JUDY VALENTE, correspondent: Father Charles Dahm has come to a parish on Chicago’s north side to deliver the kind of homily the parishioners have probably never heard before—one which will make some of them uncomfortable.

FATHER CHARLES DAHM: (preaching) How many of you have ever heard a sermon about domestic violence? Raise your hand. See, no one.

Domestic violence is often unnoticed, hidden from our eyes, but actually it is rampant in our society and in our communities. We know, of course, that there are probably women here this morning who have experienced violence in their own homes, and our heart goes out to you.

RITA SMITH (Executive Director, National Coalition against Domestic Violence): One in four women will be abused sometime in her lifetime.

VALENTE: Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, says the problem of abuse also imposes a significant cost to society.

SMITH: Lost time at work, decreased productivity at work, health care costs related to injuries as a result of abuse, response time and cost for law enforcement to go to calls when someone is being battered.

VALENTE: But so often the problem lies hidden.

FATHER DAHM: I’ve been a priest for 48 years. I didn’t see it until I hired a pastoral counselor and one day she said, “Father, you know, almost all my clients from the parish are women who are victims of domestic violence.” And I didn’t know it. And I knew many of those women.

VALENTE: Father Dahm was surprised by the extent of domestic violence within the families he served. When he realized there was no official church outreach to abuse victims, he decided to start his own ministry.

FATHER DAHM: Priests generally do not talk about it. And most dioceses in the United States have no services, or very limited services, for victims of domestic violence.

VALENTE: He goes to parishes where he is invited. So far he has traveled to some thirty parishes in the Chicago area. He has no budget and a limited staff of volunteers to focus attention on the problem. And pastors have not always been enthusiastic about his message.

FATHER DAHM: One priest didn’t want to do it because he thought it would be offensive to the children who might be in the congregation listening to the homily. Others think we don’t have that problem here. It’s someplace else. We don’t have it. Or that it’s too difficult a topic to talk about and they don’t know how to do it.

SMITH: I would say at this point most churches are not doing a particularly good job with this. It’s not that they don’t want to. I think that this is just a very, very complex issue.

FATHER DAHM: (praying) We’re here tonight because we want to serve especially those people who suffer violence in their own homes.

VALENTE: After talking about domestic violence at Mass, Father Dahm invites parishioners to meet with him to discuss how their church might help those who are suffering abuse. On this night, six people came. Some had been victims, others simply wanted to help.

MARIA: I come from an abusive home, and it’s led me to get into abusive relationships. I’m divorced also because I divorced my abuser, but I was about to marry another abuser. So this is the cycle that continues unless you get help.

JEAN MIRABELLA (Clinical Social Worker): I left a domestic violence relationship almost 35 years ago, myself and my four kids. The sad news is not very much has changed as far as men who batter and women who struggle to get out of the relationship.

JAN BERDULIS (St. Pascal Parish): When he preached at our parish about a year ago, I was sort of surprised because I was unaware at that time of domestic violence and how prevalent it is within all communities, all neighborhoods, all levels, all ethnicities.

VALENTE: Father Dahm tells them a first step is to establish a support group, so that women who are battered know they have a safe place to tell their stories. The parish can then work to connect them with agencies that can help. Parish volunteers also need to be trained so they know how to respond to pleas for help.

FATHER DAHM: Many times victims call and they don’t say “I’m a victim of domestic violence.” They just might say, “I need to talk.” Or “I’m having problems in my home” or “My husband and I are having problems.” So that’s all. So that’s actually a code almost for “I need help.”

LAURA REYES: One day I ended up in the hospital because I had bruises on my face. He kicked me and hit me in my face many times.

VALENTE: Women often stay for years in abusive relationships, for a variety of reasons.

REYES: You think you love the person, that God wants you to be in the relationship because it was the man of your life, because he’s the father of your daughter. So you belong there.

MIRABELLA: So many of the women I’ve worked with over all these years are practicing Catholics and they cannot comprehend the idea that it would be acceptable if they were to leave and get divorced, so your message is like something I didn’t think I’d be hearing in my lifetime.

FATHER DAHM: What’s one of the worst things you can do for your children is to let them grow up in a home where there’s violence. Because your daughters are learning how to be submissive to this abuse, and your sons are learning how to be abusive and they may enter into marriages that are just like yours. Do you want that?

VALENTE: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said “no person is expected to stay in an abusive marriage,” adding, “We encourage abused persons who have divorced to investigate the possibility of seeking an annulment.”

Valerie Yokie is a director with Mary Kay cosmetics. She says she first became aware of the extent of domestic abuse by talking to her customers. At one point, she served on an advisory board to Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George. She brought the issue of domestic violence to his attention—forcefully, she recalls.

VALERIE YOKIE: Your Eminence, we don’t talk about it in our churches, we are not supporting women, and our church would be nowhere if it weren’t for women.

VALENTE: About 25 people showed up for a meeting on domestic violence at Yokie’s church after Father Dahm spoke at the Masses. Yokie believes churches are one of the best settings in which to address the problem.

YOKIE: It’s the one place where you have the perpetrator, the victim and the witnesses, the kids, hearing the message that it’s wrong, that God loves you, we’re here to support you, you don’t have to put up with it.

VALENTE: Men can also be victims of domestic abuse, often in same-sex relationships, but that number is small compared to women. And domestic violence can be other than physical.

FATHER DAHM: Emotional or psychological violence is much more difficult to detect, but it’s also more frequent, the belittling, demeaning, the insults, all the ways in which the woman is isolated from her family and friends.

VALENTE: That was the case with Elia and Roman Carreon. The first twenty years of their marriage were marked by frequent periods of emotional trauma.

ELIA CARREON: The verbal abuse, the silent treatment, the humiliation of the words. He would call me names, he would call me crazy. Every time I would bring up counseling he would say, you go to counseling, you’re the one that’s crazy.

ROMAN CARREON: To me I was a nice man. That’s what I saw about me. I never hit anybody. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just…Actually I thought of myself as actually doing something better than most of my family.

