October 18, 2023 • 61 mins
We are joined by Sam Sterland, Senior Researcher with the National Church Life Survey and we look at the latest findings from the NCLS and how it matches/sheds light on what our (much smaller!) survey found in the clergy wellbeing space. What does church health have to do with clergy wellbeing? Have we made any progress in leadership sustainability, and what are the key insights we glean from both our findings.
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Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution. This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Valerie Ling (00:05):
Hey, it's Valerie Ling.
I'm a clinical psychologist andI'm your host for the clergy
well-being Down Under podcast.
I'm looking forward tointerviewing an expert today to
take you through my findingsfrom my research where I asked
200 pastors down under how theywere doing.
Don't forget to subscribe, likeand share.
(00:26):
Buckle up and here we go.
Greetings everyone.
I have Sam Stowen with me.
Hello, Sam.
Sam Sterland (00:38):
Hello everyone.
Valerie Ling (00:40):
From the National Church Life Survey group.
Should we call that group?
Yeah?
Sam Sterland (00:47):
people call us different things.
Ncls research is our short name.
Valerie Ling (00:52):
Awesome.
You and I, we chatted a fewyears ago.
Really.
I had, for not a long time, butfor some time had, been reading
what was coming out of NCLS.
At the point when we had it achat, I was quite curious to see
how some of the burnout thingsthat you were finding might link
(01:13):
into things like personality,leadership dynamics.
But then a pandemic hit.
Things got a little complicated.
So I'm glad that we can sort ofregroup.
There's been another surveythat's gone out, results have
come back in and it'd befantastic to just chat with you
(01:33):
about that.
Sam Sterland (01:35):
Yeah, we've done a lot of work over the years on
ministry sustainability, burnout, and we like to talk about the
positive end as well, thethriving end.
Valerie Ling (01:44):
Yeah, I think that'd be a good place to start.
What do we know aboutleadership, ministry leadership
that are thriving.
What's come out of the mostrecent survey, for example?
Sam Sterland (01:58):
Yeah, well, we have defined thriving for our
purposes as pretty much theopposite of burnout.
So we said burnout is one endof a spectrum where you're
extremely emotionally depleted.
You don't have a lot of energyto give to people.
It's effecting your functioningwider in life and probably
(02:24):
feeding over into certainbehaviors like avoiding people,
certain emotions, like gettingmore easily irritated as well,
and that comes out in yourworkplace and also you don't
feel like you're achieving verymuch.
So I've just described thosethree pillars of the mainstream
understanding of burnout, whichis emotionally exhaustion,
(02:46):
depersonalization and sense ofpersonal achievement.
But we're interested in thehigh end as well.
We don't want people to be justsurviving in ministry, just
avoiding car crashes all thetime.
We want to know what's thethriving end look like.
So yeah, we looked at theliterature, we looked at the
engagement work.
Engagement literature, forexample, did some work on
(03:09):
workaholism and those thingsdon't quite line up with the
idea of thriving.
We thought that you know theopposite of those things, so the
opposite of workaholism.
So we said look for thepurposes of our work.
We're going to just use thesame scales we've used for
burnout, but we're going to lookat the positive ends of those
(03:30):
things, and we developed a scalewith some colleagues in the UK
who had also been surveyingministers, and we've been using
that for 20 years now inAustralia and it's been used in
a lot of other countries as well.
So the idea that we have set ofthriving is someone who's not
emotionally depleted, first ofall, who has energy to give, and
(03:51):
I guess that means someone whois keeping an eye on their
reserves and knowing when theyneed to rest.
You know, because we all can gettired and work hard, that's
normal.
And someone who thereforedoesn't have that avoiding
behaviour going on a lot,because they don't need that as
a coping mechanism.
(04:12):
And then the other side is sothat's a low emotional
distortion, so, and low and lowdepersonalisation.
And then what about high senseof achievement?
And so you know someone whofeels like I really am.
I know what I'm achieving in myministry and I feel good about
it.
You know you don't have to befeeling like you're getting the
(04:34):
gold medal every day in all thework that you're doing, but you
feel good about what you'redoing.
You have a basic sense ofsatisfaction, competence and
achievement in what you're doing.
And we said if, that's ifyou're in that place where you
know you've got energy to giveand you know that you're
achieving well then we want tocall that thriving in ministry.
Valerie Ling (04:54):
Yeah, for many people sitting in church, our
experience of the survey isquite different from the overall
results that you can get orthat NCLS presents.
For example, I attended yourwebinar not too long ago about
the results from the sustainableleadership and what you were
(05:16):
looking at.
But, broadly speaking, what areall the different aspects that
the survey covers in terms ofwhat information it gives us?
Sam Sterland (05:27):
Well, in relation to leaders, which I guess was
out where our interest is todaywe obviously cover the
well-being material.
So burnout and thriving we'veused various stress measures
over the years.
Anxiety, depression indicatorsand I suppose the distinction
I'd make there is burnout isgenerally recognised as a
(05:49):
workplace phenomenon Although Ithink you can burn out in other
things as well but it's framedas a workplace phenomenon,
whereas anxiety, depression, aremore a whole of life
experiences and they cancertainly be linked.
If you're staying burning upfor long enough and it's not
dealt with, it may just moveinto generalised depression and
(06:12):
anxiety and that you can'tfunction at all in any area.
So we've looked at all thosethings.
We've looked at the positiveside of things a positive
well-being indicator, which is awell-known Australian scale
that's used.
We've looked at engagement inwork, so that's more
work-focused thing.
Again, we've looked atworkaholism, as I mentioned
(06:34):
before.
So they're all the well-beingthings.
But then another big area thatwe have focused on is resilience
, because when you look aboutburnout or thriving, you're
really talking about an outcome.
It's good to know how you'regoing, but you don't have to
think about that too long beforeyou should be thinking well,
hang on a sec.
(06:55):
What causes this stuff?
What has led to me being okay,I know where I am, I know I'm
doing well or I'm struggling,but really, how did I get to
this outcome?
And so there's a million thingsthat affect us in our life and
if we're in ministry.
A million things going on inchurch, in society, in our
family, in our health, ourbackground as well they all
(07:16):
affect how we're going, butparticularly the internal
qualities that we carry aspeople.
We refer to that as resiliencefactors.
So we talk about six resiliencefactors that we think is
helpful to focus on aspectsrelated to self-care etc.
When we're focusing on thosethings, they will help us thrive
and avoid burnout.
(07:37):
So they're the well-beingrelated things in leadership.
Then we also ask a lot of stuffabout training, how well-trained
people feel in areas and ofcourse, we know that something
like that is related towell-being If you don't feel
particularly well-trained andyou're needing to function in an
area that you don't feelwell-trained in.
(07:59):
So a good example of that wouldbe administration in church.
So many ministers do asignificant amount of
administration.
In fact, most ministers putthat in the top three things
they spend time on.
But if you have not receivedtraining in administration.
(08:20):
You probably didn't sign up forit.
When you signed up for Biblecollege, you wanted to go in
ministry.
You didn't think, oh, I reallywant to be an administrator in a
church, I'm really lookingforward to all that paperwork.
You went in maybe because youhave a pastoral heart for people
, or you like to preach or train, or you want to connect with
the community as the localminister, etc.
And so if you haven't beentrained in an area that you find
(08:42):
you have to do a lot of work in, that can really affect your
well-being and you can also bepretty bad at it because you're
not trained in it and so it'staking up even more time than it
should.
And so we've noticed a numberof denominations offering
training in administration,which is not a bad thing because
they probably didn't get it atBible college in a lot of cases,
(09:04):
and if they can spend less timeon it because their competency
level is higher, they're goingto be happy and they're going to
be less stressed and feelingthat mismatch, more about the
things they wish they werespending time on.
So training.
We looked at personality andobviously the literature says
(09:24):
that some aspects of ourpersonality can make us more
vulnerable to struggling invarious ways, so that's an
important area.
We also look at effectiveleadership, which is a different
topic to sustainable leadership.
They're no doubt very closelylinked.
But what is my leadership style?
(09:46):
How do people in my churchexperience me as a leader?
That can be a really helpfulbut scary question to ask.
Where can I get feedback that'ssafe to receive, that's not
traumatising or damaging for me,but where can I get helpful
feedback that will help me growas a leader, and so that's very
(10:11):
much a fit.
It's about how effective am I,but it's going to feedback on
how sustainable I am in my roleas well.
Valerie Ling (10:18):
Incredible.
Yeah, let's start from the top.
Let's do the church stuff aswell.
Sam Sterland (10:22):
So I've just mentioned also we do the church
stuff as well.
That's what most people arefamiliar with.
Valerie Ling (10:27):
Yeah.
Sam Sterland (10:28):
All the healthy churches and qualities of
churches that are thriving.
Valerie Ling (10:32):
So in the most recent survey, what proportion
are thriving, surviving, burningout?
Sam Sterland (10:42):
Now we pretty much calibrated our scales now close
to what scales that are used bypsychologists would give.
So, like the Maslach burnoutinventory, which is like the
gold standard that cliniciansuse, and we've looked at their
norms, or you know their levelsof where people are above or
below burnout or in the top end,and then we've applied that to
(11:06):
people in ministry with our ownscales.
We haven't seen that the levelof burnout has increased greatly
yet.
So I think 2016, maybe,strictly say, 2% of ministers
were in burnout, according towhat we could see.
(11:26):
Now, of course, that's notgoing to be exactly right.
Some people have already leftministry.
They're not filling out asurvey, so you know you've got
that issue.
Of course you're sampling andof course, everybody's different
.
A scale doesn't replace seeingdown in front of a professional
or someone who's experienced, areally good mentor or someone
(11:47):
like that who can really helpyou assess where you are, but a
scale gives you a basic sense ofthat.
So we found about 2% of peoplein ministry really were in
burnout, whether they knew it ornot, based on what they'd
answered, and this time aroundit was about the same.
But that next level above,where you're not burning out but
(12:08):
you are struggling and you'rein danger.
That group has grown, butwhat's interesting is that the
top end group those who arethriving in ministry that's
grown as well.
So the experience of COVID hasbeen really surprising, I think.
I think when it first hit we'vegot to remember it wasn't the
(12:30):
same for everyone.
It wasn't the same for everyonein ministry.
Even at the time we weretalking to people, because we
talked to church leaders all thetime, we talked to
denominational leaders who cantell us what their people are
saying.
There were people who wereworld falling apart as COVID
started.
I can't preach, we haven't gotour tech set up, I can't do
(12:54):
pastoral care, I mean, these arethe top two reasons why a lot
of people went into ministry andthey can't do either of these
things.
There were certainly people whowere really questioning what am
I supposed to do?
What on earth is my purposeright now?
How do I adapt?
So there were certainly peoplethat I think there were probably
(13:15):
some people who were actuallygreat for a bit of a rest, who
might have been working too hardand said, okay, I've just got
to pause, I've got to set upsome other things, but all that
adapting, that change was reallyhard.
There were other people whowere saying this is really
exciting because we're going tostop doing some of the things we
had no choice about and we'renow in a new space where we can
give some thought to, forexample, creative mission.
(13:38):
We talked to some people whowere saying how can we connect
with the community when peoplearen't even allowed to go out,
when we're under that muchlockdown you're only allowed to
go one person to the shops oncea day, or something like that
and there were some people whowere really excited about a
mission in a new approach, andsome were even saying I don't
(14:01):
think I want to go back to whatwhen all this gets lifted?
I think I'm like I'm reallyexcited about the new
possibilities.
You know, online connecting hasjust exploded for us, so we've
got to remember it was differentfor different people.
Some people were reallystruggling.
Others just enjoyed the changeand found some refreshing wind
blowing, and then, as time wenton, you know there were things
(14:26):
that became resolved.
At first, there was nounderstanding of what's going to
happen financially.
Then financial support wasprovided by the government for
most churches and so that stress, massive stress, went away for
a period and as for many, manybusinesses too, you know,
wouldn't still be here if theyhadn't had that government
support.
So that has led to twodifferent groups of people.
(14:51):
If we just want to generalise, Ithink there are some people who
have come through COVID whohave said this has been really,
really hard.
