Wounded Pastors: Navigating Burnout, Finding Healing, and Discerning the Future of Your Ministry
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
You’re not alone in your ministry. And you don’t have to suffer in silence.
Ministry is a stressful vocation, with unspoken expectations, projected anxieties, and conflicting demands. After the pandemic caused a sudden shift to online worship and factions fighting over when and how to return to in-person worship, pastors have been leaving congregational ministry at even higher rates than usual. The emotional fallout of burnout and abuse at the hands of parishioners is something pastors carry for years, whether they stay or leave the congregation.
Seasoned pastor Carol Howard Merritt and psychotherapist and former pastor James Fenimore join their expertise to offer validation, support, and guidance for pastors who have been hurt by the church. With wisdom that can come only from experience, they describe and define aspects of struggle and pain readers may have difficulty articulating or claiming for themselves, and they offer compassionate, informed guidance on how to find healing. A systems approach to conflict sheds light on the dynamics of church conflict and how clergy can tend their own well-being amid leadership challenges. The final chapter helps readers consider their overall vocational path based on what they’ve experienced and decide whether they can remain in congregational ministry or need to pursue a different line of work.
This is a Logos Reader Edition. Learn more.
- Offers validation, support, and guidance for pastors who have been hurt by the church
- Provides compassionate, informed guidance on how to find healing
- Explores how clergy can tend their own well-being amid leadership challenges
- Starting Our Journey
- Finding Our People
- Telling Our Story
- Identifying Our Context
- Recognizing Our Reactions
- Setting Our Boundaries
- Forgiving Our Antagonist
- Reclaiming Our Meaning
- Renewing or Releasing Our Call
- Walking Wounded
Here is a book that should be required reading for every seminarian and should be a gift to every pastor and church board. Thank God that Carol Howard and James Fenimore have said out loud the things that are usually expressed only through sighs and tears. The diagnosis is sound, and the prescriptions are wise indeed.
Brian D. McLaren, author of Do I Stay Christian?
Every pastor I know right now is experiencing some degree of burnout, pain, or desperation. None of us are okay. I can’t think of a more important book for clergy and those who wish to help them. Howard and Fenimore speak with authority, care, grace, and knowledge. A must-read.
Traci Smith, author of the Faithful Families series
Howard and Fenimore love the church and intimately know its capacity to wound its pastors. Their book is a gift to clergy and to the congregations they serve. Pastors, let them come alongside you and accompany you with care through the wounds of ministry and into greater healing and wholeness.
Cody J. Sanders, Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership, Luther Seminary
- Title: Wounded Pastors: Navigating Burnout, Finding Healing, and Discerning the Future of Your Ministry
- Authors: James Fenimore, Carol Howard
- Publisher: Westminster John Knox
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Pages: 188
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9780664268459, 0664268455
- Resource ID: LLS:WNDDPSTRSMNSTRY
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-09T14:30:22Z