VALENTE: Finally, with Father Dahm’s help, they entered counseling.

ROMAN CARREON: I would hear other men telling their story. And I would say, you know, as they were saying their story, how come you’re not expecting to get in trouble with the things you’re doing? That’s wrong. But then after a little while I realized, jeez, that’s what I do.

VALENTE: (to Elia) How would you describe your marriage now?

ELIA CARREON: Healthy. If I had to choose one word, it’s healthy. Not only are we healthier, are we more in love.

ROMAN CARREON: Now I know that she’s my partner. We’re aiming to grow old together. It’s not about me anymore. Now, if something happens to you, it happens to me too.

VALENTE: Reported incidents of domestic abuse nationwide are down. But Father Dahm says it’s difficult to measure success, because no one knows how many women who need help aren’t coming forward. A woman might leave an abusive partner as many as seven times before she finally makes the break. And the abusers don’t change easily. Father Dahm says they have to be confronted and held accountable.

FATHER DAHM: The good news about domestic violence is that it is learned behavior. It’s not something we inherit in our genes; we learn it from somebody, someplace. That means it can be unlearned.

(speaking to group) I’ve seen it with abusers who’ve converted and now have turned their lives around. They’re super active in our parish. So we have a very strong men’s group in our parish that is made up primarily of people who were perpetrators.

ROMAN CARREON: I went twenty years of my marriage without knowing all this. So I did a lot of things that now I regret. But thank God, you know, I can live the rest of my life with my wife without violence.

VALENTE: Which is why Father Dahm will continue visiting parishes, delivering a homily that will be news to some. For others, it’s a message that may change their lives.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Judy Valente in Chicago.

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DEBORAH POTTER, correspondent: On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the vans from Holy Comforter Episcopal Church make the rounds in southeast Atlanta.

DRIVER: Today we’ll pick up between 60 and 70 people.

POTTER: The church provides a day center for people with mental illness and other disabilities.

KENNETH (getting off the van): Good morning, everybody.

POTTER: At first glance, it looks like any other assistance program. People line up for free clothing and toiletries from a stockpile of donations.

VOLUNTEER: Do you need a toothbrush?

WOMAN: Yeah.

POTTER: They share meals prepared by volunteers—breakfast and lunch.

REV. MICHAEL TANNER (Vicar, Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter): Is this your first time here?

MAN AT DOOR: No, second.

REV. TANNER: Well, I’m Mike.

POTTER: While some participants go to counseling or therapy, others work with their hands in a supervised art program.

EMILY SEABURY: I really love this church. It makes me feel good about myself.

SYTHA HOLT: You come, you read, you get to know people better. You get to understand your illness, you know, just have a good time.

POTTER: But the heart of the program isn’t the handouts or even the activities.

HAKIN MCDUFFIE: The prayer and the inspiration from the prayers inspire me to come.

RICHARD CUMMINS: When I pray it makes me feel better, makes me feel like things will be all right, you know. Try to calm down and pray instead of being worried, anxious like I used to be all the time.

POTTER: The church garden grows and sells vegetables and plants to help defray the cost of the day program, which is mostly paid for by the Episcopal diocese of Atlanta, foundation grants, and donations.

REV. TANNER: What I see coming to us and joining us is a group of people who have been knocked down all their lives and who are just remarkably joyous and remarkably full of faith. They get it that God loves them and that their suffering is just part of life, and God loves them through it, and they love each other through it.

POTTER: One out of every ten people will experience a severe and persistent mental illness at some point in life, experts say. For decades society shut those people away in institutions. But now they’re more visible on the streets and in group homes, and faith communities have been challenged to respond.

Holy Comforter responded 15 years ago when a group home opened nearby and the priest at the time invited the residents to church. Today, almost two-thirds of the congregation is made up of people with mental illness—including bipolar disorder, clinical depression, and schizophrenia—who worship together…

NOON SERVICE: Lord, we thank you.

POTTER: …and pray together.

NOON SERVICE: Father God, we ask that you wash us clean and keep us safe and protected. Father God, protect each and every member of our church right now, in Jesus’ name. Amen, Amen.

POTTER: Programs like this are rare for many reasons, including fear that people with mental illness will be disruptive or disturbing.

REV. TANNER: We have a lot of things that we imagine about mental illness that aren’t true. We imagine that people with mental illness are more violent than the rest of us. They are not. They are less violent than the rest of us. They’re more vulnerable than the rest of us, but we’re afraid.

POTTER: The stigma attached to mental illness keeps many people silent about their suffering, and researchers at Baylor University found in a limited study that a third of those who seek help from their pastors don’t get it.

REV. ADENET MEDACIER (Shalom Community Church, Miami): They might say that it’s from an evil spirit. It’s an evil spirit and it has to be cast out. You have to pray more. And that approach, of course, would only result in that illness never being—you know, the core of that issue never even being touched.

POTTER: At this government-sponsored conference in Washington, faith communities were encouraged to partner with mental health groups—a recognition that both medicine and spirituality have a role to play in dealing with mental illness.

REV. CRAIG RENNEBOHM (Mental Health Chaplaincy): Faith can give us a sense of hope. It provides a horizon of possibility in our lives. Faith speaks to what’s deepest and best in us each, and faith helps us to explore our connections with one another.

POTTER: Craig Rennebohm ministers to people with mental illness in Seattle. He’s a former pastor in the United Church of Christ.

REV. RENNEBOHM: I think all of our traditions talk about loving our neighbor. Virtually every religious, spiritual tradition has scriptures about compassion and about healing. So it’s not a matter of whether we do these things. It’s sort of extending our capacity to support healing and respond to suffering by including those who experience mental health issues.

POTTER: Inclusion is the key at St. Catherine-St. Lucy Roman Catholic Church in suburban Chicago. Twice a month for more than 30 years, people with mental illness have come together here for prayer and conversation with volunteers.

CONNIE RAKITAN: It’s also time to give praise and worship to our God because we’re here. We made it. Whatever our day brought, we made it, and without Him we never would have made it.

