL CRISIS / 35

Indeed, the plainest and dumpiest nurses on the floor began to look desirable to me! The

'Metapause'

Dr. Edmond C. Hallberg, a professor at Cal State Los Angeles has given another, and I think a better, name for the male change of life. He calls it the "metapause." Meta means change and pause means a time to stop and think. This is what happens in the middle years. It is a time when a man finds himself asking, "Who am I and where am I going?" The male metapause is characterized by numerous symptoms ranging from unhappiness to the fear of losing one's sexuality. Much of this is tied up with career frustrations, but some of it is related to the fear of sexual changes. Concerning this, Dr. Hallberg says, "The feeling that it's all over really bothers a great many men. They are confused by two things; their Victorian conditioning, which contrasts with today's swinger philosophy, and the mythologies of the numbers game—the 'how many times' and 'how long it is' tales we grew up with in the locker room." 4 It is this confused state of body, mind, and emotions that makes a man so vulnerable to an extramarital affair, and male ministers are no different than other men. We will consider this further in a later chapter. Hormonal imbalance produces instability in the middle-aged male just as it does in the adolescent boy. For the man there is a decline of hormonal pro4

Edmond C. Hallberg, Helping Males Over the Metapause; Article in The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 23, 1975.

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duction. For the youth there is an increase of hormonal activity. In both cases there may be "feelings of intense joy and spurts of restless and often aggressive energy may alternate with periods of gloom, lethargy and depression." 5 Similar emotional symptoms characterize the female who is going through physical and hormonal changes preliminary to the menopause. Women in the clergy are no exceptions. Health

Problems

Health problems—real or imagined—are inevitably involved with the physical changes of mid-life. This was the case with one person I interviewed. He had a weight problem. One day when he was nearing forty he had trouble breathing and there was a pain in his chest. He went to his doctor and was told his heart was warning him that he needed to take off some weight. My friend said, "It really shook me. I went away from the doctor's office with the realization that I wasn't as young as I used to be and I would have to do something about my weight. I went on a diet and undertook an exercise program under the direction of the doctor. I adopted a new life style in which I was willing to walk away from some of my job pressures and take care of my body." Not all ministers are as wise as that. I recall a college classmate who was at the threshold of his most creative usefulness in his mid-forties. My friend, too, had heart warnings, but he did not heed them. He was dead at the age of forty-eight. 5

Barbara Fried, The Middle-Age Crisis; (New York: Harper and Row paperback edition, 1976) p. 31.

T H E PHYSICAL CRISIS / 37

I know another clergyman who was in the midst of raising a half million dollars to build a church. This, together with his regular pastoral duties, which could not be shirked, and the preliminary planning for the building itself, with interminable committee meetings, sapped the energies of this forty-one-yearold minister. H e became so exhausted he found himself wishing he might get sick so he could go to bed and get some rest. One day he felt some strange pains flitting t h r o u g h h i m like heat lightning in a midwestern summer sky. H e became anxious and called a doctor. A n appointment was arranged quickly and a full examination was given. T h e doctor found nothing wrong organically and dismissed him. Secretly the pastor was disappointed that the doctor h a d not placed h i m in a hospital. H e really wanted to be sick. Sometimes the wish is father to the reality. W e call it hypochondria. The Mid-Life

Malaise

It is n a t u r a l to mid-life to worry about one's health. Sometimes m e n whose sexual powers are declining become anxious about u r i n a r y disturbances and the possibility of prostate or heart trouble, and they may also develop a fear of b r a i n cancer. Hypochondria can be just about as m u c h of a problem as the real thing, and it is one of the likely symptoms of the mid-life malaise for b o t h sexes. T h e answer to t h e physical crisis that aging produces lies in acceptance and the re-ordering of priorities in the light of physical changes. It is h a r d to accept the fact that we can't work as long at fifty as we could at thirty. Nor is it easy for a m a n to admit

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that his sexual energy is not what it used to be. A n d when illness comes and leaves us limited in some of the n o r m a l functions of a younger person, we do our best to disguise the lack. We do this with certain other evidences of aging, too. A m a n might comb his hair so as to cover the bald spot t h a t was not t h e r e ten years ago. Or some may dress with m o r e of a flare in a vain effort to appear younger t h a n they are. Accepting ourselves as middle-aged persons is exceedingly difficult. W h e n our m i n d s are focused on the past, acceptance is impossible. A n d yet, this is what we tend to do in mid-life. W h a t we should do is realize t h a t this is a paralyzing exercise. W e should look ahead r a t h e r t h a n back. As Barbara F r i e d says in h e r book, The Middle-Age Crisis, "As long as the middlescent concentrates on what used to b e — t h a t is, on the disagreeable fact that strength, sexual vigor, activity, youthful beauty, stamina, and potential are w a n i n g — he (or she) will never be able to accept the idea t h a t experience, assurance, substance, skill, achievement, wisdom, success, ( a n d ) the judgment to see what is truly i m p o r t a n t m o r e t h a n compensate for t h e disappearance of youthful power." 6 This, t h e n , is t h e direction we must t a k e — w e must emphasize the values of our state in life. W h o of us has not wished we might have had today's wisdom when we were making the mistakes of our y o u t h ? Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from the exercise of poor judgment in the past. T h a t is b e h i n d us in mid-life, and we can feel good about it if we do not t o r t u r e ourselves with thoughts of waning powers. A mid-western pastor who h a d gained exceptional status in denominational affairs because of his will6 Ibid., p. 123.

THE PHYSICAL CRISIS/39

ingness to work hard at any task that was given him, had to come to terms with some changes in his life as he neared fifty. He had a minor accident such as would not happen to a younger man. During a fall down the steps of his church, he tore the muscles in one leg. This required a cast which he lugged around as he continued his work at home and in the presbytery. When the leg had healed he had the embarrassing experience of falling again—down the same steps—with the same result as before, except this time it was the other leg. The doctor told him there was muscle deterioration in both legs and he would have to be careful. This man wisely began to take stock of himself. He said, "I realized that I was overtired. I took what had happened to me as a message that I wasn't Samson and I wasn't God—and that the committee work of the larger church would go on without me. So I began to pull back from some of these responsibilities. I came to terms with the fact that I was coming close to fifty and to live in a state of exhaustion over a long period of time was stupid. In addition, I had set some unrealistic goals in my work load in my church, and I realized I needed to rethink what I was doing there and to restyle my ministry. Now, I go home in the evenings and sit in my chair and manage not to have guilt feelings about it. So, you see," he said to me, "I found out rather dramatically that I wasn't still thirty." Note well what this pastor did. He accepted the physical limitations of mid-life and reordered his priorities. This is the mature way to deal with the physical crisis that besets us in the middle years. Declining energy, hormonic changes, and health problems are the lot of us all as we grow older. We can't do anything about these, but we can do something about our attitude toward them.

4 The Career Crisis

Most ministers begin their careers with lofty ideals and high expectations. Their commitment is to serve God and humankind, and there is just enough of the messiah complex in the young to believe they are going to change the world before they are done. While motives may differ from person to person and from one ministerial generation to another, I think it is safe to say at this writing that pastors in their middle years started out wearing rose-colored glasses. In fact, a forty-one-year-old clergyman recently said to me, "I think I was a little naive." At some point in the career scale idealism meets realism. The young ordinand of twenty years ago did not mind living on a subsistence salary in a substandard parsonage serving a small church. Indeed, this was considered part of the sacrificial and unselfish nature of ministry. But babies started coming and the dollar started to shrink, demanding some practical thoughts about increased income and better living conditions, and this meant a "larger church." For those in the "call system" it required keeping alert to other 40

T H E CAREER CRISIS / 41

churches looking for pastors. F o r clergy in the appointive system it m e a n t asking for a move. A few more years pass and ministers in their early thirties find the association with their peers in conferences, conventions, presbyteries, districts, and assemblies arousing a sense of competition for status churches and for positions of influence and respect in the denominational power structure. T h e fires of ambition are fed further by well-meaning lay persons who praise their pastors and say, " I hate to t h i n k of it b u t one of these days we're going to lose you. Y o u are too big for us. Y o u will go far in the m i n i s t r y . " T h e flattery is what a young minister wants to hear and before long the urge to "get a h e a d " takes the edge off his or her earlier idealism. T h e denominational hierarchy contributes to this also by seeking or recommending the "bright y o u n g " clergy for advancements. One cynical pastor described this stage in these w o r d s : " T h i r s t for career status, measured in terms of membership, staff size, and c h u r c h location, makes for a subtle rat race in which ministers vie with one another u n d e r a smoke screen of piosity." The Career

Plateau

T h e n come the years of the career plateau. It is a curious thing that at the time when ministers in late mid-life become less desirable for an appointment or a call to larger churches, people the same age in m a n y secular professions are more highly regarded and recognized. Churches want a " y o u n g " b u t experienced pastor. They want someone who is old enough to handle large responsibilities b u t young enough to appeal to the youth of the church and community. So,

42 / THE MID-LIFE CRISES OF A MINISTER

pastors hit their career plateau in the forties. If they haven't "made it" by then they feel they won't "make it." Career anxiety sets in, causing clergy persons to work harder to "make a showing" and this may affect health and bring on a physical crisis, or it may mean neglect of marriage and family with its attendant difficulties, as we will see in the next chapter. Black leaders tell me career concern is one of the problems with the young ethnic just out of seminary today. The idea of serving any kind of "apprenticeship" is anathema to many of them. This is why it is difficult to recruit and hold in the ministry the young blacks so greatly needed in one denomination that operates on the appointive system. Turning again to the white clergy, let us recall ambitious David from our case study in the first chapter. Career anxiety was his problem. It began early with him and became intolerable in his middle years. Disappointment ate at his vitals. Other men were getting "the breaks" and he could see no reason why he should be passed by. Evidently, the hierarchy were uninformed about him. How could he get their attention? The only thing he could see was to work harder, which he did at the expense of his deteriorating marriage. At times he became bitter, concluding that the real problem was ecclesiastical insensitivity. Apparently his superiors with appointive responsibilities didn't care about him and how hard he worked. In this dark mood he saw the death of his dreams. So, he would call his friend, Joe, and pour it all out on him. I talked with another minister who fared better in the success scene than David did. He went through some of the same agonies as he approached the mid-

T H E CAREER C R I S I S / 4 3

life period. At thirty-four he h a d a sense of almost complete failure, he said. H e , too, sought the help of a colleague and this stabilized h i m enough to go on. " I felt very frustrated," he declared. " I looked at other ministers of comparable age who were receiving the breaks and I looked at myself and said, 4 Hey, what's going on h e r e ? ' My wife shared my concern. W e b o t h felt—at my age at that time—it was now or never. Either we got the advancement soon or else this was the level where we were going to be. It h u r t . I h a d given the best that I could. My c h u r c h had done well. My record was good. I concluded that if I didn't move u p now I would have to look elsewhere. I probably would have left the m i n i s t r y . " But he didn't. H e stuck it out and his " b r e a k " came. H e was, as he said, "able to move u p . " T h u s , this m a n received his career encouragement just before his fortieth year. Momentarily he is satisfied. B u t will he be happy later? "Success," as Robert Raines says, "is a moving target." T h e r e are other factors that contribute to the career anxiety of those who have succumbed to the secular success syndrome. W e live in rapidly changing times. Male majority clergy approaching mid-life are challenged as never before by the emergence of ethnic minority leadership and a growing n u m b e r of women clergy. This varies, of course, from one denomination to another. 6

