Many would be great if it weren't for the people," a burned-out pastor muttered after a particularly rancorous board meeting. Indeed, people can frustrate and discourage pastors, but they also can be marvelously affirming.
Relationships are vital to every one, pastors included. The ability to touch and speak to another who unconditionally accepts and values us is beneficial even if the other is only the family dog. Research indicates that people who have pets such as dogs have an increased life expectancy. Why? It seems that the simple relationship of touch and talk that pet owners share with their animal brings contentment. 1 Conversely, babies who are provided with the necessities of food and shelter and cleanliness but are not cuddled by the caregiver suffer in their physical and emotional development. 2
Importance of interaction
Human beings can be likened to countries possessing certain natural resources but lacking others. Such countries in a modern world economy require commercial interaction with other nations. They send away what they have in abundance and receive back what they lack. Likewise, people do not stand as self-sufficient islands complete unto themselves; they need both to give and to receive.
So people need people. The Bible says it was not good for the first human to be alone (see Gen. 2:18). God's solution to this aloneness involves more than sexual interaction in marriage; it includes also His gift of relational complementarity. This is where one person finds in another both a difference and a sameness that are fulfilling.
Henri Nouwen speaks of the need for interpersonal relationships: "Thou sands of people commit suicide be cause there is nobody waiting for them tomorrow. There is no reason to live if there is nobody to live for." 3 Lloyd Rediger, minister and a counselor to pastors, advocates a pastoral support system that he compares to a stool with three legs. The first leg is the pastor's own self-esteem, the second is the pastor's intimate relationships, and the third is the pastor's spiritual support system.4 Rediger thus describes the intimate relationship leg: "We pastors often feel we already spend enough time with people. Some times we feel we don't have enough time for our work, much less just sitting and socializing with family and friends. Such feelings are misleading. . . . This is valuable time in keeping us human, in keeping us pas tors from having a distorted view of ourselves and others. Such time is certainly valuable to those with whom we have intimacy commitments." 5
Everyone needs both to give and to receive intimacy in relationships with others. Charlotte and Howard Clinebell express this well in The Intimate Marriage: "There is in the heart of every human being a powerful longing for a meaningful relation ship with at least one other person.
For some, the longing is a conscious awareness; for others it remains unconscious, felt only as loneliness or an absence of meaning in life. This hunger is a part of being human with deep roots in man's long infancy and child hood. Personality is formed and deformed in relationships." 6
The family is the primary group to which its members look for fulfillment of their needs for intimacy. If intimacy needs are not significantly met within the family, then family members will look elsewhere. More over, if the primary social group the family fails in providing intimacy needs, the ability to have such needs met elsewhere gets stunted.
Loneliness in the parsonage
Loneliness is one of the occupational hazards of ministerial families. In a study of 157 Adventist pastors' wives, 67 percent indicated they felt loneliness and isolation in the minis try. 7 According to Leadership magazine, a survey of 166 ministers' wives disclosed that 56 percent had no close friends in the church. 8 Dr. Rediger indicates that the "loner lifestyle" is a common characteristic of the clergy role. He identifies this as one of a number of potential burnout factors for clergy. 9 Many preachers perhaps choose their profession because they want to do the right thing out of the desire to please people who are significant in their life, but with a weakness that makes them fearful that they will not be able to do so. Later this leads to a personality style that shows reluctance in being open and vulnerable to others because of their potential to withhold praise and inflict pain.
What a paradox! Ministry needs individuals who are open and avail able to others in order to minister effectively to them, not those who have developed the loner lifestyle out of self protection. Tremendous conflicts can arise for individuals caught in such a dilemma. These clergy have a central need to know others and be known by them, yet they cannot seem to break out of the lonely lifestyle in which they find themselves.
No one can be an island, not even pastors or their family members. They must allow themselves to be known as human beings within and without their congregations. They must shed the isolation that the pastoral pedestal urges upon them, or they risk ill health. The systems and structures of the church should assist in recognizing this reality.
If the ideas in this article ring a bell, do not delay to spring into action. Right now you can decide to select someone close at hand for enhanced personal contact. Perhaps you can give a small personal gift to your spouse or child, maybe extend an invitation to lunch to a coworker, write a letter to an old school classmate, or enjoy a Saturday night of games with another family. Whatever comes to mind, don't put it off to a more "favorable" time. Remember, you are not an island!
1 Jake Page, "Companion Animal Therapy,"
Science, January/February 1984, p. 88.
2 cf. Mia Pringle, The Needs of Children
(New York: Schocken Books, 1975), pp. 34ff.
See also Jere E. Brophy, Child Development
and Socialization (Chicago: Science Research
Associates, 1977), p. 127.
3 Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p. 67.
4 G. Lloyd Rediger, Coping With Clergy
Burnout (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press,
1982), p. 99.
5 Ibid.,?. 101.
6 Howard J. Clinebell and Charlotte H.
Clinebell, The Intimate Marriage (New York:
Harper and Row, 1970), p. 12.
7 Carole Luke Kilcher, Roger L. Dudley,
Des Cummings, Jr., and Greg Clark, "The
Pastor's Wife as a Person: A Study of Morale of
the Pastor's Wife," (Berrien Springs, Mich.:
Andrews University Institute of Church Minis
try, September 1981), p. 6.
8 Pat Valeriano, "A Survey of Ministers'
Wives: The Struggles," Leadership, Fall 1981,
p. 67.
9 Rediger, p. 24.