Study Leave Report Summer 2011 Ian Manson This is the first time I ...

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improve the way he worked he would need to do it himself. He summarised those changes bysaying “I needed to learn to say no and genuinely not be bothered if people don't like me as aresult”. I think that is a statement which most of us would be both attracted to and terrified by.So what is it that leads towards such a crisis point? Partly it seems to be the pressure of a job whichis more than a contract of employment. As one said, there is never a time when you are completelyswitched off without the nagging feeling that there is someone we should be visiting or somethingwe should be preparing for. It is back to that longing to feel that we have completed something, afeeling which is rare indeed. So one colleague described feeling “a deep tiredness which underliesroutine tiredness”, explaining that “even on social occasions when people think you are relaxingyou have to be professionally sociable”. These pressures are added to, at least in the experience ofsome, by the expectation that as a christian leader who is setting an example we shouldn't be feelingthese things. Someone articulated this well when he said “when we preach that we can do allthings through Christ, how can you turn around and tell people that you can't cope”.The conclusion would appear to be summed up by the minister who told me “stress is somethingyou have to live with. We just have to learn to live with it. There will always be some people in thecongregation who are unhappy with you.” However there is also a recognition that much of thepressure we feel comes from within, from unrealistic expectations of ourselves, rather than frompeople around us. I'll expand on that in the later section about my own experiences.VisitingThe issue of visiting members of the congregation in their own homes was something of a litmustest for good ministers when I started out. Phrases like “he was a good minister, he often called into see me for a cup of tea” or, “that minister never did anything, he was only in my house once infive years” were heard so often that we took the sentiment behind them for granted. Both myprobationary year in Forfar and my first role as an associate minister were spent with ministers whodid indeed visit people regularly and systematically, and it may have taken me many years to getover a sense of guilt that I have never been able to do it as well as them. However it is fair to saythat the closest thing I got to a unanimous response was the negative response to the question “doyou spend much time visiting your congregation?” Even those who had started out prioritising thishad long since reassessed their priorities. One colleague described how, during his equivalent of aprobationary year, he had been expected to make 40 visits a week and have a report on the ministersdesk by Monday morning. Even then he had been forced to conclude that he couldn't do it andnegotiated a smaller number. I haven't come across anyone who still thinks this style of ministry isdesirable or practical.Other comments.One thing that surprised me was how willing my colleagues were to meet with me once I hadoutlined the kind of conversation I wanted to have. Some of them put themselves out considerablyeither to bring me to their homes or to meet me at a convenient place. I ate lots of meals and dranklots of coffee through the process. The remarks made by one or two suggested that the practice ofdiscussing their ministry with me in this non threatening way was a therapeutic one, a blessing that Iwas able to offer, to put it in someone’s actual words. This seemed natural and obvious while I wasdoing it but it was not something I had really anticipated. One colleague who emailed me to thankme added these thoughtful words of reflection: “I think that experience of thinking you can changethe world, (or at least a parish, or at the very least congregation) and then realising you are asmediocre as the next person, and having to cast yourself upon the grace of God for any usefulnessin life is common across all sorts of theological groupings”.
The Personal StuffI should say that the elements of self understanding which emerged for me during this time ofreading and conversations were not new revelations. All of these are aspects of my life and ministrythat I had already become aware of. What was different was having the time to think it through andpiece it together, and the discussions to help me to articulate it as I saw it reflected in my colleaguesstories.I can see now that throughout my ministry I have carried with me a nagging sense of havingsomething to prove. Actually I have discovered that this is a very common thread in the lives ofministers. Two different colleagues used the exact same words when talking to me about it, “I keepfeeling as if someone is going to come along and find me out”. There is a voice from somewherewhich tells us that we are not real ministers, we are not really up to the incomprehensible demandsof the job, that we are really just acting out the role. It creates a fear which drives us to strive toprovide evidence which we could use in our defence, just in case the day of accusation were everreally to arrive.In one sense our fears prove to be real and the day does often arrive. In any congregation there willbe plenty of people whose causal comments will unwittingly carry that accusing tone, whether it iscriticism of a sermon or regret that you didn't get to visit someone when they were ill or a complaintabout the wrong kind of hymns. All of them, innocent enough in themselves, carry echoes of thedeeper doubts that always linger within us, telling us that we are not really up to this, that we are notreally good enough, that we must have been imagining the call of God or have failed to live up to it.This perhaps is why we tend to be so sensitive to criticism and why we feel the need to try so hardto be liked. One retired minister recently told me that he now recognised that much of his ministryhad been driven by guilt. He was almost obsessed by the fear of letting people down and so feltobliged to visit anyone he was told about who might be facing some difficulty. An expression ofdisappointment on one occasion when no reasonable person could have expected any more of himstill lives vividly in his memory. It is common for us to recognise that on a Sunday morning wemight get ten positive, appreciative comments about a sermon, none of which will carry muchsignificance for us. One negative comment one the other hand will haunt our mind for months tocome.This extent of this imbalance in my own experience came home clearly to me when I returned oneSunday to the church I had served in 20 years ago. The memory of the day I got a baby's namewrong at a baptism in that church has always been a very clear one for me. In fact it has driven meto be extremely careful to get names right on such occasions ever since. I recounted that dreadfulincident to a few people over coffee after the Service on my return visit and was surprised todiscover that none of them had any memory of it. Meanwhile an elderly lady spoke with Roberta,telling her that her family will always be grateful to me. It seems that her grandson had braindamage and was badly disfigured, so much so the parents were very nervous in approaching thechurch for baptism. Yet she said I had been so gentle and caring and supportive that it made a hugedifference to them. Roberta told me of this conversation and I have no reason to doubt its accuracy,but I have no recollection of the events at all.So where does this “nagging sense of having to justify myself” actually come from? In part this is aspiritual matter, connected with the notion that God has called me to do a job in his church andtherefore I had better do it well. No doubt every job includes a responsibility to impress the boss,
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