Bolstered by a strength that comes from outside themselves, few people are better-equipped to deal with job stress than pastors, yet the pressure to inspire and long hours spent ministering in often-heartbreaking circumstances are enough to wear almost anyone down.
When it all gets too much, it’s time for some R&R, clergy-style.
“There are some days you’re so exhausted you just can’t talk to one more person,” said Betty Jo “B.J.” Birkhahn-Rommelfanger, pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Waukegan, who unwinds by traveling. “The emotional demands on a pastor–and the administrative demands–by the time you’re done with a 12- or 14-hour day, you have to find a breather.”
That takes many forms, from playing golf to curling up with a good book, from going abroad to dinners with friends who know them as people first and preachers second.
Then there is Bishop Tom Paprocki, marathon runner, hockey player–and auxiliary bishop for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.
The job is demanding. He works with 60 pastors and attends numerous confirmations, jubilees, meetings and other archdiocese business.
Sports provides an escape for the Little Village native, a lifelong Blackhawks fan who plays floor, roller and ice hockey.
Despite the sport’s reputation for violence, however, Paprocki, 52, is not exactly an old-time pugilist priest. In fact, he’s usually living up to his nickname, the “Holy Goalie,” in attitude as well as in the net.
“I’m pretty much looking for the puck,” he said, “I’m not scrapping with the other players that much.”
He has also run 11 marathons, raising $174,000 in pledges for charity in the process. Running, often by himself, “is a total diversion” that gets him back to God, he says.
“I say the Hail Mary while I’m running, I just keep repeating it like a mantra,” he said. “Other times I pray in my own words, just communicating with the Lord.”
Pastors also value good company, whether it’s venting to or seeking advice from other ministers, or dining with parishioners who are comfortable hanging out with them.
“People have ideas of what a priest should say or how they should act,” said Rev. Rich Yanos, pastor of Prince of Peace parish in Lake Villa. “The reality is, we’re human beings . . . [and] it’s nice to be with people who can let you be yourself.”
Birkhahn-Rommelfanger and her husband have traveled the world, from London to Japan to the Grand Canyon.
“I believe God is in the world, so for me to go and be in the canyons in Arizona, it’s very spiritual,” she said.
Indeed, Rev. Phil Blackwell, pastor of First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, says his cabin in Wisconsin is “the sanity point, an alternative landscape,” that keeps him going.
The quiet and solitude allow him to read, think and, gloriously, to sleep in.
“It’s almost a purgation, an emptying out of the tensions and the constant carrying around of things to do,” Blackwell said. “Just putting it down long enough to find something else to do and come back fresh.”
One challenge married pastors face is trying to find time for their own families when they spend so much time with others’.
There is a wry joke that “if a rabbi or a pastor is at the bedside of his wife–if she’s on her deathbed and someone calls because of a hangnail, the rabbi will go,” said Ira Youdovin, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis.
Youdovin’s father-in-law, now in his 90s, is also a rabbi, and Youdovin said it was harder in the old days.
“There was no such thing as a day off. God rested on the 7th day but the rabbi can’t,” he said. “Friday night services, Saturday night services–if there’s a bar mitzvah or a funeral they probably attend that too. Their family togetherness was visiting cemeteries–unveiling the headstones or the funerals themselves. That’s changed somewhat.”
But it still takes an effort on the part of the clergyman.
“Because of the requirements of time, we’re able to talk about family a lot but not be with them as much as we like,” said Rabbi Paul Caplan of Temple Anshe Sholom in Olympia Fields, who makes time. “Just being with them is relaxing, we don’t have to `do’ anything.”
However they do it, renewing the spirit is vital to ministers. Many are overworked and underpaid. The demands to always be “on” can weigh them down.
“A pastor’s work is different from those who go to work and then come home,” said Erwin Lutzer, pastor of The Moody Church in Chicago. “First, because our work is never finished. There’s always more we could do: We could make another phone call to someone who is sick, we could write a card of encouragement or a letter. So there’s always that lingering guilt that our work is never finished.
“The second thing is . . . as pastors, we hold people close to our hearts when they’re going through a time of grief and crisis, so I think there’s a strong temptation for us to take our problems home with us,” Lutzer said.
But just as often, problems come from dealing with things unrelated to spreading the Gospel.
Adding to the strain, experts say, is the increasing independence of worshipers no longer tied to a denomination and quicker to bolt if they don’t like the direction of a church.
“Pastors are under a lot of stress, in part because these are some high-conflict times,” said Jackson Carroll, a former minister who heads the Pulpit and Pew research project at Duke University Divinity School.
In a 2000 study of 880 clergymen and women, researchers found that 20 percent reported serious or major conflicts with their congregations, often serious enough that people were leaving.
“If over 20 percent of them are experiencing what pastors consider serious conflict, that’s a bad situation,” Carroll said.
Many of the problems were unrelated to theological issues. Instead, it was building projects, finances and leadership styles causing friction, the study found.
Indeed, dealing with those duties can be the most vexing part of pastoring, Yanos said.
“When I became a pastor, I traded away my priesthood,” he said, more or less joking.
While most congregations are understanding, some can be oblivious to their leader’s problems, Carroll said.
“Some people say that the pastor just works on Sunday,” he said. “Most people know that’s not true, but behind the joke there’s some reality. They don’t recognize the tensions and stress the pastors are under.”
“People will call and say, `Pastor, I knew it was your day off so I figured I could catch you at home,'” Blackwell said.
Despite the difficulties, most pastors never forget what they’re there for, and nearly all say that, on most days, just doing their job provides more than enough satisfaction.
“For myself, visiting the sick, visiting the homebound, those are things that energize me. That’s when I feel I’m being like Christ,” Yanos said. “To me, that’s the most peaceful, the most stress-relieving thing I could be doing.”