This has been the hardest thing.
I'm more tired than ever.
I'm still not sure how I feelnow about how things are going
for church.
Not everybody's come back.
There's more people that it'shard to connect with, et cetera.
(15:14):
There's some people who arestill really struggling and
finding that hard.
There are other people who saylook, I'm refreshed by the
changes and the newpossibilities.
I think one thing ministersfound that was that because they
had more people in theirchurches in crisis for a range
of reasons.
It might be because of health,it might be because of finances,
(15:36):
because they lost their job ortheir job had massively scaled
back.
It might be because ofloneliness, because they weren't
as mobile like they were.
It might be because of familyillness.
They might have known people orhad a relative who died.
I mean, I know of someone whodied during COVID who was close
to one of our work colleagues.
(15:58):
So all kinds of stresses, butmany ministers, I think, rose to
the occasion of pastoral carein that time and felt more
relevant than ever because theywere able to connect with people
in that time of crisis.
So sure, there was a lot todeal with and more people with
more needs, but we actuallyfound that the proportion of
(16:22):
ministers who say I feel reallyeffective in my role went up.
And that surprised me because Ithought, oh, they're all going
to be really affected by I can'tpreach, I can't do pastoral
care.
But that was early in thepandemic 2020.
By the time our survey camearound, late 21 and many
(16:42):
churches waited till early 22 todo the survey because they
hadn't fully resumed, or theykind of resumed in late 21.
But too much was going on, sothey waited till 22 to do it.
At that point I think many ofthem were saying actually feel
really satisfied in my role.
I feel really effective, I knowwhat I'm here to do.
(17:03):
There's a lot of good stuffhere.
So I think we've got two groups.
Of course, more people areexhausted as well.
We saw that go up as well.
So the proportion of people whosay, look, I'm feeling pretty
worn out, I don't have a lot ofenergy, I feel drained by my
work, I know I'm avoiding somethings or some difficult
(17:26):
situations because I'm justbarely coping myself, maybe just
because I'm so tired andemotionally I've given out.
A lot More people were in thatspace.
So it's an interesting shiftbecause we have always found
that people who that ministerscan be high on stress and high
on sense of effectiveness at thesame time.
(17:48):
They don't.
They're not opposites.
They often go together.
You're working hard, you'redoing great work, you feel good
about what you're doing, butyou're stressed and you're tired
, and so what we found duringCOVID is both of those things
went up.
The sense of effectivenessreally did go up a lot, so that
means quite a number of peoplefelt more effective.
(18:10):
I'm not saying everyone did,but for many not as many, but
for many exhaustion went up aswell.
Valerie Ling (18:19):
I think that's a finding that's replicated in
other studies as well that forpeople who are in the industry,
their sense of effectiveness orengagement or meaning and
purpose doesn't necessarily godown, but they are exhausted.
So, sam, you were saying that2% probably met the technical
(18:42):
diagnosis, if you like a burnout.
Maybe we'd have to do moreinvestigation to that, but
perhaps that's what it is.
And then you were saying thatthere was a range from the
thriving to the burnout spectrum.
What does it look likecurrently?
Sam Sterland (18:57):
Yeah, okay, so I'll start with what you said
there, that, yes, 2% we foundwere burning out both in 2016
and 2021.
That's of senior local churchleaders, not assistance, not
other people.
We collect all that info aswell, but the national figures
we put out after senior leadersand that's because we can put
(19:21):
out a consistent figure forAustralia from year by year and
even when our sample changes,that figure is actually accurate
because we know how manychurches there are in Australia.
So that figure has not gone upand I guess the uncertainty
around that is to say, if youthink you're burning out based
on a scale, go and talk tosomeone, because you probably
(19:44):
are, but there might be otherthings going on as well.
It may be that you're sufferingfrom depression and it's not
burnout, because you'll probablyscore really high on burnout.
And similarly, if you'restruggling according to a scale,
go and talk to someone anyway,because you might actually be
burning out and just the scaledidn't pick it up.
So that the scale is a bluntinstrument.
(20:07):
You get face to face with aprofessional and experienced
person who will then help youdecide what you need to do to
get out of that struggling place.
Yeah, so what we found in 2021was that the overall proportion
of people in the lower bands hadactually gone down and that the
(20:27):
top bands managing well,thriving had increased.
But that actually made us stopand go.
There must be more to the storythat we're not getting and
that's what we just talked abouta couple of minutes ago that I
broke into the two parts and Isaid, yes, more people are
saying they feel effective, butalso more people are saying they
(20:50):
do feel exhausted.
And so if you can feel reallyexhausted but still feel really
effective, technically you'renot in burnout, right.
But what's really happening isyou've got this buffer
underneath you holding you uplike a big balloon.
I am totally exhausted, but Ifeel so good about my ministry,
(21:12):
I feel so fulfilled.
We're doing so much good stuffand you're not necessarily
really reflecting on how longcan I do this for.
But if anything was to takeaway that sense of effectiveness
, suddenly, let's say, somethingbad happens at your church, or
let's say you get sick and youcan't work, or something in your
own life falls apart, suddenlyall you're left with is your
(21:34):
exhaustion level and no sense ofachievement.
So what we would say is thatpeople lost in that very one
dimensional sense, they'refeeling better about many people
are feeling better aboutministry.
We have to stop and askourselves have we moved into an
unsustainable position?
(21:56):
So, yeah, so to give you thenumbers.
Previously we said 14% wasstruggling, and now it's 9%.
Previously we said 35% were inthat surviving zone, that middle
zone.
Now it's 23%, so that's smalleras well.
The Managing Well group hasbarely changed that group, who
(22:17):
are almost up there withthriving.
They're above surviving.
The thriving group has doubled.
So in 2016 it was 17% of seniorministers we categorised as
thriving.
This time it's 33%, and so thaton the surface looks great.
But then we looked at the widerthing, not just the one
(22:38):
dimensional, but the widerpicture, and we said, oh, we can
see what's happened.
Valerie Ling (22:43):
This is the midpoint break for the podcast.
If you want to put a pause andwalk away and come back to it,
make sure you do check out thedescription for all the various
downloads that we have for you,including my full report,
research and reflections.
You might also want to rememberto like, share and subscribe.
So stop now or keep going.
Sam Sterland (23:07):
More people have moved into this tired but
feeling fulfilled space, and soif you look at it one
dimensionally, you say, yep,overall they're feeling great,
but actually, in a more detailedlook, they probably moved into
an unsustainable place.
So we all need to ask ourselvesis this a good equilibrium that
(23:29):
I can maintain?
It's a little bit like going towar, and I think the pandemic
was a little bit like going towar.
It's a really unusual event,and when people have had to go
to war and go off and fight orthose who don't go off and fight
but stay at home but they haveto survive as well Everything is
(23:51):
different for a while.
But can it stay that way forvery long, or is something going
to break?
And so, yeah, when people cameback from war, they had to come
back to actually that's notnormal what I just did.
I have to find my newequilibrium.
Maybe it will be back where Iused to be, or maybe there'll be
(24:13):
a new equilibrium because thishas changed me in some way.
But I think this wholeexperience is like that too.
You've had this high intensityperiod where more people in your
congregation have been incrisis and struggling and scared
than probably any other time inyour ministry and the whole
country has gone crazy for awhile.
Now we're moving back into anew thing.
(24:35):
Do you need to stay at thishigh intensity pace?
Can you stay there Even if youfound it deeply fulfilling?
Or are some cracks starting toshow, some where starting to
show?
Because you might have beenneglecting your need to rest,
because you were there foreverybody else.
You might have been neglectingyour relationships, even your
(24:57):
walk with God.
You might have been neglectingthat to somebody.
Many ministers say when I'mbusy, my time with God is the
first thing to go, believe it ornot.
More than half a minister saythat.
So what will it mean now foryou to come back to an
equilibrium so that you're stillministering in 20 years time,
you're still glorifying God in20 years time because of the way
(25:20):
you're ministering and you'renot just going to burn out now
because of this high intensitytime we've had?
Valerie Ling (25:27):
So there are a couple of things that in the
survey that I had and I thinkyou're right, these are the
people.
So by the time I did my survey,it's now 2023.
It's not in the thousands, it's200, mainly senior leaders, and
the top three reasons there wasprobably more were saying that
it was the reason why they wouldleave has got to do with
(25:48):
loneliness as well as impact onfamily.
I think that was like in the 70percents, whereas sort of the
work stress was in the 40percents zone.
Is there anything from whatyou've seen that makes sense of
how the interaction of some ofthe relational things impact
(26:12):
maybe church life, what'shappening?
Even in the leadership detailsthat you have, anything that
explains that loneliness andsense of impact on family?
Sam Sterland (26:23):
Yeah, look, I think one of the challenges of
being in ministry I've been inministry for a period of time,
but I know many, many others whoare and have been in for much
longer than me One of the hardthings about being in ministry
is friendships, because you arepart of it.
You're embedded in a communityof people you love and hopefully
(26:47):
love you, but that's but.
Having your closest friendshipsin your congregation can be a
real challenge and so manyministers, I think, express a
level of loneliness because theyknow there's a level of
distance there with their localpeople and so they've got to
also have connections outsideSome people you know in your
(27:08):
church you're an authorityfigure.
You're a spiritual authorityfigure.
You might be up on a pedestal,even if you didn't want to be on
a pedestal.
People who put you up there andsometimes people would be
playing weird towards you whenyou're an authority figure
because they're dealing with alltheir authority issues and
they're projecting them onto you.
So there's all that to dealwith.
(27:29):
I know many ministers that youknow they've just found one or
two really close friends in thecongregation who treat them like
a normal person and who knowthey're not Superman or
superwoman, that they're just aperson who signed up and went
into ministry and they, you knowthey don't want to wear this
mantle or this aura ofperfection.
But mostly I think it's best togo for those relationships
(27:53):
outside where the whole churchcontext is just not complicating
things.
It's a little bit like, youknow, if you're a counsellor,
you can't become friends withyour clients because you can no
longer be a good counsellor tothem.
It's this boundary thing thathas to happen in many places.
So, yeah, you can have closefriends in church, but it's it's
(28:15):
.
There's challenges to that.
So we've asked ministers do youhave close friends in church?
Do you have someone that no, inyour life?
I mean, can you trust that youcan trust?
And there's, there's a group ofministers that say no, I don't
have a single one, at least 10%,who say I don't have a single
(28:37):
person that fits thatdescription.
Now, maybe some of these peopleare single and so they don't
even have that spouse.
But even even with the spouse,if you're married, you might be
protecting your spouse to somedegree from some of the stuff
you're dealing with.
So even there this is why youknow, getting a mentor or a
(28:58):
spiritual director or a coach orsomeone, a professional
supervisor, that they can justhear everything and you don't
have to worry about how theycope.
You know that's their issue,because friendships are
friendships are there for yoursupport and many ministers
struggle to find that.
Many ministers said I've gotone, I've got one person,
(29:21):
presumably often their spouse.
So yeah, it is an issue.
Loneliness is a definite issue.
It's not just because of thepandemic.
Maybe it's exacerbated a littlebit because your close friends
who you know live 50Ks away orsomething.
Maybe you couldn't see them asmuch over that time and they all
got busy too.
But it's really.
(29:41):
It's a perennial issue.
Loneliness what was the otherones you mentioned?
The other at the top?
Valerie Ling (29:47):
three Like the family.
Sam Sterland (29:49):
Yes, yeah.
So that's a perennial issue aswell, obviously.
But with the pandemic, ifyou've been more involved in
pastoral care, you've been moresacrificial with your time in
supporting people in crisis,then the stress on family has no
doubt increased as well.
Valerie Ling (30:06):
Yeah, I reckon this has just come to my mind as
well that from a systems andresourcing perspective the whole
family gets sucked into it aswell.
So it's not just the ministerwho's dealing pastorally with
the issue, but the kids are alsointeracting with the kids,
spouses are interacting withspouses.
So it possibly can also depletethe family resources to
(30:31):
minister to one another as afamily, to love and give and
engender hope and encouragementfor one another, if the whole
family system has been absorbedinto some of the pastoral
implications.
