Pastors and Mental Health

The issue of mental health and Christians is finally getting some attention. Among the Christians who have challenges, many pastors struggle with depression. We hear too frequently about a pastor committing suicide. And many wonder how such a tragedy could happen to someone whose life was committed to serving the Lord.

I love pastors. Indeed I converse with pastors via a variety of means every day. I know many of them are struggling. Many of them are depressed. And, sadly, many of them are reticent to say anything about their depression lest they be viewed as unfaithful to God and unable to help others.

Possible Issues

I noted in an earlier post some of the issues that may cause depression or at least exacerbate it among pastors. While not all of them are unique to pastors, they are certainly pervasive among these servants of God.

• Spiritual warfare. The Enemy does not want God’s servants to be effective in ministry. He will do whatever it takes to hurt ministers and their ministries.    Continue at Thom Rainer

Depression and the Ministry, Part 1: The Setup

Editor's Note: The following is part one of a five-part series on depression and the ministry. The series is a joint effort of the Biblical Counseling Coalition and The Gospel Coalition.

• Garrett Higbee, Part 2: Occupational Hazards
• Steve Viars, Part 3: A Ministry Sabbatical
• Jeremy Lelek, Part 4: The Need for Wise Disclosure
• Bob Kellemen, Part 5: Facing Depression with Christ

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Sam’s Story

I was there the week it happened. His wife asked to see me. Tearfully she told me that he had walked into the church building that week and announced to his staff that he was “done.” He said he couldn’t face preaching another sermon; that all that he really wanted to do was to run away from his own life. Sam was 45 and the pastor of a vibrant and growing church.

I am convinced that there are important changes needed in pastoral culture and that the number of pastors who find themselves in the range from discouraged to depressed give clear evidence of this. Let me suggest four potential setups of this discouragement/depression cycle in ministry.

Setup #1: Unrealistic Expectations

 

I taught a class at Westminster Seminary on pastoral care and was impressed year after year about how unrealistic the expectations of my future-pastor students were. Year after year my students seemed to forget the two things that consistently make pastoral ministry hard. What are they? The harsh reality of life in a dramatically broken world and what remaining sin does to the hearts of us all. These two things make pastoral ministry a day by day spiritual war.  Continue at Paul Tripp

Battling Depression . . . Together

In 1954, speaking of spiritual depression, Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "I have no hesitation in asserting that one of the reasons why the Christian Church counts for so little in the modern world is that so many Christians are in this condition."

It's striking to hear of how common the struggle was in his day. Depression is no stranger to the great leaders in church history (in fact, it affected quite a lot of them), but neither is depression uncommon in the church today.

So what do we, as a church, do about it? We recently asked biblical counselor Ed Welch. Here's what he said.

Ed Welch is a speaker at our upcoming National Conference. Visit the event page to learn more and register.

For more on the theme of depression see —

• Ed Welch, book, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness
• Ed Welch, booklet, Depression: The Way Up When You Are Down
• John Piper, book, When the Darkness Will Not Lift
• John Piper, book, When I Don't Desire God, chapter 12: "When the Darkness Does Not Lift"
• John Piper, book, Future Grace, chapter 24: "Faith in Future Grace vs. Despondency"

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Other videos from our trip to CCEF and Westminster Theological Seminary —

• The Heart of Sinful Anger (David Powlison)
• Is Sanctification Complex or Simple? (David Powlison)
• How Christ Died To Sin, And Why It Matters (Richard Gaffin)
• Learning About Sanctification From Fyodor Dostoyevsky (David Powlison)
• Why Pornography Robs a Man of His Humanness (Ed Welch)
• The Blessed Struggle Against Fear and Anxiety (Ed Welch)
• God's Aim in Election, and Our Personal Holiness (Richard Gaffin)
• Fear, Anxiety, and Growing in Sanctification (Ed Welch)
• Can I Grow in Holiness Without the Local Church? (David Powlison)

 Credit: Desiring God

Overcoming Spiritual Stagnation

A dark room that reeks of the musty smell that accompanies rot. Alone here, your mind wanders nowhere yet everywhere at the same time. A feeling of dread, loneliness or something wriggles through your bones. A sucking feeling in your gut tips you off that you are hungry but you are not sure. It might just be anxiety. All of this happened because of a keen experience of separation from God. A sort of spiritual anxiety. The Puritans described this feeling with the phrase, “the dark night of the soul.” They knew well about the malady of spiritual depression.

