Stress, Power and Ministry
by John C. Harris
Excerpts Prepared by Dr. Neil Chadwick
What our situation requires is pastors with the capacity for autonomy.
Autonomy has to do with a person's inner ability to govern himself. The concept of autonomy, as I see it, does not mean noisy self-assertion, adolescent rebellion against authority, or rugged lonerism.
The pastor's autonomy is a capacity to balance and resolve opposing demands within himself and between himself and the congregation. It is the ability to do so in keeping with his personal values and intelligent self interest and with the interests of the congregation.
It does not contradict the concept of ministry as servanthood, but is its essential accompaniment. In order to sustain a creative degree of tension, to take risks, to be out front about his hopes and intentions, to tolerate ambiguity, to stand criticism, to challenge prevailing norms -- the pastor must have within himself the ability to be an autonomous person.
For Christians, obedience to God does not mean the surrender of self-hood, but a willing commitment of energy, talent, and reason to the purposes of Christ. Page 70-71
It is the pastor's business to develop a high degree of autonomy within himself. Page 73
Only pastors who struggle to become more free as persons in the company of others are free in themselves to assist others' search for freedom.
In our day it is popular to define autonomy as freedom to do your own thing, free of the claims of others, usually others like bosses, parents, organizations, neighbors who we fear will take control over us, if they haven't already, and block our way to self-fulfillment.
The root meaning of autonomy is to be self-governing. To be autonomous is to stand on one's own feet in authentic relationship with other persons.
Anyone capable of introducing or sustaining the anxiety necessary for spiritual growth must be self-governing. He cannot expect to be loved. He needs to be able to stand alone, to help others see the illusion behind their wishes for a safe world, to get temporarily on bad terms with others when it is necessary. Page 75
Voluntary nature of the church, the structural dependence of the pastor, inescapable presence of his vision and values - a volatile mix.
Churches are voluntary religious associations. Their stability depends in equal parts upon consensus about the vision and purposes of the congregation and upon the satisfaction members get from participation. Consensus refers to an agreed-on set of values, norms, perceptions and behaviors that make up the portrait of that particular church. This network of beliefs and behaviors is in every church.
Subjectively, it supports the credibility of important notions about life's meaning and the place its members occupy in the world. These notions continue to feel valid and right because in large measure other members continue to uphold them.
Any threat to the consensus predictably floods the congregation with tension, a mixture of fear and excitement, leading to a crisis.
To achieve inclusion, the pastor must be perceived as one who values the existing consensus, and yet one who has earned the right to test its adequacy and play a part in changing its nature. He must be recognized as a trusted person, capable of giving and receiving straight talk. Page 82-83
The testing process is also to find out whether or not the pastor can be creatively assimilated into the congregation in a way that preserves its stability while simultaneously keeping open the possibilities of new direction, new learning, and deepened spiritual growth. This process entails pain. Because it is the nature of any human group to protect the status quo, there is an unspoken general wish to avoid confronting the trouble people feel. In fact, the failure to deal at all openly with these issues of inclusion and leadership is well nigh universal in parishes. Page 84
A seldom mentioned fact of church life is the reality of a special, though often unconscious, pressure upon clergy. Lacking a better term, I will call it structural dependence. This means that pastors in mainline denominations derive their basic economic support and their vocational identity from an occupational system.
Structural dependence creates very real psychic and economic vulnerability for a pastor, a condition which involves not only his power to lead, but his livelihood, his reputation, his vocational identity, his future career.
To the degree the occupational system supports and affirms their vocational identity -- pastors are apt to lose their internal freedom to act as authentic persons within the local church.
Pastors particularly must develop acute sensitivity to the institutional pressures inside themselves that tend to shut down their courage and independence. Page 86-87
Each new clergyman is a threatening (and exciting) intrusion into the life of a church precisely because he brings his own operative values and vision. We wouldn't want him any other way, not if he is to supply energy and directions and to facilitate the spiritual growth and ministries of others like him.
To incorporate him or her means the effective integration of the pastor's spiritual vision about the church's task.
Jud's group of ex-pastors left primarily because of conflicts with the leadership of their congregations about the nature of the minister's work.
There are also pervasive hopes that the pastor can be smoothly absorbed into the status quo. Churches do not hire a pastor, not at first. They hire a knotted tangle of messianic, erotic, parental wishes and hopes dropped crazy quilt fashion on the shoulders of one finite, limited individual. Page 89-90
The pastor carries a heavy bag of his own illusions, values and fantasies. The process by which he gains authority to lead the church is one substituting fantasy for a measure of reality the congregation and the minister have to develop the capacity to see and treat each other as real persons, not the projection of unfulfilled wishes. Obviously, this process cannot begin, let alone occur successfully, without reflection, a degree of fear, sleepless nights, and not a few exhausting meetings. It occurs as people learn the ability to say to each other specifically what they appreciate, what they miss in their relationships, and what's important at the heart of their lives.
