The *Pastor

Embrace the Asterisk

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Pastors live life like the rest of people. We mow our lawns and wash our dishes. We pursue our interests, from sports to quilting. And we do the ordinary things to take care of ourselves. We get physicals to keep heart disease at bay. We endure a dental cleaning twice yearly to preserve our teeth. We regularly get our car’s brakes checked to stay safe on the road.

But many of us will resist, if not oppose, any suggestion that we see a therapist or otherwise seek help for the monumental stress we bear. Professionally, pastors are prone to everything from narcissism to depression, and yet many of us obstinately refuse to open our lives to a mental health professional.

The problem is that we fear the asterisk.

*Barry Bonds at one time was the Major League Baseball player who hit more home runs in a season than any other. When this is mentioned, however, his name bears an asterisk. *Bonds, it is assumed, could not have done what he did without the help of illegal drugs. The asterisk, real or symbolic, is a mark of his shame. And we pastors will do all that we can to avoid such a mark.

In this, we are not at all unlike others. Andrew Solomon for his book The Noonday Demon interviewed persons from every strata of society who struggled with depression. Many of them refused to allow their stories to be told with their names attached fearing that being known as prone to depression would make them look weak, unstable, and untrustworthy.^⁠¹ Pastors fear this in spades. To struggle with physical disabilities can be inspiring. The blind preacher gets a platform and applause. To struggle with mental health suggests failure, and we hide it. We deny the need for help. We fear the asterisk.

I know I did.

During a particularly hard stretch of my ministry, when I was far too proud to seek help, I was battling nearly debilitating anxiety. It was unsettling. At times my internal anxiety would manifest itself in uncontrollable physical shaking. I finally took the risk of sharing this with a small prayer group. There was a couple in that group who had both recently retired from prominent evangelical institutions and as such were deeply steeped in the expectations of evangelical culture. They heard my confession politely and, having silently attached an asterisk to my name, began looking for a new church.

Our popular vision of pastoral ministry leaves no room for pastors to struggle. To admit to struggling feels like a denial of pastoral fitness. To let it be known that we are relying on a therapist leads some to wonder just how weak we are. The pastor who, as it seems, stands alone in the darkness to battle with the devil is honored. The one who seeks help gets an asterisk.

For thirty years I was persuaded that my strength and my faith precluded the therapy that others needed. My posture masked a terrible pride that God has been painfully dismantling ever since. First he made me see that I was looking to my performance and not to Christ for my salvation. Then he began to destroy the illusion I had of control as the beautiful church I pastored and loved began to fall apart. Through deeply traumatic realities in my personal life he forced me to face the ways in which I had failed my family.

In desperation more than intention I sought out a therapist to help me untangle it all.

There was so much to untangle. I have had to wrestle with the destructive thought patterns behind my anxiety. Together Barb and I have confronted our toxic habits of marital communication. It’s been hard, but it has made me a better pastor and a (marginally!) better husband.

A few years ago I offhandedly mentioned to the congregation that Barb and I were benefiting from therapy. Since that admission church members have thanked me. It gave those who feared shame the courage to seek help. It helped lift the shame felt by those who were in therapy. When the asterisk is normalized no one seems to care about it anymore.

Andrew Solomon, whose book I mentioned earlier, when asked how one who is battling depression ought to confront it, says we first of all just need to talk.

I tell people to talk about it. . . . Talk about it with family if they’ll listen. Talk about it with friends. Talk about it with a therapist. (p. 419)

Few of us have family willing and able to listen to us deeply week after week, and few of us want to burden our friends with our endless, miry, and complicated feelings. A good therapist, on the other hand, wants to be this person and has the training both to listen well and to leverage those conversations toward wholeness.

Do we all need a therapist? Probably not. Might we all benefit from a therapist? Probably.

What we must not do is to try to face our struggles alone. Find a good therapist, the asterisk be damned. My therapist is simply not allowed to retire, quit, change professions, or die before *I do. *I need her insight that much.

Because, yes, *I am that weak.

But somewhere, paradoxically, in that admission of weakness, Scripture says, lies strength.^⁠²

1. Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (United States: Scribner, 2001, 2015 update), p. 363

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2. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9. 10)