But that natural desire for privacy also can mean that ministers may not take advantage of assistance programs available through the Presbyterian Board of Pensions, and which have proven in some cases to be a valuable support in precarious economic times.
As the nation’s economy hit hard times, the Board of Pensions programs have felt the crunch too.
Some of the denomination’s emergency assistance programs are funded partially through the Christmas Joy Offering, along with other support from bequests and donations. In 2000, Board of Pensions assistance programs received about $2.8 million through Christmas Joy giving. But by 2008 the Christmas Joy funding for those programs had dropped to about $2 million — part of the overall budget downturn the denomination is experiencing.
At the same time, however, the Board of Pensions staff wants pastors and church staff members to know such programs exist so those who really need assistance will know to ask. Peter Sime, the Board of Pensions’ vice-president for assistance, CREDO and funds development, calls these assistance programs — ranging from adoption assistance to short-term sabbaticals for small-church pastors to emergency financial assistance — “one of the best-kept secrets we have.”
Often, ministers serving smaller churches feel “very isolated and under a lot of strain and stress,” said Sime. “Their churches are often paying the minimum salaries,” and don’t have the resources to dig any deeper.
The Board of Pensions also is seeing financially-stressed presbyteries having more difficulty coming up with matching funds they traditionally have provided to support emergency assistance programs for pastors, at the same time when pastors may be feeling increased financial need.
Pensions officials say they’re seeing “more pastors who are out there closer to the edge,” Sime said. Some are in-between calls and having difficulty finding a new job. Others struggle to make the financial transition to a new position in a rocky real estate market. “We’ve had some cases where people are under water on mortgages,” having taken a new call and moved, but having been unable to sell their former home before having to move into a new one. So the pastor is facing the difficulty of either paying a mortgage and also paying rent, or paying for two mortgages at once. And some face unexpected medical costs that can drag people under with amazing speed.
With a changing job market and economy, and with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continuing to struggle with the question of how to provide leadership to small congregations, the denomination is looking hard at the kinds of support that it already provides to ministers and at what more may be needed.
One new program under development is being called “For Such a Time as This” — a two-year pastoral residency program that will pair recent seminary graduates with small congregations, and provide them with mentors to help guide their ministry during the residency period.
Presbyteries in North and South Dakota, Mississippi, Kansas, and Missouri — all areas with significant numbers of small congregations — will participate in the 2010 pilot project.
The program is open to those who have graduated recently from seminary with a master’s degree in divinity and are seeking a first call. The nine people who are selected will be ordained as designated pastors, to full-time positions, and will be enrolled in the Board of Pensions benefits plan. Each will be assigned a mentor from the presbytery, and will meet about once a month with other pastoral residents from the area, and three times in national gathering with all the pastoral residents, with travel costs to be paid through a grant from the PC(USA)’s Office of Vocation.
The idea of partnership undergirds all of these programs, with presbyteries, the denomination’s national offices, seminaries, and the Board of Pensions working together to help recent seminary graduates and established pastors work through the bumps in ministry and meet the needs of congregations.
Another Board of Pensions program attempting to do that is CREDO, which Sime describes as sort of “the hub of the wheel” of the assistance programs. This year the PC(USA) will hold six CREDO conferences, inviting to them randomly-selected Presbyterian ministers who are between the ages of 40 and 55 and have served in ministry for at least seven years.
CREDO focuses on wellness in a broad sense — spiritually, financially, physically — asking participants to step back for about a week from daily responsibilities to spend some time considering the arc of their personal and professional lives.
For some pastors, that bit of breathing room can make a difference. The Duke Divinity School in North Carolina, using a $12 million grant from the Duke Endowment, has started a 7-year clergy health initiative program to improve the health and well-being of 1,600 United Methodist pastors and elders. Research from that program, including a survey conducted in 2008 of all active Methodist ministers in North Carolina, found that “the pastors define health broadly as mind, body, and spirit, and they do not feel healthy unless they feel spiritually vital.”
The study also found, however, higher-than-typical rates of depression among the pastors surveyed — a rate roughly double that of the overall U.S. population — and found relationships between clergy depression and factors such as feelings of isolation, the sense of being criticized by the congregation, and financial stress.
Some spoke of the difficulty of finding time for exercise and time away from work responsibilities. One pastor told the researchers that “every person sitting in the pew has a separate job description for our job, and when you put it all together, it’s an impossible task.”
At the Board of Pensions, the hope is that ministers will ask for help before things become impossible. It supports, for example, a sabbatical program through which pastors of small congregations can take a little time away for rejuvenation.
And Karen Babik, the board’s director of communications, said she’s been surprised how grateful people seem to be for a program that provides small grants to help pay transitional costs of the children of pastors or church workers who are starting their freshman year of college.
Some use the funding to buy the student a laptop or textbooks, or even curtains for a dorm room. “It’s amazing the number of thank-you notes we get from people,” Babik said. “It’s surprising to us how much it is appreciated.”