Spiritual stagnation is a problem that will bombard everyone at one point or another. Depression, fears and anxiety gush out, because we feel “separated” from God, from grace. We feel alone, sinful, dirty and unloved—or perhaps unloving.

Part of reason spiritual depression occurs, I am convinced, is because we have a wrong view of Biblical Change. We go to God and ask for ways to overcome our problems, our worries. We look to ourselves and our problems and then to God’s word for helps to our problems. Being lost in our issues, we seek help from God.

Not to throw out the baby with the bath water, one should admit a mixture of good and bad rises in this recipe. The good comes when we seek God in our distress. The bad comes about when we try to find the right “trick” to overcome spiritual depression. These tricks are sometimes hidden under the guise of “practicality” or “practical helps” in Scripture.

Sometimes, however, reading the Bible in order to attain “practical” helps or seeking only what is “practical” (a very popular word these days) becomes an Achilles heal for spiritual athletes. That which promises hope results in further disappointment. These aids crush the runner’s sternum causing a desperate gasps for air instead of the promised jolt of energy so-called practicality promises.   Continue at Wyatt Graham

Spiritual Depression: Seeing Clearly

Lloyd-Jones titles chapter 4 of his book, Spiritual Depression, “Men as Trees, Walking.”  He calls our attention to Mark 8:22-26, an account of Jesus healing a blind man in two “attempts.”  I put the word “attempts” in quotation marks because Lloyd-Jones argues that the first attempt, which resulted in the blind man seeing of sorts (men walking as though trees), was not successful at producing perfectly restored sight.  Lloyd-Jones argues that this miracle was a parable of sorts.  He says it’s placed here in Mark’s gospel as a lesson to the disciples, “to enable the disciples to see themselves as they were” (p. 39).  Lloyd-Jones contends that the disciples were beginning to see Jesus, but they were not yet seeing as fully as they ought.  They were in process.  Their understanding was not yet whole.  They were, like the man in Mark 8, blind and not blind.

In this sermon/chapter, Lloyd-Jones describes the problem this way:

I am concerned about these Christians who are disquieted and unhappy and miserable because of this lack of clarity.  It is almost impossible to define them.  You sometimes talk to this type and you think: “This man is a Christian.”  And then you meet him again and you are thrown into doubt at once, and you say: “Surely he cannot be a Christian if he can say a thing like that or do such a thing as that.”

Whenever you meet this man you get a different impression; and you never quite know whether he is a Christian or not.  You are not happy in saying either that he does see of that he does not see.  Furthermore, the difficulty is that not only do others feel like this about these people, they feel it about themselves.  Let me pay them that tribute, they are unhappy because they are not clear about themselves.  … [T]hey are as troubles about themselves as other Christians are about them; they feel they are, and they feel they are not Christians.  They seem to know enough about Christianity to spoil their enjoyment of the world, and yet they do not know enough to feel happy about themselves.  They are “neither hot nor cold.”   Keep Reading...

Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

I’ve begun reading the book I most wanted to read during vacation, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures.  Recently a new friend gave me a hardback copy published by Granted Ministries.  It’s a handsome volume with an insightful foreword by Geoffrey Thomas.

I know, I’m late to the Spiritual Depression party.  I’ve heard it quoted often.  Many people have shared personal testimonies about how much it’s helped them.  