Because I do think, becausewe've seen it in the practice.
So we typically are a trainingpractice as well, so we
(30:54):
supervise students and then wesupervise registrars etc.
When our clinical psychologistregistrars and our senior
clinical psychologists, wecontinue to feel the pressure of
the acuity and the level ofemotional distress in our
community such that we'veactually kind of had to put a
(31:16):
protection around our studentsso that they wouldn't burn out,
because it is.
It can be quite a helpless,traumatic experience to hear
such horrible things that arehappening to younger kids.
So we've actually had we have abit of a traffic like system.
You know we triage the clinicalload so that our students are
protected from too much of thatand then our registrars take,
(31:39):
you know, a level of it.
But our seniors we have toreally watch because they're
actually taking the majority ofthe complexity and we have to
check in very regularly withthem Because, very much like
ministry folk, when you're apsychologist you also deeply
care for people outside of yourprofessional life.
So there's a lot of caring andI think ministry households just
(32:03):
don't have those naturalprotections and boundaries.
Sam Sterland (32:07):
That's right.
Quite a much more organic sortof environment, yeah.
Valerie Ling (32:12):
So, sam, I'm curious then, just with respect
to these two things that we'vetalked about, the loneliness
impact on family resources Isthere anything that we can tell
from the thriving group?
That's different, maybe.
Sam Sterland (32:24):
I think that we see evidence that the thriving
group make time for goodconnection and there's no
substitute for quantity time.
Valerie Ling (32:35):
Yeah.
Sam Sterland (32:38):
So the thriving one of our resilience factors is
balance and boundaries.
And balance is about havingsomething other than your
ministry that you also enjoy andobviously your family
relationships are a big part ofthat and boundaries is about
being clear when you're able towalk away, when you're able to
say no, that you're not 100% ofthe time on call, that you can't
(33:02):
be interrupted all the time,that kind of stuff.
If you make the decision thatyou want to be that kind of
minister, that's your decisionand you may be able to do that
fine, depending on your makeup.
But there is a cost involvedand you may not even really
process that cost.
It could be quite unconsciousthat you always feel on duty.
You always feel that you'rethere for others.
(33:24):
Now, if you're a parent, youalready feel that for your kids,
that you're trying to be therefor them.
If you've expanded that to well, actually anybody anybody in
church, can call me anytime cando that there's a cost involved
for you and that you may notactually fully relax ever.
So, even when it's just you andGod, when you're just spending
(33:49):
time with God, are you able toreally fully be there in that
relationship, or is it justattention and always a readiness
to race off and do something.
So can you be still?
Because even God said be still,seize.
Striving is another way totranslate that.
(34:09):
First Be still and know thatI'm God.
There's a peace in that.
That's our number onefoundation, that we say the
resilience factor, yourspiritual foundations, are the
thing that are going to make thebiggest difference.
So that balance and boundaries,close relationships.
And we know that thrivingpeople, they invest in their
(34:30):
relationship with God.
They spend time with God inways that work for them.
We know that they invest intheir relationships with their
family and their friends.
They just hope that it happensby accident.
They actually investintentionally.
We know that they're clear withtheir boundaries and have a
balance in life.
So they're three of our factors.
(34:51):
Yes, so we do know thatthriving people invest in that.
Valerie Ling (34:55):
How do you know what the balance and boundaries
are?
How were those questions asked?
What were they about?
Sam Sterland (35:02):
Yes.
So we asked some generalquestions about some of these.
Stuff is not complicated, yes.
I mean, if you want to knowwhether someone's burned out,
you can ask them a whole scaleor you could just ask them do
you think you're burned out?
Because most people know it'snot actually that complicated,
unless they're in denial orthey're wanting to hide it from
(35:24):
you.
Most people know if they'recoping or not and similarly, a
lot of our questions are verytransparent.
So I managed to keep goodboundaries between work and the
rest of life.
That's one of our surveyquestions.
I have other interests apartfrom my ministry.
Just asking people self-report,yes or no, agree or disagree,
(35:47):
and how strongly do you agree ordisagree, even that with you.
Well, I kind of agree.
I better put slightly agree,because I know I'm not very good
at that.
So even that kind of thing, wecombine a bunch of questions on
boundaries to get a score foreach person and then we see a
bell curve of everybody inAustralia, all the ministers in
(36:08):
Australia and where they are.
So there's going to be thosethat down the low end and our
analysis.
I won't use a lot ofstatistical terms, but we do
correlation analysis, we doregression analysis.
But basically what thatanalysis does is say what do all
the struggling people have incommon and what do the people
who are thriving have in common?
(36:29):
And that's where you get thesefactors from.
So of course, you go in withyour theories, you go well, I
bet balance and boundaries makesa difference.
And then you come up with somequestions.
You tested and sure enough itdoes, because most of us kind of
know that.
I bet having supportive peoplein my life makes a difference,
and it does.
But that's the point ofresearch is that you confirm
(36:50):
things that you had hunchesabout, but you also explode
myths, because some of thesethings are not right, although
they're not as as big as youthought they were, and it also
helps you find things you hadn'tthought about.
So you know, for example, wefound that having a strong sense
of call to ministry makes ahuge difference to whether
(37:11):
you're going to burn out.
So those of those of us whohave a really strong sense of I
know that I'm meant to be doingthis, I feel called to do this.
That just gives a sense ofconfidence in yourself, even if
other people are saying, oh, butyou haven't had enough training
or you don't have the rightpersonality or whatever, or what
about this, this and this inyour life?
(37:31):
That sense of call is a reallystrong foundation for us.
Now we still need those otherthings.
But we have found that eventhat is really important to have
.
If, when, that, when thingshappen in your life, that call
into question am I meant to bedoing this?
That's a really that's a reallyvulnerable moment.
(37:52):
So, for example, in thepandemic, we were saying to
people now is not the time toleave ministry, now is not the
time to say, oh, ministry didn'twork out for you because
nothing's normal right now.
You know, churches aren't evenallowed to meet, or when they
did resume, half the peoplearen't coming.
Don't don't look at yourselfnow and say, oh jeez, I'm a
terrible minister.
You know, like this is really,this is hard.
(38:14):
I don't think this is for me,because it's not a normal time
for anybody.
So, yeah, we need to berealistic about what's going on
and we need to know the times,as the Bible says.
You know, understand the timesand be gentle with ourselves and
careful with ourselves when weexamine how we're going.
Valerie Ling (38:37):
We actually find in the clinic that it's really
at the point where it's burntout and depressive symptoms have
started and panic attacks andthings like that.
That's the point where maybethe ministry person recognizes
there's something wrong, but inthe lead up to that very often
they're not actually fully aware.
It's almost like a frog in apan, sort of adapting the thing
(38:59):
that you said about the call.
This is an interesting one,right, because everybody has.
Well, there are differenttheological positions on that,
but practically what we find isat that pointy end the call can
be like the sense of convictioncan also be this double-edged
sword, a real sense of guilt andfailure.
So you know, I'm really talkingnow.
You know there's an impact,sense of self-worth, there are
(39:22):
depressive symptoms, they'reburnt out, exhausted and then
feel like a failure as well.
That's one of the things thatyou know we've found.
We have to return our clientsback to the original love for
Jesus first, because all of theexpectations of duty and what he
(39:42):
then wants of you, you know,has been completely shifted
actually.
Sam Sterland (39:49):
That's fair enough , that a call is a buffer zone
when you're coping.
It's one of the things thatwill help you in your confidence
.
But if things have fallen apartfor whatever reason, it's not
supposed to be a chain aroundyou that holds you to something.
If you were listening to God inthat moment, I'm sure God would
(40:10):
be saying I didn't call you tothis, I didn't call you to.
You know, shrivel up and die.
I didn't call you to burn out.
I don't do that to my children.
Look at my people who follow mein the Bible.
That's not what I did to them.
Look at the even the heroes offaith.
You know they suffered, butthey held on to me and I didn't
call you to.
(40:31):
You know, crash and burn likethis.
It's not glorifying to God ifyou're in that position.
So come away with me and getyourself sorted out with me, and
then we'll work out where we gofrom here.
Valerie Ling (40:45):
So did you find anything to do with church,
health, conflict, leadershipthat gave any interesting
information about those who werestruggling, those who were
thriving?
Sam Sterland (40:56):
Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yes, even way back
in 20 years ago when we broughtout this book, burnout in Church
Leaders, which you can stillget.
The book came out in 2000.
That was a very comprehensivelook by Peter and Rod who wrote
that book and did that work, andit looked at what you're asking
(41:17):
about.
What's the role of the church?
The way they framed it at thetime was there's such a thing as
toxic churches so it's.
But it's that idea that Burnoutisn't all about you, right.
Burnout isn't just because ofyour lack of resilience or your
personality or you know yourrole issues.
(41:38):
That book showed that about 50%of Burnout related stuff was
coming from the individual.
So that is very important tothink about because that is
stuff you have some control over, right.
But another half of the causesof Burnout were coming from
outside, coming from the widercontext, particularly the local
(42:00):
church.
So if you're in a church that'stoxic in some way or that's
going through a conflict whichis a toxic time for many people,
that is going to take its toll.
You can.
It can also be denominational,so denominations can go through
periods where it will drop inhigh stress for people who are
affiliated.
And then think of the widercontext as well as just what's
(42:22):
happening in Australian culture.
So we found, for example youknow Australian culture is
changing all the time.
Many would say that Christianvalues are less and less central
.
One of the findings in thatbook was that people who are
struggling with the fact thatsociety is, you know, society is
(42:43):
falling apart.
It's not, society is not ashealthy as it used to be, those
people were more likely to beexperiencing burnout, and so in
my first thesis that I wrote inmy psychology on is on ministers
and burnout I based it onsecularisation and that's the
idea that as society secularises, ministers are in an
(43:05):
increasingly difficult position.
We used to be ministers, used tobe authority figures in their
community, less and less so andmore and more compromised in.
How do I stand in my communityas a person who wants to speak
with authority but is beingincreasingly questioned and the
values that I stand for thatseemingly personify in some
(43:28):
people's minds as the leader ofmy church, some of those values
are being denigrated or ignoredat least, and so that the wider
society influences actuallybring to bear on individuals and
, Valerie, I want to commend youwith the work that you did.
I really resonated with some ofthe things that you did in that
(43:49):
area.
When you talked about you knowwe need to look at the wider
picture, the wider context.
We totally agree with that andour work has highlighted that as
well.
Valerie Ling (44:00):
Oh, that's wonderful to hear.
Thank you for yourencouragement.
So again, I'm just curious.
I don't know whether you havethe answer to this, but did you
find any connections, forexample, with some of the
spiritual health components ofchurch life?
You know, because I found thosequestions when we were doing it
at our church, I was fascinatedactually with our results,
(44:24):
making my own internalconnections to some things.
Did you find some broadertraffic?
Sam Sterland (44:29):
Yeah, we did, we did so and you can look them up
in that book.
Actually, it's really quitecomprehensive.
So, yes, in churches wherepeople are walking more closely
with God themselves so, forexample, they're more involved
in personal devotions Feel likethey're growing in their faith
In those churches, ministers arestruggling less with burnout
(44:51):
and you would think that partlybecause there's an alignment
between them and their people.
But clearly, you know, when theplace is more healthy
spiritually, then it's a lessstressful workplace for the
minister.
Yes, yeah, so we did find that.
Valerie Ling (45:09):
Any other interesting tidbits you can
remember?
Sam Sterland (45:11):
Yeah, I'd like to add a bit more to that, because
we can over spiritualize thingsas well.
So of course churches arespiritual places and you know
ministers see that as a big partof what they're doing is.
I'm here to help people intheir walk with God and their
growth as disciples, and we wantto connect with our wider
community as a spiritual placeto help other people think about
(45:34):
their connection with God.
But there's also just healthyorganizational stuff that a
church can have or can ignore,and you know, if you compare
that to a workplace, if there's,if you're in a workplace where
you know unhelpful stuff is justlet go and isn't dealt with, or
(45:54):
if there's just really badhabits or culture that just go
unchecked, of course thatbecomes kind of a more
depressing place to work.
