physical unhealth, and other indicators of a fractured and isolated view of oneself. Pete Scazzero has built an entire enterprise around helping pastors become emotionally healthy( The Emotionally Healthy Leader). My denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, has counselors who will meet with pastors free of charge, retreats dedicated to emotional wellness, and emotional and psychological screening before a pastor can be ordained. With all the resources available and the growing awareness of this problem for pastors, I cannot help but conclude that the persistence of this problem with the emotional and overall well-being of pastors is not for lack of trying. There is something deeper in the imagination of what it is to be a pastor that is not only keeping pastors from seeking the help that they need once they realize they have a deeper problem but actually creating the problem from the start. I do not know how you take someone who has trained, prepared, and imagined themselves to be a Goliath figure in ministry, a gladiator for God, and transform them into a wounded healer. But with God, all things are possible.
Many people in my own congregation often check in on me, asking,“ How are you really doing? I know that your job is such a burden.” This is evidence of their love and compassion for their pastor, for which I am deeply grateful. But it leads me to ask: Should the job be the kind of burden that drives so many pastors into extreme unhealth? Or is that what we have made it— the isolated shepherd who carries the burden for the whole flock on lonely shoulders, suffering attacks from wolves that
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