And on the strength of the quotes (often extended), the personal recommendation of friends, and my general love and trust for Lloyd-Jones, I’ve recommended the book a number of times myself.  But until now, I’ve actually never read it.  I’m excited to be correcting that omission over the next couple days.  And along the way, I’m equally excited to hear the good Doctor’s original sermons that became this classic treatise on the Christian life.

So, over the next few days, Lord willing, I hope to post some reflections and thoughts as I read through the book.  Today, I want to offer a brief summary of Thomas’ biographical foreword and Lloyd-Jones’ brief preface.

Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures, 1

Spiritual Depression, 2

Spiritual Depression, 3

Spiritual Depression

Pastor Steve Cornell at his Wisdom for Life blog recently posted some great quotes from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book Spiritual Depression. Read his original post, repeated below, at Spiritual Depression.

Quote # 1: Talking to Ourselves Is Good!

“I say we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ‘ourselves’ to talk to us. Do you know what that means? I suggest that the whole trouble of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow ourselves to talk to us instead of talking to our selves.

Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

Take those thoughts that come to you when you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Yourself is talking to you.

Now this man’s (David in Psalm 42:5, 11) treatment is this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, oh my soul?’ he asks. His soul has been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self listen for a moment and I will speak to you.’” Keep Reading...

The Soul's Thirst

Every soul thirsts. This thirst may not be obvious in every moment, but at some point and to some degree every soul thirsts after something, something it does not have. We are rarely content in our current condition, rarely content just the way we are. But while we all thirst, we do not all thirst in the same way. Donald Whitney’s book Ten Questions To Diagnose Your Spiritual Health has much to say about this. Whitney identifies 3 ways in which our souls thirst.

The Thirst of the Empty Soul

The soul of the unbeliever is empty toward the things of God. Until the Spirit fills the soul with his presence, it is devoid of any love for God. Without God, the unbeliever is constantly looking for something, anything. But he is unable to fill the emptiness. This is something many people do not understand, but something the Bible teaches clearly: While the believer’s soul is empty because he does not know God, he does not and cannot seek to fill it with God. Many people believe that unbelievers are truly seeking after God but unable to find him. The Bible tells us, though, that the empty soul is unable to understand or satisfy this thirst. Not only that, but the empty soul does not want to understand this thirst, and would not, even if it were possible. The empty soul is completely and fully opposed to God; it is deceitful and desperately wicked. As Paul writes in Romans 3:11, quoting David, “no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Psalm 14:2). Keep Reading...

Spiritual Depression: An Interview with John Newton

John Newton wrote a number of valuable letters on the high marks and the low points of the Christian life. One of those letters was originally to a pastor. But as you will soon see, it has application for every Christian, especially on the topic of spiritual depression (see Psalm 42:1–11).

For this entry in the series I’ve chosen to reformat one letter into an interview. We’ll see how it goes.

Rev. Newton, thanks for your time today. Let’s begin discussing the topic of how spiritual depression affects pastors. You have many years of pastoral experience yourself. Does God preserve pastors from undergoing spiritual valleys? Do pastors get a special divine favor and higher proportion of comforts in life to better serve their local churches?

Give me leave to ask pastors: What would you do if you did not find yourself occasionally poor, insufficient, and stupid?

Are you aware of what might be the possible, the probable, the almost certain consequences, if you always found your spirit enlarged, and your frames lively and comfortable? Keep Reading...

The Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment of Spiritual Dehydration

Let me begin this post by asking you four direct questions about the condition of your soul right now:

• Do you sense that your affections for the Savior have diminished recently?
• Has your appetite for Scripture weakened?
• Does your soul seem dry?
• Does God seem distant from you?
  

If so, you are not alone. These struggles are common to even the most mature Christians—so common that Scripture anticipates them. But these are serious problems and must be addressed and not ignored. They don’t just go away over time.

So how should we respond?

Tucked away in the short (and often neglected) letter of Jude we find help and hope:

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20–21)

In these verses we find a command and three practical ways to obey the command. Continue reading>>>