POTTER: Connie Rakitan founded the program and still runs it today, helping to design worship that’s welcoming to all.

RAKITAN: Walking into a church with a long service and a long sermon and lots of music and lots of people could just be so overwhelming that it’s just not doable.

Worship: Praise our God, who lavishly loves us.

RAKITAN: We would never, ever use a healing passage, because we would not want to set somebody up for an unrealistic disappointment, because the fact is not everybody gets cured. So it’s not like, you know, just join a church and everything’s going to be hunky dory.

POTTER: But programs like Faith and Fellowship do help some people.

RAKITAN: Their families might be alienated from them or estranged or whatever. They might not have work communities. What do they have left but their faith in God?

RUTH RESKEY: I fought depression for a long time, but I’ve gotten through that, and I just seem to take it day by day.

POTTER: And the faith part of it helps?

RESKEY: Faith helps. Faith helps greatly. And coming to the church where everybody knows me, acknowledges that you’re there—that helps.

JACKIE BURKS: Why I feel so comfortable here? Because we all one family and we love each other.

JOHN SCHULLER (Volunteer): We love it, too. You know, it feels like home. I don’t know how much better to say it, but everyone’s welcome here, you know, and it’s a marvelous, marvelous spirit. I don’t know if you can feel it, you know, but it’s palpable.

POTTER: More faith communities are beginning to reach out to people with mental illness. But change comes slowly, partly because many pastors feel unprepared to lead the way.

REV. RENNEBOHM: Not every pastor has to be the out-front leader. I think in every congregation there are families and individuals who have experienced mental illness or mental health issues who can be the champions in their local faith community.

RAKITAN: I think that there’s a long way to go, and I think one of the keys that’s going to move us even more forward is for churches to recognize that relationships are the key and people want to be needed, wanted, loved, and appreciated.

POTTER: Here they are.

BURKS (singing): Amen, amen…

POTTER: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Deborah Potter in Oak Park, Illinois.

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BOB ABERNETHY, correspondent: If you have ever wondered what it is like to be the pastor of a church, there’s a book out about that. It’s This Odd and Wondrous Calling, by two seasoned United Church of Christ ministers who are well aware of ministry as it really is—the joys, the problems, and the things that can drive pastors crazy.

At the Wellesley Congregational Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, outside Boston, the senior minister is the Reverend Martin Copenhaver.

REV. MARTIN COPENHAVER (preaching from pulpit): We worry about so many things, so Jesus says what we all long to hear: Do not be anxious. Do not worry.

ABERNETHY: At the First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, the Reverend Lillian Daniel is senior minister.

REV. LILLIAN DANIEL (to congregation): Let us greet one another with a sign of God’s peace. Peace be with you.

ABERNETHY: Recently, Lillian and Martin were together in Glen Ellyn. They talked with us about the church and its challenges.

DANIEL: This is what drives me so crazy about the “spiritual but not religious” people who see God in the sunset. You know, anybody can see God in the sunset. But what is remarkable is that you can see God in the committee meeting with other people who you disagree with, and that’s to me the miracle.

COPENHAVER: God can actually be found inside the church among flawed, quirky, broken people who are somehow bound together, and try to even see God in one another.

ABERNETHY: Ministry is constant, they said, never 9 to 5, and preaching is just part of it. They insisted ministry is often fun, and Lillian spoke of what she called the weird interplay of the sacred and the earthy.

DANIEL: The time right before you are leading worship, and so you’ve got a sermon that you are trying to memorize, and you are trying to be prayerful and lead hundreds of people in worship, and you walk in the sanctuary, and somebody says, “Lillian, we’re out of toilet paper in the men’s room.”

ABERNETHY: Lillian has been a pastor for 19 years. She has seen a lot of life. She once played bass guitar in a punk rock band, and she still sits in occasionally. Lillian has campaigned for social justice and is married to a union organizer. They have two teenage children. Recently, she went to Guatemala on a mission trip to build houses. Her father was a foreign correspondent. She has lived in seven countries.

DANIEL: It makes me feel angry when people think that the ministry is somehow removed from the real world, as though we have never heard swear words before. You know, we’ve heard some of the grittiest stuff you can hear. We’ve visited people in prisons. We’ve heard from folks when their lives are really at a low point. You’re eating with people, and you are talking with people, and you hear some of the worst things that people have done, and they are just sharing real life with you.

ABERNETHY: Lillian loves preaching and preparing for it.

DANIEL: We get to immerse ourselves in scripture and really study this stuff. And then we distill that and share it with the congregation. To me, that is such a privilege.

ABERNETHY: But in today’s world, Lillian says, the church’s message can sometimes seem unwelcome.

DANIEL: I think we live in a society of rampant narcissism, and the church rubs like sandpaper against that. You are selling a message that a lot of people just don’t want to hear in this sort of “it’s-all-about-me” culture.

ABERNETHY: Churches such as Lillian’s try to live the concern for others that they teach. This was a gourmet eight-course dinner and auction to raise money to send forty young people on a week-long work project this coming summer to help build a soup kitchen for the poor. The ample menu suggested a problem for many ministers—obesity.

DANIEL: Food is the socially respectable addiction of the church.

COPENHAVER: Ministers are always being plied with food. It’s one of the things if you pay a call on somebody they have a coffee cake.

ABERNETHY: Martin is the son and grandson of ministers, comfortable with many styles of worship.

COPENHAVER (speaking to congregation): This is our sabbath, our day of rest, a word that means literally a day for quieting the heart.

ABERNETHY: Martin puts a high priority on encouraging young people to consider becoming ministers and on training young ministers on the job. So does Lillian.

DANIEL: I remember I was an intern in divinity school at my first church, and the minister, my supervisor, turned to me in the meeting and said, “Lillian, would you like to open us with prayer?” And I said, “No, I wouldn’t like to.” You know, I thought he was just asking if I wanted to, and later he said that’s not an option, and I said, well, I don’t know how to do it, and he said nobody knows how to do it. You just have to do it.

COPENHAVER: The way to learn how to pray is to pray.