A Special Kind

of Crisis'

A forty-four-year-old United Methodist minister had this to say in one of my interviews: " W e who are white and are middle-aged have a special k i n d of

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crisis because at precisely the point where one might have expected to come into his own, the ethnic movem e n t came in. A n d it was very necessary to encourage it, b u t the white minister was t h e one whose career options were appropriated for others, and properly so, b u t nevertheless it was painful. A n d now as we develop options for women this will even more affect the white m a l e . " T h e r e are emotional as well as career problems h e r e as one white male minister indicated to me. " G u i l t is involved," he said. " W e have been in the saddle and we've been asked to move over. W e know we should and intellectually we can accept that, b u t I'm not so sure we do so emotionally. Instead of being aggressively involved in defense of our own legitimate needs, we have just laid down. And then we feel badly because we don't do something to affirm our needs and w o r t h . " I n addition, t h e r e is always the t h r e a t of the younger clergy who require expansion room for their growing potential. T h u s , the middle-aged white male in ministry today is caught in a frightening crosscurrent of career complications. T h e most m a t u r e of these persons are h a r d p u t to it to maintain their equilibrium and keep afloat. Some cannot make it and sink b e n e a t h the surface of the raging stream, victims of their own inability to swim with the currents of change. Other Kinds

of Career

Crisis

E t h n i c minority and women clergy themselves have their own special b r a n d s of career crisis facing t h e m in mid-life. At this point we are still in an awkward time with respect to unlimited acceptance of ethnic

THE CAREER CRISIS / 45

and women ministers. Perhaps career opportunities are more open in denominations with the appointive system but even this is limited according to geography and local customs. John, the black minister we met earlier, was a victim of continuing discrimination. He had served successfully in an administrative capacity wherein he worked with the majority group as an equal, but his ecclesiastical superior did not accord him equal treatment with others when it came time to assign him to a church. Nor are the clergy couple, Sharon and Steve, accorded the same uncomplicated appointment freedom that is granted to others. Moreover, in the case of ethnics so long repressed and bound by attitudes of white racism, the present mood of emphasizing their own identity is a selflimiting factor. Asians, Hispanic people, and blacks are reluctant to become pastors of white churches. They are more interested in empowerment than in integration. This may change in a few years, but at the moment self-conscious awareness is more important than freedom to serve white congregations in appointive systems. This means that ethnic local churches, which are mostly small in membership and financial resources, must be built up before there can be a large enough field for career expansion opportunities. Until then, unless the mood shifts again, there will continue to be career frustrations for those who feel the need to climb the professional ladder in local church pastorates. Women Clergy And what of career opportunities for women clergy? You may recall what Sharon said in the first

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chapter: "The opportunities are so many, I just feel my career line is straight up." This may be true now, but what about ten years hence when Sharon is more deeply into mid-life and when the present group of women seminarians are pressing for their own career openings? In 1976, it was reported that more than six hundred women were in United Methodist seminaries alone and in one west coast seminary of another denomination one third of the spring graduating class consisted of women. The time is coming when the career line for women will not be "straight u p " as Sharon saw it. Rather, it may well be a straight line similar to the professional plateau so many middleaged white male clergy face today. Most "mainline" denominations have not grown in membership during the seventies and many of the old downtown and boulevard "status" churches have declined to a point of struggling existence. This has caused ministers who are approaching mid-life at this time to alter their "success" goals somewhat. Instead of aspiring to a transfer or call to some larger church, they are more inclined to "dig in" and work harder to improve the membership and financial strength of the churches they have. In mid-life, such an urge to "work hard and improve your situation" may lead to overwork and the problems of fatigue and broken health in addition to marital and family neglect and deterioration. The longer one stays in a local church the heavier becomes the counseling and pastoral load. Sermon preparation requires more time as "the barrel" becomes empty. Staff assistance, as it grows, demands more administration and this takes time. And for the mid-life minister it is time that is running out, along with energy.

THE CAREER CRISIS/47

Anger at the

Establishment

When career frustrations occur it is not unusual to project the problem onto the hierarchy, if that be the form of church structure involved. Anger at the establishment may result. "Does anybody up there hear me? Do they care?" In "free enterprise" churches, as some have called the non-hierarchical type, hostility may develop toward the unfeeling elders who are insensitive to the financial needs of a pastor's family. This is the foremost reason for people leaving the ministry in denominations where job security is not assured and provision for retirement is an individual matter. Closely related to anger is fear. The fear of fifty is not a calendar but a career emotion. Ministers who may preach on "Life Begins at Forty" when that date arrives would just as soon forget the whole thing when fifty looms on the horizon. Who wants a minister who is past the half-century mark? An attorney in his mid-fifties may be ripe for a judgeship, but a minister at the same age may be too old to be elected a bishop. In other professions persons in the upper scale of mid-life may be much in demand • in the ministry there is no place to go except to a smaller church. No wonder there is a traumatic fear of fifty! To feel trapped on a career plateau is a sickening experience. A minister may reflect the feeling of Bob Slocum in Joseph Heller's novel, Something Happened. "Is this all there is for me to do?" Slocum asked. "Is this really the most I can get from the few years left in this life of mine?" There are two kinds of frustrations the clergy may feel when they are stalled on a career plateau. One

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M I D - L I F E CRISES O F A M I N I S T E R

comes from undue concern about the bureaucratic ladder and the other results from the deadly practice of unequal comparisons. The ladder anxiety occurs more frequently in the appointive church system. Comparison anxiety may be more the problem of pastors in the "call" system. For example, Jim Russell in The Stranger in the Mirror goes to a General Assembly in the east and on his way home he decides to visit some of the "great" churches and hear the well-known preachers who occupy their pulpits. His reaction is summed up in these words: "These were all stimulating experiences but they were obscured in my mind by the persistent, nagging comparison between what others were doing and the little that I had accomplished in my life." 1 Two options are open to mid-life ministers who find themselves stuck on a career plateau. The first is career change and the second is career renewal. Changing Vocation To change vocations in the middle years is far from easy. Such an experience requires an elasticity that may have been lost. It requires money, too. Few will have enough savings to tide them over until a new position is found. Moreover, it may be difficult to find another job with adequate income to meet family needs. Leaving the ministry is a serious step. It should not be taken precipitously. Before making such a move a 1

J a m e s William Russell, The Stranger in the Mirror, Y o r k : H a r p e r a n d Row, 1968) p . 45.

(New

T H E CAREER C R I S I S / 4 9

minister should seek help from a career guidance or retreat center. Such resources are available throughout the country. 2 In the career centers interviews and tests are used to determine functional abilities and interests. A thorough job of career assessment is done. This will bring to light strengths and weaknesses, satisfactions and frustrations. Such an experience may confirm the ministry or suggest another vocation. I recall a man who failed to make use of available guidance resources. "Fed u p " with his frustrations and career stagnation, he announced he was through. He tried selling insurance but found this was not to his liking. An opportunity to sell cars came along and he tried that without success. He ended up in a menial job, his life full of boredom and bitterness. Not all cases are as tragic as this one, however. Even without career assessment programs some people have "fallen into" the right thing upon leaving the ministry. These opportunities have usually been in some other "helping" profession such as teaching or social work. While we can point to a few cases like this, vocational adjustment by accident is a poor way to deal with a career frustration. Sometimes clergy persons are the victims of the "greener pastures" temptation. A thirty-five-year-old pastor who was having trouble making ends meet on 2

The Northeast Career Center at Princeton, New Jersey, The Middle Atlantic Career Center in Washington, D.C., The Western Career Development Center in San Anselmo, California, to name a few career assessment centers, and among the retreat centers are Kirkridge (Bangor, Pennsylvania) and Interpreters House (Lake Junaluska, North Carolina).

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his salary decided to enroll in a night school course in business administration with the thought that it might lead to a more lucrative and satisfying career. As he looked about him at his fellow students he concluded they, too, all were searching blindly for greener pastures. He returned to his work of ministry a wiser man. Pastors with a vocational itch would do well to explore some of the career assessment possibilities referred to above. This cannot be done without cost, of course, but it may be worth the investment. Some denominations provide subsidies for this purpose. If it is too threatening to avail oneself of such funds a minister should weigh the values of borrowing the money against the continued bafflement of vocational uncertainty. There should be no guilt feelings about leaving the ministry if careful examination warrants it. The priesthood of all believers is open to ex-ministers as well as to other lay persons. Renewal The second alternative available to those who find themselves on a career plateau is renewal. One may not need to ditch the ministry. He or she may need to re-stimulate it. One of the ways to accomplish this is through continuing education. It is a sad development when a clergy person stops studying after graduating from seminary. One can understand how this can happen with the pressures of ministry making demands in all directions. Reading becomes limited to sermon preparation for next Sunday. Lofty intentions to set aside time for independent

T H E CAREER C R I S I S / 5 1

study fall before the demands of the day and soon t h e urge dies a n a t u r a l death. Still one must try. One way to reinforce the need for continuing education is to associate oneself with a small group of like-minded clergy. I was involved with such a group in my middle years. W e called ourselves " m i n d sweepers." O u r activities included book reviews, chapter-by-chapter study of particular books, theological discussions, and individual p r e p a r a t i o n and reading of papers. It was a stimulating experience, and it helped to keep us alive to contemporary thought. Still another form of continuing education is to take some courses at a nearby college or seminary. A forty-three-year-old pastor of my acquaintance felt this need strongly. H e said, " I have a career crisis every d a y ! " W i t h the consent of his local c h u r c h leaders he worked out a schedule of classes involving just one day a week at a theological school an h o u r ' s drive from his home. A deeply meaningful community feeling developed among a small group of clergy engaged in the same pursuit. It was a wholesome experience for this pastor. " C o n t i n u i n g education has been for me a way of renewal and stability in minist r y , " he declared. Some denominations provide for a sabbatical or a leave of absence of a few m o n t h s to a year for extended periods of formal education. This has its problems. It may involve prolonged separation from family. T h e r e may or may not be funds to support such an endeavor. Sometimes an interim pastor, if one is to r e t u r n to the same c h u r c h following t h e study, will be irresponsible and "leave the c h u r c h in a mess." Continuing education, in some form, is a necessity for clergy who seek career renewal. It is not easy to

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find the time for it, b u t t h e mental and emotional dividends are rewarding. Reassessment

and

Reevaluation

Let us consider another way to career renewal. It lies in taking a second look at success. Reassessment of success can come to the clergy in mid-life not as "sour grapes" b u t as m a t u r e u n d e r s t a n d i n g of what is really important. " I don't have any great need to climb the bureaucratic l a d d e r , " said a forty-year-old minister. " I d o n ' t have to prove anything. A n d I feel good doing what I can do. I t h i n k it is i m p o r t a n t to have a sense of who you are and what you can do and to feel comfortable in that. I had a bit of a struggle to come to this, b u t now t h a t I have it I ' m okay." T h e period of the middle years is a time for reevaluation of one's powers and possibilities and setting new career goals that are consistent with them. Success in ministry is measured not by comparison with someone else b u t in relation to one's own maturely perceived gifts. One of the most successful persons I have ever known was an associate pastor who knew what he could do and did it well. His strength did not lie in t h e preaching b u t in pastoral ministry. H e did not fret about his limitations. H e deliberately chose to major in his strengths. It was a good choice and he was fulfilled. Someone reading this may be h u r t i n g from career disappointments. T e n , twenty, thirty years have passed since you began your work with a lofty sense of ministry. Yours was a glowing idealism. But you succumbed to secular success goals in ecclesiastical

THE CAREER CRISIS / 53

dress. These were vain pursuits and they have brought you much pain. You have suffered ego bruising with the death of earlier dreams. I can feel your hurt for I have had it, too. Even as I write I am aware of a twinge of distress from the emotional scar tissue that remains. I tell you this because I want you to know that this can occur at all levels of "success." I have had more than my share of honors, distinctions, and achievements. Still there was more that I wanted to do. It is human never to be fully satisfied. But do not despair. Behind the wounded pride lies the possibility of a wiser person. You can have a new sense of ministry—enlightened and without illusions. It is possible to be free from fretting and straining to be like someone else—or to be better than another. You can be at peace with yourself knowing who you are. A person may celebrate life as it is. You can know that you, too, are fully human. Then you will be free to let the love of God flow through you to the people you serve wherever you are and you can be successful—as God counts success—by being faithful in the use of the talents given you. Phoenixlike, a renewed sense of vocation in ministry can arise out of the flames of crisis.

