Clergy Mobbing Research
Steve Vensel September 20 2011 - No Comment
Last year I wrote a blog on mobbing:
Mobbing is an emotional assault in which a hostile workplace environment is created through innuendo, rumors, and public discrediting. Mobbing is defined as the prolonged malicious harassment of a coworker by a group of other members of an organization to secure the removal from the organization of the one who is targeted. Usually a single individual initiates the mobbing by gathering others to participate in malevolent actions to force a person out of the workplace. Mobbing involves a small group of people and results in the humiliation, devaluation, discrediting, degradation, loss of reputation and the removal of the target through termination, extended medical leave or quitting. In a church workplace setting “coworkers” may include other clergy, staff, volunteers, elders, deacons, and/or congregation members.
Mobbing has never been empirically researched in church settings, which is a fancy way of saying it doesn’t exist in the academic literature, and is therefore not recognized as something that actually happens. This blog is about how we can change that in order to begin a meaningful conversation regarding how to help pastors prevent and/or overcome this experience.
As part of my Doctorate work at Florida Atlantic University (Department of Counselor Education) I am investigating “mobbing” and clergy. I am asking you to please assist me in getting the word out to pastors (Senior, Associate, Assistant, Executive, Youth Pastors, Worship leaders: anyone serving in a pastoral/ministry position in a church) to participate in this research. If you have experienced mobbing I urge you to participate in this study.
Participation will consist of going to this secure research website: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ClergyMobbing and completing a short demographic questionnaire and three short questionnaires. This should take no more that 35 minutes and you can come back to it if you are not able to complete it at one time.
All information and collected data is completely confidential, secure and protected. No identifying information will be collected and there are no obligations, advertisements, requests, promotions or commercial activities associated with this research whatsoever, it is strictly and only for research purposes. The risks involved with participating in this study are no more than one would experience in regular daily activities. To learn more about the study please visit the “Clergy Mobbing” Facebook page I have created: Clergy Mobbing on Facebook.
If you have any contacts in denominational organizations, pastor support groups, or can forward an email to a pastor with a link to the research page please do so. A copy of an email is posted on the Clergy Mobbing Facebook page that you can forward to your contacts. I’m happy to email this information so please feel free to contact me at stevevensel@gmail.com. Thank you for helping with this important project in any way possible!
Lastly, I want to express my extreme appreciation to Steve Brown for his support of pastors and to Erik for his help with this blog.
Steve Vensel, Doctoral Candidate
Florida Atlantic University
Department of Counselor Education
How To Avoid Burnout- Two Simple Disciplines
Steve Vensel September 13 2010 - 1 Comment
I have the vantage point of being both a therapist and an academic who focuses on clergy research. This stuff excites me because it offers both insight and direction. In my last blog I wrote about burnout so that pastors can recognize the signs before they become crippled by it. Today I want to address how to avoid it altogether.
Burnout is not good. That may sound stupidly simplistic and grammatically awkward but it deserves repeating: Burnout is not good. The reason for the negative redundancy is to emphasize the need to avoid burnout. It is so debilitating and so difficult to treat that the very best way to deal with it is to avoid it.
Pastors are a stout and dedicated bunch. You guys work long hours, receive little pay, don’t take much time off, experience incredibly difficult boundary issues with church members, constantly have to choose between the needs of your family and the needs of your congregations, have more “bosses” and critics in a single congregation than most people will have in a lifetime and rarely have supportive relationships that you can deeply trust. But you serve God with a devotion and ethic that any Fortune 500 corp. CEO would kill for.
But pastors are also stubborn. It never ceases to amaze me how pastors will continue to self-sacrifice with no regard to the personal consequences. Often this self-sacrifice involves denying the degree of stress you are experiencing by minimizing its emotional impact. Pastors can tell me stories of incredible rudeness and criticisms, sometimes directed at their families, and say “but, that’s Okay” as if accepting abusive behavior from a fellow Christian is Godly. Pastor are notorious for not taking vacation and when they do they are often asked to come back early for one reason or another, usually for good cause, but it often serves to increases stress. You may think this is just a part of serving Christ but the increasing exodus of clergy from full-time ministry suggest the stress experienced by American pastors is increasingly intolerable.