ABERNETHY: Sometimes, even the most experienced ministers face situations that test them, such as one that faced Martin when he taught a Sunday school class of very smart fourth graders—ten year olds.

Sunday school class: What came before God?

COPENHAVER: Oh, man, that’s a good one.

Sunday school class: Where is heaven?

COPENHAVER: Heaven is where God is.

Sunday school class: How do we know God exists?

Sunday school class: If God is good, why did he also create bad?

COPENHAVER: That is the biggest puzzle.

ABERNETHY: At last, the closing prayer.

COPENHAVER (praying with children): So God, we thank you that we might continue to stretch our hearts and minds toward you, never being afraid to ask and always seeking to learn.

ABERNETHY: I asked both pastors how they had known they were being called to ministry.

COPENHAVER: A sense of being compelled: I cannot not do this.

DANIEL: You keep coming back to it over and over again. When you try to walk away it is impossible.

ABERNETHY: Both pastors say the satisfactions, for them, far exceed the problems.

COPENHAVER: We are invited in and given privileged access to people’s lives, and that is not always joyous in the happy sense, but it’s a great, deep, abiding joy to share in people’s lives in that way.

DANIEL: Most clergy would far prefer to do a funeral than a wedding. You feel that the work that you are doing is profoundly important, and you are there to say something that nobody else in the world can say.

COPENHAVER: We get a chance to be wise. Not that all ministers are wise, but we get a good crack at it, because we see people in a variety of circumstances. We meet at that intersection of a human and the divine. We live in community. Wisdom is always acted out in community.

(to congregation): Go in peace.

Ministry is a lot like parenting in that it can be really difficult at times, but it never feels not worth doing. It really is joyous work.

DANIEL: God calls you just as you are, and you don’t have to be this phony-baloney person. You’ve been called to be exactly as you are and in that to proclaim this Word that is bigger than yourself.

ABERNETHY: Lillian and Martin’s book is This Odd and Wondrous Calling.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: We have a profile today of the writer and retired Presbyterian minister Eugene Peterson. His latest book is “The Pastor,” a memoir that includes Peterson’s concerns about how hard it is for pastors and everyone else to live Christian lives in modern America. Peterson is best known for one of his many earlier books, “The Message,” his translation of the entire Bible into everyday American English. “The Message” has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.

Peterson lives now in northwestern Montana near Glacier National Park. In late winter it is both majestic and full of life. Peterson grew up nearby, in Kalispell in the Flathead Valley. His father was a butcher who built a summer place on Flathead Lake, which Peterson and his wife, Jan, expanded and improved. When we met there, I asked Peterson about his theology, but he said he has little time for anything abstract. He listens for the holy, he said, in people and in the quiet of the place he loves.

EUGENE PETERSON: How do you pay attention to the unheard, the unseen? In a cluttered, noisy, distracted society it’s very hard to do it. A lot of the language in the church—well, not just the church, in religion itself, has to do with trying to figure out the truth of things. What’s true? What’s true? And I’m not really interested in what’s true. I want to know if I can live it. I want to test it out.

ABERNETHY: Peterson was the founding pastor and for 30 years the minister of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church near Baltimore, Maryland. Because he had been trained as a scholar, he started out giving lectures from the pulpit.

PETERSON: After a couple of years I realized, you know, this isn’t working, and I began to change the way I talked, the way I preached, the way I taught, so I was inviting conversation, and you enter into the soul, the spirit of somebody else by listening to them, not by telling them something. I get asked, what do you miss most about being a pastor? I think it’s the intimacy, the incredible gift of intimacy. You go through death with somebody, with their families, and there’s an intimacy that comes through that that is just incomparable.

ABERNETHY: In his 30-some books, one of Peterson’s themes is that there is no way pastors can develop one-on-one relationships with their people if their churches have more than about 500 members.

PETERSON: A pastor in personal relationship is not just trying to find ways to make people feel good, loved, whatever. This is a kingdom life we are living. It has to do with salvation. It has to do with justice. It has to do with compassion, and you can’t do that wholesale. You just can’t.

ABERNETHY: So Peterson deplores megachurches. He thinks they are too big for pastors and worshipers to have close relationships with each other.

PETERSON: What’s so bad about it is that they don’t have to live responsibly. When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else.

ABERNETHY: But, obviously, aren’t megachurches what many people want?

PETERSON: The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We’re called to have people follow Jesus. We’re called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies. We’re called to show people that there is a way of life which has meaning beyond their salary or beyond how good they look.

ABERNETHY: Not surprisingly, Peterson also condemns the so-called prosperity gospel—preaching that if people follow Jesus, God will give them tangible rewards.

PETERSON: Well, I think it’s a lie. I think it’s just a downright rotten lie. It’s nowhere in Christian tradition, so how does this get going in our culture? It’s greed is what it is. It’s greed given a spiritual name: God will bless you. I want to ask these prosperity gospel people, do your people ever die? Do the people in your church ever die? What do you do when they die? Where’s the prosperity in that? I don’t have much patience with them, to tell you the truth, because I think they’re defrauding people.

ABERNETHY: I also asked Peterson what he thought of doing church online.

PETERSON: Oh, my. You know that you can have virtual baptisms now? There are pastors who have virtual baptisms. You can—he’ll baptize your baby in the bathtub. You do the baptizing, he’ll say the words, and you have a virtual baptism. How do you like that?

ABERNETHY: As Peterson compares life on Flathead Lake in Montana to life in the rest of the country, he does not like what he sees.

PETERSON: American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we’ve ever had because it is so materialistic and it’s so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just, it’s just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst of the instincts we have. The problem is people have been treated as consumers for so long they don’t know any other way to live.

ABERNETHY: The antidote, for Peterson, is what pastors can teach.

PETERSON: Introduce them to a living Christ, a Christ who makes life livable in the terms in which you are living—that everything in the gospel is livable, not just true.

ABERNETHY: Although the mainline Protestant churches have lost millions of members, Peterson sees them as essential.

PETERSON: I think the mainline churches are the ones who are kind of holding things together while all this faddy stuff goes on.