5 The Marital and Family Crisis "You go through a pretty exciting time for a few years," said a minister who had been married long enough to have teenagers in the home. "Learning to know your mate, having children, getting started in your career. Then it all comes to a screeching halt. Everything settles down. Routine develops in your marriage. You begin to take each other for granted. You are preoccupied with your work. Dinner time comes and you sit down with your family and mumble the same old grace. The kids have their own interests. Your wife has a job. And you're glad you have a meeting to go to. It isn't much fun at home any more." It is the nature of things that, following a peak experience, there is a winding down. Unless a couple is sensitive to this possibility and take steps to anticipate it, the "winding down" can have a fatal conclusion. Marital dissolution is on the increase among ministers and their spouses. Ten years ago divorce was a rare occurrence and when it happened it usually meant the clergy person would leave the ministry, or would take a leave of absence until postmarriage 54

T H E MARITAL AND FAMILY C R I S I S / 5 5

adjustments h a d been made. Now, another divorce scarcely creates a ripple in c h u r c h circles. Granted, in years past some ministerial marriages were held together only by the threat of hierarchal and peer disapproval, and such marriages existed tragically in quiet and long-suffering desperation. Today, t h e tragedy lies in easy divorce. Some of the marriages now ending in dissolution could be renewed and preserved with the possibility of increased satisfaction and richness if these couples were willing to receive help and work at their marriages r a t h e r t h a n to take what appears to be the easy way out. Factors

That

Affect

a

Marriage

Let us look at some of the factors that can affect a marriage. Most of these are common to marriages in general; for professionals in ministry t h e r e are some variations. Some marriages should never have happened. T h e y were conceived in sex and were thereafter dedicated to the proposition of discovering other common interests sufficient to sustain a union. This is not unusual. T h e culture of the fifties p u t a higher p r e m i u m on "saving sex for m a r r i a g e " t h a n is the case today. As a result sexual desire often dominated the courtship and sometimes led to the marriage altar as a means of satisfying this hunger. If a couple were lucky they discovered other interests which held t h e m together after the initial sexual excitement wore off. Other couples found themselves to be strangers, when not in bed, and the differences of personality, interests, and backgrounds eventually spoiled even the bed-play. Dutifully, they produced children who became their common interest, b u t w h e n the children

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were gone and the nest was empty, they found they h a d nothing further to share and t h e marriage was dead. In other times, clergy couples would suffer through an u n h a p p y marriage like that until death parted them, b u t not now. I n this culture divorce is a live option for ministers. I n the best of marriages there may be a cooling of relational intimacy. I n this case I am using t h e t e r m " i n t i m a c y " in its broader sense, as H o w a r d and Charlotte Clinebell use it—namely, " m u t u a l needsatisfaction." x Many marriages start well and the intimacy level is high. Each is genuinely sensitive to the other's needs, b u t with the passing years sensitivity may be shifted to children, careers, and community interests—and relational intimacy cools as a result. I n the ministry one of the things we often h e a r about is that the clergy person continues to grow mentally while his spouse stagnates. T h i s contributes to t h e loss of intimacy. Again, in the middle years, which are m a r k e d by personal stock-taking, the faults of one's mate seem to stand out more glaringly. Personal unhappiness finds a scapegoat in the unpleasant qualities of one's h u s b a n d or wife—and intimacy fades. Essential to relational intimacy is communication. It could be assumed that ministers are good at communication. So m u c h of their work is involved in this art. But at home, often times, the art is neglected with disastrous results. A clergyman h a d been married for fourteen years. His wife decided to leave him. H e had this to say about c o m m u n i c a t i o n : " I 1

Howard J. Clinebell and Charlotte H. Clinebell, "The Intimate Marriage (New York: Harper and Row, 1970).

T H E MARITAL AND F A M I L Y CRISIS /

57

consider myself to be a professional communicator. That was part of the problem. When I came home I was tired of communicating. I neglected that with her." Communication, like CB radio, is a two-way affair. Insensitivity on the part of one's mate can cause it to be an exercise in futility. When the insensitivity is found on both sides, it becomes "dialogues of the deaf." The one-way kind was brought home to me when the ex-wife of a minister told me she tried her best to talk to her husband about their problems. He would nod his head and say, "Uh huh," but he wasn't there. You can't communicate when one person isn't listening. Two people living in close proximity may easily assume they can read each others' minds, but it doesn't work that way. In their outstanding book on The Spouse Gap, Robert Lee and Marjorie Casebier said, "Messages, both verbal and non-verbal, can conflict with each other, with the intention of the sender, and with the interpretation of the receiver. Often the message sent is not the one received—and this is true of behavior as well as words. It is estimated that spouses miscommunicate twenty percent of the time, and that this faulty transaction wrecks marriages that might otherwise be workable." It is even more important to express feelings than to say words. Ministers may say this to young couples in preparation for marriage, but may fail to do it at home. Depending on the "openness" of a marriage, true feelings may be hidden and expressed only non2

R o b e r t Lee and Marjorie Casebier, The (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971) p p . 164-5.

Spouse

Gap

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verbally and, as indicated above, this is hard to interpret. I have devised a communication game which I have suggested to scores of couples. I recommend it for "professional communicators" who may not practice at home what they preach elsewhere. It involves talking, listening, and play-back. The person with the feeling-pain talks. His or her mate listens carefully, avoiding any temptation to express a judgment. The only objective is to understand. After a time the listener says, "If I read you correctly, this is the way you feel," and then attempts to state the other person's true feeling. It may be right—or it may be only partially right. On the other hand, it may be totally wrong. Correction is made and the listener tries again. At last comes that moment when the listener understands, and the one who is hurting knows he or she is understood. This becomes a golden moment. Then the roles are reversed. And when it is done both partners feel a load lifted and intimacy restored. The need for communication cannot be emphasized too strongly. Whatever the cause of this breakdown the result is predictable. Two people become strangers in their own home, and the isolation eventually leads to alienation. Another factor that puts a strain on marriage in the middle years is intergenerational. People in their forties are likely to have teenage children and aging parents at the same time—and they are caught in a squeeze. The young have growing problems; the old have problems of health and loneliness. The young must be educated, and that is expensive. The elderly sometimes require nursing home care, and the cost is frightening. Meanwhile, the middlescent has his own problems and he or she is likely to be thinking,

T H E MARITAL AND F A M I L Y C R I S I S / 5 9

Who is going to do something time for a marriage. Menopause

and

for me? It is a rough

Metapause

A further complication for this difficult time comes from life changes—the menopause for women and the metapause for m e n . Dr. David R. R e u b e n of "Everything you always wanted to know about sex" fame wrote an article for The Reader's Digest in which he said, " A couple who have been together for 20 years are usually in their 40s or 50s, and middle age's intense pressures are taking their toll. T h e wife almost always has to e n d u r e some of the depression and unpredictable moods of the menopause, and m e n suffer from so-called 'male menopause.' Irritability, indecisiveness, and even a waning of sexual potency are possible side effects." 3 All this on top of everything else, and it just seems like too m u c h ! After twenty-five years of marriage, a minister and his wife were at the breaking point. H e had experienced a career crisis four years before. T h e n menopausal and metapausal problems hit t h e m like the proverbial ton of bricks. H e complained to a friend that his wife h a d become cold sexually, and she said to one of h e r confidants, " Y o u don't know what it's like to live with him. It's been h e l l ! " T h e m a n in the example above was u n d o u b t e d l y having anxieties over lost youth and waning sexual powers, which may have led to u n d u e sexual dem a n d s on his wife. T h e woman, on the other h a n d , 3

Dr. David R. Reuben, Reader's

p . 79.

Digest,

May, 1975,

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may have been one of those who h a d been brainwashed to believe that her role as a sex p a r t n e r is supposed to lessen with the coming of menopause. If t h e r e h a d never been m u c h pleasure in sex anyway, she may have used this as an excuse to give it u p . T h e conflict and accompanying anger is understandable. As a matter of fact, ministers and their spouses can have trouble with their sexuality before menopause begins. It is associated with the t r a u m a of lost youth. W h y do women stop counting their birthdays at thirtyn i n e ? A n d why do some ministers become involved with a young counselee, secretary, or choir m e m b e r in the "foolish forties"? Ministerial couples are no different t h a n others. " N e i t h e r m e n n o r women at forty," says B a r b a r a Fried, " c a n escape the consequences of having been indoctrinated from childhood with the notion that youth is the only ideal stage of life and that anything else is second-best. We are continually being r e m i n d e d in commercial song and story, by the standards for beauty, by the fashions in clothes and hair styles, that it's infinitely better to be young and foolish t h a n to be anything else." 4 The Effects

of

Aging

Because of the influences of our culture u p o n us, aging deals a heavy blow to our self-esteem. T h u s , it is exciting when a handsome m a n pays complimentary attention to a woman of thirty-eight and for a m a n in his forties the prospects of an affair with a young woman who looks at h i m with adoring eyes is extremely titillating. Contrary to some lay expectations, 4

Barbara Fried, The Middle-Age Crisis; Harper and Row paperback, 1976) p. 77.

