Failure to Thrive Syndrome: Young Ministers at Risk
THE FAILURE TO THRIVE
In their book, “Among Friends,” James Hinkle and Tim Woodroof cite a 1945 study conducted by social scientist, René Spitz. The study tracked the development of 88 healthy children (1 to 2 ½ years of age) who had recently been separated from their families and institutionalized in a group home.
When these children entered a group home, each child was in good physical health as compared to other children of the same age.
However, in a short period of time these once healthy children became listless, apathetic, suffered from a loss of appetite, and showed no interest in toys or other children.
Over the long term, these children evidenced seriously stunted development:
Only 2 of the 88 children could say more than a couple of words;
Only 3 could walk – at the very bottom of the developmental range;
They were often sick and diseased;
Tragically, 23 of the 88 children actually died during the study.
This research by Spitz sparked a flurry of similar studies on the problems faced by institutionalized children. The findings on long-term effects consistently demonstrated that institutionalized children:
Suffered greater rates and severity of sickness and disease;
Evidenced lower IQ scores than their peers being raised by their own parents;
Demonstrated very poor motor and verbal skills;
Suffered a much higher mortality rate than non-institutionalized children.
THE CAUSES
Faced with these results, researchers Initially looked at factors such as food quality, medical care and environmental conditions, but all were found to be healthy. Researchers even looked for an undiscovered virus or germ, but found nothing. Some concluded the cause to be some biological reaction in the child at being separated from his or her mother, but this too was found not to be the case.
They did note with interest that children who were returned to their mothers rebounded quickly to health while those who remained in group homes continued to decline.
Researchers then looked not the presence of some harmful factor in the child’s life, but the absence of a positive factor that every good mother provides: individual love and attention. When the theory was tested, it was proven to be accurate: children under observation of professionals were lacking individual love and attention.
In other words, though these children were surrounded by healthcare professionals, they were literally dying for lack of love.
Scientists christened this illness, the “Failure to Thrive Syndrome” (FTS).
THE PRESCRIPTION
As a remedy to FTS, doctors prescribed one small but significant change: more nurses – more nurses sharing more face-to-face, hand-in-hand relationship with the children.
At least once every hour of every day, every child was:
To be held;
To play and laugh with an adult and other children;
To be talked with;
To be empathetically listened to.
THE RESULTS
This one simple change produced immediate results. Elevated rates of sickness and death were erased. IQs, motor and verbal skills all elevated. Developmental differences were greatly reduced.
Simple things like eye contact, listening, play, laughter, and touch were understood to be healing and health giving. When these basics were re-introduced into the lives of little ones, they produced profound and enduring benefits: individuals who had been dying for lack of love, returned to health and vibrancy when isolation was replaced with relationship.
THE APPLICATION
There is a clear spiritual parallel between these children raised in group homes and many serving in vocational ministry today: many in ministry today exhibit the symptoms of a spiritual FTS.
This is especially true for younger ministers.
Young adults enter the ministry with all of the promise of a new arrival in the home. Everyone rejoices over the new addition to the ministry team, the minister is excited at the prospects of serving in a new position – it’s fanfare and rejoicing by all.
But then the initial celebrations end. Everyone settles back into the day-to-day, the usual, even the grind. The young minister meets a world for which he or she is not prepared.
The excitement experienced in Bible College or seminary, the days of dreaming with others on similar journeys, encounters a real world ministry life that too often functions like the group homes we saw earlier: everyone in the same place, but no one in the same place together.
That this is possible for ministers serving as a church’s only pastor is obvious: pastoring alone is a lonely world. But thirty-seven years of experience in ministry and in pastoral coaching have proven to me that even those serving on ministry teams are frequently disappointed by the lack of shared journey among fellow ministers.
The result? At best, individualism (And this is not good). At worst, isolation for the young minister.
And it isn’t long before it sets in: the Failure to Thrive Syndrome.
The Short-Term Symptoms of FTS:
- Apathy
Passion for Christ – first love fire – cools and transforms into the routine of ministry for Christ; the daily grind becomes the norm; life outside the groove, but deep in the rut.
- Listlessness
The energy of the early days in a new ministry cools into lethargy; interest wanes; the blood no longer stirs at the thought of Jesus or ministry, but instead at sports, movies, music or _________.
- Loss of appetite
Ministers can no longer feed themselves, nor do they care to do so.
They read the Word, but not for themselves – only for sermon and teaching preparation.
They lead others in worship services, but no longer live in worship themselves.
Prayer is an interruption to the schedule rather than a relational conversation with God.
Relationships are a foreign land; it’s more comfortable to do life and ministry in isolation.
*Quick test, minister: how does your appetite for these things compare to your appetite for them when you were in Bible College or seminary? Or during the early days of ministry?