ABERNETHY: I could not resist asking Peterson how he and his wife, as Christians, have dealt with the prosperity his books have brought them.

PETERSON: We give it all away. Our standard of living hasn’t changed, not a bit. We just—we know a lot of people we like to give it to.

ABERNETHY: In retirement Peterson seems content with his writing and his sense of place—of being, in his words, at home.

PETERSON: What makes me sure of what I’m doing is that virtually everything that seems to me that I’ve believed I’ve been able to live.

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Minister leading church service: Let us stand and continue our morning worship.

DEBORAH POTTER, correspondent: Serving God and ministering to people is deeply fulfilling, pastors say. Yet studies have found that Protestant clergy also suffer from depression and obesity at higher rates than the population as a whole.

REV. JOSEPH STEWART-SICKING (Loyola University Maryland): Researchers like to joke that what we know about clergy is they’re satisfied, stressed out, and fat.

POTTER: Joe Stewart-Sicking is an Episcopal priest who teaches pastoral counseling and studies why clergy are more stressed than most of us.

STEWART-SICKING: What makes the clergy vocation and occupation really different is that you work for God ultimately. If that work environment isn’t meaningful to you, you’re doing a lot of things like, you know, doing budgets or checking spelling on a bulletin, or office management, that’s going to really hit home, because you think your job should be about God.

POTTER: Add to that a new source of stress for many pastors in mainline Protestant denominations: as church membership dwindles they feel pressured to reverse the trend.

STEWART-SICKING: And a lot of pastors think that church growth is really the measure of their success, you know, and a lot of people are having to learn to deal with shrinking numbers, shrinking budgets, even closing churches.

REV. LYNDA FERGUSON (praying in home of church members): Lord, we thank you for your grace and your mercy today…

POTTER: Lynda Ferguson is pastor of Salem United Methodist Church in rural Bostic, North Carolina.

FERGUSON (praying in home of church members): …in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

POTTER: She’s the church’s only pastor—most Protestant churches have just one—ministering to a congregation of about 300.

FERGUSON: Used to be the churches were filled, and now today we have to play a role of going out and bringing people into the church or actually taking the church to people.

POTTER: In the past three years, Ferguson has put 90,000 miles on her car, visiting the sick…

FERGUSON (praying with sick church member): I ask, Lord, that you would just fill her with your holy presence and that your healing power will just consume her body.

WOMAN (speaking to Rev. Ferguson): He brought a lot of joy into this world.

POTTER: …consoling the bereaved.

FERGUSON (speaking to church members): I appreciate you letting me be part of your life.

Clergy are different in that we are called to go to many dark places. We enter into sacred places with people, places that often are very difficult and, you know, we don’t do that from a distance. Jesus didn’t sit off in a corner and say “I feel your pain” from over here. Jesus very much reached out and touched, and he felt intensely for people, and we do, too, and so when you do that on a day-after-day basis, it is a lot of stress.

POTTER: Today’s technology just adds to that stress.

FERGUSON: I couldn’t do my job probably without my laptop and my Blackberry but I’m on call 24/7, 365 days a year. I receive probably an average of 30 to 35 phone calls a day, 60 to 70 emails a day, and just taking care of that takes a lot of time.

POTTER: Feeling called to serve, not to be served, Ferguson hid her stress from the congregation. She worked 60 to 70 hours a week for more than five years and took little time off. And then one Sunday night it hit her.

FERGUSON: I came into the parsonage, and I put my things on the kitchen table, and I sat down and I—my body, I just felt like I couldn’t move, and I just sat there, and I was emotionally and physically exhausted.

POTTER: For years, clergy stress was a little bit like the weather. Everybody talked about it, and nobody did anything. But now, more than 50 programs across the country are working to improve clergy health, from foundation-paid sabbaticals to peer groups and retreats sponsored by church pension plans. Here in the mountains of North Carolina, the Episcopal Church brings groups of clergy together for eight days to de-stress and re-center themselves. This program started a decade ago with one workshop. It’s now held more than 20 times a year.

Retreat leader: The official theme for today is “where am I going?”

POTTER: The sessions cover everything from finance to vocation, giving clergy who are often isolated in their work a chance to share their stories and learn from each other.

REV. JOHN THOMPSON-QUARTEY (St. Mary’s by the Sea, Point Pleasant Beach, NJ): I was left alone in a very large parish and I was doing everything, everything, all the six or seven services during the weekend, running to all the hospital, home visitation. The doctor said, “You must be stressed out.” I said, “You think?”

POTTER: For many, the session on work and meaning was revealing.

REV. NICHOLAS PORTER (Trinity Episcopal Church, Southport, CT): What this has helped me realize is that I’ve sort of been feeling starved in my primary position.

REV. KYM LUCAS (St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Raleigh, NC): I realized that at work I spend the bulk of my time doing the things I hate and not the things that I love to do.

POTTER: Trying to do it all can take a toll on a pastor’s spiritual life.

THOMPSON-QUARTEY: I often carry the burden of being stressed from work because of such nasty emails and stuff, I bring it home, and I can’t even prepare myself to pray.

POTTER: Kym Lucas has four small children and ministers alone to a busy parish—a classic recipe for clergy burnout.

LUCAS: I felt like I had been burning the candle at both ends for a long time, for at least a year-and-a-half. And there was a part of me that felt a little guilty about taking this time, but I’m glad I did, absolutely glad that I did

POTTER: For Nicholas Porter, the retreat was a reawakening.

REV. NICHOLAS PORTER (Trinity Episcopal Church, Southport, CT): I love my job. Do I love all of it? No. At any given moment, if you were to have a little camera in my office, no. But I love my job. Healing lives, connecting people to eternity and eternal life and love—I mean this is great stuff. This is great stuff.

FERGUSON: That can be hard to remember when the stress of the job gets to be too much. Sometimes I’ll hear clergy, other clergy, not just Methodist clergy but other clergy, say to especially young people when they’re discerning a call to ministry, they will say to them, “If you can do anything else, do it.”

