The mental health needs and profile of Bible College Students with Dr David Eagle

Dr David Eagle is an Associate Research Professor of Global Health and Sociology. He leads the Religion and Social Change Lab (RaSCL) RaSCL. RaSCL is a team of researchers and practitioners who use the tools of social science to deepen understanding, spark conversations, and develop resources for the training and formation of faith leaders and their communities. They work collaboratively with the Duke Clergy Health Initiative (CHI) to promote clergy well-being across the lifecycle and shifting cultural landscapes.

He is an expert on the health of religious clergy, the changing role of churches in North American society and the implications of these trends for the professional training of ministers. He has done significant work on burnout, depression and social support. 

He is the Principal Investigator of The Seminary to Early Ministry Study, a multi-year, multi-cohort study seeking to understand how seminary impacts the health, occupational wellbeing, theology, and career trajectories of students.  In this episode, Dr. David Eagle discusses this particular research.

Season 3 of the Clergy Wellbeing Down Under Podcast brings you into the rich conversations shared at the Common Table Global Gathering in Houston earlier in 2026, a collaborative meeting of leading scholars and practitioners committed to clergy and congregational wellbeing. At this interdenominational table, leaders from many christian faith traditions chose to set aside what divides their beliefs and lean into what they hold in common, seeking the common good not only of the church, but of the world—and this season, we’re inviting our guests to continue that same hopeful, cross-tradition dialogue with you. 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dr. David Eagle and His Work
03:09 The Clergy Health Initiative: Understanding Clergy Wellbeing
06:39 The Seminary to Early Ministry Study: Insights and Findings
10:31 Adverse Childhood Experiences and Their Impact on Seminarians
13:21 Navigating Vulnerabilities: The Role of Community in Seminary
16:49 Political Polarization and Its Effects on Ministry
20:12 The Importance of Identity and Belonging in Ministry
23:35 Protective Factors for Seminarians: Strengths and Support
26:31 The Role of Beliefs and Community in Seminary Experience
30:09 Building Human Capacity in Pastoral Leadership
33:34 Advice for Early Career Pastors and Ministry Workers
37:03 Recommendations for Seminaries and Churches Supporting New Leaders

 

Podcast Disclaimer:

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!

Transcript

Valerie Ling (00:00.953)
Hey everybody, I have Dr. David Eagle with me. David is an associate research professor of the global health of global. I'm reading from your website, but I think I'm getting all mixed up. All right, let's start again. Hi everybody. I have Dr. David Eagle with me. David is an associate research professor of global health and sociology.

He leads the religion and social change lab. And this is a team of researchers and practitioners who use the tools of social science to deepen understanding, spark conversations, develop resources for the training and formation of faith leaders and their communities. David works collaboratively with the Duke clergy health initiative to promote clergy wellbeing across the life cycle and shifting cultural landscapes.

Hello David.

David Eagle (00:59.603)
Hello Valerie, so wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.

Valerie Ling (01:03.823)
Well, we had a great initial encounter in Houston at the Common Table gathering. And I've told everybody that that was my first academic rock star experience because we were in a, I suppose, a seminar room and I had asked a question and you basically tapped my shoulder to say that you had an answer. And when I saw your name tag, I don't know whether you were used to getting this response, David, but I pretty much

geeked out because I've read much of your work. Tell us a little bit about first of all your role in everything that I've just read out, the Duke clergy health initiative, the religion and social change lab. Could you tell us a bit about that?

David Eagle (01:51.427)
Yeah, so the Clergy Health Initiative began way back in 2007 by a very generous grant from the Duke Endowment. And our goal was initially to figure out if the health of, particularly the physical health of United Methodist clergy people in North Carolina was bad or good. And we didn't know this question for a long time. Researchers had assumed that

There was nothing different about clergy people's health and that perhaps maybe it was even a little bit better than the average American. Everybody thought, know, clergy health looked just like other people's health. So we launched and found out that at least among this group of clergy, we found very high rates of, or we found elevated rates of obesity concerning signs about stress and depressive symptoms.