- Disinterest
No genuine interest in people, their stories, their well-being, their souls. The minister is more interested in position and tasks than people
- Sickness
A weakened blindness and deafness to sin; a weakened resistance to temptation.
The Long-Term Effects of FTS:
Like the children in the above referenced study, ministers with FTS also suffer from long-term, devastating effects.
These effects include:
- Spiritual sickness. Sickness as normal and acceptable.
Spiritual blindness and deafness, hardness of heart: spiritual cancer begins to eat them and/or their ministry alive.
It begins as a spiritual sniffle and ends up in full-blown, debilitating sin, the kind of sin that they are presently unaware of, but will one day, if unchecked, leave them asking, “How could this have ever happened to me?” as they struggle to pick up the pieces of their life.
- A lowered IQ (Inspirational Quotient)
A decreasing IQ and increasingly stunted spiritual development. The absence of joy and peace. It’s been years since they felt real passion for Jesus, knew a sense of overwhelming gratitude for His grace or were moved like Paul in a limitless desire to please Jesus.
- Diminished motor skills
Ministry roles and tasks that once came naturally become increasingly difficult, to the point that ministers avoid them or they give them to others. It’s no longer a calling, it’s a career – “I am a professional going through the motions as ministry muscles weaken.”
- No voice.
They can’t talk. Not with divine authority. There is no anointing in their preaching, teaching, counsel or witness. We’ve all heard far too many of these sermons. Far too many of us have preached them. God help us.
- Diseased, Dying or Dead
They ultimately leave the ministry (5 in 10 of young ministers leave in the first 5 years). Or they stay in the ministry, but do so in a daily death march. Far too often, the casualties of their dying includes those whom God has entrusted to their care.
THE FINDINGS
Doesn’t happen, you say? Couldn’t happen in ministers? Shouldn’t happen among ministers.
Fact of life #123: It does happen among and in ministers.
Just a few stats from recent studies on ministers’ health:
90% of ministers said ministry was completely different from what they thought it would be when they began
45.5% of pastors have experienced depression to the point they had to take a break from ministry;
33% of ministers said they felt burned out within the first 5 years of ministry;
23% of pastors say they feel happy and content on a regular basis with who they are in Christ, in their church, and in their home;
50% of new ministers will not last 5 years in the ministry.
THE PRESCRIPTION
What should be done to address FTS in ministers? What can be done?
We can take a lesson from the study we cited at the beginning of this article: we can add more relationship to the life of every minister.
Enter pastoral coaching and peer mentorship.
Individualism remains the norm in ministry in spite of the fact that the number one killer of ministers and ministries is isolation – walking alone rather than in a shared journey with peers and with someone who has walked before where you walk now.
Stephen Baldwin writes,
“Of all the vocations, surely the gospel ministry is the one whose paradigm is most radically formed by the dynamics of godly mentorship.”
The Center for Creative Leadership states:
“The most effective learning of all, more than all other forms combined, is going through hardship with support, and evaluation.”
And yet, only 1 in 2 pastors receives support from a small group of any kind. Far fewer walk with a pastoral coach.
Again, enter pastoral coaching and peer mentorship.
Pastoral coaches and peer mentors are the “nurses” who break the power of FTS and they do so by breaking the inward cycle and downward spiral of isolation in the minister’s life. Pastoral coaches and peer mentors share the journey of life and ministry with the individual, bringing to him a sure sense of being “held in heart”: they laugh with him, and yes, they cry with him; they talk with him in words he understands; and they listen with understanding.
Every minister needs:
To be held in heart.
Connected, doing life and journeying closely with someone who understands because that someone has been where the minister is.
To laugh.
Every month at Journey Pastoral Coaching, we ask our members to answer an “Insight Question,” a question we ask primarily for the instruction of the coach. Members’ answers inform and educate us, equipping us to better serve them.
Usually these questions are of a serious nature. But from time to time, they deal with non-serious matters like favorite vacation spots, music or film, dreams, etc. Why? So that all of us in Journey laugh together in the comments, questions and retorts that follow. So that ministers can be people, happy, healthy people. The magic of play. The medicine of laughter.
To be talked with in words he or she understands.
Ministers understand ministers. We understand because we are in ministry. When we talk life or ministry, we know the other understands because he or she speaks our language. And we do so from a shared experience, even if separated by distance or by time.
There is something transcendent in a human voice – its sound can be powerful, transforming, even healing. Ask someone who is alone. Ask a minister who serves alone, no mentor or peer nearby.
I remember our first year of ministry in France like it was yesterday. We had chosen to go total immersion in order to learn language and culture – 100% French town, people and culture, French church, daughters in French schools (no, they did not speak, read, or write French when they began, and no one taught them – they had to figure it out).