POTTER: After nearly collapsing from exhaustion and overwork, Lynda Ferguson finally took time off for a mission trip to Nicaragua and reset her priorities. She takes Fridays off now. Sometimes when her cell phone rings she doesn’t answer, and she’s lost weight in part by resisting the temptation to sample every dish at every church gathering.

FERGUSON (at church meeting): Bill caught me this morning running a little bit.

Church member: I saw you jogging.

Church member: Hey, she runs, she don’t jog.

FERGUSON: Just because I love the people, and I truly do, I cannot be there for everything, and they understand that, and they know that, and it is part of our job to set those boundaries, but it is very, very difficult to do so.

POTTER: Difficult, but essential for clergy to manage the stress that comes with the job and focus on the work they really feel called to do.

FERGUSON: There’s a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves as clergy because of what we’re doing, and we don’t want to let God down.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Deborah Potter in Bostic, North Carolina.

The post Clergy Stress appeared first on Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

ELIZABETH (speaking in Stephen Ministry training session): I just don’t know what to do.

DEBORAH POTTER, correspondent: Sometimes you just need someone to listen.

ELIZABETH: I just don’t know how to resolve this in my head. I’m just really upset. I can’t forgive myself.

POTTER: Sometimes you need something more—a hand to hold, and maybe a prayer.

PAMELA (praying with Elizabeth): Dear Lord, Thank you for watching over all of us today. In your name we pray.

ELIZABETH: Amen. Thank you. I feel so much better.

POTTER: At Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, parishioners are training to become caregivers.

STEPHEN MINISTRY TRAINEE: The key thing that I saw is you leaned into her. You engaged her and told her, “I’m listening to you.”

POTTER: They’re learning to be Stephen ministers, named for Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr who cared for the poor. Parishioners are recruited and interviewed by the pastor, then trained to offer one-to-one care to people in and around their congregation. They commit to be available as needed for two years, but many serve longer. Pam Montgomery has been involved for two decades, balancing Stephen Ministry with responsibilities at home. But sometimes the caregiver is the one who needs care.

PAM MONTGOMERY (Stephen Minister): This is my dad and my mom.

POTTER: Seven years ago, Pam’s father died of cancer. Just two weeks later she lost her grandmother. As she grappled with her grief, a friend surprised her with a suggestion: What if Pam herself asked for a Stephen minister?

MONTGOMERY: When you’re so close to it I didn’t even think about me having one, and that Stephen minister was the best gift I could have given myself. She came week after week after week when other people, even my wonderful neighbors, even my wonderful friends, stopped asking, “You doing okay?” She came and she prayed for me, just for me, and that’s really powerful.

REV. KENNETH HAUGK (Founder, Stephen Ministries): When a person allows you into their life and shares their feelings and their hurts with you, they are giving you a fantastic gift, and I think when you listen to them and when you accept their feelings and when you love, share Christ’s love to them, you are giving them a similarly powerful gift.

Rev. Kenneth Haugk

POTTER: Kenneth Haugk started Stephen Ministries in 1975, when as pastor of a church in St. Louis he found he just couldn’t do it all. So drawing on his background as a clinical psychologist, he enlisted and trained a handful of lay people to offer confidential care to their fellow parishioners. And then it spread, becoming a nonprofit juggernaut.

Good Shepherd is one of 10,000 congregations around the world where parishioners serve as Stephen ministers. More than 150 Christian denominations have adopted the program.

HAUGK: Christianity is not a spectator sport. It was never intended to be a spectator sport. God gave to the church apostles, evangelists, and pastors and teachers whose job is to equip the saints for ministry.

MONTGOMERY (speaking to trainees): How did it feel to have your confession treated in that way?

POTTER: Stephen ministers go through 50 hours of instruction and practice, learning to help care receivers express their feelings, to listen without judging, and how to bring faith and the Bible into the conversation.

ALLAN (speaking in training session): Can we pray? Dear God, give Rene the absolute confidence of his forgiveness…

POTTER: They also study specific situations, like dealing with grief and divorce. But Stephen ministers are not counselors, so they also learn when to call in professional help from a pastor or therapist. Their work is supervised at the parish level, and if a care-giving relationship doesn’t work out, which does happen sometimes, either party can be reassigned.

Good Shepherd’s senior pastor, David Sloop, introduced the program here in 1987.

REVEREND DAVID SLOOP (Senior Pastor, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Raleigh, NC): It took a while for people to say, instead of “I need to speak to the pastor,” to also say, “Or can I have a Stephen minister?” And that’s a cultural shift, but it did occur, and we’re grateful it did. That old Lutheran concept of the priesthood of all believers—Stephen Ministry helps you live that out.

MONTGOMERY (speaking to trainees): Consider your stewardship of a precious resource: God’s gifted people…

POTTER: To enroll in the program, parishes pay a one-time fee of about $1700, giving them access to materials and leadership sessions like this one in Orlando, Florida, where experienced Stephen ministers and pastors learn how to train more care givers back home.

JACLYN HICKS: I was a care receiver, and I tell everybody, even before I became a Stephen minister, about my experience.

POTTER: Jaclyn Hicks and her husband were struggling with infertility when her pastor at Church of the Savior United Methodist in Cincinnati suggested a Stephen minister.

HICKS: It changed my life. It changed my life just having somebody be there for you, supporting you.

POTTER: After becoming pregnant and having a daughter, Hicks became a Stephen minister herself.

Jaclyn Hicks

HICKS: It’s huge to be on the flip side, to be able to just care for someone during their time of need. It’s been a tremendous blessing, and I get, as a Stephen minister, just as much out of it as I feel my care receivers do.

POTTER: Care-giving relationships are always same-gender, and the program tends to attract more women than men. Rene Anctil of Good Shepherd wasn’t sure at first that he was cut out to be a Stephen minister.

RENE ANCTIL: I tended to rely on myself a lot, and throughout this process I’ve kind of learned that I’m truly the care giver. I’m not the cure giver, and that’s God’s part.