Over time People often won'thang around as much.
Now a church is not a workplace,except it is for the minister.
So it's an unusual place, butit is still what you call an
(46:16):
organization and so the thingsthat we know about healthy
organizations still apply tochurches.
But we shouldn't just put onthe template of this is how a
workplace should be there forthis, how church should be that
silly.
I mean, a church should be somuch better, because it's a
community of people who aredoing life together and they're
doing it voluntarily.
They're not showing up becausethey're paid to be there.
(46:37):
They want to be part of thiscommunity.
But if you think of it as anorganization, that's quite an
unusual place to work.
Many ministers have not reallymany churchgoers have not really
reflected on the fact thattheir minister works for an
organization where they are theonly employee in many cases one
staff member and everybody elsein the organization is a
(47:00):
volunteer, and so they are therebecause they want to be.
They can come and go as theywant.
They can increase theircommitment, decrease their
commitment, but the minister isin quite a different position
than that.
This helps us understand whyboundaries are such an issue if
you're a minister, because wedon't think about boundaries
when in our community group orwith our family.
(47:20):
It's just life.
But the minister is ministeringto everybody is part of
everybody's life.
So, yeah, we have found thatchurches that think about their
organizational health or exhibitgreater organizational health.
I've done some recent work onthis, actually on organizational
(47:41):
culture in church, and we and Ihave found in these studies
that churches with cultures ofmore empowering of their people.
Churches that are moreinnovative that's a cultural
thing.
Churches that are more focusedon a vision and a direction.
(48:02):
So those three culturalqualities in particular.
They are significantlydifferent to other churches in a
whole bunch of ways.
In one way, they do better atattracting new people to church.
They do better at attractingpeople from the community.
They also make a big differencein people feeling like they're
(48:23):
growing in their faith,interestingly.
And so just healthyorganizational culture, and
there's obviously many otheraspects of culture too, but
that's what I focused on inthose studies.
Valerie Ling (48:37):
Is this part of the NCLS studies, sam, or this
is something else you do?
Sam Sterland (48:40):
Yeah, it's going to come to light eventually.
So these are studies that I'vedone with NCLS data and we're
now looking at how will thatcome out in the future.
We'll do some papers on it.
It'll first of all come out insome journal article papers, so
we go for the peer reviewedstuff.
Then we'll do some more easyreading stuff Fact sheets, maybe
(49:01):
a book in the future.
But I think anybody who's beenlistening to NCLS for the last
five or 10 years has heard ususing the word culture more, and
we're talking more about churchculture, organizational culture
, because in an organizationlike us, when you survey
everybody in church, or nearlyeverybody in church, that's
really what you're getting anopportunity to measure.
(49:23):
Is the culture, the trueculture of the place, not what
one or two people think is theculture which is most
organizational culture studiesare based on, but actually the
majority of people.
So, yeah, when we give churchesreports on a sense of belonging
, how close do we feel as acommunity, their sense of how
(49:45):
welcoming is this church, howinclusive is it for new people,
how good is it reaching out.
We're really talking aboutculture in those things and so
we're using that terminologymore.
So we decided to do somestudies really focused on that.
Valerie Ling (50:01):
You're also looking at psychological safety
there.
I think that's anotheringredient Don't talk about.
I absolutely resonate with you.
For a long time I felt reallyburdened because we are clinical
psychologists, so we are reallyin the realm of understanding
individual dynamics.
And I find too that becausemany of the in my opinion, many
(50:25):
of the interventions that we'vebrought into the church space
has come from a clinical lenswhich largely deals with
intra-personal dimensions.
So things like we just talkedabout, you know, balance and
loneliness and how we viewourselves and our standards for
ourselves, and theninterpersonal dynamics, so you
know how we're relating with oneanother, sort of from a
(50:48):
familial lens, right.
So you know how do we trust,how we forgive in all of those
sorts of things.
But I think there's a big partmissing, which is the church is
increasingly also anorganization.
So you know, organizationalbehavior becomes really, really
important.
How do we cultivatepsychological safety to innovate
, make mistakes, say oops, I waswrong, and how to also then
(51:17):
look at things like how do wereduce the risks in an
organization with regards to howwe design workload, work roles
and things like that?
Because in my hypothesis is, ifwe overly focus also on the
clinical and the familialdynamics, we also open the door
for those dynamics to causehavoc in organizational behavior
(51:40):
.
As an example, I have apsychology practice.
We behave as an organization,right, we have some conduct
boundaries with regards to I'mnot your parent yeah, how do you
speak to me, your expectationsof me.
We don't interact as if I'm theparent in your other child, but
(52:03):
we're actually professionalsinteracting with a certain set
of standards that we wouldexpect an organization to have
so that we can serve others, befocused in what we do, not be
distracted and really not beburnt out by all of that stuff.
So I really resonate with that.
I really look forward to seeingwhat comes out of that.
Sam Sterland (52:22):
I think to have conversations like that in
church is really valuable, thatthere's things here that are
acceptable and there's thingshere that are not okay, and that
people need to be pulled up onthat.
So an example would be whatpeople do on social media that
impacts on their church.
I'm picking this examplebecause it's really slippery,
(52:44):
really difficult.
I was talking to someonerecently who was posting on.
Someone in their church wasposting online criticism of the
minister.
They're free to do what theywant in the social media space,
but to pretend it has no impact,right, and the person posting
(53:05):
is in leadership themselves atthe same church.
Now it gets really complicatedand I said you guys need a code
of conduct, right?
You need to be able to at leasthave the conversation and
someone needs to say this hurtsomeone.
Okay, it's fine that you have acriticism, but what you do with
(53:25):
it has the power to hurt people.
It has the power to cause harm,and that's just organizational
thinking that the churches cantake on.
It's things that organizationshave learned long ago.
We've always been organizations.
I think we're just waking up toit more and realizing that that
can mean a whole lot of things.
And it's lovely wheneverything's going well.
(53:47):
Church feels like a reallyhappy family.
That is lovely.
But I guess we can sort of fallasleep in matters like that and
not be prepared for when thingsgo a bit pear shaped and how
we're going to deal with it whenthat happens.
And this is where I reallyencourage local church leaders
to talk to your denominationalpeople, because they've already
had to help other churches dealwith this stuff.
(54:09):
So don't go and reinvent thewheel.
As soon as anything negativehappens, as soon as bad stuff is
coming out, dysfunctional stuff, go and talk to someone who's
probably had the sameconversation with 10 other
churches and say what have youlearned?
What do we need to put in place?
Because that is all aboutsafety.
Obviously, we've seen a lot ofstuff in the last few years
(54:29):
about safe church, particularlyin relation to protecting
children and other vulnerablepeople.
That's really the tip of theiceberg, isn't it?
Because what you're talkingabout, valerie, is also just
basic psychosocial safety foranybody in the way we relate,
and that's the obvious.
Next thing, we've got to dealwith the most extreme stuff
first and make sure even themost basic things are in place
(54:53):
to protect the most vulnerablepeople from the worst kinds of
behaviour.
But we need to also moveforward, once we're achieving
that, into all the other waysthat things can be damaging and
leave a really bad mark, becauseit all reflects badly on the
church and on God's mission.
That God is trying to drawpeople into a community of love,
(55:15):
and that was Jesus' words.
They will know you're my peopleby your love, and so we want to
be communities that exemplifythat.
I'll come back to something Isaid at the beginning.
It's a great question to askwhat is it like to experience me
as a leader?
What are people experiencing?
(55:36):
And it's going to be a toughquestion, be a hard question, a
little bit scary to ask, butwe're really talking about the
same thing here.
Do people experience me assomeone who's connected with God
and life-giving to them, or dothey experience me as a little
bit dangerous or a little bitrisky, because I'm not always
good to relate to?
Now, if you ask yourself thatquestion, don't beat yourself up
(56:00):
when you realise you could bedoing better than you are.
But ultimately nobody needs youto be perfect as the minister,
because that's not what wepreach.
We preach grace.
So people want to encountersomeone who's just genuinely
connecting with God, knows theyare a broken person, knows they
are a sinner, but also knowsthey're made in the image of God
(56:22):
, knows they are forgiven, thattheir life has been redeemed and
they're just doing life withGod now.
That's all people want toencounter in their leaders.
They don't need this perfectperson.
If people expect you to be aperfect person, you should
correct them.
Don't let them put you on apedestal.
But it is a great practice to.
(56:43):
If you were constantly thinkingwhat's it like to be on the
receiving end of me?
What's it like, then you willbe very careful about what you
post on social media and youwill be very careful about what
you say in public.
In that, because it's just anempathetic way to think about it
from other people's point ofview, as to what are they being
impacted by when I'm the personimpacting them?
Valerie Ling (57:06):
Now we need to wrap up, but it would be remiss
of me not to ask this lastquestion, sam.
Any insights from leadership,from the data that you have on
personality or leadership fromthe NCLS?
Anything came out of that thatcan help us?
To see what's thriving andwhat's struggling.
Sam Sterland (57:24):
Look, there's some well-known work on this.
We haven't done it justrecently, but we've replicated
in the past what other studieshave found.
So let me mention a couple.
People aren't familiar.
If you are a person who hisemotions go up and down a lot,
if you're emotionally labelledas one of the words that people
(57:46):
use, or they used to say it wasneuroticism, but that's unfair,
that could be a bit of anegative word.
But if you're someone who youknow it's got negative
connotations unless you're intocertain forms of comedy.
But if your emotions go up anddown and you just know that
about yourself, then you have tolook after yourself, because
(58:08):
people whose emotions go up anddown a lot are more vulnerable
to burnout.
We know that, okay.
Second thing introverts andextroverts People who are more
introverted are more vulnerableto burnout.
Now, neither of those thingsmake you disqualified for
ministry, because God made youthe way you are for a reason.
You gave us all differentpersonalities and so you just
(58:31):
need to be aware of their areas.
For me, okay, if you're anextrovert, you're going to have
other areas of weakness, butthis isn't going to be such an
issue for you, okay, we aren'tgoing to criticise extroverts
right now.
But if you know that people tieyou out, you have to put a lid
on it.
You're just going to be goodwith your boundaries, because
(58:54):
when you are with people you arequality.
Okay, because you do go deepwith people, you invest with
people.
That's the big bonus of beingan introvert you understand
people, you take the time andyou bother.
But you can't do that with alarge number of people.
So, yes, if you're introverted,just go.
Oh, that's why I can't keep upwith the extroverts all the time
, because I go deep with peopleand I feel it deeply If you're
(59:18):
more a feeler than a thinker,say in the Myers-Briggs world or
something like that.
That's similar to how myemotions got went down.
But I also want to separate somethings off that maybe aren't
personality.
I think some of us sometimesexcuse things and say, oh, you
know, I've just got a bit of atemper, that's just my
personality, right.
(59:39):
So don't put everything down topersonality and say that's just
the way I am, or I tend to getimpatient more easily.
There are things about you thatGod might God might be, want to
work on, that are not actuallyyour personality, but you might
have taken things on even from avery early age.
You might have been told allyour life you know you're this
kind of person or that you'renot.
(01:00:00):
You know you might have beentold you're not a very artistic
person, not creative.
Whatever these things are,we've got to think about what we
really feel.
We know we are from what we'velearned in our work with God and
in life, and also some thingsthat maybe aren't part of it,
part of our personality, and wecan leave them behind and we can
see transformation.
Valerie Ling (01:00:21):
Sam, thank you so much for your time and thank you
for for you, the NCLS, for yourservice to the church and to
the Lord over the decades,because you know it is very much
because you have put out thisinformation that people like
myself can then take that andsay, okay, let's make sure we
can do some upstream work.
Also, let's know exactly wherewe need to go when working with
(01:00:43):
our ministry teams in thepractice.
Thank you so much, sam.
Sam Sterland (01:00:47):
Thank you for your work too.
I just loved your.
I would have talked more aboutyour study, but I really
resonated with a bunch of thingsand it's made me think, it's
made us think, I think, in theteam, and it's.
It's great, isn't it, toconnect over this kind of thing
and all stimulate each other towhat do we need to understand
better and how can we just, youknow, bless the church with what
(01:01:07):
we're learning here?
