I am working on an appendix for the book right now. This is a question that I seem to answer a lot. I have my own answers to this question, which I will post in a bit, but I would like to hear from you. How would you answer the above question? If you are a parishoner, spouse or friend of someone (pastor or not) who suffers from depression, what should you do?
Category Archives: Pastoral Office
What to do if your pastor or loved one suffers from depression
I am working on an appendix for the book right now. This is a question that I seem to answer a lot. I have my own answers to this question, which I will post in a bit, but I would like to hear from you. How would you answer the above question? If you are a parishoner, spouse or friend of someone (pastor or not) who suffers from depression, what should you do?
A Sham
When I get depressed, I feel like a fake.
I get tired easy. I can’t write sermons. I don’t want to prepare for bible class. I don’t want to see or talk to people. I don’t want to do anything at all.
All of which raises the question for me, why am I a pastor?
I know it’s a phase. I know it will pass. But it just keeps happening. I want somebody to slap me and say SNAP OUT OF IT! Of course, it doesn’t work that way. I wish I knew the formula. X amount of sleep plus Y amount of quiet time plus Z amount of no stress equals slump gone.
So what is the formula? Will someone tell me the secret?
Thanks,
-DMR
A Sham
When I get depressed, I feel like a fake.
I get tired easy. I can’t write sermons. I don’t want to prepare for bible class. I don’t want to see or talk to people. I don’t want to do anything at all.
All of which raises the question for me, why am I a pastor?
I know it’s a phase. I know it will pass. But it just keeps happening. I want somebody to slap me and say SNAP OUT OF IT! Of course, it doesn’t work that way. I wish I knew the formula. X amount of sleep plus Y amount of quiet time plus Z amount of no stress equals slump gone.
So what is the formula? Will someone tell me the secret?
Thanks,
-DMR
Walther's Depression
Rev. Matthew Harrison from LCMS World Relief and Human Care has written a couple excellent articles and translations regarding C.F.W. Walther’s struggles with depression and despair. Please go check them out:
Walther's Depression
Rev. Matthew Harrison from LCMS World Relief and Human Care has written a couple excellent articles and translations regarding C.F.W. Walther’s struggles with depression and despair. Please go check them out:
Walther's Depression
Rev. Matthew Harrison from LCMS World Relief and Human Care has written a couple excellent articles and translations regarding C.F.W. Walther’s struggles with depression and despair. Please go check them out:
Pastoral Care and Depression
Last night I had a pastoral care visit with a parishioner. She came from another parish in town (not LCMS, although it could have been). She was nervous, fearful, on the edge of tears and yet strangely numb, like she wasn’t all there. I recognized the signs.
She came to tell me that she was in an outpatient mental health program for clinical depression. The reason she came to tell me was because she wanted to make sure she wasn’t sinning by being in this program or by taking anti-depressants. You see, her previous pastor had told her individually and from the pulpit that it is “sinful and wrong” for Christians to take anti-depressants or see psychiatrists and psychologists. Because we are Christians, we have no need to be depressed, and should be joyful all the time, because Jesus died for us.
We had a long talk, prayed, heard the Word of God together, and I worked hard to dispel the destructive words of her previous pastor. It will take a long time for it to sink in. She feels guilty because she is undergoing medical treatment. Good grief.
If this is the stigma and gunk that our parishioners have to deal with from us, imagine how hard we pastors are on each other? I think that many parish pastors view those of us who has suffered from clinical depression as damaged goods, weak, with some kind of serious moral failing. Suffering from depression is somehow unmanly. Real men don’t have mental problems. They just think that way.
God help our parishioners who suffer from our false understanding of mental illness. God help us when we judge and condemn one another needlessly. God help me when I want to throttle someone for being such an idiot. God help me.
-DMR
Pastoral Care and Depression
Last night I had a pastoral care visit with a parishioner. She came from another parish in town (not LCMS, although it could have been). She was nervous, fearful, on the edge of tears and yet strangely numb, like she wasn’t all there. I recognized the signs.
She came to tell me that she was in an outpatient mental health program for clinical depression. The reason she came to tell me was because she wanted to make sure she wasn’t sinning by being in this program or by taking anti-depressants. You see, her previous pastor had told her individually and from the pulpit that it is “sinful and wrong” for Christians to take anti-depressants or see psychiatrists and psychologists. Because we are Christians, we have no need to be depressed, and should be joyful all the time, because Jesus died for us.
We had a long talk, prayed, heard the Word of God together, and I worked hard to dispel the destructive words of her previous pastor. It will take a long time for it to sink in. She feels guilty because she is undergoing medical treatment. Good grief.
If this is the stigma and gunk that our parishioners have to deal with from us, imagine how hard we pastors are on each other? I think that many parish pastors view those of us who has suffered from clinical depression as damaged goods, weak, with some kind of serious moral failing. Suffering from depression is somehow unmanly. Real men don’t have mental problems. They just think that way.
God help our parishioners who suffer from our false understanding of mental illness. God help us when we judge and condemn one another needlessly. God help me when I want to throttle someone for being such an idiot. God help me.
-DMR
The fall rush and doing good
I want to commend an article to you I ran across recently. It is in the newsletter for Doxology, and is entitled A New Beginning. Please check it out. Here’s one of the opening paragraphs:
This is me. Well, not literally, but you get the point. I am inundated with the fall. School, Sunday School, Bible Class, Adult Instruction (Catechesis, whateveryouwanttocallitthisyear), it all starts in the span of about two weeks. GOOD GRIEF! Haven’t we ever heard of pacing, people?
This year, though, overshadowing all of it, is that basic question: is anybody listening? I feel like I am doing the same thing year after year after year, and that nobody is listening. The excitement, the interest is gone. I’m not the new pastor with the great ideas to save the Church. I’m the pastor who has been around here for a while. I’m predictable. People know my strengths and weakensses. They know what to expect. There is nothing new under the sun. I think that’s in the Bible somewhere.
So how am I to move forward?
As of this moment, I don’t know.
So my answer for now is, focus on the doing and less on the gradiose strategizing and theories and plans. I don’t know where this will go, but there can be some satisfaction in worker harder to do a good job, regardless of the measurable outcomes. St. Paul put it this way:
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.â€
(Galatians 6:9-10 ESV)
Have a blessed day in Christ.
-DMR