I have been printing articles recently that zero in on depression.  Today’s article wasn’t one I had spent much thought on at all.  The fact is that our Pastor’s do in fact struggle with depression just like the rest of society.  In rare cases, as this article will show,  a Pastor will end his depression by taking his own life.  Stigma in the church regarding mental illness is a sad reality.  Imagine being a spiritual leader and the pressures they face as depression afflicts them.  Pray for our spiritual leaders.  The road they walk can be difficult.  There are two excellent resources listed at the conclusion of this article.  If you are a minister or a minister’s family member please take note of them. Allan

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE

Published: November 2, 2009

HICKORY – What kind of personal pain would cause a 42-year-old pastor to abandon his family, his calling and even life itself? Members of a Baptist church are asking that question after their pastor committed suicide in his parked car in September.

Those who counsel pastors say Christian culture, especially Southern evangelicalism, creates the perfect environment for depression. Pastors suffer in silence, unwilling or unable to ask for help or even talk about it. Sometimes they leave the ministry. Occasionally the result is the unthinkable.

Experts say clergy suicide is a rare outcome to a common problem. But Baptists in the Carolinas are soul searching after a spate of suicides and suicide attempts by pastors. In addition to the September suicide of David Treadway, two others in North Carolina attempted suicide, and three in South Carolina succeeded, all in the last four years.

Being a pastor — a high-profile, high-stress job with nearly impossible expectations for success — can send one down the road to depression, according to pastoral counselors.

“We set the bar so high that most pastors can’t achieve that,” said H.B. London, vice president for pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. “And because most pastors are people-pleasers, they get frustrated and feel they can’t live up to that.”

When pastors fail to live up to demands imposed by themselves or others, they often “turn their frustration back on themselves,” leading to self-doubt and to feelings of failure and hopelessness, said Fred Smoot, executive director of Emory Clergy Care in Duluth, Ga., which provides pastoral care to 1,200 United Methodist ministers in Georgia.

A pastor is like “a 24-hour ER” who is supposed to be available to any congregant at any time, said Steve Scoggin, president of CareNet, a network of 21 pastoral counseling centers in North Carolina. “We create an environment that makes it hard to admit our humanity.”

It’s a job that breeds isolation and loneliness — the pastorate’s “greatest occupational hazards,” said Scoggin, who counsels many Baptist and other ministers. “These suicides are born out of a lack of those social supports that can intervene in times of personal crisis.”

No one knows for sure how many ministers suffer depression or attempt suicide. “It’s like nailing Jell-O to the wall,” said London. But he estimated 18 percent to 25 percent of all ministers are depressed at any one time.

Most counselors and psychologists interviewed for this article agreed depression among clergy is at least as prevalent as in the general population. As many as 12 percent of men and 26 percent of women will experience major depression during their lifetime, according to the American Medical Association.

“The likelihood is that one out of every four pastors is depressed,” said Matthew Stanford, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

But anxiety and depression in the pulpit are “markedly higher” in the last five years, Smoot said. “The current economic crisis has caused many of our pastors to go into depression.”

Besides the recession’s strain on church budgets, depressed pastors increasingly report frustration over their congregations’ resistance to cultural change.

Most depression does not lead to suicide, but almost all suicides begin with depression. Depression causes two-thirds of the 30,000 suicides reported each year, the AMA says.

Nearly two out of three depressed people don’t pursue treatment, according to studies by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Counselors say even fewer depressed ministers get treated because of career fears, social stigma and spiritual taboo.

“Clergy do not talk about it because it violates their understanding of their faith,” Scoggin said. “They believe they are not supposed to have those kinds of thoughts.”

Treadway, pastor of Sandy Ridge Baptist Church in Hickory, was the exception. He told his congregation he was in treatment several months before his suicide. Still the shock was hard to absorb, co-workers said.

Rodney Powe, worship pastor at the church, said he only now understands depression is a mental illness. Christians who don’t experience depression trivialize it, he said. “We just say, ‘Come on, get over it. We have the hope of Christ and the Holy Spirit.’”

