Clergy face the pressures of their calling

Members of the clergy come up with ways to deal with their own stress as they help others handle divorce, sickness and death.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 3, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- Roaring across the Howard Frankland Bridge on his Harley-Davidson, the Rev. Raynald Bonoan feels as free as a bird. Tomorrow, he'll serve the Lord the better for it.

The Rev. W. Bruce Wilder enjoys calming, leisurely evening walks with Millie, the family dog, and Wednesdays bring the additional treat of a rousing practice with his church choir.

And for Rabbi Charles Kroloff, relaxation can mean sailing, a round of golf, writing books or horsing around with his grandchildren.

These are some ways members of the clergy cope with the stress of their round-the-clock jobs, which by their very nature require meeting the needs of exacting congregations and offering comforting words during life's most wrenching moments. Many feel alone as they pursue their tasks and for clergy who marry, pressures of the calling also are borne by spouses and children, who inevitably share the fall-out from high expectations and tight finances. And while African-American clergy combat similar problems, their lives often are compounded by racial prejudice and intra-racial rivalries, a local minister says.

It's not that job stress is unique to members of the clergy, said Don Armentrout, associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.

But, he said: "The work encountered in the ministry is a little more personal. People are dying, getting sick, getting divorced. It wrings the emotions."

Retired priest Nathaniel "Bud" Hynson, one of three priests responsible for providing pastoral care to active clergy and their families in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida, believes clergy stress is a natural outgrowth of commitment to the congregations they serve.

"What I've experienced in my own life is that your congregation really becomes your family and so as a priest, you experience everything that your congregation goes through. . . . Everybody's pain, everybody's suffering, everybody's whatever. It's not just your own problems you have. You have the problems of your parish," said Hynson, who in recent years served as the diocese's archdeacon and deputy for ministry development.

The subject of stress is an important one to institutions that train the clergy.

At the University of the South, "it is addressed under the label of taking care of yourself," Armentrout said.

"A stressed-out pastor is useless, and we try to help them learn to see signs of it happening in their lives. We also try to help them to know that whichever church they go to, it was there before they got there and will be there when they're gone."

Kroloff, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, an organization of the Reform tradition, said he would like to see a change in the perception and reality of rabbis' lives, not just for those who are already following their vocation, but for those men and women who may be contemplating the rabbinate.

"I want them to say that I can have a very full life as a rabbi and still be a good father or mother, a good husband or wife, a caring son or daughter and maybe have a decent golf game too. And it's possible to put all of those together," said Kroloff, who recently returned from a monthlong sabbatical.

For the most part, though, Kroloff's vision seems to fall short of reality for many members of the clergy.

"Rabbis are expected to be available almost on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week, even," Kroloff said by telephone this week from Temple Emanu-El, which he heads in Westfield, N.J.

"We're expected to be very good at a lot of different activities, to have a wide variety of talents. Somebody may be a very good speaker, but not a very good administrator. A good teacher, but not a good counselor, or vice versa. In most lines of work, if you're a counselor, you're a counselor. If you're an administrator, you're an administrator. Rarely do you have to combine such a diverse group of talents," Kroloff said.

The life of a parish priest is no less demanding.

"For most parish priests, you have a Mass in the morning usually, you keep office hours, you have hospital hours and in the evening, it's usually parish organization meetings," said the Rev. Robert Schneider of Holy Family Catholic Church.

He said, though, that priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg get four weeks of vacation a year, a week for continuing education and a week for spiritual retreat.

"Every week you get a day off. Then there are some nights when there are no meetings. A lot of times Sunday afternoons you're free," he said.

Schneider, who has an assistant, has devised ways to handle his hectic schedule. He and his fellow priest take turns being on call for Holy Family's 2,300 households.

"When I'm not on the pager, he's on the pager. That takes a lot of stress off," said Schneider, who also tries to relax by walking a couple times a week.

The Diocese of St. Petersburg has a system for helping its clergy cope with stress, he said.

"We have a vicar for clergy in our diocese, and that person is available if you're feeling that you are not able to handle things," Schneider said.

"He is a resource you can turn to."