(New York:

T H E MARITAL AND F A M I L Y CRISIS /

61

ministers and their spouses have the same need for self-esteem assurances and are likely to make the same mistakes as others in the human family. Let us look further at some problems that can lead to an affair for minister or spouse. Women thirty-five to forty and men forty to forty-five take special note! For the male, in addition to the psychological slippingyouth syndrome, hormones may be acting up. There is no unanimity of opinion about this, but as hormonal production declines, there may be a cyclic pattern with testosteral generation surging and ebbing with uncertainty. There is little question about imbalance at this time. As noted before in chapter 3, an injection of steroids does increase sexual interest. For the female in the late thirties, hormonic changes may be taking place, too, as a pre-menopausal symptom. But interest in the opposite sex is more likely to be a matter of vanity than of glands. A male minister is ripe for an affair, not only as youth fades and hormones ebb and flow, but also when common interests and sexual intimacy with his wife subside. "My husband and I used to play a lot of tennis together before we were married," said an ex-minister's wife. "After a few years our marriage just sorta ran down and we got to the place where we weren't doing anything together. I had my home duties and my job, and he had his church. About the only thing we shared was our bed, and even there we slept with our backs to each other and seldom touched." With the decline of intimacy at home, a man is fair game for a new and exciting physical intimacy elsewhere. For a male minister, the opportunities for an affair are close at hand. Consider what Ruth Truman says in her Underground Manual for Ministers' Wives:

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There is the ever-present danger of the alluring female. She may not look very ravishing but, if your sex life is nil, she doesn't have to. Every day you send your husband out to call on the widowed and divorced, the woman whose husband "doesn't love her," or the secretary who may offer him far more patience and understanding than you do. Face it! Women are a ministerial job hazard. He sees them in their most helpless conditions, begging for a man to depend on. He comforts them at their most susceptible moments, when a loved husband is gone or a hated one has walked out the door. Unwittingly, he pays attention to a woman who works in the church while, unknown to him, her life is empty and meaningless. He is startled to hear one day that she believes herself to be in love with him— and what should she do? So, it's one against a million— you against them. 5 T h e odds may not be that high b u t the fact cannot be ignored. T h e r e is a further complication with male ministers in that they tend to be romantics. If they step out of b o u n d s and become involved with another person, they have to feel they are in love. They cannot be blase about an affair, as their secular brothers may be. I suppose it is a p a r t of the justification process. Somehow, it helps to make it right if it's love! T h e n t h e r e comes that curious switch of commitments in which the idealistic, romantic minister begins to feel m o r e b o u n d to the object of his affair t h a n he does to his wife. By this time the spouse has a slim chance of winning back the straying h u s b a n d . How strangely like an adolescent a grown m a n involved in a sexual liaison can b e ! 5

Ruth Truman, Underground Manual for Ministers' (Nashville: Abingdon, 1974) pp. 4 8 ^ 9 .

Wives,

T H E MARITAL AND FAMILY CRISIS / 63

A minister's wife is vulnerable to an affair also when she feels neglected by her h u s b a n d , becomes concerned about losing h e r attractiveness, and sees in another m a n the qualities she might wish h e r husb a n d had. The Workaholic

Minister

It may be that the greatest pressure on a minister's marriage and family comes from the job itself. T h e r e is never enough time to get everything done. Ministers who cannot come to terms with this and find a way to balance their work and family responsibility are headed for trouble. Conscientious clergy face a dilemma. More t h a n one minister has said to m e , " W h e n I give as m u c h time as I should to the c h u r c h , I feel guilty about the family, and w h e n I take time for the family I feel guilty about the church. I ' m caught in the m i d d l e . " Sometimes, however, the problem is not one of duty b u t of addiction. F o r such persons t h e job is not a profession; it is an obsession. A n ex-minister's wife told m e h e r h u s b a n d h a d taken time off for a vacation with the family only once in twenty years. While this may be an extreme case, consider the revelation of a survey of a group of ministers from various denominations. T h e wives were asked, " H o w m a n y days have you had alone with y o u r h u s b a n d in the last m o n t h ? " More t h a n half of t h e m said, " N o t o n e . " Such insensitivity to the needs of one's spouse puts a trem e n d o u s pressure on a marriage. A n irate woman, suffering such neglect from her h u s b a n d after a dozen years of marriage, exploded one day. "If the c h u r c h is that important to you, it seems to m e all you need

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me for is sex—and if that's all you need me for, forget it!" Workaholic ministers leave rejection scars on their children also. One of my painful memories is that of a circus outing with my eight-year-old son. We left in the middle of the performance because I had thoughtlessly scheduled a meeting at the church. I dragged him away as the acrobats were mounting the high wire. My son, now an adult with whom I have a very close relationship, says he has no memory of this incident, but I remember it with shame, and doubtless it left a scar in the depths of his subconscious mind. I always tried to compensate for my neglect of the children during the busy months by taking a vacation with the family each summer, but even then I often brought along a brief case full of work to be done before my return. It is no wonder that many PKs (preachers' kids) turn away from the church when they arrive at their independent years. Not only are they subjected to unnatural role expectations laid upon them but they have to share their fathers (and their mothers) with an institution that seems to have an insatiable hunger for their parents' time. Clergy couples like Sharon and Steve, whom we met early in this book—both of whom are involved professionally with ministry—must be unusually sensitive to their children's need for time and attention outside the church. It is yet to be seen what "double PKs" will do coming out of this kind of situation, though it is not difficult to predict if both of their parents happen to be workaholics. Let us turn now to the problem of identity and the new fact of liberation as they affect marriage and family. "I was always introduced as the minister's

T H E MARITAL AND FAMILY CRISIS / 65

wife," said a newly divorced woman of thirty-nine. " I t got to the place where I could hardly stand it. My identity was so wrapped u p in my h u s b a n d ' s , I just felt I had to get in touch with myself. I began to read u p on the liberation thing and I became m o r e and more dissatisfied. If my h u s b a n d could have accepted m e as a person and not as a satellite, I t h i n k we could have m a d e it." The Minister's

Wife

More and more male ministers and the c h u r c h generally are accepting women who m a r r y ministers as the persons they are. A pastor being interviewed for a new c h u r c h felt the need to explain to the lay committee that his wife had her own career and t h a t if he was chosen and accepted the call she would have to commute to work in another city five days a week. How would they feel about t h a t ? "Welcome to the c l u b , " one of the lay persons said. "Some of us are in the same b o a t ! " H o w a r d Clinebell says the liberation movement may well be " t h e most profound of the multiple revolutions which our society is experiencing." I n an interview for a magazine for pastors he made the point that " p e r h a p s for the first time in h u m a n history "we . . . . have the opportunity to develop genuine companionship marriages . . . . Deep intimacy," he said, "is possible only between equals." e T h e r e are males who are fearful of liberation and there are females who over react to its possibilities, 6

Howard Clinebell, Article in The Christian July, 1971, p. 38.

Ministry,

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but with understanding on the part of both there is the promise of enriched companionship. Intra-marital conflict often is an enigma to ministers and their spouses. Clergy, perhaps more than others, fall victim to the idea that their marriages must be full of sweetness and light. Pastors who help others handle conflict in their homes ought to be able to avoid it in the parsonage! So an effort is made to keep the lid on the hostilities that are bound to occur in any home. The result can be disastrous. Children who grow up without ever seeing their parents blow up may fall prey to perfectionism and its attendant guilt feelings when they can't live up to the image their parents have projected. Males who suppress anger may develop ulcers. The wife of one minister broke out in an uncontrollable rash. Inability to deal with conflict may result in passive-submissive behavior that is far more deadly to a marriage than pounding the table. A frequent passive-submissive device is to withhold sexual favors as unconscious punishment. This may seem strange, but my advice to parsonage families is to learn to fight. Just be sure that you fight fair. No low blows like "You're just like your mother!" or "You've got your father's stubborn streak in you!" Learn to deal with conflict. It is all right to "let off steam" in ways that are physically safe. It is "the teetering accumulation of little angers clothed in false smiles" 7 that gets us into trouble. And when you argue, project yourself into your mate's feelings. Try to understand. At some point use the means suggested earlier in the communication of feelings. Say, 7

H e r b e r t A. Otto, E d i t o r , Marriage and Family Enrichment: New Perspectives and Programs, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976) p . 146.

T H E MARITAL AND FAMILY C R I S I S / 6 7

" L e t m e see if I can express your feelings about t h i s . " T h e n try it. K e e p trying until you can. Take t u r n s trying until the mood becomes one of problem solving. This is not a gimmick; it is an effort to validate your mate's experience. I n mid-life, marriages can be bitter or they can be better. W h e n they become too bitter or, p e r h a p s , just too unfulfilling, the option of divorce suggests itself. W e need to look at that option for t h e r e are problems with divorce, too. F o r one thing, divorce is no solution for chronic personality difficulties that cause interpersonal problems. These have a way of going along with a person into another marriage. T h e n there is the matter of loneliness, especially for the woman. " N o , I don't miss h i m , " said one woman. " B u t I do miss having someone. A n d there is no o n e . " T h e r e are other deep emotions as well. " W h e n (the) failure to m a k e it in marriage hits h o m e , t h e person may experience damage to his self-esteem as well as guilt, grief, resentment, self-pity and depression. T h e marriage crisis becomes a life crisis." 8 A minister whose wife has left h i m is besieged with feelings of failure, grief, and self-doubt. The Minister's

Children

Children pay a p r i c e for their p a r e n t s ' failure to make a go of marriage. While it is t r u e that bitter marriages have a destructive effect on the children, separation and divorce can do the same. Children Casebier, op. cit. p. 177.

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tend to blame themselves for the exodus of one of their parents. When the minister-father of one elevenyear-old boy walked out on his mother, the child went into a deep depression. When questioned about it, he said, "Maybe dad wouldn't have left if I had been a good boy." And later, when visitation rights were not exercised by the father, the sensitive child sank into deeper gloom. The emotional strain of divorce proceedings is another negative in the dissolution option. As opposing lawyers fight for their clients' "rights," hurt turns into bitterness, and bitterness eventuates in raging anger and hate. To speak of "amicable divorce" is to romanticize marriage dissolution. It may begin with friendly feelings but as contention rises over child custody, visitation rights, property settlement, and child support, the friendly feelings vanish like the mists of the night. With divorce achieved, the balance of old and new commitments becomes complicated. With a new marriage there may be his children and her children and their children. There are visitation rights and/or obligations to be heeded. Things are never quite the same with old friends. Some of them will be uncomfortable with the new mates—or just with the broken relationship. Career adjustments may have to be made—a new church, a different job, another community, all of which may mean the breaking of old ties and the forming of new ones. Then there is always the possibility that the commitments of a new marriage will be just as chafing as those of the old. Granted, there are marriages so destructive that the only answer is divorce, but mid-life ministers and spouses considering this alternative need to weigh the

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options with great care. There may be a better way. This brings us to the consideration of marriage renewal. Creating a New Marriage How do you go about creating a new marriage out of the broken relationships of an old one? You have lived together for ten, twenty, or perhaps twenty-five years. Habits have been formed. The scar tissue of many hurts covers sensitive areas. You don't want to be hurt again. Where do you start to rebuild? The point of beginning lies with motivation. How badly do you want to create a new relationship of mutual need satisfaction? Half-hearted effort will not do. It is a matter of dominant desire. You must want renewal more than anything else, or it won't work. The motivation must be mutual as well. Unilateral attempts may bring some improvements but they will not issue in renewal—unless, of course, the effort of one inspires the other to join in the action. Given the motivation and the mutuality of purpose, perhaps the first step will be the rereading of this chapter focusing especially on the areas which have troubled your relationship. Is your marriage tired, dull, boring? Do you have few common interests? Is there little or no mutual need satisfaction (deep intimacy) in your marriage? Do you have poor communication, especially at the feeling level? Do your mate's negative qualities really bug you? If you have teenage children and elderly in-laws and/or parents, do you feel sorely pressured by their needs? Are you experiencing metapausal/menopausal instabilities—irritability, unpredictable moods, depression,

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loss of sexual potency a n d / o r interest? Do you worry u n d u l y about not being young a n y m o r e ? Have you h a d or are you having an affair? As a minister, do you neglect your spouse and family because of your w o r k ? As the spouse of a minister, do you feel you have no identity of your own? Do you have bitter arguments that seem to solve nothing? These are the matters we have discussed in this chapter. T u r n back to those which have been a problem for you and discuss t h e m together. W i t h good communication ( p e r h a p s this is w h e r e you should start!) and reasonable maturity, you can m a k e the mid-course corrections in your marriage t h a t will bring you to your goal. If you need a t h i r d person to help you deal with the problem areas, go to a trusted "elder counselor" such as we described in Chapter 2. Or go to a professional counselor, carefully selected, to whom you can m a k e clear that you have not come to consider the alternatives of divorce or renewal, for that decision has been made. Y o u want to discover and implement creative ways of achieving new intimacy at the deepest levels. A n o t h e r step you can take is to involve yourself in the "marriage and family e n r i c h m e n t " movement which has been growing r e m a r k a b l y since 1973. Dr. H e r b e r t A. Otto has catalogued this movement in a book of resources called Marriage and Family Enrichment: New Perspectives and Programs.9 Secure a copy of this book and study the various approaches to renewal which are included. Engage in a marriage e n r i c h m e n t experience or join a growth group. Dr. Otto, op. cit.