Click    HERE for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Click    HERE for The Parsonage.  A ministry of Focus On The Family to ministers and their families.   Their Pastoral Care Line is available Monday thru Friday from 9:00a.m. to 4:00p.m.  mountain time.  They can be reached at     Toll-free: (877) 233-4455

It’s been a year and a half since Steven Curtis Chapman lost his youngest daughter, 5-year-old Maria Sue, to a tragic accident at the family’s Tennessee home. Maria’s death rocked her father’s world, causing Steven and his wife, Mary Beth, to question God and their faith, while also clinging to the hope of things to come. The grieving process brought Steven, like King David, to his knees, simultaneously shouting at God while also desperately grasping for hope. Chapman journaled the journey, which he likens to penning his own Psalms—and not surprisingly, many of them turned into songs, and now his first album since Maria’s passing, Beauty Will Rise.

Chapman spoke with CT about losing his daughter, the “black hole” of pain and despair, and the glimmers of life they’ve clung to through the last 18 months—including the opening of Maria’s Big House of Hope, a healing home in China for special needs children. The Chapmans had already adopted two Chinese girls before Maria, so returning to China over the summer to open Maria’s Big House was a bittersweet time to both mourn Maria yet again, but to celebrate her life and legacy.

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a piece of art where hope and pain are so beautifully intertwined. You’ve said it didn’t feel so much like making a record, as you were just being David recording your personal psalms.

Yeah, I was hiding out in the valley of the shadow of death, just crying out to God. Man, I’ve never been so thankful for the Psalms. I’m not sure I really even got the Psalms until I walked through this. Obviously the Psalms were a great comfort before walking through the valley, but all of a sudden, I’m just so thankful for God’s honesty to us, to allow us to look into the heart of a schizophrenic worshiper like David, because that’s what I’ve found myself to be. To go in the same breath, How long, O Lord. Where are you, God? Are you doing anything about this? Do you even hear me? to But I’ll trust you. Your love is better than life. I worship you. I praise you. How can you do that? But I have, and my family has.

I almost get this image of David beating on his chest when he’s saying, “Why are you so downcast within me?” He’s thinking, Heart, come on. Get with it. You know what’s true. Hope in God. It’s like that for me, where my heart and mind are going into this dark abyss. But then I say, Wait a minute. Come back. Come back to your senses. For me, that’s where these songs came from.

What else was non-typical about making this album?

I ignored every rule that I’ve ever had for myself for making records. I’ve always been a rule follower. Even when I was a kid, I tried to do everything by the book. Over the years writing songs, I’ve developed some rules—always thinking of the listener and always putting myself on their side of the speakers and going, Okay, my job is to try and put this thought in a way that they’re going to be able to grab hold of and stick in their own pocket in their own life, in their own heart and experience.

 

Chapman and Maria, shortly after her adoption

I’ve done it so long, these things just come automatically. But here, I ignored the rules. This wasn’t me writing songs. This was me just screaming and crying out to God. Nobody heard these songs, not even my wife till most of them were recorded. No record guys. No managers. I am prone to reshape and refashion things to try and please as many people as I can, to get as many nods or smiles out of as many people as possible. But this was such a completely different thing. It was important that it’s coming straight out of my gut and out of my heart. That was a strange, scary process, but it was important that whatever it is—good, bad, ugly—it’s true and it’s real.

What reactions are you getting so far?

People have said the songs are almost at times unbearably hard to listen to, and yet they say, “I somehow they walk away with a sense of this incredible hope that obviously has sustained you guys through this.” And I’m like, okay, glory to God on that.

Besides writing these songs, how else have you dealt with your pain?

I read a handful of really good, encouraging books. We received a lot of books from well-meaning folks, but grief is so unique. Our pain is as unique as our DNA, very specific the way you’re going to work through this. But there were a handful of things that really grabbed my heart in a dark place and bring me back.