POTTER: While Stephen Ministry relationships are strictly confidential, Anctil’s care receiver, Ed, said we could sit in on one of their weekly sessions. They started meeting more than a year ago, after Ed’s wife died.

ANCTIL: You mentioned that your daughter mentioned to you that she thought you were depressed.

ED: Yeah, oh yeah.

ANCTIL: How did that make you feel?

ED: I don’t think I’m depressed, but you get moody once in a while. Your body wears out when you get old. You always want to do something that you can’t do. That’s the hardest part.

ANCTIL: I think I recognize God in my life a lot more than I had in the past, and a lot of it is because of Stephen Ministry. I see God working not only with my care receiver but with me, which I never saw before.

POTTER: In the 35 years since the program started, half a million people have been trained as Stephen ministers, each one touching at least one other person—and being touched in return.

ANCTIL: I’m not going to go away. I’m going to be there as long as he needs me. I don’t know where the end’s going to be, but we’re going to do it together.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Deborah Potter in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The post Stephen Ministry appeared first on Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

Since its inception 10 years ago, the ministry of congregational care and counseling at Union Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, has made Stephen Ministry a vital component of its continuum of care.

“The Good Samaritan” by James Lesesne Wells (1902-1995)

Union—a thriving, predominantly African-American congregation of about 4500 members—enrolled in Stephen Ministry in the spring of 2000 and sent me to a leadership training course in Orlando. When I returned to North Carolina, I conferred with Union’s pastor, Kenneth R. Hammond, and began recruiting additional Stephen leaders from the church. Six months later, Union’s first Stephen Ministry class began with nine trainees.

One of the most appealing aspects of this model of ministry is its ability to balance attention between both the spiritual and emotional needs of care receivers. Stephen Ministry trainees receive 50 hours of preparation over four months in areas such as listening non-judgmentally, managing care receivers’ feelings, practicing assertiveness, establishing boundaries, observing confidentiality, and recognizing the limits of the care they can offer. These practical skills help to establish a trusting bond between the Stephen minister and care receiver, and they also provide a superb foundation for the care receivers themselves to cope with challenging circumstances in their lives.

Because Stephen Ministry trainees are encouraged to establish prayer-partner relationships with one another, they too are formed spiritually by their work. Specific training on using scriptures when providing care and identifying ways that Christ cared for others augment the spiritual experiences Stephen ministers have as they devote themselves to what is a two-year “calling.” While Stephen Ministry is unapologetically Christ-centered, it allows space to accept care receivers at their specified point of need, which often is not articulated as faith-based. Stephen ministers can openly reflect their own Christian identity without proselytizing.

Stephen Ministry is well-suited to our congregation in Durham for theological as well as pragmatic reasons. It recognizes the inherent value of the laity in ways that have not always been emphasized historically. While traditional models of pastoral care stress the role of the pastor in shepherding the flock, Stephen Ministry complements the pastoral role by equipping the laity to work alongside the pastor and provide care to the hurting. This is especially meaningful to individuals who require ongoing attention in ways that are challenging for pastors, who often must move from one crisis to another. Stephen ministers offer countless hours of care that meet real needs. They embody what they believe is a responsibility for the hurting that is shared by clergy and laity alike.

Shared responsibility is a central scriptural and theological emphasis of Stephen Ministry, which encourages Christians to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Such biblical wisdom runs counter to the messages of North American Christianity and culture, where individualism and autonomy often reign supreme. Stephen Ministry, in training and in practice, teaches the laity valuable skills for how one bears another’s burdens without ever losing sight of one’s own burdens (particularly as lay leaders share them in biweekly supervision sessions and the prayer-partner relationship).

Union’s Stephen Ministry has partnered with other ministries in our own congregation (the diaconate ministry and women’s ministry, for example) to provide education and skills to their members. It has also served our local Durham community well in multiple ways. Whenever we experience a lull in requests for care from members of our own congregation, we are able to assign Stephen ministers to organizations in the broader community. Our church has forged relationships with local homeless shelters, social service agencies, nursing home facilities, and their individual members and constituents. We have established a deeper sense of partnership and community with several local churches, collaborating on Stephen Ministry training for the past five years with Duke Memorial United Methodist Church, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, White Rock Baptist Church, the Congregation at Duke Chapel, Aldersgate United Methodist Church, and Westminster Presbyterian Church. This ecumenical fellowship has resulted in more efficiency in our training efforts, ready referral partners across churches, greater understanding of and respect for other denominations, and ongoing relationships with Stephen leaders and ministers that extend well beyond the training season. The Triangle Area Stephen Ministry Network has provided resources and continuing education opportunities with our counterparts in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and surrounding areas as well.

While there are aspects of Stephen Ministry that can be improved, such as greater multicultural sensitivity in training materials and more attention to meeting the needs of youth (who are not served under the current Stephen Ministry model), we remain convinced that it has greatly enriched the quality and quantity of care we provide to church and community members alike.

One of the most powerful narratives of the New Testament is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), where the “ordinary” Samaritan lay person (rather than a member of the clergy) demonstrated care and compassion for the victimized Jew. Instead of resorting to overly spiritualized discourse, the Good Samaritan responds to the victim’s multilayered needs in a manner that brings healing and provides encouragement. This narrative underscores the importance of meeting the needs of the oppressed and marginalized in tangible ways. It broadens our understanding of who our neighbor actually is and illustrates what it means to show mercy. Most importantly for Stephen Ministry, the parable of the Good Samaritan affirms the tremendous value of the laity in joining God’s healing work, beginning with our immediate communities.

Tonya D. Armstrong is the minister of congregational care and counseling at Union Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, and adjunct assistant professor in pastoral theology at the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life.

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SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: Los Angeles County’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility: it’s one of the largest jails in the country. Behind its walls, over 3,000 men are locked up as their criminal prosecutions continue. Many prisoners are accused of committing murder, rape, and a variety of gang-related crimes. However, this jailhouse is also a house of worship to Dennis Gibbs, a senior chaplain at Twin Towers. His Sunday services are like few others, held in a cell block and closely watched by sheriff’s deputies.

