As pastors and church leaders, we travel in and out of airports, train stations, even the local bus depots going to meetings, presbytery committees and retreats. If there is an empty seat beside us, perhaps our anxiety rises. Sometimes our stomachs drop when we hear these words after some small talk: “Oh! You’re a pastor?” It can be for many reasons. Maybe we were accosted by someone who was hurt by the church who wanted to hold us personally responsible for their pain as we headed to the funeral of a colleague. Or it could have been someone who just had to tell us why women should never be ordained at a point when we have owned a season of struggle in our ministry. It could even be a well-meaning tirade on what the church really needs while we are headed out to a conference exhausted by our called vocation. There are many stories and possibilities that zip through our heads as the empty seat is filled. When leaving the Atlanta airport on a trip this past year, I was looking at the … [Read more...]

For two thousand years, the church has done a relatively good job of comforting bereaved people. Through ritual leadership, pastoral care, laments and psalms, sacred music, support groups, congregational support, memorials and assurances of life eternal, the local church has been a helpful resource for people dealing with significant losses and death. Indeed, whether formalized or not, most congregations provide grief support services. In recent decades, however, we have become more aware of the incidence and effects of trauma in people’s lives. We now see that many of life’s most significant losses come upon us embedded in trauma. A loss or death is traumatic when it is unusually violent, gruesome, unexpected or overwhelming. It is the murdered child, mass shooting, fiery automobile crash, suicide, battlefield explosion or natural disaster. Trauma comes in many forms and intensities, and not all trauma events involve death or even a loss. But in this article, I want to focus on … [Read more...]

A few years ago, in the midst of the war in Syria, some 50 pastors from across the Middle East made their way to the Near East School of Theology in Beirut to spend a week together reflecting on the realities of being pastors in wartime. I was a part of that conference, invited to provide support to these colleagues in the form of training for compassion fatigue and resiliency. During a panel discussion on how pastoral work had changed since the war, a pastor from the shattered city of Homs, in western Syria, said: “Before, preaching was an art, a part of ritual, a tool to change a small corner of the church. You preach in order to help people come back to right thinking. But suddenly in the crisis we are demanded to answer universal questions, difficult questions. We are like Jesus in the garden: praying that God would take this away from me.” He described how church life was — before. He talked about the impossible circumstances endured by so many of the members of his … [Read more...]