Jerry Sittser’s book, A Grace Disguised, was very helpful. He went through an incredible loss of his own—his wife, daughter, and mother, all killed in an accident. He’s professor of theology at Whitworth College, so he’s got a deep theological understanding of death and hope and grief. But all that went out the window for him, and this is his real journey. I think it helped us because it was so painfully honest but also so incredibly hopeful.

Others that have helped were A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, and Brennan Manning’s Ruthless Trust.

How did you decide on the title, Beauty Will Rise?

We were in China last May when the earthquake hit [the 2008 Sichuan quake that killed 70,000], though we were sitting in the Shanghai airport when it happened, so we didn’t feel it. But when we came home, we heard about all the devastation. And then two weeks later, our earthquake hit [when Maria was killed]. And that was a real connection for me, in a way, to pray. In a lot of ways it was one of the ways we survived. When I turned everything inward, with the pain, questions, and devastation in our own family, I felt like I was going to cave in. But when I could pray for other people, when I could say, God, these people are feeling the same thing. Please give them the comfort that we are finding in your promises and the fact that we’re going to see our little girl again. We know that hope. These people don’t; they’re in a more desperate place than we are, because they don’t know. Let us share that with them.

As I thought of that, I had this desire to go back to China—which we did this summer—to the earthquake zone and sing over these people the hope that has sustained us. I was connecting our day of loss and destruction to theirs and saying, You know, today the world went wrong. But out of this, if I really believe God’s Word and God’s promises, God will bring beauty out of these ashes. And this is our hope. This is our comfort. And as I wrote that song [the title track], it just captured the heart of what I would say in this album. That this is the promise, God. Beauty will rise out of this. I’m not going to pretend to know what that’s going to look like. There’s going to be a lot of it that we won’t even see until heaven. But this is what I know to be true.

To finish reading this article please click   HERE.

Read more about Steven Curtis Chapman at his official website, and about their adoption aid agency, Show Hope, here. Read more about Maria here.

Last week I posted an article that spoke about violence and how it relates to mental illness.  The article stated that those with a mental illness are no more a danger to society than the population at large.  That article can be read   HERE.

“In fact, people with mental illness are not more dangerous than the general population –unless they are abusing alcohol or drugs and they have untreated serious mental illness. They are far more likely to be the victims of violence than its perpetrators, at a rate 11 times higher than the general population.”

Little did I know that within two days our nation would be rocked to its core when a lone gunman murdered 13 people and injured 31 more at Fort Hood Army  Base located in Texas.  As I read the news and watched the news shows everyone was offering their ideas as to what went wrong.  One of the theories some are floating is that Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist is a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Although he never saw combat Hasan did counsel those who did see combat as they returned from their tours.

Hopefully the full truth of this brutal murder of innocent people will come to light.  Until then people are going to be expressing their opinions and some will be very inflammatory.  I do not wish to be a part of THAT conversation.  I do find it hard to believe a person can become afflicted with PTSD by listening to the experiences of others.  If that’s the case then every person who does what Hasan did as he listened to troubled individuals is a potential mass murderer.  Who’s to say those in the field of counseling those with mental illness aren’t also potential mass murderers?

I realize that Hasan is unique in that he is a Muslim.  Does that unique tension excuse what Hasan did?  I don’t believe so but will leave the door open for now for those who insist this is the case.

For the time this blog has existed I have spent a good deal of time and effort on the topic of PTSD.  There is a video you can view and also much information you can read that will help educate you.  Click   HERE to view the video titled “The Soldier’s Heart” that will educate you about PTSD. I have two links to organizations whose job is to seek and reach out to our veterans who suffer with PTSD.  Click   HERE to view the site “Give An Hour” and you will be amazed at what professionals throughout the nation are doing to help returning veterans with PTSD.  Then click   HERE to view the site “Military Ministry” that is seeking to offer spiritual solutions to the men and women of our military through the love of Jesus.  As you may be hearing PTSD is very wide spread among our returning veterans.  The armed forces aren’t equipped to deal with everyone who is returning that needs help.  As you can see there are those who are seeking to make a difference.