Valerie Ling (01:01:09):
Yes, yes, thanks, sam.
Thank you so much.
Sam Sterland (01:01:11):
All right, god bless.
Bye.
Hey, it's Valerie Ling.
I'm a clinical psychologist andI'm your host for the clergy
well-being Down Under podcast.
I'm looking forward tointerviewing an expert today to
take you through my findingsfrom my research where I asked
200 pastors down under how theywere doing.
Don't forget to subscribe, likeand share.
(00:26):
Buckle up and here we go.
Greetings everyone.
I have Sam Stowen with me.
Hello, Sam.
Sam Sterland (00:38):
Hello everyone.
Valerie Ling (00:40):
From the National Church Life Survey group.
Should we call that group?
Yeah?
Sam Sterland (00:47):
people call us different things.
Ncls research is our short name.
Valerie Ling (00:52):
Awesome.
You and I, we chatted a fewyears ago.
Really.
I had, for not a long time, butfor some time had, been reading
what was coming out of NCLS.
At the point when we had it achat, I was quite curious to see
how some of the burnout thingsthat you were finding might link
(01:13):
into things like personality,leadership dynamics.
But then a pandemic hit.
Things got a little complicated.
So I'm glad that we can sort ofregroup.
There's been another surveythat's gone out, results have
come back in and it'd befantastic to just chat with you
(01:33):
about that.
Sam Sterland (01:35):
Yeah, we've done a lot of work over the years on
ministry sustainability, burnout, and we like to talk about the
positive end as well, thethriving end.
Valerie Ling (01:44):
Yeah, I think that'd be a good place to start.
What do we know aboutleadership, ministry leadership
that are thriving.
What's come out of the mostrecent survey, for example?
Sam Sterland (01:58):
Yeah, well, we have defined thriving for our
purposes as pretty much theopposite of burnout.
So we said burnout is one endof a spectrum where you're
extremely emotionally depleted.
You don't have a lot of energyto give to people.
It's effecting your functioningwider in life and probably
(02:24):
feeding over into certainbehaviors like avoiding people,
certain emotions, like gettingmore easily irritated as well,
and that comes out in yourworkplace and also you don't
feel like you're achieving verymuch.
So I've just described thosethree pillars of the mainstream
understanding of burnout, whichis emotionally exhaustion,
(02:46):
depersonalization and sense ofpersonal achievement.
But we're interested in thehigh end as well.
We don't want people to be justsurviving in ministry, just
avoiding car crashes all thetime.
We want to know what's thethriving end look like.
So yeah, we looked at theliterature, we looked at the
engagement work.
Engagement literature, forexample, did some work on
(03:09):
workaholism and those thingsdon't quite line up with the
idea of thriving.
We thought that you know theopposite of those things, so the
opposite of workaholism.
So we said look for thepurposes of our work.
We're going to just use thesame scales we've used for
burnout, but we're going to lookat the positive ends of those
(03:30):
things, and we developed a scalewith some colleagues in the UK
who had also been surveyingministers, and we've been using
that for 20 years now inAustralia and it's been used in
a lot of other countries as well.
So the idea that we have set ofthriving is someone who's not
emotionally depleted, first ofall, who has energy to give, and
(03:51):
I guess that means someone whois keeping an eye on their
reserves and knowing when theyneed to rest.
You know, because we all can gettired and work hard, that's
normal.
And someone who thereforedoesn't have that avoiding
behaviour going on a lot,because they don't need that as
a coping mechanism.
(04:12):
And then the other side is sothat's a low emotional
distortion, so, and low and lowdepersonalisation.
And then what about high senseof achievement?
And so you know someone whofeels like I really am.
I know what I'm achieving in myministry and I feel good about
it.
You know you don't have to befeeling like you're getting the
(04:34):
gold medal every day in all thework that you're doing, but you
feel good about what you'redoing.
You have a basic sense ofsatisfaction, competence and
achievement in what you're doing.
And we said if, that's ifyou're in that place where you
know you've got energy to giveand you know that you're
achieving well then we want tocall that thriving in ministry.
Valerie Ling (04:54):
Yeah, for many people sitting in church, our
experience of the survey isquite different from the overall
results that you can get orthat NCLS presents.
For example, I attended yourwebinar not too long ago about
the results from the sustainableleadership and what you were
(05:16):
looking at.
But, broadly speaking, what areall the different aspects that
the survey covers in terms ofwhat information it gives us?
Sam Sterland (05:27):
Well, in relation to leaders, which I guess was
out where our interest is todaywe obviously cover the
well-being material.
So burnout and thriving we'veused various stress measures
over the years.
Anxiety, depression indicatorsand I suppose the distinction
I'd make there is burnout isgenerally recognised as a
(05:49):
workplace phenomenon Although Ithink you can burn out in other
things as well but it's framedas a workplace phenomenon,
whereas anxiety, depression, aremore a whole of life
experiences and they cancertainly be linked.
If you're staying burning upfor long enough and it's not
dealt with, it may just moveinto generalised depression and
(06:12):
anxiety and that you can'tfunction at all in any area.
So we've looked at all thosethings.
We've looked at the positiveside of things a positive
well-being indicator, which is awell-known Australian scale
that's used.
We've looked at engagement inwork, so that's more
work-focused thing.
Again, we've looked atworkaholism, as I mentioned
(06:34):
before.
So they're all the well-beingthings.
But then another big area thatwe have focused on is resilience
, because when you look aboutburnout or thriving, you're
really talking about an outcome.
It's good to know how you'regoing, but you don't have to
think about that too long beforeyou should be thinking well,
hang on a sec.
(06:55):
What causes this stuff?
What has led to me being okay,I know where I am, I know I'm
doing well or I'm struggling,but really, how did I get to
this outcome?
And so there's a million thingsthat affect us in our life and
if we're in ministry.
A million things going on inchurch, in society, in our
family, in our health, ourbackground as well they all
(07:16):
affect how we're going, butparticularly the internal
qualities that we carry aspeople.
We refer to that as resiliencefactors.
So we talk about six resiliencefactors that we think is
helpful to focus on aspectsrelated to self-care etc.
When we're focusing on thosethings, they will help us thrive
and avoid burnout.
(07:37):
So they're the well-beingrelated things in leadership.
Then we also ask a lot of stuffabout training, how well-trained
people feel in areas and ofcourse, we know that something
like that is related towell-being If you don't feel
particularly well-trained andyou're needing to function in an
area that you don't feelwell-trained in.
(07:59):
So a good example of that wouldbe administration in church.
So many ministers do asignificant amount of
administration.
In fact, most ministers putthat in the top three things
they spend time on.
But if you have not receivedtraining in administration.
(08:20):
You probably didn't sign up forit.
When you signed up for Biblecollege, you wanted to go in
ministry.
You didn't think, oh, I reallywant to be an administrator in a
church, I'm really lookingforward to all that paperwork.
You went in maybe because youhave a pastoral heart for people
, or you like to preach or train, or you want to connect with
the community as the localminister, etc.
And so if you haven't beentrained in an area that you find
(08:42):
you have to do a lot of work in, that can really affect your
well-being and you can also bepretty bad at it because you're
not trained in it and so it'staking up even more time than it
should.
And so we've noticed a numberof denominations offering
training in administration,which is not a bad thing because
they probably didn't get it atBible college in a lot of cases,
(09:04):
and if they can spend less timeon it because their competency
level is higher, they're goingto be happy and they're going to
be less stressed and feelingthat mismatch, more about the
things they wish they werespending time on.
So training.
We looked at personality andobviously the literature says
(09:24):
that some aspects of ourpersonality can make us more
vulnerable to struggling invarious ways, so that's an
important area.
We also look at effectiveleadership, which is a different
topic to sustainable leadership.
They're no doubt very closelylinked.
But what is my leadership style?
(09:46):
How do people in my churchexperience me as a leader?
That can be a really helpfulbut scary question to ask.
Where can I get feedback that'ssafe to receive, that's not
traumatising or damaging for me,but where can I get helpful
feedback that will help me growas a leader, and so that's very
(10:11):
much a fit.
It's about how effective am I,but it's going to feedback on
how sustainable I am in my roleas well.
Valerie Ling (10:18):
Incredible.
Yeah, let's start from the top.
Let's do the church stuff aswell.
Sam Sterland (10:22):
So I've just mentioned also we do the church
stuff as well.
That's what most people arefamiliar with.
Valerie Ling (10:27):
Yeah.
Sam Sterland (10:28):
All the healthy churches and qualities of
churches that are thriving.
Valerie Ling (10:32):
So in the most recent survey, what proportion
are thriving, surviving, burningout?
Sam Sterland (10:42):
Now we pretty much calibrated our scales now close
to what scales that are used bypsychologists would give.
So, like the Maslach burnoutinventory, which is like the
gold standard that cliniciansuse, and we've looked at their
norms, or you know their levelsof where people are above or
below burnout or in the top end,and then we've applied that to
(11:06):
people in ministry with our ownscales.
We haven't seen that the levelof burnout has increased greatly
yet.
So I think 2016, maybe,strictly say, 2% of ministers
were in burnout, according towhat we could see.
(11:26):
Now, of course, that's notgoing to be exactly right.
Some people have already leftministry.
They're not filling out asurvey, so you know you've got
that issue.
Of course you're sampling andof course, everybody's different
.
A scale doesn't replace seeingdown in front of a professional
or someone who's experienced, areally good mentor or someone
(11:47):
like that who can really helpyou assess where you are, but a
scale gives you a basic sense ofthat.
So we found about 2% of peoplein ministry really were in
burnout, whether they knew it ornot, based on what they'd
answered, and this time aroundit was about the same.
But that next level above,where you're not burning out but
(12:08):
you are struggling and you'rein danger.
That group has grown, butwhat's interesting is that the
top end group those who arethriving in ministry that's
grown as well.
So the experience of COVID hasbeen really surprising, I think.
I think when it first hit we'vegot to remember it wasn't the
(12:30):
same for everyone.
It wasn't the same for everyonein ministry.
Even at the time we weretalking to people, because we
talked to church leaders all thetime, we talked to
denominational leaders who cantell us what their people are
saying.
There were people who wereworld falling apart as COVID
started.
I can't preach, we haven't gotour tech set up, I can't do
(12:54):
pastoral care, I mean, these arethe top two reasons why a lot
of people went into ministry andthey can't do either of these
things.
There were certainly people whowere really questioning what am
I supposed to do?
What on earth is my purposeright now?
How do I adapt?
So there were certainly peoplethat I think there were probably
(13:15):
some people who were actuallygreat for a bit of a rest, who
might have been working too hardand said, okay, I've just got
to pause, I've got to set upsome other things, but all that
adapting, that change was reallyhard.
There were other people whowere saying this is really
exciting because we're going tostop doing some of the things we
had no choice about and we'renow in a new space where we can
give some thought to, forexample, creative mission.
(13:38):
We talked to some people whowere saying how can we connect
with the community when peoplearen't even allowed to go out,
when we're under that muchlockdown you're only allowed to
go one person to the shops oncea day, or something like that
and there were some people whowere really excited about a
mission in a new approach, andsome were even saying I don't
(14:01):
think I want to go back to whatwhen all this gets lifted?
I think I'm like I'm reallyexcited about the new
possibilities.
You know, online connecting hasjust exploded for us, so we've
got to remember it was differentfor different people.
Some people were reallystruggling.
Others just enjoyed the changeand found some refreshing wind
blowing, and then, as time wenton, you know there were things
(14:26):
that became resolved.
At first, there was nounderstanding of what's going to
happen financially.
Then financial support wasprovided by the government for
most churches and so that stress, massive stress, went away for
a period and as for many, manybusinesses too, you know,
wouldn't still be here if theyhadn't had that government
support.
So that has led to twodifferent groups of people.
(14:51):
If we just want to generalise, Ithink there are some people who
have come through COVID whohave said this has been really,
really hard.
This has been the hardest thing.
I'm more tired than ever.
I'm still not sure how I feelnow about how things are going
for church.
Not everybody's come back.
There's more people that it'shard to connect with, et cetera.