After almost eight months of all-French-all-the-time, we traveled from our home in Tours to Normandy where we visited the American Cemetery near Omaha Beach. As we drove onto the property, I was amazed at the grounds, the order and dignity, the atmosphere. This was American soil, consecrated to the honor of Americans who had given their life to free the people of Europe in World War II. I was moved by the connection I felt with my country.
I remember being overwhelmed as well at the sound of English, Americans who spoke to me of things important to me and in thoughts I could easily understand. Their words and voices were medicine to my soul. I have always said that in that experience, the English language became more than a tool to me; it became a connection, the expression of a shared culture and country, much like French is to the French people. That day in Normandy, communication was easy and meaningful. How wonderful to converse about something I loved, talking with someone I could easily understand because we shared a common history and culture. They spoke to me with understanding. And I heard them.
The power of a voice that understands.
To be listened to with understanding.
To be seen – as a person, seen. To be listened to – eyes in eyes, listened to. To be heard – heart to heart, heard. To be understood – connected with someone who doesn’t just sympathize with your life, but who empathizes, again because he or she lives that life.
Again, enter pastoral coaching and peer mentorship. All of this is active, alive and powerful in the journey shared between the young minister and a pastoral coach, a young minister and his peer mentors.
THE APPLICATION
At Journey, we are building a coaching community, a mutual investment ministry, one built with three primary tools:
- Walking in relationship with a pastoral coach,
- Walking in relationship with peer-mentors,
- Resourcing as a part of lifelong learning.
It is significant that two of our three tools are relationship-based, emphasizing the importance of shared journey. Through regular, frequent conversations with a pastoral coach, young ministers are building strong for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry. Through regular and frequent conversations with peer-mentors (members of Journey), young ministers are building a healthy lifestyle in ministry.
Through pastoral coaching and peer mentorship we are doing all we can to not just defend against FTS in our members, but to organically help ministers grow as God created them to grow, and to develop their ministries as God has called them to develop them.
Through the building of healthy relationships in ministry, may we eradicate the Failure to Thrive Syndrome from this and succeeding generations of ministers, replacing it instead with an ever increasing thriving in life and ministry.
CONCLUSION
The Failure to Thrive Syndrome is alive and far too well in the ministry today. Statistics say that most young ministers will not survive their foray into vocational ministry.
One can only wonder how many of those who survive will thrive in ministry over their lifetime. Denominational leaders won’t know, but local congregations and ministries will know. Will they ever.
For far too long, the church has turned a blind eye to FTS. We have called young ministers to serve our churches and ministries, used them (and even abused them) without thought to their well being or their lifetime call from God. As a result, many a wounded warrior continues to walk in ministry, but not in strength – surviving, but not thriving.
FTS has taken up residence in the house of God.
In far too many of the hearts of the very ones whom God has called to lead the people of God. But how can a weary shepherd lead his flock to green pastures and still waters? How can a weakened shepherd guide them through the shadow of the valley of death to tables of plenty where we meet with God?
Ah, you say, but that is the task of the Good Shepherd, Jesus; it is Jesus who leads us in the wonders of Psalm 23. Yes, you are right, it is Jesus who leads His people so faithfully in the provisions of Psalm 23.
But He does it through pastors, His faithful undershepherds. In this, Scripture is clear. When there is no pastor who is available to lead God’s people to green pastures and still waters, or capable of guiding them through the valley of the shadow of death to God’s table of plenty, Jesus even says that He is moved with compassion for these people because, without a healthy pastor among them, they are weak and helpless, like sheep without shepherds.
It is time for the church to steward its pastors.
It is time we stop using pastors and begin utilizing them – for the health of our church or ministry today, to be sure, but as much for pastors’ lifetime call.
When we stand before God and give an account of our stewardship over what gifts He has placed in our hands, may God look at how we handled His lifetime call on our pastors and say, “Well done, good and faithful servants. You helped this pastor serve Me well by not only leading you wisely, but by stewarding him well for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry for me.”
It’s time to break the downward cycle and the inward spiral of the Failure to Thrive Syndrome, replacing it with a healthy lifestyle – for an entire generation of ministers. It’s time you and I do everything we can to help them build for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry. #SayNoToFTS #SayYesToHealthy&EffectiveMinisters
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Saddled with large student debt, just beginning to set up homes and start families, and serving in low paying first and second positions, Millennials are those who most desire but can least afford to pay for pastoral coaching.
We are able to do so thanks to the faithful and generous support of individuals and churches like yours who want to see young leaders not only enter the ministry, but remain in the ministry.
Now, more than ever, we need your help.
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