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Otto states that these programs are designed for couples who have what they consider to be fairly wellfunctioning marriages and who wish to make their marriages even more mutually satisfying. Unless your marriage is in severe crisis, which may require the help of a skilled professional counselor, a marriage enrichment experience will give understanding and encouragement to your quest for renewal. Moreover, if you are inclined to become facilitators in the movement, like the alcoholic helping other alcoholics, your motivation will increase and your knowledge will grow. A ministerial couple were about to observe their fortieth wedding anniversary and a younger friend asked, "Didn't you two ever consider divorce in all this time?" "Sure we did," one of them replied, "but we looked down the years and decided we wanted to enjoy our children and grandchildren and old friends together —and we went to work on our problems and ironed them out." Marriages can be restored. The issue lies with the participants—and what they really want.

6 The Crisis of Meaning

"Times of crisis can change the meaning of m a n y things," someone has said. Indeed, a profusion of troubles can be overwhelming and affect the meaning of life itself. T h e middle years constitute a climate for the crisis of meaning. This is t r u e of ministers as well as others. Let us r e t u r n to the case of David and Nancy. David had confided most of his career anxieties to his friend, Joe. H e had hinted at other problems, b u t his need for his friend's approval kept h i m from sharing them. Joe knew that one of David's children had health complications, some of which could have stemmed from emotional causes. Later, when David was at his most depressed stage because of his career, all three of the children, now adolescents, were having an extremely h a r d time finding themselves, and their rebellions were too m u c h for both David and Nancy. On top of this, Nancy was giving David a h a r d time with h e r constant nagging a n d her manipulative ways. T h e m u t u a l enjoyment of sex was long since gone for them. 72

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It was about this time that David became involved with Ruth. She had come for counseling and David, because of his own instabilities, had become emotionally involved with her. This led to sexual involvement and with each episode guilt feelings mounted higher and higher in the sensitive minister. It was all too much. David's emotional circuits became overloaded, and he took his own life. It was news of this tragedy that Joe and Ethel found pinned to their door when they arrived home from their vacation. Rarely, for ministers, does the crisis of life's meaning result in suicide, but tragedy has another face which shows the pain of going through the motions of life with a dead heart. When one who has preached faith finds that his or her own well has gone dry, it is like the dark night of the soul. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" rises the cry and the skies are silent. The Rise of Doubt Why are persons who have majored in the answer to life's enigmas so often unable to cope with their own in the middle years? For one thing, it is typical of mid-life to question and reexamine one's life values. This is especially acute for clergy. Twenty years ago ministers placed a high premium on chastity. Now, with the change in sexual morality, they may wonder if their victorian disciplines were all that important. Two decades ago the long-standing American Protestant work ethic was high on the list of values. Today it is scorned and older clergy wonder if the young are right and they are wrong. Excellence in preaching rated at or near the top of professional

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goals a quarter of a century ago, but now, with the decline of the authority of the minister, the validity of pulpit utterance is questioned. Twenty-five years ago, divorce was unthinkable for most ministers. In the late seventies, clergy persons can have one or more divorces and go right on with their careers. In the not-so-distant past, people lived by rules. Now they are governed by situational ethics, which means every case is determined on its individual merits and there is no black and white anymore —only gray. "Where are the values we grew up with?" cries the middle-aged minister. "Have I been living for the wrong things all these years?'" It is very unsettling. A person's value system is one of several meaning centers in life. Another meaning center for ministers is the church itself. A man who has been strongly oriented to the institution of the church said, "If this is where meaning lies for you and you are frustrated in your career—you are in trouble. Where do you turn? To the church? It is the source of your pain." Another man was telling about one of his colleagues who failed to get an advancement in his forties and got stuck on a career plateau. "Looking back on it now," reports his friend, "he keeps saying, 4If only. . . .' He tortures himself with things that might have happened to give him the recognition he wanted but didn't get. He is bitter about it. And he takes his frustration out on his people, which only makes it worse. There is a hurt that has never been healed." When the church itself is the source of your pain and the institution has been the center of meaning for you for twenty years, the seeming waste of the years is overwhelming and may cause one to leave the

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ministry in bitterness or to remain in weary acquiescence to unacceptable realities. Another aspect of the church as a meaning center has to do with the institution's role in social change. In the '50s and '60s social action came into flower. Many of the clergy were caught up in the civil rights movement and identified with the youth who were rebelling on the campuses of America. The church wrestled with social problems and moved "with all deliberate speed" as the institution sought to achieve consensus among its leaders. To the idealistic social activists in ministry the tortoise pace of the church was galling. One such person sat as a delegate in the assembly of the National Council of Churches when Martin Luther King was scheduled to speak. As the great liberator rose to address the body, one of the respected bishops in the gathering got up and walked out! The young man wanted to walk out, too—out of the church that was led by such a bishop. Later, in the councils of his own denomination, he worked for open membership in the churches, south and north, and joined the minority forces of the legislative conclave in an effort to eliminate all racial structures without delay. Again the need for consensus meant more than jusice, and again, the idealistic minister was tempted to walk out. In fact, he did gather up the workbooks from his legislative desk and leave to return the next morning only because of the pleadings of his colleagues. Disillusionment More than once clergy persons have left the ministry because of the snaillike progress of the institution in

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dealing with social change. Walking out or staying in, something beautiful dies in a person when the structure of the church as a meaning center shakes in the earthquake of disillusionment. A further meaning center for most ministers is family. A pastor with a family-centered ministry spoke of this. In the early '60s his children were small and his wife shared all his interests in the church. Then came the '70s and the children as teenagers began to break away in adolescent rebellions. He wanted them to find themselves and be their own persons, but he wondered why they had to be so extreme about it. After all, he was supposed to be an expert in family life! And now, on top of everything else, his wife was going through an identity crisis stimulated by the new liberation. She took a job which meant she could no longer share much of the church work with him. So, this man's family as a meaning center became a shaky source of security and support. A minister, whose wife had left him without explanation, said to me, "I just can't understand it. I feel like someone in the family has died!" There were reasons for the spouse's departure. Her husband was more married to the church than he was to her. Growing restless under this neglect, she had returned to school to fill the emptiness of her life after the children were grown and gone. She was completely vulnerable when she met a man who paid attention to her. Still, her husband, for whom family was a meaning center more than he realized, was shaken. And now, he found, the loss was unbearable. "How can I go on?" he cried. Self is a meaning center for all people. When that center is unsteady from the beginning or is weakened by career, family, or other problems in mid-life, a

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minister is in trouble. A healthy sense of self-worth is insurance against a major crisis. " Y o u m u s t have a lot of ego strength to be in this business," said one of my friends. " Y o u have to believe in yourself." A black clergyman told me of the struggle of some of his ethnic friends for identity. H e likened them to the Gerasene in the biblical story. " T h e Gerasene had been chained in the cemetery," he said. " H e h a d b r o k e n the chains. B u t he didn't know who he was. T h a t ' s why he answered Jesus as he did. W e haven't k n o w n who we are either. W e have b r o k e n our chains b u t we have to go t h r o u g h this zone between life and not life until we find who we a r e . " Black or white, male or female, ministers who have not discovered their own identity by the time they hit mid-life are exposed to the storms of major crisis. T h e n there are those whose self-esteem has been shattered by other developments in mid-life. A career disappointment which has shaken one's selfconfidence, an excursion into infidelity followed by paralyzing guilt feelings, a marriage failure with the recognition that one has been an inadequate spouse and p a r e n t — t h e s e experiences strike a heavy blow at the meaning center of self in the middle years of ministry. A person who can say, " I feel good about myself," has a strong anchor to the wind when the tempest of crisis hits h i m or h e r in mid-life. The Meaning

Center

of

Faith

O u r greatest meaning center in ministry is our experience of God in Christ. W h e n that is unsteady after twenty or thirty years of service in the c h u r c h , a major crisis can overtake us. W h a t can h a p p e n is that sacred matters, handled over a long period of time, sometime become commonplace. A n experience

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that was fresh in youth can become a memory after two or three decades. Fires which have not been rekindled go out. Without realizing it, ministers in their middle years may be going through the motions of faith after the reality is gone. After a pulpit absence of several weeks on one occasion, it was quite a shock to me to realize that I missed preaching for my own sake. For some time I had pumped up my personal faith by the exercise of sermon preparation and delivery like a football cheerleader being stimulated by his own enthusiasm. Absence from the cheering section (my congregation) reduced the intensity of my spiritual life. To neglect the nurture of this meaning center is exceedingly perilous to the man or woman of God. With this core of life healthy and vital there is no accumulation of crises that can overwhelm a person in ministry, "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation. . . ." * We have been reviewing the meaning centers of a minister's life—values, church, family, self, and faith. These are in reality the "being" centers of life, and if enough of them are in crisis, life's ultimate meaning is in peril. Some Solid Suggestions When the crisis of meaning comes, what do you do? Here are six suggestions. The first is—don't run! When all or even most of Romans 8:38, 39 RSV.

