When I was Rural Dean in the Oxford diocese, I spent one day a week praying the Evening Office with one of my clergy who lived at the edge of my deanery and who was isolated in many ways, not just geographically. Now he and I are both retired, but 27 years on, we still pray an Office together every week, usually CW Morning Prayer on a Thursday. It helped him then, all those years ago, and it helps both of us now. As a Cistercian, I pray usually seven Offices daily from my breviary, but using CW once a week is refreshing for me too.
Thanks very much for this piece, full of wisdom and empathy. You gently point the way towards a renewal of priestly priorities around catechesis and communion. I would suggest (to counter despair) that a traditional understanding of the Church’s belief in the communion of the saints would not equate declining Church attendance with a declining Church. A generous ecumenism also seems vital to me, seeing British Anglicanism within its proper context, both globally and locally. Admittedly this is easier in a more urban environment, but I have often been refreshed and humbled praying with colleagues from other denominations.
Thank you for this. Several years from severe burnout I am still in recovery. Your account captures more clearly than anything else I have read the dynamics that contributed to my burnout. While you address this so well, what you haven't documented is the long lasting effect on the clergy who experience burnout.
Burnout is not just extreme tiredness - it grows from the way clergy embody their ministry and so internalise the challenges and pressures experienced. Even if you could, with the waving of a wand, remove the structural causes of burnout, the unseen injuries experienced by clergy remain. The exhaustion does not just then go away when the causes are removed any more than a wound simply heals when a dagger is removed. Burnout is a change to the way we think and the way we see the world. The deep fatigue of burnout needs deep healing - and there is no support for this.
Thanks for being in touch, Ian, and for sharing about your own personal experience. Sadly, the Church can too often fail to act meaningfully to help people who've suffered either at the hands of other people in the Church or in service to the Church. This can be particularly bad, I think, for clergy, who regularly are exposed to the highs and lows of human life, the ugliness of human fallenness, while being left alone to deal with it all along with administration. I can imagine the combination of all that, combined with the loneliness typical of ministry here in the UK, can take us to dark places. I had a taste of it myself early on in my ministry.
It doesn't help with recovery that we lack many worshiping communities that are also places of healing and communities of grace.
Thanks Mark. Your piece is a really helpful contribution to a greater understanding of a widespread problem - a structural toxicity. You are right that there is a need for places of healing and communities of grace. I fear though that just as clergy don't have space for their own health, so also the church itself could be said to have a form of institutional burnout and therefore will not have the capacity or sagacity to create these places. That is something I am trying to recognise in my current role in ministerial development and support.
When I was Rural Dean in the Oxford diocese, I spent one day a week praying the Evening Office with one of my clergy who lived at the edge of my deanery and who was isolated in many ways, not just geographically. Now he and I are both retired, but 27 years on, we still pray an Office together every week, usually CW Morning Prayer on a Thursday. It helped him then, all those years ago, and it helps both of us now. As a Cistercian, I pray usually seven Offices daily from my breviary, but using CW once a week is refreshing for me too.
This is so good. As an American who has worked in the UK, I believe C of E clergy have the hardest job in the world.
I tell them that all the time!
Thanks very much for this piece, full of wisdom and empathy. You gently point the way towards a renewal of priestly priorities around catechesis and communion. I would suggest (to counter despair) that a traditional understanding of the Church’s belief in the communion of the saints would not equate declining Church attendance with a declining Church. A generous ecumenism also seems vital to me, seeing British Anglicanism within its proper context, both globally and locally. Admittedly this is easier in a more urban environment, but I have often been refreshed and humbled praying with colleagues from other denominations.
Thank you for this. Several years from severe burnout I am still in recovery. Your account captures more clearly than anything else I have read the dynamics that contributed to my burnout. While you address this so well, what you haven't documented is the long lasting effect on the clergy who experience burnout.
Burnout is not just extreme tiredness - it grows from the way clergy embody their ministry and so internalise the challenges and pressures experienced. Even if you could, with the waving of a wand, remove the structural causes of burnout, the unseen injuries experienced by clergy remain. The exhaustion does not just then go away when the causes are removed any more than a wound simply heals when a dagger is removed. Burnout is a change to the way we think and the way we see the world. The deep fatigue of burnout needs deep healing - and there is no support for this.
Thanks for being in touch, Ian, and for sharing about your own personal experience. Sadly, the Church can too often fail to act meaningfully to help people who've suffered either at the hands of other people in the Church or in service to the Church. This can be particularly bad, I think, for clergy, who regularly are exposed to the highs and lows of human life, the ugliness of human fallenness, while being left alone to deal with it all along with administration. I can imagine the combination of all that, combined with the loneliness typical of ministry here in the UK, can take us to dark places. I had a taste of it myself early on in my ministry.
It doesn't help with recovery that we lack many worshiping communities that are also places of healing and communities of grace.
Thanks Mark. Your piece is a really helpful contribution to a greater understanding of a widespread problem - a structural toxicity. You are right that there is a need for places of healing and communities of grace. I fear though that just as clergy don't have space for their own health, so also the church itself could be said to have a form of institutional burnout and therefore will not have the capacity or sagacity to create these places. That is something I am trying to recognise in my current role in ministerial development and support.