While cleaning out some boxes kept in storage yesterday, I ran across a photo taken of me at an event from my last church … and I instantly felt a twinge of pain inside.
Then I started to feel sadness behind my eyes … like I wanted to cry but couldn’t. That feeling lasted for about half an hour.
I’ve had these feelings for years now, and I don’t like them. They come upon me at unexpected times, especially when I focus too much on the conflict that propelled me out of church ministry seven years ago.
Even though I’ve written extensively about pastoral termination and church conflict over the past six years – having written nearly 525 articles – I haven’t written much about the feelings that a pastor has after he’s been forced out of office.
While I can’t speak for every pastor who goes through this horrendous experience, maybe it would be helpful to describe what’s healthy … and unhealthy … after a pastor undergoes termination.
So offering up my own experiences as a model, let me share five emotions that I experienced in the aftermath of my departure from ministry in 2009:
First, I was shocked by the viciousness some people demonstrated to get rid of me.
Some people I served as pastor did everything in their power to destroy my position as pastor as well as my reputation.
And I mean destroy.
There is no way to sugarcoat what they did or said. These professing Christians intended harm toward me, their pastor.
It was revenge … and personal.
Only I didn’t know then … and don’t know today … what I did or didn’t do to illicit such hatred from them.
That shock lasts a long time. In many ways, I’m still not over it.
I never preached with a hateful tone nor a hateful manner, so those feelings did not originate with me. They either came from an internal or external source. My guess is that they came from someone outside the church who fanned the flames of anger inside the church.
The attitude of these people was not, “We disagree with your views on several subjects,” nor, “We think you’ve lost effectiveness and should go.”
No, their attitude was, “We hate you, Jim, and we want you to leave and never come back.”
These were people who professed to love Jesus, His Word, and His people … so how could they demonstrate such rage against their pastor who had served them faithfully for 10 1/2 years?
I have no idea.
When I was nineteen years old, I became a youth pastor. One night, after finding out that two of my former Sunday School teachers were involved in sexual immorality, my pastor told me, “Jim, don’t ever be shocked by what Christians do.”
Over the years, I’ve tried not to be.
But sometimes, I still am. Sometimes, the whole conflict invades my soul without warning, and I shake my head and say to myself, “I could never, ever treat a pastor the way I was treated.”
If I’m shocked at anything today, it’s that not even one person responsible for pushing me out has ever apologized for their actions.
Second, I engaged in a lot of self-reproach.
I have this really unhealthy habit of believing bad things people say about me while ignoring the good things.
It’s not so much a self-esteem issue as it is blaming myself for not being perfect.
So when the church board attacked me privately … and their allies attacked me publicly … I figured that I must be who they said I am: a horrible person and pastor.
Nearly every charge made against me was a partial or complete falsehood, and I knew that at the time, but I still blamed myself for not being everything they wanted in a pastor.
Whenever someone severely criticized me, I used to tell myself, “How arrogant of me to think that I can please all 400 adults in this church. I can’t, and nobody else can, either.”
That’s a healthy way to view criticism. But when your critics all align together, and pool their complaints, and fire them off into the ether, it’s natural to think, “They must be right. I must be a colossal bozo.”
That’s why going to counseling was so important for both me and my wife. We needed an outside, objective, different perspective.
We saw two counselors: one who practiced a few miles from that church, and another who practiced in another state.
Both told me the same thing: the way you were treated was wrong, and your critics failed to demonstrate any love or redemption, the tip-off that your opponents were not very spiritual.
Let me quote from Dennis Murray in his book Healing For Pastors & People Following a Sheep Attack:
“The attack on you is not information about you. It is information about the handful of ringleaders who organized the battle…. Healing begins by recognizing that you did the right thing. You were blessed with an incredible ‘manure detector’ that allowed you to see exactly what was happening. You have been blessed with a perceptive intelligence that allows you to distinguish truth from lies. Your intuition is highly developed and you were able to separate fact from fiction.”
Although I still don’t know why my attackers hated me so much, I no longer blame myself for the conflict, and realize that while I made mistakes in ministry, nothing I did justified the way I was treated.
Third, I experienced a normal amount of depression.
Dr. Archibald Hart is the best teacher I’ve ever had. He taught “The Pastor’s Personal Life” class in Fuller Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry program. (And he told me that he would put my book Church Coup on his reading list.)
Dr. Hart believes that whenever you’re depressed, you need to find the core loss, and only then will you start to recover.
My wife and I lost so much after my resignation: my position, my income, my reputation, our house (it was underwater and was sold in a short sale), our church family, our credit rating, and worst of all, most of our friends.
That’s a formula for depression.
When my wife and I attended a Wellness Retreat sponsored by The Ministering to Minister’s Foundation the month after our departure, Dr. Charles Chandler and his colleagues stressed the importance of both going to counseling and taking antidepressants to aid in recovery.
Fortunately, my wife and I were both already doing those things.
After we left our last ministry, we moved to another state 750 miles away. For months, I could either explode in anger or break into tears at the drop of a hat. I spent weeks just walking around the neighborhood where we lived, wondering how I could ever pastor a church again.
My core loss? In my view, I had lost my identity as a person … and in a very real sense, was lost both vocationally and personally.
Which means that to go forward, I would have to reinvent myself vocationally.
