My paternal grandfather was a pastor. He and my grandmother were both second generation Americans. They got married in 1927, had four kids, and ultimately settled in western Virginia after living in Cincinnati and Chicago. My grandmother raised those four children alone, after my grandfather’s untimely death in 1944.
But this brief glimpse only scratches the surface of their lives. These very same grandparents for whom spreading the gospel was central to their lives got a divorce around 1940, and remarried each other in January 1942, a mere two and a half years before my grandfather died.
Right now, you’re probably filling in some mental blanks as you think about ‘pastor,’ ‘four kids,’ ‘1940’ and ‘divorce.’ Some of those speculations are not wrong. I don’t know all the details, and won’t share any more about this aspect of their lives. But things like ‘divorce’ just didn’t happen in 1940 without there being something significant underneath.
These grandparents were born in 1904 and 1908. They grew up poor. They lived through World War I, the Spanish flu of 1918 - 1920, the Great Depression and World War II. Their first daughter did not survive, arriving two months before her due date.
Even though she was only 36 when her husband died, my grandmother never remarried. Depression was never mentioned, but she was notably overwhelmed for a time when the income from her job as a grocery store clerk barely kept a roof over five heads.
For many people like me, ministry work is not only a job, it’s deeply personal. I chose to walk away from financially lucrative work because I knew God was calling me to something very different than a business career.
But I’ve also learned that God’s calling often comes with not only forging new paths, but in some ways redeeming the broken ones that came before. The faith of one generation often becomes the sight of the next. I’m working on a memoir of how incredibly often this has been true in my family.
I don’t know exactly what diagnostic mental health criteria could be used to describe the struggles of my grandparents, but in modern parlance they’d at least cover some familiar ground like anxiety, depression, trauma, maybe OCD and no doubt more. Each of these grandparents could have significantly benefited from time to care for their own mental health, practical supports from their church family, and guidance for the churches where my grandfather served as pastor, to help their congregants address very real mental health-related needs.
As COVID-19 began taking over everything in early March, Key Ministry quickly shifted to addressing the mental health crisis that we knew would accompany all of the rapid changes. In conversations with other ministry leaders, we discussed how immense was the need to help pastors, whose already stressful workloads became dramatically more demanding. At the time when our nation—and the whole world—needs godly leaders in churches to be strong for those they support, we were concerned that too many pastors would burn out, become overwhelmed and ineffective, or choose a ‘death by despair.’
As we prayed, we came to the realization that an online retreat for pastors might provide a necessary respite for those who, as Dr. Lamar Hardwick so eloquently stated, ‘care for the souls of many before God.’
We are delighted to announce that OnlinePastorsRetreat.com will be launched October 5, 6 and 7. New videos will be live each day, starting on Monday October 5, and will be viewable on demand, forever. Key Ministry, in partnership with Amplify Social Media, has assembled a team of ministry leaders, medical professionals, and other servant leaders to speak into the mental health needs of pastors in this most challenging season of history.
Day One will focus on Self Care for Pastors and their families, Day Two will focus on helping pastors care well for the mental health needs of their churches, and Day Three will help pastors learn how to equip their churches to care for mental health needs. Early bird registration will be open through September 22, with a cost of $39, and thereafter will be $49. If you are not a pastor, we encourage you to give this retreat to your pastor as a gift for October’s Pastor Appreciation Month.
My grandparents have been gone a long time. But like all families, what happens in one generation trickles down to subsequent generations. And I hope and pray that by serving the pastors of this generation with some support that many desperately need, in some small way this effort repairs and rebuilds some of what badly needed repair in the lives of my grandparents. I can think of no greater gift to honor them.
Catherine Boyle is the Director of Mental Health Ministry for Key Ministry. You can follow her work here or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and www.catherineboyle.com.