And that launched a very major intervention study that we did with about 1600 clergy and then spawned a whole series of other studies doing smaller intervention studies, continuing to do annual surveys of clergy. And then also in 2016 began to think about seminary students. And so we added on studying a long-term cohort of seminarians, about 500 students as they go through seminary and then enter into the first few years of.

ministry after seminary. So we're really interested in the factors that lead to poor or improved health amongst clergy. And we're interested in the kinds of people becoming a clergy, what special gifts and challenges they're bringing with them. And then also the religion and social change lab, which is the lab that I lead. We're really, really interested in how broader social realities that we're facing.

are impacting clergy and congregations. As you can imagine, the United States, political polarization, political difference and conflict over political differences, one example of one of those kinds of major social factors that are impacting clergy that we're doing active research on. So that's a little bit about our background as an initiative.

Valerie Ling (04:13.281)
What led you personally down this path?

David Eagle (04:16.814)
So I did not grow up in a faith family. I came to faith in university. And shortly after becoming a Christian, becoming involved in a local church, and over the years really felt the strong call to congregational ministry, which eventually ended me up in seminary in California.

and then moved back to British Columbia, to the West Coast, to pastor. And I pastored a small Mennonite church on Vancouver Island for six years. And it was really out of those experiences where a lot of the questions that I still continue to wrestle with began to take shape. You what does Christianity look like in a society that has kind of moved on from traditional forms of religion? How do you maintain sanity and wellbeing and

what's a challenging career? How do you deal with multiple, often very deeply held convictions of the people in your congregation? How do you hold that together? And how do you create a sense of community within a single church when there are people whose beliefs are often in conflicts? especially as, know, especially the issue of LGBTQ inclusion was becoming.

a really major factor, how do you keep people together with people, very different opinions on those kinds of issues? How do you keep them together in one chart? So all of those questions really started swirling around and that's what really led me back to graduate school to do a PhD. I thought it was gonna be in theology, but I ended up pursuing sociology because really a lot of my questions are grounded in empirical realities.

Valerie Ling (06:08.013)
Which brings me then to you are currently the principal investigator of the Seminary to Early Ministry study, multi-year, multi-cohort study to understand how seminary impacts the health and wellbeing of early career Christian leaders, I suppose. I've just heard you talk about...

your personal experience in a Christian ministry setting, looking at the various differences we hold, how do we then navigate our political and social realities together? What has seminary students got to do with all of that?

David Eagle (06:50.989)
Yeah, so we, the Seminary of Internal Ministry study really came about because as I mentioned, we have done studies showing that the physical and mental health of clergy looks worse than the general population, at least the population of United Methodist clergy that we work with. And we had always assumed that

this stuff began after seminary that a lot of the health problems were cropping up. Once people graduated and began working, we sort of thought the church was creating the problems. And then we began to get curious and asked, well, what's the role of both the training portion of seminary, but probably more importantly, the kinds of people who want to become clergy people want to become pastors and local church leaders. Is there something unique or particular about them?

Valerie Ling (07:28.101)
you

David Eagle (07:46.604)
that is leading to poor health. I think also there's lots of questions about are people learning the skills that they need to manage congregations and the congregational realities that they are going to face once they graduate from seminary. So this study was really an attempt to both figure out who's coming to seminary, what happens to them during seminary, and then to look at the kinds of people who seem to thrive.

Valerie Ling (08:15.258)
Mm.

David Eagle (08:15.275)
and the kinds of people who seem to struggle in leadership and trying to see if we could find then places to improve so that more people are thriving in ministry rather than struggling.

Valerie Ling (08:28.463)
Curiosity David, what's the average age of your cohort in this study?

David Eagle (08:33.901)
Um, I don't have the exact number before me, but it is around 30. So, um, at least with divinity schools in the United States, you sort of have two, different kinds of, uh, seminary divinity school settings in the United States. One are the schools that are attached to larger, uh, research universities. Those schools tend to attract a younger population. So more students who are straight out of undergrad or short are not that far out of their undergraduate degrees.