Many in our armed forces won’t seek help because of the stigma that is attached to mental illness.  This stigma reaches across our society and sadly even into some of our churches.  With so many linking Hasan with PTSD I’m afraid that this stigma will now grow as some begin to believe that victims of PTSD are now a danger to our society?  We need to see people stand up and say that these innocent men and women are victims of a disorder.  Many of them are real life heroes who have given all they had to serve our country.  We need to give all we have to see that they are taken care of in their time of crisis.

PTSD is not restricted to those who have been in the military.  We are talking about people who have experienced traumatic and life altering events that are all too common in a society where the boundaries of right and wrong no longer exist for so many.  The weak, innocent, and unprotected of our society are their victims.  Some of these victims are in our churches and we’d never guess who they are.  They need to be able to feel safe in coming forward for help.  That won’t happen until these people believe it is safe to come forward.

Today at church we went through 1 Timothy 5 that speaks about widows.  Before the message began our Pastor absolutely blew me away with what he did.  He asked every widow in the building to stand up and to come forward to the front.  He then asked each of them their name, their late husband’s name, and how long they had been a widow.  In our service maybe a dozen or more women went forward.  The church presented them with a gift card to a restaurant and asked them to let the church know they were widows so the church could help take care of them.  I was surprised a s a few of the women had been widows for only a few months.  One was a young woman that I would never have thought of as being a widow in a million years.  These women came forward because there is no shame in being a widow.  In fact we are to honor them.

I’m convinced that as time goes on we are going to see more people suffering mentally.  It could be depression, anxiety, PTSD, bi-polar disorder, or maybe something else.  It’s clear that our armed forces need to be more prepared so they can help the returning vets who have not only been physically wounded but those whose scars are emotional and unseen.

The church has always led the way in helping the needy and hurting.  Sadly we have dropped the ball when it comes to those in our midst who are battling  mental illness.  The question before the church is when those who are suffering emotionally need us will we be there for them?

“When they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushments…and they were smitten” 2 Chronicles. 20:22

Oh, that we could reason less about our troubles, and sing and praise more! There are thousands of things that we wear as shackles which we might use as instruments with music in them, if we only knew how.

Those men that ponder, and meditate, and weigh the affairs of life, and study the mysterious developments of God’s providence, and wonder why they should be burdened and thwarted and hampered–how different and how much more joyful would be their lives, if, instead of forever indulging in self-revolving and inward thinking, they would take their experiences, day by day, and lift them up, and praise God for them.

We can sing our cares away easier than we can reason them away. Sing in the morning. The birds are the earliest to sing, and birds are more without care than anything else that I know of.

Sing at evening. Singing is the last thing that robins do. When they have done their daily work; when they have flown their last flight, and picked up their last morsel of food, then on a topmost twig, they sing one song of praise.

Oh, that we might sing morning and evening, and let song touch song all the way through.  –Selected

“Don’t let the song go out of your life
Though it chance sometimes to flow
In a minor strain; it will blend again
With the major tone you know

“What though shadows rise to obscure life’s skies,
And hide for a time the sun,
The sooner they’ll lift and reveal the rift,
If you let the melody run.

“Don’t let the song go out of your life;
Though the voice may have lost its trill,
Though the tremulous note may die in your throat,
Let it sing in your spirit still.

“Don’t let the song go out of your life;
Let it ring in the soul while here;
And when you go hence, ’twill follow you thence,
And live on in another sphere.”

All of this week’s music was chosen by my Canadian friend, Owen.  There is some beautiful music here for you to give a listen to.  Thank you OWEN!!

Song List

1.  Grace Like Rain-  Todd Agnew

2.  I Go To The Rock-  Whitney Houston

3.  Second Chance Song -  Anointed

4.  The Robe-  Wes King

5.  Knees To The Earth-  Watermark

6.  He’s All You Need-  Steve Camp

7.  A Song In The Night-  Silverwind

8.  Psalm 40-  New Song

9.  He’ll Take Care Of The Rest-  Keith Green

10.  This Little Child-  Scott Wesley Brown

11.  Was It A Morning Like This?-  Sandi Patti

12.  Light Of The Stable-  Selah

“Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own. To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.” John Calvin

Past Prayer Requests

Allan-  Pastor John Duncan is hospitalized as the result of a motorcycle accident. His leg was severely damaged. Please pray that John’s leg would heal completely. Update:  John is now home and recovering.  Still needs much prayer as he is dealing with severe pain.