That person is the Rev. Bob Morris, director of priest personnel.

"We encourage all the priests to have spiritual directors and to be part of support groups called Jesus Caritas," said Morris, who added that alleviating stress is just one element of the groups' functions.

Morris, pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Tampa, said situations that trigger stress vary from priest to priest. For example, he said, while one may find it stressful to work with the dying, another may have difficulty working with couples preparing for marriage. Yet another could feel stressed dealing with families facing domestic problems.

"It depends on the individual and their own spiritual life and other avenues of their personality," Morris said, adding that prayer is seen as central to coping.

Hynson, who is canon pastor to active Episcopal clergy and their families in Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties, is only too aware of the strains of the profession. Money can be a key concern, especially for married clergy, he said.

"When we started 40 years ago, I made $400 a month, $4,800 a year, but we didn't have a lot of expenses," said Hynson, who is married to former teacher Marianna "Andy" Hynson.

"Our children were little. We lived in a very small house, and we even had help. But when you get later in life and you start thinking of sending your children to college, what happens to the clergy is the same thing that happens to everybody today. You've got to have a two-income family. So the wife takes a job. That's another bind the clergy has, because congregations don't like that."

Hynson added: "In our society today, they value the person based on what they get paid, which brings you to another thing. Nobody went into the ministry to get rich, but there's no way that a clergyman can make any more money by working harder. Like an attorney, if you want to make more money, you can see more people, you add some more hours. You can't increase your income a bit by doing that in the ministry."

Sitting in their home on a brick street near the main campus of St. Petersburg Junior College, his wife was forthright about the stresses that can affect a priest's family.

"I think from my perspective, there are unrealistic expectations . . . that I felt were put on my children," Mrs. Hynson said.

"We want our children to be just regular, normal, active, happy children, but they are supposed to be perfect in every way," she said.

Moving to new parishes was difficult, said Mrs. Hynson, adding that she did not look forward to leaving old friends and making new ones. And there was additional tension when she had to return to work.

"You could not do all the things that people thought you could do," she said.

Most difficult of all, though, was coping with the loss of parishioners because of death, said Mrs. Hynson, adding that she and her husband also shared the pain of church members who lost jobs, were diagnosed with serious illnesses or burdened by other troubles.

"These kinds of things, you want to do so much, but there's only so much you can do," she said.

The Rev. Manuel Sykes, pastor of Bethel Community Baptist Church, said he faces the usual problems of fellow clergy. But for him and other African-American ministers, those difficulties often are compounded by race.

"You have the constant situation of being an African American in a society that is still racist being part of a group of people who lead the nation statistically in every negative category, health, wealth, incarceration," Sykes said.

The church can work toward change, he said, but clergy often are frustrated in their effort to do so, he said.

Bemoaning the lack of support among African-American colleagues, he added: "In some cases, probably more here than in other places, there is clergy jealousy and competition that keep churches from coming together to produce social and spiritual change.

"It's very difficult to find trusting and faithful relationships among black clergy. It forces you to internalize many of the things that you would like to share. Your personal information is used to advance somebody else's cause. It's a unique problem in a society the size of St. Petersburg and a byproduct of the oppression from the larger community," Sykes said.

To wind down, Sykes said he takes continuing education classes, practices karate and befriends colleagues outside the St. Petersburg area.

Wilder, who has been pastor of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in the Pinellas Point neighborhood for more than three years, uses his nightly walks and membership in his church choir to ease the tensions of his job.

"It's a lot of fun," Wilder said of his choir participation.

"I sing with them on Sunday. When I get through doing the morning prayer and the congregation is seated, I walk over and join the choir and sing the anthem."

For Bonoan, who is based at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in downtown Tampa, mounting his red Harley-Davidson is his route to relaxation.

"I usually ride on the weekends. It's a nice time to go around and let the fresh air hit your face. I go across the bridges. It really relaxes me, hearing the Harley sound. It's just being free. It's like a massage. Your spirit is being soothed," said Bonoan, who is from the Philippines and heads the diocese's Asian-American ministry.

"Every time I come back from riding," he said, "I'm ready to move on and carry on the Lord's work."

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