Pastors are no different than any other human and are not exempt from the consequences when emotional needs go unmet. Just like a bank account with insufficient funds if you have not made any deposits the day will come when you are overdrawn. But the emotional bounce will manifest in health issues, family issues, or emotional issues including burnout. The saddest part is that pastors can become so emotionally bankrupt that they’re unable to make anymore deposits and they close the account. When that happens it is neither glorifying to God or useful to man!
But this doesn’t have to happen. It is important that pastors practice some very simple spiritual self-care. Chandler investigated how personal spiritual renewal and rest-taking practices can have a significant impact on reducing clergy stress and burnout.
Researchers have affirmed that spiritual dryness and lack of vibrant spiritual encounter with God is highly associated with clergy burnout. One of the consistent findings is that as time demands increase so does spiritual dryness. This means that spiritual renewal is not just “quiet-time” but is actually a necessary part of your personal and spiritual well-being. Spiritual renewal is not preparing for sermons but is finding the time, resources and means to have significant personal encounters with God for the purpose of having significant personal encounters with God! Developing systems, resources, same sex support relationships, and retreat time for spiritual renewal needs to be intentional and supported by the church. Devotional reading, meditation, prayer, worship, journaling, fasting and restorative retreats are ways of providing for spiritual renewal. This might require developing these as disciplines. A discipline is something you do by direct effort that produces something that cannot be produced by direct effort. Spiritual renewal must be purposeful. Also know that church members both want and need their pastors to be spiritually fit. I encourage you to address this with your church leadership so that a yearly spiritual retreat is included as a required part of ministry. There are many great ministries that focus on clergy care and provide very affordable retreat experiences. Your relationship with God is a vital source of energy, purpose and well-being, make sure you are personally attending to it!
Rest-taking practices, or taking time off, include non-work related leisure activities such as exercise, reading for pleasure, hobbies, outdoor activities and other recreational pursuits. It also includes family time. It is interesting to note that researchers consistently find that ministry involvement which prevents rest taking is associated with burnout and ineffectiveness. In other words the less time pastors are able to rest because of ministry involvement, the more likely they are to be emotionally exhausted. One researcher argued that rest and renewal are imperative for personal effectiveness and church well-being. It is also important to note that taking time off is associated with a deeper sense of personal accomplishment in ministry which functions as a motivator to deeper ministry. The old adage “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is an old adage for a reason. It turns out that recreation for men is as important as relationship for women! Men really need to play, create and experience. And remember, you don’t work hard to earn a vacation you take a vacation so you can work hard.
All in all these two simple practices will have a tremendous positive affect on you and your ministry and will help you avoid burnout. But they have to be intentional.
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Chandler, D. J., (2009). Pastoral burnout and the impact of personal spiritual renewal, rest-taking, and support system practices. Pastoral Psychology, 58,273-287.
Burnout: Three Dimensions One Experience
Steve Vensel May 18 2010 - No Comment
As I’ve worked with and cared for pastors over the past twenty five years, one of the particularly nasty hazards is that of “burnout.” In spite of the popularity of the term, most people are unaware of the complexity of the problem and often fail to recognize it soon enough to make a difference. Burnout is a particularly sneaky assassin, and although it has the destructive force of an IED, it usually approaches from behind and strangles the love out of its victim. Yeah, that’s not a typo, it’s a love killer as well as a ministry ender.
Ministry takes place within a spiritual economy of personal sacrifice that is relationally, physically and emotionally demanding. Burnout is always directly related to the larger work environment and is always in response to relationships and stressors. There is no single cause of burnout. The research has found that (more…)
Mobbing
Steve Vensel March 23 2010 - 20 Comments
But they all cried out together, “Away with this man…” – Luke 23:18
Since this is my first blog entry, and hopefully not my last, I guess I should give a very short introduction. I’ve been a practicing counselor for 30 years; I’ve served twenty of those years in church and para-church ministries; I have always provided services to pastors and their families for no fees; Steve Brown was my pastor for many years; I am the Executive Director of PastorServe South Florida – a ministry to care, support, counsel and love on pastors; I’m also a doctoral student researching clergy stress, burnout and mobbing. Mob what?
The fact that you are reading a blog for pooped pastors means that you may well have experienced something that until fairly recently has not had a name attached to it. Its a devastating experience that often results in pastors leaving the ministry. Its called mobbing. Although this may not sound familiar, every pastor I talk too tells me they have either been mobbed or know a dozen other pastors that have experienced it.
Mobbing is (more…)