Allan-  Oden’s six month old son had a liver transplant.  Pray that his body doesn’t reject it and that he recovers swiftly and completely.

White Horses- Prayer for anxious thoughts and worrying.

Allan-  My mother is going to need bypass surgery on both legs.  She has Peripheral Arterial Disease.

Long Term Prayer Requests

Shaun Sells-  Keep Shaun in prayer for wisdom as he seeks to continue his ministry to those with mental illness in his church.

Dusty- Continued prayer for deep depression.

Rachel-  Continued prayer as she struggles with bi-polar disorder.

Natalie Tan-   She is battling an eating disorder and has a tough battle ahead of her. There is a new article posted that is about her. She puts a face to eating disorders and is a young woman that will need prayer.

Allan-  Our nephew’s wife has M.S.

Dorci- I would love it if people could pray that our son Eric would fall in love with Jesus and would follow Him with all his heart. Thank you.

miniErunner- Please pray for my best friend’s father. He was just diagnosed with throat cancer and will be starting intense chemo within the next few weeks. Please also pray for his wife and 2 daughters. Pray that they will stay strong through all of this. Update – Surgery was done and his voice box was removed.  He will now undergo further treatment.

Past Praise Report

Allan-  Oden’s son Seth is now home from the hospital having received a new liver. Please pray that his body will heal quickly from the surgery and that his body will accept his new liver perfectly.

Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane

As I posted last week Peter-John Courson is now a part of the extended More Than Coping family as he has agreed to allow me to link to his church and personal blog.  That also means I can grab articles like this and share them with you.  This article is something I believe speaks directly into our lives and even more directly to those who have or are suffering.  I pray God would bless you through PJ’s writing.  Allan

Hebrews 11:35b  … and others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:

“Others”.

A little word found in Hebrews 11 that changes everything.

Sure, Hebrews 11 tells us the incredible exploits of faith.

By faith Abraham became a father, the people passed through the Red Sea, Rahab survived the fall of Jericho.

By faith, Samson destroyed the Philistines, David felled the giant, women saw their dead children raised to life.

But how about the “others” (verse 35).

As in “others were tortured and refused to be released, faced flogging and put in prison, stoned and sawed in half”.

Why? For a “better resurrection”.

As awe-inspiring as the former feats of faith were, it was the faith of “others” who never saw the miracle or deliverance of a Samson or David that stands out…

Because better than the miracle for the moment or the deliverance for the day was the hope that they were holding to, which was eternal….a better resurrection.

A John the Baptist who had his head on a platter.

A courageous mother telling her sons, “it was not I who gave you life and death but the creator of all things, who in His mercy will give you life back again”, as she watched her sons slaughtered. And this ignited the Maccabean revolution in Jerusalem.

A Jonathan who died in the hills of battle while his friend David ascended to the throne.

A Savior who sweated blood but submitted to the cup that was His to drink.

And you know, today, for every testimony of a miraculous moment or divine deliverance there is the testimony of “others”. Those that hold on despite having not yet seen the miracle or deliverance take place.

And maybe that is the most robust faith of all.

Yes there are those that can attest to being healed of their cancer, marriages that are saved, jobs that instaneously open up, kids that turn around, finances that funnel in, ect ect…

Than there are “others”…those that have not yet seen those things yet hold on to their faith in hopes of a “better resurrection”.

Maybe God wants to do more in your life today than a miracle. That might be just a resuscitation. But maybe He wants to do more than a resuscitation. Maybe He wants to bring about a resurrection, a better resurrection.

…An eternal purpose that might well only be seen in light of eternity.

So today, you may see the moment of the miraculous or divine deliverance for the issues that are challenging you this day. Or…

Or you might be included in that great company simply classified as “others”, holding on in hopes of a “better resurrection”.