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life's meaning centers cave in, it is easy to panic. This is no time to make decisions. They are likely to be the wrong ones. Some ministers have left the ministry precipitously at this point much to their regret later. Some have walked out on their families only to wish they hadn't done so. A few have taken their lives. The urge to act is strong when everything seems to be going wrong. Curb this urge! Take a lesson from athletics. When the game is going against you, call "time out." Suggestion number two: Pray if you can. If it is the meaning center of faith that has collapsed, you may not be able to pray. If it has not, this is your greatest resource. Often, however, when everything has seemed to go wrong you get angry at God. "Why has God allowed my life to get so messed u p ? " you cry. You want to shake your fist at the sky. Indeed, this may be a good thing to do. Like a small child in frustration and rage, you may need to beat against your Father's breast until the tears come and you subside in the everlasting arms. The child who shouts, "I hate you!" at his or her parent is not far different from the adult who is consumed with hostility feelings toward God when nothing seems right. Pray if you can. Venting your anger at God may at last make possible the calm out of which more positive prayer can issue. My next word of admonition is to seek companionship. The natural tendency, when life is shaken with experiential earthquakes, is to withdraw from people —to go into hiding to lick your wounds. This is the very time when you need people. Your urgency here is not someone to give you advice but someone to give you love. Do you know such a friend? Go to

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him or her. Do not stop with one, however. You can use the stimulation of many people. Parents Without Partners, Alcoholics Anonymous (whether you are an alcoholic or not—you could be!), a night school course in crafts, the church itself (though that may be the source of your pain)—these are some possibilities. Recognizing the inclination to withdraw, you must force yourself to go out and find companionship. The fourth thing to do is to get help. By this, I mean find someone who is a skilled listener and counselor—someone who can help put the stars back into your sky. This could be an "elder counselor" such as we have suggested before, or it may be a professional person carefully chosen. The collapse of several meaning centers of your life may require the services of a well-trained and experienced guide to help you restore the lost stability. With or without the help of a counselor, in the fifth place, take stock of your strengths. The crisis of life's meaning is likely to reduce your sense of selfworth to zero. You may feel you have nothing on the credit side of your personal ledger. Depression has robbed you of perspective. You do have strengths, and you need to number them. You have the same gifts you had before life clobbered you. The trouble is you have gone through a crisis of self-confidence along with everything else. Forget the negatives for awhile and concentrate on the positives in your life. In addition to the old strengths you have a new one now. You have suffered and your sensitivities have been sharpened. You have looked long and deeply into the abyss and have found you are fully human. Now you have a good chance of becoming a

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" w o u n d e d h e a l e r " such as H e n r i Nouwen talks about. 2 H o w can you bridge the gap to another's h u m a n i t y except t h r o u g h your own? R o b e r t A. Raines writes with keen p e r c e p t i o n : Our wounds are a primary source of self-understanding, but they are also a vehicle of self-revelation to other people. They are a primary connection with the vital humanity of another. I was raised, as maybe you were, to hide my wounds, to cover my grief and pain: "Big boys don't cry." And so I restrained my tears, until one night a few years ago in an encounter group, I found myself shaking with sobs, crying out tears that had been there for a long time. Another man next to me began to heave with his own sobbing, and at the time I thought he was feeling sorry for me. Later he told me that my pain had triggered his own inner pain which had nothing to do with me and that he was crying out of his own wounds. Many times since then I've experienced the fact of one person's suffering connecting with another's through all kinds of barriers and defenses. Our wounds are the visa into the country of another person's deep being. 3 Y o u have been driven to y o u r knees with t h e cry, " L e t this cup pass from m e ! " Yet the drinking of t h a t very cup has brought you u n d e r s t a n d i n g and the capacity to minister to others who d r a i n the bitter dregs of meaningless existence. Y o u r middle years are y o u r greatest years because you have been p r e p a r e d by life to enter deeply into the lives of others. W i t h the fever of self-centered 2

Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer (New York: Doubleday, 1972). 3 Robert A. Raines, Success Is a Moving Target (Waco: Word Books, 1975) pp. 136-137.

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ambition gone, you are free to give full attention to the fevers of others. Y o u have woven a blanket of your own disappointments and private griefs and with this you can cover another who is in shock from one of life's tragedies while administering first aid as a channel of Divine Grace. Such is t h e "glorious liberty of the children of G o d " who have suffered their own pain and now are permitted to be wounded healers. T a k e an inventory of y o u r strengths and add to it one you have not had before, certainly not to this degree—the strength of empathy. T h e r e is a sixth matter to consider. Y o u may need to change careers. Many people do so in these days of rapid change. Consider this carefully, of course. T h e loss of spouse and family as a meaning center does not automatically m e a n leaving the ministry. All factors must be considered. If, however, a reexamination of skills for professional ministry indicates the need for a career adjustment, do not be afraid of it. To be certain, avail yourself of the resources of a career development or study center. Should you need to lay aside your clerical robes, there are other forms of ministry you may be able to p u r s u e either vocationally or avocationally. Finally, grow with the pain that is in you. H e n r i Nouwen says ". . . . the w o u n d which causes us to suffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated his new creation." 4 T h e crisis of meaning at mid-life well m a y be the place where God begins his new creation. It can be the most i m p o r t a n t d e a t h / l i f e experience in your existence. 4

Nouwen, op. cit. p. 98.

7 The Mid-Life Crisis of the Minister's Spouse I am talking to Mary, whose husband is a minister. I need to do this for I am a man, and I want to hear from a woman what the middle years are like. Mary is forty-nine and she has been married to Mark for twenty-eight years. Mary and Mark "Mary, as I talk to women who are married to ministers, I hear a lot about identity crisis. Have you had anything like this in your life—I mean since you married Mark?" "Yes," replies Mary. "I have had two identity crises. The first occurred during my husband's first pastorate. It was a difficult time for me. I had never wanted to be a minister's wife, but I loved Mark, and I thought things would work out all right. They did, in time, but those first years were not easy." "What happened?" I queried. "The first thing I noticed," says Mary, "was that the people of the church expected certain things of 83

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me—or I thought they did—as the minister's wife. They expected me to run a perfect house (their house, not mine). I didn't dare be late to church or miss a service unless I was ill. I had to be at all the women's meetings and all the potluck dinners with a steaming dish. I took all my husband's calls at the house, since there was no church secretary. I had to be patient when other people were not. When introduced to a stranger I was always 'our minister's wife.' Oh, how I wished someone would treat me like a person in my own right—just plain Mary Revkin!" "You're not alone in this, Mary. I've heard a lot of women whose husbands are ministers say the same things." "I'm glad you put it that way," says Mary. " 'Women whose husbands are ministers.' That's what we are. Not 'ministers' wives.' It makes a difference how you say that—to us, I mean." I study Mary's face. "Do you want to tell me about the other crisis?" "I have to say I feel a little embarrassment about it," Mary muses. "It was when Mark got emotionally involved with a woman he was counseling. He was forty-one at the time. The children were teenagers and my father was in a convalescent home. With all the pressures on me I didn't have much time for my husband. But then, he was very busy, too. In addition to his work in the parish, he had taken on some pretty heavy responsibilities in the community and in the church at large. So, we weren't very close just then, and I guess he was vulnerable." Mary pauses reflectively. "When I found out about it, I went into a tailspin. My pride was hurt and my self-esteem sunk to a new low. The old identity thing

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hit me again. 'Who am I?' I said to myself. 'Am I so tied to Mark and the children that I have no identity of my own?' Partly for security's sake, in case Mark went the divorce route, and partly for my own need for independence, I took a job. I hadn't worked outside the home for years. This gave me a new assurance about myself. It was something I needed badly. About that time, Mark did some reassessment of his situation, and with the help of an elder counselor, withdrew from the affair. We made a special effort to try to understand each other's feelings. When we had worked through our problems and reestablished good communication and intimacy, we were closer together than we'd been in years." "That's good, Mary. I think a lot of couples could work through these crises if they really wanted to. Tell me, what happened to you when your children were grown and left home?" "Well, that was another thing. I had always been pretty much a homebody. I really preferred that to working. And when the kids were gone—Jack married and Sally in an apartment of her own—I felt very much alone. But then, Mark and I began to spend more time together. He was through that feverish stage about his career. He took seriously the doctor's warning to slow up, which was a very good thing. He was a kind of workaholic, you know." "Yes, I know." "Well, we started having lunch together a couple of times a week. Sometimes we went out for breakfast, which is a nice break in routines. Occasionally we went to dinner and a theatre. We both enjoy that. Then we joined a square dance group. I took some golf lessons and began playing golf with Mark once a

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week. Things really opened up for us after the kids went out on their own." "Sounds like you two are having a ball. Let me ask you another question. What about the liberation movement? Where are you on that?" "I'm for it," Mary replies. "I think women who marry ministers need this—maybe more than others. I don't go for the excesses. I do think every woman needs to know who she is and think well of herself. If a woman married to a minister wants a career of her own—-great. She should do that. As for me, I have worked outside the home, but I really like homemaking best, and I think I should be free to do that. I think people should be careful about sexist language and women should have equal rights, equal pay, and so on. I guess I am a liberationist, but I'm not a flaming crusader about it." "Mary, you are forty-nine. May I ask if you have been through the menopause? And how did it affect you?" "It was easy for me, and I welcomed it. My monthly menstruals were hard on me. There wTas always the tense period just before, and I had a heavy flow. I know a lot of women have a hard time with menopause, but for me it was easy. Menstruation just gradually stopped. Mark's climacteric was harder on him than my menopause was on me. He was irritable, went into depressions, and generally was pretty difficult to live with. He had a lot of self-doubts and even had some trouble with impotence for awhile. But me? After menopause I had more energy than before. I was more relaxed about sex and with new freedom and a little experimentation we soon overcame Mark's impotence problem. We laugh about it now. Actually, our sex life is better than ever at this point."

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" I ' d like to ask you another personal question, if I may, Mary. Y o u don't have to answer it if you don't want to. Did you ever have an affair of your o w n ? " " N o , not really," Mary said. " I was tempted a few times. I t h i n k m a n y women are. W h e n your h u s b a n d is w r a p p e d u p in his work and spending ungodly h o u r s at it, and you begin to wonder about your own attractiveness somewhere in the late thirties, a woman is pretty vulnerable. I know some wives of ministers who have become involved with others. I know a few who have become interested in 'open marriage' and have joined their husbands in a little mate-swapping glossed over with the rationalization of 'the extended family' idea. B u t these cases have usually ended u p in a big mess. So, when a certain guy in our c h u r c h m a d e a pass at me, I accepted the compliment that I was still attractive and said, 'No t h a n k s ! ' " Mary smiles. " T h i s has h a p p e n e d a few times." " W h a t about the parsonage? Did you ever feel t r a p p e d t h e r e ? " I ask. "Yes, this has been h a r d for me. Never having a house of our own. Not even having our own furniture, in the early years. Everything belonged to the church and we always h a d to be careful and work through committees to get new carpets or drapes and to get t h e painting done. This really bugged m e . B u t after awhile, we bought our own bedroom furniture and that improved things for us. At least we had one room that was ours. About live years ago, Mark came u p with a great idea. H e suggested we b u y a house we could rent with the thought that we could build u p some equity toward our retirement home. W e can retire in about fifteen more years, you k n o w . " I nod. "Well, we borrowed some money for a small down p a y m e n t and bought a place. T h e r e n t money carries

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the payments. We probably won't live in that house when we retire, but we can sell it at that time and buy one we want. I feel good when I think about having our own home one of these days—or years!" "Mary, suppose you stood in front of a room full of women whose husbands are ministers. They are young and are just starting out. What would you say to them to prepare them for the middle years?" How to Prepare for the Middle Years At this point let us leave Mary Revkin and allow all the Marys I have consulted to answer this question. This is what they might say: (1) Take control of your life. Don't allow yourself to be pushed around. You have choices. Make them. This is the best way to deal with an identity problem. Develop your own inner security. Don't parade your independence. You don't have to. Just be you. (2) This is really an extension of the first point. Do the things you want to do in the church. You are a lay person. Exercise that right. If you can establish in the beginning a good feeling about yourself and your relationship with your husband and the church, family and other pressures will be easier to deal with when they come along. Don't try to compete with your husband. Get into things that are not his best subjects. Do your own thing in the church. (3) Write yourself into your husband's schedule, if he doesn't do it himself. You need time with each other—prime time. He will be very busy with all the demands of church and community. Get hold of his date book and write in meals out, and little excursions together, movies, plays, friends over for games,