(15:14):
There's some people who arestill really struggling and
finding that hard.
There are other people who saylook, I'm refreshed by the
changes and the newpossibilities.
I think one thing ministersfound that was that because they
had more people in theirchurches in crisis for a range
of reasons.
It might be because of health,it might be because of finances,
(15:36):
because they lost their job ortheir job had massively scaled
back.
It might be because ofloneliness, because they weren't
as mobile like they were.
It might be because of familyillness.
They might have known people orhad a relative who died.
I mean, I know of someone whodied during COVID who was close
to one of our work colleagues.
(15:58):
So all kinds of stresses, butmany ministers, I think, rose to
the occasion of pastoral carein that time and felt more
relevant than ever because theywere able to connect with people
in that time of crisis.
So sure, there was a lot todeal with and more people with
more needs, but we actuallyfound that the proportion of
(16:22):
ministers who say I feel reallyeffective in my role went up.
And that surprised me because Ithought, oh, they're all going
to be really affected by I can'tpreach, I can't do pastoral
care.
But that was early in thepandemic 2020.
By the time our survey camearound, late 21 and many
(16:42):
churches waited till early 22 todo the survey because they
hadn't fully resumed, or theykind of resumed in late 21.
But too much was going on, sothey waited till 22 to do it.
At that point I think many ofthem were saying actually feel
really satisfied in my role.
I feel really effective, I knowwhat I'm here to do.
(17:03):
There's a lot of good stuffhere.
So I think we've got two groups.
Of course, more people areexhausted as well.
We saw that go up as well.
So the proportion of people whosay, look, I'm feeling pretty
worn out, I don't have a lot ofenergy, I feel drained by my
work, I know I'm avoiding somethings or some difficult
(17:26):
situations because I'm justbarely coping myself, maybe just
because I'm so tired andemotionally I've given out.
A lot More people were in thatspace.
So it's an interesting shiftbecause we have always found
that people who that ministerscan be high on stress and high
on sense of effectiveness at thesame time.
(17:48):
They don't.
They're not opposites.
They often go together.
You're working hard, you'redoing great work, you feel good
about what you're doing, butyou're stressed and you're tired
, and so what we found duringCOVID is both of those things
went up.
The sense of effectivenessreally did go up a lot, so that
means quite a number of peoplefelt more effective.
(18:10):
I'm not saying everyone did,but for many not as many, but
for many exhaustion went up aswell.
Valerie Ling (18:19):
I think that's a finding that's replicated in
other studies as well that forpeople who are in the industry,
their sense of effectiveness orengagement or meaning and
purpose doesn't necessarily godown, but they are exhausted.
So, sam, you were saying that2% probably met the technical
(18:42):
diagnosis, if you like a burnout.
Maybe we'd have to do moreinvestigation to that, but
perhaps that's what it is.
And then you were saying thatthere was a range from the
thriving to the burnout spectrum.
What does it look likecurrently?
Sam Sterland (18:57):
Yeah, okay, so I'll start with what you said
there, that, yes, 2% we foundwere burning out both in 2016
and 2021.
That's of senior local churchleaders, not assistance, not
other people.
We collect all that info aswell, but the national figures
we put out after senior leadersand that's because we can put
(19:21):
out a consistent figure forAustralia from year by year and
even when our sample changes,that figure is actually accurate
because we know how manychurches there are in Australia.
So that figure has not gone upand I guess the uncertainty
around that is to say, if youthink you're burning out based
on a scale, go and talk tosomeone, because you probably
(19:44):
are, but there might be otherthings going on as well.
It may be that you're sufferingfrom depression and it's not
burnout, because you'll probablyscore really high on burnout.
And similarly, if you'restruggling according to a scale,
go and talk to someone anyway,because you might actually be
burning out and just the scaledidn't pick it up.
So that the scale is a bluntinstrument.
(20:07):
You get face to face with aprofessional and experienced
person who will then help youdecide what you need to do to
get out of that struggling place.
Yeah, so what we found in 2021was that the overall proportion
of people in the lower bands hadactually gone down and that the
(20:27):
top bands managing well,thriving had increased.
But that actually made us stopand go.
There must be more to the storythat we're not getting and
that's what we just talked abouta couple of minutes ago that I
broke into the two parts and Isaid, yes, more people are
saying they feel effective, butalso more people are saying they
(20:50):
do feel exhausted.
And so if you can feel reallyexhausted but still feel really
effective, technically you'renot in burnout, right.
But what's really happening isyou've got this buffer
underneath you holding you uplike a big balloon.
I am totally exhausted, but Ifeel so good about my ministry,
(21:12):
I feel so fulfilled.
We're doing so much good stuffand you're not necessarily
really reflecting on how longcan I do this for.
But if anything was to takeaway that sense of effectiveness
, suddenly, let's say, somethingbad happens at your church, or
let's say you get sick and youcan't work, or something in your
own life falls apart, suddenlyall you're left with is your
(21:34):
exhaustion level and no sense ofachievement.
So what we would say is thatpeople lost in that very one
dimensional sense, they'refeeling better about many people
are feeling better aboutministry.
We have to stop and askourselves have we moved into an
unsustainable position?
(21:56):
So, yeah, so to give you thenumbers.
Previously we said 14% wasstruggling, and now it's 9%.
Previously we said 35% were inthat surviving zone, that middle
zone.
Now it's 23%, so that's smalleras well.
The Managing Well group hasbarely changed that group, who
(22:17):
are almost up there withthriving.
They're above surviving.
The thriving group has doubled.
So in 2016 it was 17% of seniorministers we categorised as
thriving.
This time it's 33%, and so thaton the surface looks great.
But then we looked at the widerthing, not just the one
(22:38):
dimensional, but the widerpicture, and we said, oh, we can
see what's happened.
Valerie Ling (22:43):
This is the midpoint break for the podcast.
If you want to put a pause andwalk away and come back to it,
make sure you do check out thedescription for all the various
downloads that we have for you,including my full report,
research and reflections.
You might also want to rememberto like, share and subscribe.
So stop now or keep going.
Sam Sterland (23:07):
More people have moved into this tired but
feeling fulfilled space, and soif you look at it one
dimensionally, you say, yep,overall they're feeling great,
but actually, in a more detailedlook, they probably moved into
an unsustainable place.
So we all need to ask ourselvesis this a good equilibrium that
(23:29):
I can maintain?
It's a little bit like going towar, and I think the pandemic
was a little bit like going towar.
It's a really unusual event,and when people have had to go
to war and go off and fight orthose who don't go off and fight
but stay at home but they haveto survive as well Everything is
(23:51):
different for a while.
But can it stay that way forvery long, or is something going
to break?
And so, yeah, when people cameback from war, they had to come
back to actually that's notnormal what I just did.
I have to find my newequilibrium.
Maybe it will be back where Iused to be, or maybe there'll be
(24:13):
a new equilibrium because thishas changed me in some way.
But I think this wholeexperience is like that too.
You've had this high intensityperiod where more people in your
congregation have been incrisis and struggling and scared
than probably any other time inyour ministry and the whole
country has gone crazy for awhile.
Now we're moving back into anew thing.
(24:35):
Do you need to stay at thishigh intensity pace?
Can you stay there Even if youfound it deeply fulfilling?
Or are some cracks starting toshow, some where starting to
show?
Because you might have beenneglecting your need to rest,
because you were there foreverybody else.
You might have been neglectingyour relationships, even your
(24:57):
walk with God.
You might have been neglectingthat to somebody.
Many ministers say when I'mbusy, my time with God is the
first thing to go, believe it ornot.
More than half a minister saythat.
So what will it mean now foryou to come back to an
equilibrium so that you're stillministering in 20 years time,
you're still glorifying God in20 years time because of the way
(25:20):
you're ministering and you'renot just going to burn out now
because of this high intensitytime we've had?
Valerie Ling (25:27):
So there are a couple of things that in the
survey that I had and I thinkyou're right, these are the
people.
So by the time I did my survey,it's now 2023.
It's not in the thousands, it's200, mainly senior leaders, and
the top three reasons there wasprobably more were saying that
it was the reason why they wouldleave has got to do with
(25:48):
loneliness as well as impact onfamily.
I think that was like in the 70percents, whereas sort of the
work stress was in the 40percents zone.
Is there anything from whatyou've seen that makes sense of
how the interaction of some ofthe relational things impact
(26:12):
maybe church life, what'shappening?
Even in the leadership detailsthat you have, anything that
explains that loneliness andsense of impact on family?
Sam Sterland (26:23):
Yeah, look, I think one of the challenges of
being in ministry I've been inministry for a period of time,
but I know many, many others whoare and have been in for much
longer than me One of the hardthings about being in ministry
is friendships, because you arepart of it.
You're embedded in a communityof people you love and hopefully
(26:47):
love you, but that's but.
Having your closest friendshipsin your congregation can be a
real challenge and so manyministers, I think, express a
level of loneliness because theyknow there's a level of
distance there with their localpeople and so they've got to
also have connections outsideSome people you know in your
(27:08):
church you're an authorityfigure.
You're a spiritual authorityfigure.
You might be up on a pedestal,even if you didn't want to be on
a pedestal.
People who put you up there andsometimes people would be
playing weird towards you whenyou're an authority figure
because they're dealing with alltheir authority issues and
they're projecting them onto you.
So there's all that to dealwith.
(27:29):
I know many ministers that youknow they've just found one or
two really close friends in thecongregation who treat them like
a normal person and who knowthey're not Superman or
superwoman, that they're just aperson who signed up and went
into ministry and they, you knowthey don't want to wear this
mantle or this aura ofperfection.
But mostly I think it's best togo for those relationships
(27:53):
outside where the whole churchcontext is just not complicating
things.
It's a little bit like, youknow, if you're a counsellor,
you can't become friends withyour clients because you can no
longer be a good counsellor tothem.
It's this boundary thing thathas to happen in many places.
So, yeah, you can have closefriends in church, but it's it's
(28:15):
.
There's challenges to that.
So we've asked ministers do youhave close friends in church?
Do you have someone that no, inyour life?
I mean, can you trust that youcan trust?
And there's, there's a group ofministers that say no, I don't
have a single one, at least 10%,who say I don't have a single
(28:37):
person that fits thatdescription.
Now, maybe some of these peopleare single and so they don't
even have that spouse.
But even even with the spouse,if you're married, you might be
protecting your spouse to somedegree from some of the stuff
you're dealing with.
So even there this is why youknow, getting a mentor or a
(28:58):
spiritual director or a coach orsomeone, a professional
supervisor, that they can justhear everything and you don't
have to worry about how theycope.
You know that's their issue,because friendships are
friendships are there for yoursupport and many ministers
struggle to find that.
Many ministers said I've gotone, I've got one person,
(29:21):
presumably often their spouse.
So yeah, it is an issue.
Loneliness is a definite issue.
It's not just because of thepandemic.
Maybe it's exacerbated a littlebit because your close friends
who you know live 50Ks away orsomething.
Maybe you couldn't see them asmuch over that time and they all
got busy too.
But it's really.
(29:41):
It's a perennial issue.
Loneliness what was the otherones you mentioned?
The other at the top?
Valerie Ling (29:47):
three Like the family.
Sam Sterland (29:49):
Yes, yeah.
So that's a perennial issue aswell, obviously.
But with the pandemic, ifyou've been more involved in
pastoral care, you've been moresacrificial with your time in
supporting people in crisis,then the stress on family has no
doubt increased as well.
Valerie Ling (30:06):
Yeah, I reckon this has just come to my mind as
well that from a systems andresourcing perspective the whole
family gets sucked into it aswell.
So it's not just the ministerwho's dealing pastorally with
the issue, but the kids are alsointeracting with the kids,
spouses are interacting withspouses.
So it possibly can also depletethe family resources to
(30:31):
minister to one another as afamily, to love and give and
engender hope and encouragementfor one another, if the whole
family system has been absorbedinto some of the pastoral
implications.
Because I do think, becausewe've seen it in the practice.
So we typically are a trainingpractice as well, so we
(30:54):
supervise students and then wesupervise registrars etc.