Whereas standalone seminaries, other seminaries across the US, they tend to attract a much older population and tend to have more people who are transitioning from another career into pastoral ministry. So definitely our students are younger on average than the average seminarian would be in the US. Although that is changing now that during our study, the Divinity School here started a...

hybrid program. So that was an online, that's an on mostly online degree that you're on campus a few weeks a year. So definitely the average age of students here is also getting getting older, reflecting that, you know, there is a much larger demand for theological education amongst older people nowadays than there is amongst younger people.

Valerie Ling (09:52.493)
Alright, so let's start with the first question. So what have we discovered about students entering seminary in terms of where you started to say, it because of the environment that makes ministry difficult or are there certain characteristics of the cohort that comes in to train for ministry? What have you found?

David Eagle (10:12.855)
So one thing that we have, we were really curious about this phrase was coined by Carl Jung, but I think Henry now and the priest Henry, late priest Henry now and really coined this, this phrase of the wounded healer. And that's the idea that one of the, the, one of the ways a Christian pastor can minister is out of their own brokenness or the modeling Christ offering his ministry from a place of.

Valerie Ling (10:24.931)
Hmm.

David Eagle (10:42.701)
brokenness and of suffering. And so now I'm really popularized this idea that out of our suffering, we can bring healing and hope to others. And so, we find that patterns are born out amongst our data in that people coming to seminary are more likely to have had what we call adverse childhood experiences in their past, particularly

Seminary students are much more likely to have grown up with somebody with a mental illness, and they're also much more likely to have experienced sexual or physical abuse as children. So there is definitely, and I think this probably speaks to broader patterns in that there are definitely more students who have some difficult experiences in their background, and it is out of that, they have found healing and release for

through their faith for some difficult experiences and they want to give back. But of course those factors in your background come with certain challenges as well. So it's definitely one piece that we find. And then we find, although it's very hard to find comparative data on this, we definitely find high rates of both diagnosed mental illnesses, but also fairly high rates of people with elevated depressive symptoms.

people who have had significant thoughts of self-harm, those kinds of things tend to be elevated amongst this population. So those are some of the risk factors that we find, those are good things that seminarians bring with them as well. I don't wanna understate that as well, but those are some of the challenges that seminarians are bringing with them.

Valerie Ling (12:39.653)
They do remind me, because I don't think we have a comparative Australian study, although David, we would love to get you over as a visiting scholar or some kind of research guru here in Australia. I don't think we have comparative data, but we do have population-based prevalence statistics that would suggest that in Australia, at least that 18 to 25 age group.

David Eagle (12:52.428)
you

Valerie Ling (13:08.835)
currently we'd say would have elevated patterns of psychological distress. They probably have more mental health vulnerabilities. I'm wondering whether you have any data to know whether what you're seeing in the seminary students in comparison with broad US mental health prevalence stats. Would you know what that might look like? Is it the fact that we're attracting vulnerable

individuals into seminary or is it a generation that is broadly vulnerable?

David Eagle (13:45.003)
Yeah, I think it's both those things. We have research. We have studied specifically adverse childhood experiences. We have compared against demographically matched samples of Americans. And we have, like I said, found that...

The experience of living with someone with a mental illness, the experience of sexual abuse is more common among seminary students. We also have a study that's just under review right now that shows that there are elevated rates of suicidal ideation amongst seminary students. Again, when you compare them against a demographically matched sample of the general public. know, we do see some, we do see that seminary is attracting people with some more psychological

vulnerabilities.

Valerie Ling (14:35.993)
Do we know what's fueling them? What's there?

David Eagle (14:42.572)
I think if you look at some of the research from other helping professions, social work, psychology, a few other fields have been studied, I think it is very much this suggestion. don't have great, we can't nail this down with data exactly causally, but I think we have enough evidence that suggests that people...

Valerie Ling (14:47.396)
Yes.

David Eagle (15:06.876)
with a specific set of vulnerabilities have a heightened sense of compassion for other people with, who are vulnerable and could face struggles in life and that they are drawn to professions that, where they can offer help and healing to people who have struggled and suffered. So definitely the experiences of adversity can make a person more likely to want to help another person

Valerie Ling (15:36.815)
Yeah.