Ultimately the process of legitimizing a new pastor's authority is one of negotiation in which real people sit down, despite their fears and fantasies, and talk together about real things: the demands of the environment upon the church, who the church will serve, how resources and talents can flourish, who does what, and how they'll know it is getting done.
Fear is the most important emotional force. Fear blocks the power of the laity to express themselves to the pastor (except perhaps ineffectively or destructively) and it blocks the power of the pastor to speak his mind to the laity, caringly and thoughtfully, without jeopardy. Fear-dominated churches push people to become tense, uncommunicative, and unreal with each other.
In today's church, the pastor's ability to lead with authority is, above all, an act of personal autonomy. In particular, it involves his capacity to face fear in himself, to share influence, to lead the membership into reflections upon the meaning of life together, to build an atmosphere where the irrational forces of church life are taken seriously, to have the courage to reveal his own needs and judgements and to be accessible to influence in return. To be sure, religious authenticity requires not only autonomous people, but autonomous relationships. Yet the pastor cannot wait for someone else to begin; he must have Abraham's vision and courage - to start alone the journey with its unforseen ending. Page 91-94
For many clergy, difficulties in coping with the stress of parish leadership stem from the pastor's dependent status in the church.
Churches cannot sustain viability without leadership that is risk-taking, collaborative and vulnerable to change -- precisely those constructive qualities of personal assertion that, under conditions of dependency, threaten the pastor's emotional and economic well-being.
Dependency and powerlessness are linked together. We are reluctant to take risks with whatever gives us bread and belonging. And if we look at the same source for our recognition and fulfillment as well, our reluctance to risk, to be vulnerable, is even greater. In exchange for these -- fulfillment, recognition, belonging and food -- we may (and often do) surrender autonomy and the ability to exert firm personal influence.
The more the church's environment changes, the greater the church's need for thoughtful, challenging clergy leadership. The more his interventions rupture old perceptions and bring fresh perspectives, the higher the economic and emotional risks to the pastor. Page 115
To remain adaptive, churches must learn to develop reward systems that give status to risk-taking that honor the acquisitions of knowledge, that give distinction to new forms of innovative congregational life. Page 123
The church cannot be counted on to be a sensitive and wise employer. The church is a flawed, often insensitive, often coercive, often paternalistic organization toward its principal employees. The depth and keenness of this realization for a pastor is critical since it connects directly with his motivation to develop greater direction over his own personal and professional life.
Clergy associations foster a definite sense of distance of independence, from the institutional church. The presence of such psychological distance is essential for a pastor's depending sense of autonomy. This experience makes it possible for a pastor to feel less absorbed into the church and therefore less helpless at the hands of his judicatory or congregation.
The church's need for compassionate, forceful clergy leadership runs afoul of its own traditional practices as an employer. Security breeds passivity. And passivity and risk-taking are mutually exclusive. A pastor who does not (for reasons of security) challenge the negative conditions under which he works is not apt to challenge effectively the same church to face complex issues or to examine its own life. Both go hand in hand. The link, therefore, between the pastor's willingness to let go security and his adaptive leadership is a clear and a direct one. Page 151-152
These three self-realizations ("moving into anxiety", "I can survive", "the church makes a lousy mother"), have a strengthening effect on the pastor, increasing his power to lead.
Their net effect is twofold. First, to make possible a sufficient separation between the pastor and his congregation so that he can stand up against it, setting the tension necessary for growth. Second, to deepen a pastor's consciousness of his self-respect and inner freedom to the point he can be allied with his congregation as a friend and an equal.
For a pastor to seek autonomy seriously means that he has come to the point that he does not expect the Church to assume responsibility for his life and well being.
Autonomy is not a socially isolated state of being. It does not mean doing your own thing as pastor, imposing on the laity your vision of the church, being a law unto yourself. For clergy it is, the capacity for inner self-direction in the company of others whom he is called to serve. Page 156-158
Autonomy leads to more, not less, openness in relation to the laity. Given the whirlpool of forces besetting clergy today, they must have as a matter of course, the inner capacity to act under stress and to withstand considerable loneliness, and the willingness to push steadily for interdependent relationships with laity in pursuit of the church's mission.
There are, in my judgment, three promising paths for the pastor toward greater autonomy. First, by gaining greater independence within the church's world of work, thereby reducing his sense of psychic captivity within the institution. Second, by acquiring competence: as an authentic guide into the Christian life for a congregation. Third, by developing the capacity for sustained personal growth under the pressures of parish leadership.
For today's pastors, these core elements are central to the realization of firm leadership under stress. Each carries the individual pastor in two directions at once - towards solidifying inner resources and toward greater solidarity with others in the congregation and the community. Page 159
Reprinted from Stress, Power, and Money by J.C. Harris, by permission of
the Alban Institute, Inc., 7315 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 1250W, Bethesda,
Maryland 20814-3211. Copyright © . All rights reserved.
- - Return to Top of this Page 
- Email a Link to this Page
- Go To Next Article
- Listing of All Articles
- Back To Leadership Articles
- - Download This Article