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whatever, so he doesn't get gobbled up by his work and you get aced out of his time. (4) Don't let the liberation thing throw you. If homemaking is your interest, do it and enjoy it. You don't need to feel guilty if you don't care to get on the liberation bandwagon. On the other hand, if the movement appeals to you, pursue it. Go back to school if you need to or want to. Have your own career if that's the thing you require. (5) Express your feelings to your husband. He needs to know. Chances are he will give support. If he can't understand your needs, that's his problem. You need to understand his, too. If you don't, that's your problem. Communication is a big thing. Maybe the biggest. (6) If you have any sex hang-ups, get rid of them. Learn, if you need to, to enjoy sex-play. This is one of the important things you and your husband can enjoy together. It's fun and it's relaxing. It's good recreation. And, as you get older, it's good exercise! (7) Develop more and more activities you and your husband can enjoy together. This is why you need to grab his date book and write yourself in for a variety of things. Maybe he's the kind of a guy who likes to explore new and different interests. Great! Do these things together. Out of this experimentation will come many things you like to share. The more the better. (8) Let your faith help you. Avoid bitterness and self-pity. Remember who you are in God's sight—a person in your own right. God loves you. He wants you to be you, and he will help you to be you. Your real security lies in your own mature faith. (9) Be honest—be open—be yourself.

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( 1 0 ) Oh, yes! K e e p a sense of h u m o r . You'll b e amazed how liberating it is to be able to laugh at yourself. Julia and

Ralph

I am sitting in a parsonage having coffee with Julia a n d R a l p h . J u l i a is the minister. R a l p h is a teacher. She is thirty-five and he is two years older. They have two children. T h e i r daughter is four and their son is one. I am talking to b o t h J u l i a and R a l p h because they are breaking new g r o u n d — a t least as far as mainline Protestantism is concerned—in that she is a professional minister and he has a n o n - c h u r c h related career of his own. " R a l p h , " I begin, " h o w does it feel to be m a r r i e d to a m i n i s t e r ? " " J u s t like it feels to be married to a n y o n e , " he replies—a little defensively, I think. H e grins. "Actually, I'm getting quite a charge out of it. W h e n we go to some of my school functions where Julia is not known, I get a kick out of introducing her. 'This is my wife, Julia,' I'll say, and then add, 'She's a minister.' You should see the double-take on t h a t ! " Julia breaks in. " I really think I'm more sensitive t h a n Ralph is about our roles," she says. " W e frequently get letters addressed to 'Reverend and Mrs. J. Martin.' Sometimes the envelope will say, 'Reverend and Mr.' It seems strange and awkward. I guess that's what our culture has done to us. W e went to an international church conference not long ago. I was a delegate and Ralph was an official observer. My badge said 'Dr. J. Martin.' His read 'Mrs. J. Martin.' This kind of thing bothers me more t h a n it does Ralph, I t h i n k . "

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"Well, you are in an awkward stage at the moment," I remark. "There aren't many couples like you in your denomination right now. There will be more in time. As you know, there are over six hundred women in training for the ministry in your branch of the church this year. It isn't easy being a model for what is to come." "We know that," says Ralph. "The worst thing right now is that there are no other couples like us to talk to. We go to a ministers and spouses function and see the men grouped in one place talking shop and the women in another talking about whatever women talk about. Where does Julia go? Where do I go? It gives you an odd feeling." "Which group do you join?" I ask. "Usually we both go with the men," Julia answers. "Although sometimes I join the wives and Ralph gets in with the ministers." "There's one thing I refuse to do," says Ralph with a grin. "I won't pour tea at a women's meeting!" "What about your home and parenting responsibilities? How do you handle those?" Julia is the first to respond. "We share them. I do the washing and ironing, although there are some things we send out. We share the cooking. Ralph hates dusting so I do that. Ralph often feeds and bathes the children. I have quite a few night meetings, so he usually puts the children to bed. In quantity of time, my husband spends more time with the children than I do. The result is that when our little girl awakes in the night she will call for her daddy rather than for me." "How do you feel about that?" I query. Julia answers, "I have to confess, I feel a little

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guilty about it. O u r culture has conditioned women to the m o t h e r role. 'Why isn't she calling for h e r m o t h e r ? ' I say to myself. W e had an interesting experience when we visited relatives recently. T h e baby h a d to sleep in our room. H e was just eight m o n t h s old. H e sensed the strangeness and was crying. I d i d n ' t want the others to be disturbed so I got u p and tried to quiet the child. But t h e n , as soon as I'd get back in bed, he would begin to cry again. I was nervous and tense about it. R a l p h would say to m e , 'Do you want me to see what I can d o ? ' A n d I would say stubbornly, 'No, I'll do it!' Finally, I gave u p and said, 'Okay, you do it.' H e got u p and in five minutes the little guy was fast asleep. Y o u see, because of m y conditioning, it was difficult for m e to relinquish the parenting role to R a l p h . " Julia pauses thoughtfully. "Sometimes I say to R a l p h , 'I don't feel very m u c h like a woman,' and he sometimes says to m e , 'I don't feel very m u c h like a m a n , ' and we u n d e r s t a n d each other's feelings." " A n d that's very i m p o r t a n t , " I say to them. T h e y nod agreement and exchange a w a r m glance with each other. I continue. " H o w do you manage to have time to yourselves—just the two of y o u ? " " W e have to schedule it," R a l p h replies. " J u l i a ' s work makes more demands on her time t h a n m i n e does. We m a k e dates with one another. W e get a baby sitter and go out for an evening—sometimes to a show—sometimes for a late d i n n e r and talk. W e are careful to keep Saturdays free, except, of course, for emergencies. J u l i a used to have h e r hair done on Saturday mornings. W e talked it over—about losing out on that time together—and she bought a wig. She used to finish u p h e r sermon on Saturdays. Now

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she wraps it up on Friday so we can be free to be together as a family on Saturday. Sunday, of course, is something else." "Are you involved with the church, Ralph?" I inquire. "Yes. I really am quite interested in the church. I am an usher, and I serve in the education and youth departments. Sometimes, I teach a class. I do the things I like to do and am interested in doing." I look searchingly at both of them. "You are barely into the mid-life years. Have you looked down the road to see what things may be like in another five to ten years? What about the time when you begin to be aware that you are not as young as you used to be? How about when your marriage loses some of its zip and you see each other's faults more sharply— and you're vulnerable to an affair with someone else? Have you thought of this? Or maybe the pressures of two careers and a heavier than usual parenting role for you, Ralph, begins to be burdensome. What about things like that?" Ralph and Julia look at each other and it is Julia who speaks. "If you've been talking with each other through the years, you'll be able to talk about those things when they come along." Ralph nods. "Yes," he says. "We think we are building a pattern of dealing with problems and if we keep on doing that, we shouldn't have too much trouble when the mid-life things come up." Some Positive Points I have thought much of Ralph and Julia, and the few models of female ministers and spouses who are blazing trails. Using the crystal ball, I offer these

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suggestions to other Ralphs who may be in or approaching early mid-life: (1) Recognize the need of both of you to communicate and be honest. Be aware of what each of you is feeling. The pressures on you are greater than those on other couples. Ministry makes unusual demands on a person. Your wife as a minister may be struggling with guilt feelings about parenting. You may feel like saying, "You're not going out and leave me with the children again tonight, are you?" You need to know that this and similar remarks will increase her sense of guilt. Of course, you have feelings, too—irritation, being put upon, the strangeness of your role. Both of you need to talk about these feelings. Be honest in communicating. Be fair in listening. (2) Try not to be threatened by what your wife is doing. Try to accept the fact that being a minister fulfills needs in your wife that you can't fulfill. You need to know that and feel all right about it. She needs you, too, not only for the personal things, but in order to function as a minister. This doesn't mean you are an assistant minister. It does mean your commitment to the church is important, too. If the church means everything to her and nothing to you, you have a problem. That would be true if you were the minister and the roles were reversed. Unless you love the church, too (and perhaps even if you do) there will be times when you will resent it. Try to understand this. (3) Some professions or careers meld with the ministry better than others. Law, medicine, dentistry, specialized management positions, and the like, reduce your mobility to near zero. Your wife as a min-

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ister may not be able to stay in one place very long. Teaching, clerking, sales, social services, carpentry and similar trades, some management positions, a n d so on may be more compatible. Of course, t h e r e is always the possibility y o u r clergy-wife may choose or be called to a form of ministry wherein she could more easily adapt to your professional or career needs. Y o u need to talk about such matters and anticipate adjustments as m u c h as possible. (4) Look for one or more support groups. At this time there are not m a n y others like yourself. T h e r e will be more in a few years, and that will m a k e it easier. Meanwhile, you might help to organize a national or regional group of m e n m a r r i e d to ministers. Y o u could keep in touch by newsletter and p e r h a p s have a yearly get-together. It will help you greatly to u n d e r s t a n d and deal with your particular situation if you can share with others of like m i n d and state. (5) Establish and maintain your own identity. This is important for women m a r r i e d to ministers, a n d it is equally important for you. If you know who you are and are secure within yourself, the special relationship you have as a minister's spouse can be positive and enriching. Be your own m a n . Do the things you want to do in the church. Be profoundly grateful for the special role you play. Until that role is m o r e widely recognized, you may be subject to jibes and jokes, b u t if you k n o w who you are, you can share the h u m o r and you can be p r o u d of your place in the scheme of things. (6) Love God and love your wife and children as you love yourself. Love is the royal road to deep relationships.

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*

#

*

Being married to a minister has its hazards, but it has its joys as well. Your spouse's profession, more than most, opens the door to instant friendships and lifelong satisfactions. You, like your mate, must deal with the aging process in the middle years. With mutual understanding and growing maturity, this can be the best part of your life.

