I’m preaching with the people of Living Stream Church of the Brethren this coming Sunday, 5/5. This congregation has been worshipping online together since long before the pandemic forced so many others of us to do that; you can join us at 8pm EST. This week’s lectionary text is about friendship & joy. I’m writing here about friendship & joy for clergy; I’ll be preaching Sunday about friendship & joy more broadly.
Last year, Barna released results of a study on pastoral well-being and support. In 2022, 65% of pastors reported feelings of loneliness and isolation. Less than half of pastors reported feeling frequently well-supported by those around them. Pastors are a notoriously unhealthy group, and overall wellbeing is plummeting.
There are lots of factors that contribute to the decline in pastoral well-being. The world is on fire, religious institutions are no longer trusted or trustworthy, and pastors are by no means the only group of professionals experiencing burnout and attrition at enormous heights. But I do think that pastors shoulder an extra, weird-ass burden that folks working as teachers and counselors and social workers (whose jobs are SO HARD in SO MANY WAYS) don’t: it’s especially hard for pastors to make and keep friends.
Teachers, counselors and social workers, in most contexts, have a clearly delineated roles in the lives of their students or clients. The people they work with and for are very clearly not their friends, equals, or colleagues. The relationship - which involves a significant power dynamic - is, for the most part, very clearly defined. Students go home at the end of the day. Clients don’t often show up in their counselor’s living room. Patients are not involved in the decisions about whether or not to fire their provider.
Pastoral relationships are much more complicated. The person whose bedside I sat at offering prayer and comfort might, the very next week, be the person who decides whether or not I get a raise. The person about whom I know very intimate and confidential things - addiction, abuse, complicated marital struggles - will also be someone who sits next to me at a potluck dinner and we’ll have to interact in a completely different register in public than we did in private.
For all those reasons and more, pastors cannot be friends with people in their congregations. That doesn’t mean that pastoral relationships are without deep, intense love. It doesn’t mean that congregants don’t love and support their pastors. It doesn’t mean that the relationships are fake or false or wrong; it just means that relationships between a pastor and a congregant are never, ever, mutual. I, personally, do not think there are exceptions to this rule, and I’ve seen enough horrific, traumatic scenarios unfold when pastors choose to break it that I’m convinced it is good and true and healthy.
The problem is that this weird relational dynamic that pastors participate in with ten or twenty or three hundred people who are not their friends *also* makes it very, very difficult to make and keep friendships outside the congregation. The schedule of ministry is unpredictable and intense. A lot of what pastors engage in for work isn’t easily translatable or public enough to chat about over drinks. For me, spending SO MUCH of my relational energy navigating these fascinating and complicated interpersonal dynamics meant that I simply didn’t have a lot of relational energy left to spend outside of them.
One much-bandied statistic says that 70% of pastors report having no one they consider a close friend, mentor or confidant. I suspect that number is slightly exaggerated, but also: not by much. We’ve constructed this system where pastors are expected to spend all of themselves inside a particular structure, and have absolutely nothing left to live or thrive outside of it.
This is not the fault of congregants, particularly any of mine! Both congregations I served loved me deeply and well, but I’ve found that it is simply impossible to explain what being a pastor entails and requires to folks who…aren’t the pastor. They see the relationship from the other side. The imbalance of power is not explained or clearly delineated like in education or mental health; it is super subtle and emotional and spiritual and relational and I - the one with power over others - am only barely grasping onto the edge of the truth, here.
It’s hard for pastors to have friends.
And so, when Jesus, in his farewell discourse, his pastoral attempt to calm his disciples before he is crucified and resurrected and ascends back into heaven, tells them that he no longer considers them servants but has chosen, instead, to call them friends, I perk up.
Servants don’t know what the master is doing, Jesus says, but I’ve made known to you everything that I have heard from my father. It seems to me that Jesus, in this moment, is giving up his privilege and power - not in relation to Rome or the religious leaders, but the power he has held OVER HIS DISCIPLES.
And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what to make of that. I don’t think that relational dynamics can change in an instant with a simple proclamation. It’s pretty clear, given the ensuing centuries of worship and elevation of Jesus as messiah and god that the disciples and our Christian forebears did not exactly take him seriously. Jesus - lord and savior, teacher and rabbi, expedition leader and wise sage - our…FRIEND?
I have been very lucky to have had close friends, mentors and confidants throughout my life, even while I was a pastor. Fewer, maybe, than I would have liked and I FOR SURE experienced the loneliness and isolation that so many clergy report. But I confess that it messes with me to think about Jesus as one of my friends.
I send my friends bawdy instagram memes. I don’t know if Jesus would appreciate them.
Just this weekend, a friend and I argued about which of us was more of an asshole than the other; I’m not sure I would like to have that (tongue-in-cheek) conversation with Jesus.
My friends are the people who know my flaws and gifts in equal measure, and who have no trouble pointing out either one. I would rather think of Jesus as knowing one or the other side of me.
I suspect that my unease with considering Jesus my friend is similar to how some (most?) people think about their relationship with their pastor. It unnerves us for the people we’ve been taught to place on pedestals, the ones we understand as having more authority or more wisdom or more power, to turn out to be just…normal people. Even if I *think* I’m okay with it, there’s something deeper, more intuitive and formative that WIGS OUT when power structures and systems of authority get knocked over.
Which is why I love and hate this line from Jesus, where he refuses to inhabit the role of authority any longer. Where he says, “Nah, we can’t go on like this, y’all. I can’t have you thinking of me as some ruler or prince or king or messiah anymore. I’m your friend and I love you. THAT’s what you should abide in. THAT’s what you should try to do, with each other. THAT is where we will all find our complete joy.”
I’m not a pastor anymore, and I cannot express to you what a relief it is. I miss the people terribly. I miss preaching and teaching and having a context in which to situate my work in the world. But I do not miss the loneliness and isolation of power. I am making more friends. I participate in relationships of mutuality. I am free to be a friend. Thank God.
I love this, I want to send to all my pastor friends! It makes me think about Sue Monk Kidd's The Book of Longing -- big themes about Jesus as a friend/partner/person
The meaning of the word philoi is deeply rooted in the concept of reciprocity; encompassing the exchange of favors and support, in addition to a profound sense of duty to each other. Attributed to
Aristotle in Wikipedia
That's all I'll say for now as I am preparing to preach this text on Sunday at PC.