CHAPLAIN DENNIS GIBBS: I think this is a holy place. I believe that we are standing on holy ground. This is a place of reconciliation and healing, and so I really see this as—in many ways this is my parish.

GONZALEZ: Chaplin Gibbs is one of dozens of clergy men and women from a variety of faiths who offer pastoral care and spiritual guidance to the inmates at Twin Towers. Although an Episcopalian, Chaplain Gibbs provides spiritual counseling to all prisoners who approach him, no matter what their particular faith.

GIBBS (speaking to prisoner): Hey, man, how is it going? Good to see you again.

PRISONER: Could you say a little prayer for me and my girl, my baby?

GONZALEZ: Although the chaplain doesn’t condone what these men are accused of doing, he also doesn’t apologize for showing them compassion.

GIBBS (praying with prisoner): God the Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you forever.

GIBBS: These men are wounded, these men are orphans, and these men are largely forgotten, and I think it’s powerful that we bring church to them and remind them that they are a part of our community, and that they are beloved by God.

CARLOS ORTIZ: You build a bond, I’d say, with the chaplain. You build a bond of friendship.

GONZALEZ: Carlos Ortiz, who’s been at Twin Towers for six months, was recently convicted of drug possession. He says Chaplin Gibbs and other jailhouse clergy help inmates sustain and develop their faith when they need it the most.

ORTIZ: If you don’t have faith, they provide faith. You know, I am a man of faith, so just the fact there is someone that you can talk to, someone that can acknowledge about God, that’s something good for inmates. The situation you are at might not be good, but he makes you realize that you are good spiritually and physically, you are in a good spot.

GONZALEZ: Along with larger worship services, the chaplains spend much of their time holding private one-on-one sessions with prisoners who want to talk to them. Episcopal chaplain Greta Ronnigen says she’s not interested in why the men she ministers to are here.

GONZALEZ: You don’t care what the guys are in here for?

CHAPLAIN GRETA RONNIGEN: No.

GONZALEZ: Why? That seems counter-intuitive.

RONNIGEN: Because I am here for their spiritual support. I am not a lawyer. I am not social services. I’m about where they are with God. I am here to talk to them as they turn, turn away from the dark that has been their past, and they are looking, they are seeking.

GONZALEZ: Some of the prisoners at the center of complex cases, such as murder or gang-related crimes, can be held at Twin Towers for years before they’re convicted and sentenced to state prison. Except in extraordinary circumstances, say when an inmate might be threatening to murder someone, the jailhouse clergy keep confidential what they hear from prisoners, as Chaplain Gibbs explained in a conversation back at the Los Angeles Episcopal diocese.

GONZALEZ: If an inmate says something in a confession and admits to something horrible you don’t have to report it, right?

GIBBS: It’s protected.

GONZALEZ: It’s protected.

GIBBS: Yeah, it’s protected. The nature of confession is that it is a sealed sacrament, and that’s important for the men. Once the priest puts on that stole and enters into the sacrament of the church, it is a completely sealed and confidential conversation, just like it would be with somebody confessing in their church.

GONZALEZ: The presence of the chaplains at county lockups also helps ease tensions and assuage anger, and the sheriff’s deputies welcome that. However, at Twin Towers security and punishment always come before worship, and that’s especially true in the jail’s highest security units or pods.

GIBBS: In this particular unit they are complicated cases. I would say a very good majority of the men are in here for homicide, and there’s a lot of gang-related crimes in this pod.

GONZALEZ: Here, services are often conducted through steel doors and plexiglass, and services, as in the day we were shooting, are often cut short by lockdowns.

GIBBS (speaking to Chaplain Ronnigen): Greta, full lockdown. We gotta go.

RONNIGEN: Sorry, guys. Peace.

GIBBS: Yeah, the jail just went on full lockdown, so we never really know what that is about, just that a full lockdown means that there is no movement whatsoever, so we want to wrap up rather quickly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out of the jail.

GONZALEZ: Although he doesn’t get into the details, Chaplain Gibbs knew about confinement long before he arrived at Twin Towers six years ago.

(speaking to Chaplain Gibbs): You were in jail yourself?

GIBBS: I was, yeah. I have lived this despairing life to a great degree, absolutely. My personal response to the call to follow Christ has led me back to the streets where I once was homeless. It’s led me back to the drug-addicted and alcoholic, as I once suffered. It’s led me back to the jails, where I once was a prisoner.

GONZALEZ: I’m sure, Chaplain, when the men at Twin Towers hear about your past, and I’m sure you share some of your past with them, it gives you a particular credibility.

GIBBS: I think it does. I think it changes the conversation to a degree and kind of alerts people that I am not just some do-gooder Christian guy coming in to tell you that Jesus loves you.

GONZALEZ: That’s certainly the case for prisoner David Yi.

DAVID YI: He does give us hope. That he was once an inmate also and now this is where he’s at, helping other people find themselves—it’s just a lot of hope.

GONZALEZ: He’s a good model to follow?

YI: Exactly. Someone you can lean on.

GONZALEZ: One of the Twin Towers prisoners Chaplain Gibbs has gotten to know the best in recent months is also the most unusual. He’s William Manson, a scholarly 80-year-old physician recently convicted of killing his ex-wife. Already in the hospital ward, Manson knows he’ll likely die behind prison walls.

WILLIAM MANSON: I think that the sentence was just under the circumstances. I did the crime. Now I’m paying the price.

GONZALEZ: And spiritually are you armed for this, for this life that you have ahead of you, being a man of faith?

MANSON: I don’t know. I think so.

GIBBS (speaking to William Manson): God bless you.

MANSON: Thank you very much.

GIBBS: Would you like to pray?

MANSON: Yes.

GIBBS: As chaplains we absorb people’s sadness, their brokenness, their wounding, their depth of spiritual despair, and we are very aware of that as chaplains. I think in many ways we hold for these inmates often what they cannot hold for themselves.

(anointing and blessing prisoners): May your wounds be healed.

GONZALEZ: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

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