Here’s what I’ve learned about depression after a forced departure:
*Whenever I returned to the community where my previous church was located, I would become increasingly anxious and afraid. I can no longer get anywhere near it. It’s poison to my soul.
*Whenever I took a trip out-of-state, my depression lifted, probably because I felt safe.
*Whenever I’ve talked about my situation in public – like in a workshop for Christian leaders – I feel fine.
*Whenever I write a blog, I rarely feel sad because I’m trying to help others by engaging in something redemptive.
*When I wrote my book Church Coup, and had to look at documents that were created during the conflict, I could feel my intestines tie into knots. If it’s a difficult book to read, imagine how painful it was to write. (This is probably why there are very few books written by pastors about their own forced terminations.)
*When I became an interim pastor three years after leaving my last ministry, I felt great most of the time … except when I was drawn into several conflicts.
I’ve been asked if I’m willing to do any more interim work, but right now, the answer is “no.” Whenever I even imagine myself serving at a church, the pressure behind my eyes builds again, and I start feeling a large degree of anxiety.
For me, healing involves working, and being involved in ministry … just not church ministry.
Fourth, I am completely open about every aspect of the conflict.
Years ago, I determined that I would be a pastor who would express his humanity and describe his feelings if it would be redemptive. I grew up with pastors who never let us know who they were or what they felt strongly about, and I didn’t want to be like them.
So when the Lord allowed me to go through a 50-day conflict of which I was the focus, I resolved that I was going to make things redemptive by sharing what happened to me so that I could help others.
Many pastors have who been pushed out of their churches don’t want to talk about what happened to them with anyone. They keep it all inside … for whatever reason.
Maybe they don’t want to relive it. Maybe they don’t want to dwell on the past. Maybe they figure they can’t change what happened.
Or maybe it’s all just too painful.
My ministry mentors are leaders like Archibald Hart, Bill Hybels, and Stephen Brown … men who are authentic and transparent about their feelings and failures.
So if someone wants to talk about our conflict, I’m glad to engage. If someone wants to steer away from the topic, I’ll follow their lead.
Several months ago, I learned that someone who had supported my ministry during the entire time I was at my last church turned against me after I left … and she surely wasn’t the only one.
It hurt me for a moment, but then I figured, “Why should this bother me? I can’t straighten out everybody. Besides, the next time we’ll see each other is in heaven, so she can only hurt me if I let her.”
But I felt that sadness behind the eyes again, and had to wait for it to subside.
To write my book, I had to engage in hours of personal ruminating as well as many interpersonal conversations. My hope was that by writing a complete account of what happened … with commentary from conflict experts … I could put the entire situation behind me.
Writing the book did help a great deal. I don’t have to revisit any major events mentally because I’ve already recorded them.
I would say this: being open about what happened to me probably wrecked any chance I have of returning to church ministry someday, but it’s made me much more empathetic and effective in helping pastors who have undergone this horrendous experience.
And I think that’s a great trade-off.
Finally, I have felt a strong sense of isolation.
I love Sherlock Holmes, whether it’s Doyle’s original stories, the episodes filmed for Masterpiece Theatre in the 1980s, or Benedict Cumberbatch’s current take on Holmes.
Holmes was a consulting detective which means that people who wanted help with a problem had to seek Holmes out directly. They came to him … he didn’t go to them.
When I was a pastor, people emailed and called me for help during the week. They made appointments for my counsel. They sought me before and after services. As an introvert, I loved it when people came to me for help.
I was a somebody at church.
But when you’re no longer a pastor, you suddenly feel like a nobody at every church you visit. And God help you if you tell the pastor that you’re an ex-pastor who would like to use his spiritual gifts to make a difference. Most of the time, you will be perceived as a threat and shunned just for saying that much.
The Christian community simply does not know what to do with its former pastors.
My wife and I live in a desert community. We have many business clients but no real friends in the area. We are not only each other’s best friends … we are each other’s only friends.
We do have some family around: 60 miles away … 75 miles away … 330 miles away … and 490 miles away.
And we do have some good friends we see several times a year.
But it’s not the same as when you have church friends that you see several times a week because they live in your community. We’ve tried going that route, but so far, it hasn’t worked.
In case you’re wondering, I love my life right now. The Lord retired me early, and I enjoy working with my wife, seeing our grandsons, watching sports, and going to concerts and ballgames.
It hasn’t been an easy road, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
This Monday marks seven years since the beginning of the conflict that pushed me out of church ministry. As I do every year, I’ll be writing a special blog about that experience and including some things I’ve never shared before.
If I can help you or a loved one who has undergone a church attack, please let me know. Either leave a comment on this blog or write me at jim@restoringkingdombuilders.org
Sometimes reaching out to someone who understands is the best way to start your recovery.
Honey, thanks for always being honest about your feelings from our experience and choosing to help other hurt pastors. I will always be grateful working at your side.
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Jim, you and Kim were very much loved in Pelham.We were so blessed to have you as our interim pastor. We will never forget you and your lovely wife. Hugs to you and Kim!
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What a lovely note, JoAnn! Thanks so much for reading what I wrote. My mentor was very glad that I went to such a loving and thoughtful church. He said that many interim situations end up a bloody mess!
Please greet all my friends in Pelham!
Jim
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