When our clinical psychologistregistrars and our senior
clinical psychologists, wecontinue to feel the pressure of
the acuity and the level ofemotional distress in our
community such that we'veactually kind of had to put a
(31:16):
protection around our studentsso that they wouldn't burn out,
because it is.
It can be quite a helpless,traumatic experience to hear
such horrible things that arehappening to younger kids.
So we've actually had we have abit of a traffic like system.
You know we triage the clinicalload so that our students are
protected from too much of thatand then our registrars take,
(31:39):
you know, a level of it.
But our seniors we have toreally watch because they're
actually taking the majority ofthe complexity and we have to
check in very regularly withthem Because, very much like
ministry folk, when you're apsychologist you also deeply
care for people outside of yourprofessional life.
So there's a lot of caring andI think ministry households just
(32:03):
don't have those naturalprotections and boundaries.
Sam Sterland (32:07):
That's right.
Quite a much more organic sortof environment, yeah.
Valerie Ling (32:12):
So, sam, I'm curious then, just with respect
to these two things that we'vetalked about, the loneliness
impact on family resources Isthere anything that we can tell
from the thriving group?
That's different, maybe.
Sam Sterland (32:24):
I think that we see evidence that the thriving
group make time for goodconnection and there's no
substitute for quantity time.
Valerie Ling (32:35):
Yeah.
Sam Sterland (32:38):
So the thriving one of our resilience factors is
balance and boundaries.
And balance is about havingsomething other than your
ministry that you also enjoy andobviously your family
relationships are a big part ofthat and boundaries is about
being clear when you're able towalk away, when you're able to
say no, that you're not 100% ofthe time on call, that you can't
(33:02):
be interrupted all the time,that kind of stuff.
If you make the decision thatyou want to be that kind of
minister, that's your decisionand you may be able to do that
fine, depending on your makeup.
But there is a cost involvedand you may not even really
process that cost.
It could be quite unconsciousthat you always feel on duty.
You always feel that you'rethere for others.
(33:24):
Now, if you're a parent, youalready feel that for your kids,
that you're trying to be therefor them.
If you've expanded that to well, actually anybody anybody in
church, can call me anytime cando that there's a cost involved
for you and that you may notactually fully relax ever.
So, even when it's just you andGod, when you're just spending
(33:49):
time with God, are you able toreally fully be there in that
relationship, or is it justattention and always a readiness
to race off and do something.
So can you be still?
Because even God said be still,seize.
Striving is another way totranslate that.
(34:09):
First Be still and know thatI'm God.
There's a peace in that.
That's our number onefoundation, that we say the
resilience factor, yourspiritual foundations, are the
thing that are going to make thebiggest difference.
So that balance and boundaries,close relationships.
And we know that thrivingpeople, they invest in their
(34:30):
relationship with God.
They spend time with God inways that work for them.
We know that they invest intheir relationships with their
family and their friends.
They just hope that it happensby accident.
They actually investintentionally.
We know that they're clear withtheir boundaries and have a
balance in life.
So they're three of our factors.
(34:51):
Yes, so we do know thatthriving people invest in that.
Valerie Ling (34:55):
How do you know what the balance and boundaries
are?
How were those questions asked?
What were they about?
Sam Sterland (35:02):
Yes.
So we asked some generalquestions about some of these.
Stuff is not complicated, yes.
I mean, if you want to knowwhether someone's burned out,
you can ask them a whole scaleor you could just ask them do
you think you're burned out?
Because most people know it'snot actually that complicated,
unless they're in denial orthey're wanting to hide it from
(35:24):
you.
Most people know if they'recoping or not and similarly, a
lot of our questions are verytransparent.
So I managed to keep goodboundaries between work and the
rest of life.
That's one of our surveyquestions.
I have other interests apartfrom my ministry.
Just asking people self-report,yes or no, agree or disagree,
(35:47):
and how strongly do you agree ordisagree, even that with you.
Well, I kind of agree.
I better put slightly agree,because I know I'm not very good
at that.
So even that kind of thing, wecombine a bunch of questions on
boundaries to get a score foreach person and then we see a
bell curve of everybody inAustralia, all the ministers in
(36:08):
Australia and where they are.
So there's going to be thosethat down the low end and our
analysis.
I won't use a lot ofstatistical terms, but we do
correlation analysis, we doregression analysis.
But basically what thatanalysis does is say what do all
the struggling people have incommon and what do the people
who are thriving have in common?
(36:29):
And that's where you get thesefactors from.
So of course, you go in withyour theories, you go well, I
bet balance and boundaries makesa difference.
And then you come up with somequestions.
You tested and sure enough itdoes, because most of us kind of
know that.
I bet having supportive peoplein my life makes a difference,
and it does.
But that's the point ofresearch is that you confirm
(36:50):
things that you had hunchesabout, but you also explode
myths, because some of thesethings are not right, although
they're not as as big as youthought they were, and it also
helps you find things you hadn'tthought about.
So you know, for example, wefound that having a strong sense
of call to ministry makes ahuge difference to whether
(37:11):
you're going to burn out.
So those of those of us whohave a really strong sense of I
know that I'm meant to be doingthis, I feel called to do this.
That just gives a sense ofconfidence in yourself, even if
other people are saying, oh, butyou haven't had enough training
or you don't have the rightpersonality or whatever, or what
about this, this and this inyour life?
(37:31):
That sense of call is a reallystrong foundation for us.
Now we still need those otherthings.
But we have found that eventhat is really important to have
.
If, when, that, when thingshappen in your life, that call
into question am I meant to bedoing this?
That's a really that's a reallyvulnerable moment.
(37:52):
So, for example, in thepandemic, we were saying to
people now is not the time toleave ministry, now is not the
time to say, oh, ministry didn'twork out for you because
nothing's normal right now.
You know, churches aren't evenallowed to meet, or when they
did resume, half the peoplearen't coming.
Don't don't look at yourselfnow and say, oh jeez, I'm a
terrible minister.
You know, like this is really,this is hard.
(38:14):
I don't think this is for me,because it's not a normal time
for anybody.
So, yeah, we need to berealistic about what's going on
and we need to know the times,as the Bible says.
You know, understand the timesand be gentle with ourselves and
careful with ourselves when weexamine how we're going.
Valerie Ling (38:37):
We actually find in the clinic that it's really
at the point where it's burntout and depressive symptoms have
started and panic attacks andthings like that.
That's the point where maybethe ministry person recognizes
there's something wrong, but inthe lead up to that very often
they're not actually fully aware.
It's almost like a frog in apan, sort of adapting the thing
(38:59):
that you said about the call.
This is an interesting one,right, because everybody has.
Well, there are differenttheological positions on that,
but practically what we find isat that pointy end the call can
be like the sense of convictioncan also be this double-edged
sword, a real sense of guilt andfailure.
So you know, I'm really talkingnow.
You know there's an impact,sense of self-worth, there are
(39:22):
depressive symptoms, they'reburnt out, exhausted and then
feel like a failure as well.
That's one of the things thatyou know we've found.
We have to return our clientsback to the original love for
Jesus first, because all of theexpectations of duty and what he
(39:42):
then wants of you, you know,has been completely shifted
actually.
Sam Sterland (39:49):
That's fair enough , that a call is a buffer zone
when you're coping.
It's one of the things thatwill help you in your confidence
.
But if things have fallen apartfor whatever reason, it's not
supposed to be a chain aroundyou that holds you to something.
If you were listening to God inthat moment, I'm sure God would
(40:10):
be saying I didn't call you tothis, I didn't call you to.
You know, shrivel up and die.
I didn't call you to burn out.
I don't do that to my children.
Look at my people who follow mein the Bible.
That's not what I did to them.
Look at the even the heroes offaith.
You know they suffered, butthey held on to me and I didn't
call you to.
(40:31):
You know, crash and burn likethis.
It's not glorifying to God ifyou're in that position.
So come away with me and getyourself sorted out with me, and
then we'll work out where we gofrom here.
Valerie Ling (40:45):
So did you find anything to do with church,
health, conflict, leadershipthat gave any interesting
information about those who werestruggling, those who were
thriving?
Sam Sterland (40:56):
Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yes, even way back
in 20 years ago when we broughtout this book, burnout in Church
Leaders, which you can stillget.
The book came out in 2000.
That was a very comprehensivelook by Peter and Rod who wrote
that book and did that work, andit looked at what you're asking
(41:17):
about.
What's the role of the church?
The way they framed it at thetime was there's such a thing as
toxic churches so it's.
But it's that idea that Burnoutisn't all about you, right.
Burnout isn't just because ofyour lack of resilience or your
personality or you know yourrole issues.
(41:38):
That book showed that about 50%of Burnout related stuff was
coming from the individual.
So that is very important tothink about because that is
stuff you have some control over, right.
But another half of the causesof Burnout were coming from
outside, coming from the widercontext, particularly the local
(42:00):
church.
So if you're in a church that'stoxic in some way or that's
going through a conflict whichis a toxic time for many people,
that is going to take its toll.
You can.
It can also be denominational,so denominations can go through
periods where it will drop inhigh stress for people who are
affiliated.
And then think of the widercontext as well as just what's
(42:22):
happening in Australian culture.
So we found, for example youknow Australian culture is
changing all the time.
Many would say that Christianvalues are less and less central
.
One of the findings in thatbook was that people who are
struggling with the fact thatsociety is, you know, society is
(42:43):
falling apart.
It's not, society is not ashealthy as it used to be, those
people were more likely to beexperiencing burnout, and so in
my first thesis that I wrote inmy psychology on is on ministers
and burnout I based it onsecularisation and that's the
idea that as society secularises, ministers are in an
(43:05):
increasingly difficult position.
We used to be ministers, used tobe authority figures in their
community, less and less so andmore and more compromised in.
How do I stand in my communityas a person who wants to speak
with authority but is beingincreasingly questioned and the
values that I stand for thatseemingly personify in some
(43:28):
people's minds as the leader ofmy church, some of those values
are being denigrated or ignoredat least, and so that the wider
society influences actuallybring to bear on individuals and
, Valerie, I want to commend youwith the work that you did.
I really resonated with some ofthe things that you did in that
(43:49):
area.
When you talked about you knowwe need to look at the wider
picture, the wider context.
We totally agree with that andour work has highlighted that as
well.
Valerie Ling (44:00):
Oh, that's wonderful to hear.
Thank you for yourencouragement.
So again, I'm just curious.
I don't know whether you havethe answer to this, but did you
find any connections, forexample, with some of the
spiritual health components ofchurch life?
You know, because I found thosequestions when we were doing it
at our church, I was fascinatedactually with our results,
(44:24):
making my own internalconnections to some things.
Did you find some broadertraffic?
Sam Sterland (44:29):
Yeah, we did, we did so and you can look them up
in that book.
Actually, it's really quitecomprehensive.
So, yes, in churches wherepeople are walking more closely
with God themselves so, forexample, they're more involved
in personal devotions Feel likethey're growing in their faith
In those churches, ministers arestruggling less with burnout
(44:51):
and you would think that partlybecause there's an alignment
between them and their people.
But clearly, you know, when theplace is more healthy
spiritually, then it's a lessstressful workplace for the
minister.
Yes, yeah, so we did find that.
Valerie Ling (45:09):
Any other interesting tidbits you can
remember?
Sam Sterland (45:11):
Yeah, I'd like to add a bit more to that, because
we can over spiritualize thingsas well.
So of course churches arespiritual places and you know
ministers see that as a big partof what they're doing is.
I'm here to help people intheir walk with God and their
growth as disciples, and we wantto connect with our wider
community as a spiritual placeto help other people think about
(45:34):
their connection with God.
But there's also just healthyorganizational stuff that a
church can have or can ignore,and you know, if you compare
that to a workplace, if there's,if you're in a workplace where
you know unhelpful stuff is justlet go and isn't dealt with, or
(45:54):
if there's just really badhabits or culture that just go
unchecked, of course thatbecomes kind of a more
depressing place to work.
Over time People often won'thang around as much.
Now a church is not a workplace,except it is for the minister.
So it's an unusual place, butit is still what you call an
(46:16):
organization and so the thingsthat we know about healthy
organizations still apply tochurches.