8 Making the Most of the Middle Years As a young minister I used to listen to Harry Emerson Fosdick on the radio. The title of this chapter makes me think of him. As I recall it, he had a sermon on the idea of taking what life gives and making, not the worst of it, nor the best of it, but the most of it. This theme may be applied with profit to clergy in the middle years. There are those who make the worst of mid-life. They resent encroaching age. The reduction of energy levels and all the signs of growing older are met with incredulity. "It's impossible! Why, I used to be able to. . . ." And this in itself is a dead giveaway. Many a minister, upon losing his or her youthfulness, is dragged kicking and screaming into middle age. One of the reasons for this is the concentrated indoctrination people get regarding the virtues of being young. Thus, clergy-persons, like others in our culture, resist aging with all that is within them. This sometimes results in making the worst of it. "I'm as young as I ever was," says a forty-four-year-old minister, and he undertakes physical pursuits suitable to men in their twenties, ending up with heart damage that will limit 97

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h i m the rest of his life. A woman in h e r mid-to-late thirties or a m a n in his early forties hears a parishioner say, " I t h i n k I am in love with y o u , " and is flattered to t h i n k she or he can still attract a person of the opposite sex. This may lead to a relationship that can destroy marriage and affect career. T h e desire to hang on to lost youth can sometimes cause otherwise intelligent people to do some r a t h e r unintelligent things. People approaching or into mid-life sometimes do make the worst of it. T h e n , t h e r e are those who accept the inevitability of aging and are determined to make the best of it. " T h i s is just the way life i s , " they say. " W h a t can you do about i t ? " Such acquiescence to the inexorable dulls creative powers and condemns a person to mediocrity at a time when the accumulation of experiences and knowledge is most promising. T h e dictionary defines acquiescence as " q u i e t submission" and "passive assent." Fatalism concerning the passing years can lead to quiet submission to " t h e way it i s " and reduce incentive to creative endeavor. Passive assent to mid-life limitations may curb the generative impulse which still can be alive and well at eighty if encouraged. The 'Futile

Fifties'

I recall a minister who quit trying to improve his preaching because he h a d passed that great professional continental divide we call "fifty." P r i o r to reaching his career plateau, he kept buying books on preaching and attending preaching conferences. H e h a d a serious desire to be a more effective preacher. His attitude after fifty was " W h a t ' s the use? W h o is

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going to want a preacher my age? The churches all want younger men." So, he stopped writing new sermons and used the "barrel." He became sloppy in his pulpit manner. He droned away, not expecting much in congregational response—and he got what he expected. The middle years had come and in a dreary sort of way he was making the best of it. No matter what the circumstances may be, the way to meet it is to make the most of it. To accept life, at whatever stage, as challenge, releases creative energies that otherwise lie unused behind barred doors. A man I know virtually went blind during his second pastorate. He had always had relatively poor eyesight, one eye somewhat better than the other. A detached retina in his good eye left him dependent on the poor eye which gradually grew worse. There he was at thirty-five, with his best years ahead of him, and handicapped so severely that he could not drive a car or read his sermon notes. He engaged a reader to keep him abreast of contemporary developments in his field, and he hired a driver to take him on his pastoral calls. At the time, eye surgery had not developed sufficiently to warrant an attempt to repair the detached retina, so he suffered continuing deterioration in his sight. His church gave him a six months' leave of absence with full pay in order for him to engage in a retraining program for some other form of ministry wherein near-blindness would not be a hindrance. Grateful for this opportunity and determined to pursue it wholeheartedly, he returned to seminary planning to equip himself for a ministry in pastoral counseling. His wife read for him. He recorded lectures and practically memorized them with frequent playbacks. Following

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classes in which professors wrote notes on the blackboard, he would go to the blackboard and record the notes by bringing his face within six inches of the professor's writing. The six months' leave ran out, but he secured a grant for continued study. In addition, he found a part-time teaching position. His wife took a job and became breadwinner for the family. These were difficult years, but the courageous couple persevered. At last, with an advanced degree under his belt and practical training as an assistant hospital chaplain behind him, he applied for a full-time position as a chaplain and received it. This was the kind of thing he could do with his handicap, and he was successful at it. Meanwhile, advances in eye surgery made it possible to risk an operation with positive results. Partial vision was restored. Now he walks the halls of a great hospital visiting the sick and the dying, bringing a ministry of wholeness to everyone he meets. This man took what life gave him and made, not the worst of it, nor even the best of it, but the most of it. And he did it in the middle years of life. How does one in the normal course of events at mid-life make the most of the changing circumstances of aging, career, marriage/family, and life's meaning? This is the time to use the prayer of the alcoholics: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity, courage and wisdom—herein lies the way to make the most of the middle years.

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Serenity Let us look first at serenity—serenity to accept what cannot be changed. The Apostle Paul said, ". . . . I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content." Considering the fact that Paul had a "thorn in the flesh" which continued to plague him after repeated prayers to be free from it, this is a remarkable saying. Wittingly or not, he had found the secret of serenity. So often, ministers in mid-life torture themselves with looking back and saying, "If only. . . ." There was a fork in the road in career development and the wrong choice was made. "If only. . . ." There was a momentary lapse in moral behavior. "If only. . . . " A move to another place with an unfavorable climate brought on a crippling disease. "If only. . . ." It is an exercise in uselessness to look back and think what might have been done differently. The past cannot be changed. Serenity, like Don Blanding's joy, is "an inside job." It is a matter of attitude. A certain minister just missed by a few votes being elevated to the highest position his denomination could offer. One of his friends said to him, "Doesn't it bother you that you came so close but didn't quite make it?" "Yes," said the other. "It hurt terribly for a long time. The first night after it happened I wept like a baby, so great was the disappointment. I felt sorry for myself and my bitterness made me hard to live with. But finally, I came to my senses and saw what I was doing to myself and to those who loved me. There was nothing I could do about the past but there was something I 1

Philippians 4:11 RSV.

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could do about me. W h e n my attitude changed I began to feel at peace with myself." Life in t h e middle years can be good if one has the right attitude toward it. "Forgetting what lies b e h i n d , " says P a u l , " a n d straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of t h e u p w a r d call of God in Christ J e s u s . " 2 This is a good word for ministers in mid-life. Courage to Change What Can Be

Changed

T h e second factor in making the most of the middle years is courage to change what can be changed. Acquiescence is not always a virtue. One cannot change the past, b u t the present is another matter. Sometimes ministers in their middle years come to realize poor preaching is limiting their effectiveness. All too m a n y persons accept this limitation as the way it is and do nothing about it. A few will have the courage to attack the weakness. T h e problem may be pulpit m a n n e r i s m s , a lifeless expression, or a poor voice. Private lessons from a voice teacher or a drama coach might be in order. If there is a seminary nearby, one could audit a course in preaching. I knew one minister who joined the local Toastmasters Club wherein h e submitted himself to the constructive criticism of its members. T h u s he became m u c h m o r e effective as a public speaker. Such actions take effort and no small a m o u n t of courage (exposing one's weaknesses to o t h e r s ) , b u t the result can be rewarding. Getting along with people often is a problem for clergy persons. This failing affects one's work and may 2

Philippians 3:13-14 RSV.

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well be a problem in marriage and family relations. Again, one can accept such a limitation and do nothing about it—or one can take steps to deal with the problem. It takes real fortitude to hie oneself off to a psychiatrist or a professional psychologist and say, "Look, I've got some personality problems that are getting m e into trouble. I need your help in overcoming t h e m . " A woman who was m a r r i e d to a minister came to see me one day, deeply concerned about the state of her marriage. I asked her if h e r h u s b a n d would be willing to come to counseling with her. "Unfortunately," she replied, " h e says t h e r e is nothing wrong with him. H e says I ' m the one who needs help. Well, he is right—at least partly. I do need help. B u t h e needs it, too. I just t h i n k he is afraid to face his problems." P o o r marriages can be changed into good marriages, b u t it takes courage to admit the need for improvement and seek help. One of the conditions afflicting m a n y ministers is loneliness. A psychologist led one of the sessions in a ministers' retreat. H e was probing painfully into ministry and hostility feelings began to emerge among the participants. T h e psychologist sensed this, scrapped his lecture plans, and said to the group, " I am aware of your feelings toward me. I t h i n k you see in m e where you are in your lives, in your churches—everyone seems to be taking pot-shots at y o u . " One of the participants who had just gone t h r o u g h a divorce said, " T h a t ' s exactly where I am. I just feel completely alone." This was followed by one of the older ministers in the group who said, " T h a t ' s where I am too. I feel nobody cares about m e . " T h e next person to speak was an ethnic pastor.

i

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Then an associate minister. They all said the same thing with variations. Overwhelmed with loneliness, they all felt they were standing out there utterly alone. Granted, this is a common feeling for many clergy. How do they deal with it? Most of them suffer in silence. But it need not be this way. There are support groups to be found or they may be started. There are people to go to who understand and who can introduce reinforcement. Why do so many ministers bear their burdens alone? Because they are afraid to reveal themselves to their peers or a counselor. Loneliness in ministry is a condition that can be changed, but it takes courage to change it. Wisdom Serenity. Courage. This leaves wisdom as a factor in making the most of the middle years. To be sure, it is not easy to know what can and what cannot be changed. This is because feelings are subjective and anxieties are not rational. If it were a matter of logic only, it would not be difficult. In some ways it is harder to be objective about one's problems in midlife than at other times, because subjective feelings are intensified during these years. The first act of wisdom, therefore, well may be to find another person who can listen creatively. Describing one's state of mind to such a person can help to clarify thinking. Perhaps nothing can be done. To come to grips with that and to accept it can reduce anxiety and produce serenity. On the other hand, while one verbalizes his or her concerns, positive action steps may become clear and the way be opened to constructive change. Whatever the issue, and whatever means isfused to identify and

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understand it, wisdom to know that it will, or will not, yield to constructive change is a necessity. As I write the final pages of this book, I want to give you a strong assurance. Others have made it through mid-life, and so can you. Victor and Joy Let me tell you about Victor and Joy Levitt. In their late fifties, they have been married for thirty-six years. They have had a good life together in spite of a career disappointment that Victor had in his forties and the health problems Joy had about ten years ago. They have two children who went through teenage rebellions like others, married reasonably well, and live more or less average lives. It was something of a relief for Victor and Joy when the kids got out on their own. Victor has made no great splash in the ministry, but he wouldn't trade what he's done for anything. Joy had the usual identity problems of a minister's wife in the early years, but she found herself and became her own person. Their marriage hit some rough spots in their forties, but they sought help and came out of that period stronger than before. I was especially interested in what Joy said about mature love. "You think you are in love when you are first married," she said, "but you don't know what love is. At first there is that wild, exotic sexual attraction, something like firecrackers and everything, but then you live together, grow together, struggle together, go through crises together, hurt together, have fun together, travel together, and raise children together. There are all these things. And when you get to be our age, you know what love really is." There was a warm glow on Joy's face as she said this. I

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looked at Victor and saw that his eyes had found hers. What I had witnessed made me feel good. I asked Victor and Joy what they might say to other couples in ministry that would help them "make it" through the middle years. After assuring me they have no particular feelings of having "made it," this, in summary, is what they said: Keep a good sense of humor. Learn to receive as well as to give. Be realistic about your work. There is always something special that needs doing in every church. Just try to do it and let that be your success. Don't let your ego ride on every program you propose. If you do, you'll feel rejected when your ideas are. Remember, you are dealing with human beings like yourselves. Be honest in your relationships. Don't pretend to be something you aren't. That's too heavy a burden. Don't let yourself be trapped in a role imposed by others—or yourselves. Don't be afraid of your peers or your superiors. You are all working for the kingdom of God. Be sure to find time to spend together— just the two of you, and cultivate that closeness. Keep talking. Keep reading. Keep growing. Don't be too impressed by big salaries and plush parsonages. The materialistic merry-go-round is a snare and a delusion. Don't be afraid to get help if you need it. Don't expect perfection from yourselves or from others. We are all human. Enjoy your work—each other—your children—your friends. Enjoy your religion. Life is good, no matter what happens. Your attitude toward it is what makes the difference. Victor and Joy made the most of their middle years and so can you.