But we shouldn't just put onthe template of this is how a
workplace should be there forthis, how church should be that
silly.
I mean, a church should be somuch better, because it's a
community of people who aredoing life together and they're
doing it voluntarily.
They're not showing up becausethey're paid to be there.
(46:37):
They want to be part of thiscommunity.
But if you think of it as anorganization, that's quite an
unusual place to work.
Many ministers have not reallymany churchgoers have not really
reflected on the fact thattheir minister works for an
organization where they are theonly employee in many cases one
staff member and everybody elsein the organization is a
(47:00):
volunteer, and so they are therebecause they want to be.
They can come and go as theywant.
They can increase theircommitment, decrease their
commitment, but the minister isin quite a different position
than that.
This helps us understand whyboundaries are such an issue if
you're a minister, because wedon't think about boundaries
when in our community group orwith our family.
(47:20):
It's just life.
But the minister is ministeringto everybody is part of
everybody's life.
So, yeah, we have found thatchurches that think about their
organizational health or exhibitgreater organizational health.
I've done some recent work onthis, actually on organizational
(47:41):
culture in church, and we and Ihave found in these studies
that churches with cultures ofmore empowering of their people.
Churches that are moreinnovative that's a cultural
thing.
Churches that are more focusedon a vision and a direction.
(48:02):
So those three culturalqualities in particular.
They are significantlydifferent to other churches in a
whole bunch of ways.
In one way, they do better atattracting new people to church.
They do better at attractingpeople from the community.
They also make a big differencein people feeling like they're
(48:23):
growing in their faith,interestingly.
And so just healthyorganizational culture, and
there's obviously many otheraspects of culture too, but
that's what I focused on inthose studies.
Valerie Ling (48:37):
Is this part of the NCLS studies, sam, or this
is something else you do?
Sam Sterland (48:40):
Yeah, it's going to come to light eventually.
So these are studies that I'vedone with NCLS data and we're
now looking at how will thatcome out in the future.
We'll do some papers on it.
It'll first of all come out insome journal article papers, so
we go for the peer reviewedstuff.
Then we'll do some more easyreading stuff Fact sheets, maybe
(49:01):
a book in the future.
But I think anybody who's beenlistening to NCLS for the last
five or 10 years has heard ususing the word culture more, and
we're talking more about churchculture, organizational culture
, because in an organizationlike us, when you survey
everybody in church, or nearlyeverybody in church, that's
really what you're getting anopportunity to measure.
(49:23):
Is the culture, the trueculture of the place, not what
one or two people think is theculture which is most
organizational culture studiesare based on, but actually the
majority of people.
So, yeah, when we give churchesreports on a sense of belonging
, how close do we feel as acommunity, their sense of how
(49:45):
welcoming is this church, howinclusive is it for new people,
how good is it reaching out.
We're really talking aboutculture in those things and so
we're using that terminologymore.
So we decided to do somestudies really focused on that.
Valerie Ling (50:01):
You're also looking at psychological safety
there.
I think that's anotheringredient Don't talk about.
I absolutely resonate with you.
For a long time I felt reallyburdened because we are clinical
psychologists, so we are reallyin the realm of understanding
individual dynamics.
And I find too that becausemany of the in my opinion, many
(50:25):
of the interventions that we'vebrought into the church space
has come from a clinical lenswhich largely deals with
intra-personal dimensions.
So things like we just talkedabout, you know, balance and
loneliness and how we viewourselves and our standards for
ourselves, and theninterpersonal dynamics, so you
know how we're relating with oneanother, sort of from a
(50:48):
familial lens, right.
So you know how do we trust,how we forgive in all of those
sorts of things.
But I think there's a big partmissing, which is the church is
increasingly also anorganization.
So you know, organizationalbehavior becomes really, really
important.
How do we cultivatepsychological safety to innovate
, make mistakes, say oops, I waswrong, and how to also then
(51:17):
look at things like how do wereduce the risks in an
organization with regards to howwe design workload, work roles
and things like that?
Because in my hypothesis is, ifwe overly focus also on the
clinical and the familialdynamics, we also open the door
for those dynamics to causehavoc in organizational behavior
(51:40):
.
As an example, I have apsychology practice.
We behave as an organization,right, we have some conduct
boundaries with regards to I'mnot your parent yeah, how do you
speak to me, your expectationsof me.
We don't interact as if I'm theparent in your other child, but
(52:03):
we're actually professionalsinteracting with a certain set
of standards that we wouldexpect an organization to have
so that we can serve others, befocused in what we do, not be
distracted and really not beburnt out by all of that stuff.
So I really resonate with that.
I really look forward to seeingwhat comes out of that.
Sam Sterland (52:22):
I think to have conversations like that in
church is really valuable, thatthere's things here that are
acceptable and there's thingshere that are not okay, and that
people need to be pulled up onthat.
So an example would be whatpeople do on social media that
impacts on their church.
I'm picking this examplebecause it's really slippery,
(52:44):
really difficult.
I was talking to someonerecently who was posting on.
Someone in their church wasposting online criticism of the
minister.
They're free to do what theywant in the social media space,
but to pretend it has no impact,right, and the person posting
(53:05):
is in leadership themselves atthe same church.
Now it gets really complicatedand I said you guys need a code
of conduct, right?
You need to be able to at leasthave the conversation and
someone needs to say this hurtsomeone.
Okay, it's fine that you have acriticism, but what you do with
(53:25):
it has the power to hurt people.
It has the power to cause harm,and that's just organizational
thinking that the churches cantake on.
It's things that organizationshave learned long ago.
We've always been organizations.
I think we're just waking up toit more and realizing that that
can mean a whole lot of things.
And it's lovely wheneverything's going well.
(53:47):
Church feels like a reallyhappy family.
That is lovely.
But I guess we can sort of fallasleep in matters like that and
not be prepared for when thingsgo a bit pear shaped and how
we're going to deal with it whenthat happens.
And this is where I reallyencourage local church leaders
to talk to your denominationalpeople, because they've already
had to help other churches dealwith this stuff.
(54:09):
So don't go and reinvent thewheel.
As soon as anything negativehappens, as soon as bad stuff is
coming out, dysfunctional stuff, go and talk to someone who's
probably had the sameconversation with 10 other
churches and say what have youlearned?
What do we need to put in place?
Because that is all aboutsafety.
Obviously, we've seen a lot ofstuff in the last few years
(54:29):
about safe church, particularlyin relation to protecting
children and other vulnerablepeople.
That's really the tip of theiceberg, isn't it?
Because what you're talkingabout, valerie, is also just
basic psychosocial safety foranybody in the way we relate,
and that's the obvious.
Next thing, we've got to dealwith the most extreme stuff
first and make sure even themost basic things are in place
(54:53):
to protect the most vulnerablepeople from the worst kinds of
behaviour.
But we need to also moveforward, once we're achieving
that, into all the other waysthat things can be damaging and
leave a really bad mark, becauseit all reflects badly on the
church and on God's mission.
That God is trying to drawpeople into a community of love,
(55:15):
and that was Jesus' words.
They will know you're my peopleby your love, and so we want to
be communities that exemplifythat.
I'll come back to something Isaid at the beginning.
It's a great question to askwhat is it like to experience me
as a leader?
What are people experiencing?
(55:36):
And it's going to be a toughquestion, be a hard question, a
little bit scary to ask, butwe're really talking about the
same thing here.
Do people experience me assomeone who's connected with God
and life-giving to them, or dothey experience me as a little
bit dangerous or a little bitrisky, because I'm not always
good to relate to?
Now, if you ask yourself thatquestion, don't beat yourself up
(56:00):
when you realise you could bedoing better than you are.
But ultimately nobody needs youto be perfect as the minister,
because that's not what wepreach.
We preach grace.
So people want to encountersomeone who's just genuinely
connecting with God, knows theyare a broken person, knows they
are a sinner, but also knowsthey're made in the image of God
(56:22):
, knows they are forgiven, thattheir life has been redeemed and
they're just doing life withGod now.
That's all people want toencounter in their leaders.
They don't need this perfectperson.
If people expect you to be aperfect person, you should
correct them.
Don't let them put you on apedestal.
But it is a great practice to.
(56:43):
If you were constantly thinkingwhat's it like to be on the
receiving end of me?
What's it like, then you willbe very careful about what you
post on social media and youwill be very careful about what
you say in public.
In that, because it's just anempathetic way to think about it
from other people's point ofview, as to what are they being
impacted by when I'm the personimpacting them?
Valerie Ling (57:06):
Now we need to wrap up, but it would be remiss
of me not to ask this lastquestion, sam.
Any insights from leadership,from the data that you have on
personality or leadership fromthe NCLS?
Anything came out of that thatcan help us?
To see what's thriving andwhat's struggling.
Sam Sterland (57:24):
Look, there's some well-known work on this.
We haven't done it justrecently, but we've replicated
in the past what other studieshave found.
So let me mention a couple.
People aren't familiar.
If you are a person who hisemotions go up and down a lot,
if you're emotionally labelledas one of the words that people
(57:46):
use, or they used to say it wasneuroticism, but that's unfair,
that could be a bit of anegative word.
But if you're someone who youknow it's got negative
connotations unless you're intocertain forms of comedy.
But if your emotions go up anddown and you just know that
about yourself, then you have tolook after yourself, because
(58:08):
people whose emotions go up anddown a lot are more vulnerable
to burnout.
We know that, okay.
Second thing introverts andextroverts People who are more
introverted are more vulnerableto burnout.
Now, neither of those thingsmake you disqualified for
ministry, because God made youthe way you are for a reason.
You gave us all differentpersonalities and so you just
(58:31):
need to be aware of their areas.
For me, okay, if you're anextrovert, you're going to have
other areas of weakness, butthis isn't going to be such an
issue for you, okay, we aren'tgoing to criticise extroverts
right now.
But if you know that people tieyou out, you have to put a lid
on it.
You're just going to be goodwith your boundaries, because
(58:54):
when you are with people you arequality.
Okay, because you do go deepwith people, you invest with
people.
That's the big bonus of beingan introvert you understand
people, you take the time andyou bother.
But you can't do that with alarge number of people.
So, yes, if you're introverted,just go.
Oh, that's why I can't keep upwith the extroverts all the time
, because I go deep with peopleand I feel it deeply If you're
(59:18):
more a feeler than a thinker,say in the Myers-Briggs world or
something like that.
That's similar to how myemotions got went down.
But I also want to separate somethings off that maybe aren't
personality.
I think some of us sometimesexcuse things and say, oh, you
know, I've just got a bit of atemper, that's just my
personality, right.
(59:39):
So don't put everything down topersonality and say that's just
the way I am, or I tend to getimpatient more easily.
There are things about you thatGod might God might be, want to
work on, that are not actuallyyour personality, but you might
have taken things on even from avery early age.
You might have been told allyour life you know you're this
kind of person or that you'renot.
(01:00:00):
You know you might have beentold you're not a very artistic
person, not creative.
Whatever these things are,we've got to think about what we
really feel.
We know we are from what we'velearned in our work with God and
in life, and also some thingsthat maybe aren't part of it,
part of our personality, and wecan leave them behind and we can
see transformation.
Valerie Ling (01:00:21):
Sam, thank you so much for your time and thank you
for for you, the NCLS, for yourservice to the church and to
the Lord over the decades,because you know it is very much
because you have put out thisinformation that people like
myself can then take that andsay, okay, let's make sure we
can do some upstream work.
Also, let's know exactly wherewe need to go when working with
(01:00:43):
our ministry teams in thepractice.
Thank you so much, sam.
Sam Sterland (01:00:47):
Thank you for your work too.
I just loved your.
I would have talked more aboutyour study, but I really
resonated with a bunch of thingsand it's made me think, it's
made us think, I think, in theteam, and it's.
It's great, isn't it, toconnect over this kind of thing
and all stimulate each other towhat do we need to understand
better and how can we just, youknow, bless the church with what
(01:01:07):
we're learning here?
Valerie Ling (01:01:09):
Yes, yes, thanks, sam.
Thank you so much.
Sam Sterland (01:01:11):
All right, god bless.
Bye.
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