David Eagle (15:36.882)
endure similar or other kinds of vulnerabilities. So I think it's that pattern. see this amongst, you definitely see this among social workers, psychologists, and some other helping professions.

Valerie Ling (15:50.095)
So what do we extrapolate or know about what happens to this level of vulnerability as it enters seminary and into that formation space? What do we know?

David Eagle (16:04.437)
Well, one thing that we have done some work on, again, this is work that still hasn't been peer reviewed yet, but I feel pretty confident in these results. One thing that's fairly new to the seminary context that I'm studying with the students in our population is that there are about 15 % of our sample identify as a sexual and gender minority.

student of some sort. And when we observe those students, we find elevated rates of depressive symptoms compared to other of their entering classmates. This is not

And this is because especially for LGBTQ people who grow up in the church, they often have a lot of negative experiences connected to their sexual identity and their religious communities. so life has often been more difficult to face a lot more discrimination in general society as well. And reconciling their Christian and their sexual and gender identity has been

and has been a struggle. So we see that pattern. The hopeful thing that we have seen in our data is that by the end of seminary, the population of sexual and gender minority students in our cohort looks no different than the rest of the student population. So there is something that's happening, and we have some qualitative data to back this up, that students who are coming in saying, hey, I don't know what it means to be gay and a Christian.

They are finding support. They're finding probably models of gay Christians that they can emulate. They're being included in the community that is affirming of being Christian and gay at the same time. And so some of their psychological distress is alleviating. So definitely there are some...

David Eagle (18:08.625)
Insofar as seminary provides a supportive environment for people with struggles of all kinds, think seminary can be a really, really important time to integrate different aspects of your identity that may not have been well integrated before. We see similar things about students who have had

say religious and spiritual struggles coming into seminary have struggled with who God is and feeling distant from God or having deep questions about their faith.

That of course can also, that also is correlated with and probably causally related to having more psychological distress. Again, for the students who come to seminary with a lot of some of that inner turmoil around what they believe and can they believe what they believe, can they have doubts about their faith insofar as they find other people within seminary environment who've had similar struggles and can process that with their peers and

Valerie Ling (18:52.485)
David Eagle (19:13.367)
through their classes, we do find that psychological distress does reduce. I think that's a different set of questions with students who then embark on their careers that we can get into as well. All right. So I think the one challenge that we have heard some students talk about, have

Valerie Ling (19:28.485)
Nothing.

Well, let's go there then.

David Eagle (19:40.748)
We have a small sample of students that we spend a couple of weeks with, both one year and two or three years out from seminary. I think the one thing that those students have reflected back to us is that seminary is a very supportive environment for them. These students all are part of a Domini school that's in a large university, so there are a lot of psychological services.

There's lots of peers who have similar experiences around them. and generally seminary is a fairly, although there, there is of course an ideological diversity and spectrum. The ideological spectrum is probably not as wide as it is in your average congregation. So seminary is, doesn't reflect the real world always.

And so we definitely see students say that, you know, I don't have nearly as many supports around me and available to me now that I am out in a local church. And this definitely, a lot of our students in mainline Protestant denominations will end up serving churches in rural areas or in more conservative areas.

And those are very different experiences where it's not necessarily that the people who are around you in the communities that you live are like you. more difference that students are feeling and then managing friendships and broader connections to the community are more challenging. So it's definitely one thing we hear. Definitely pastors are struggling managing.

ideological, political, and theological differences within their congregations as well. There's some very, lots of really great research on this topic. I've shown that at least in America, I'm not sure about the situation on Australia, but in America, political identity used to be, was not American's primary source of identity. Americans for a long time did not primarily root their identities in their politics.

David Eagle (21:56.734)
way back in the day in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s. You you had Democrats and Republicans who were very liberal and very conservative. The parties were very mixed and people's party identification did not really line up with their values nearly like it does now. But nowadays people's political identities, at least in this country, have become very primary. And those are some people's most important identities or their political identities and their religious identities are sort of layered on top of that.

Valerie Ling (22:27.128)
No.

David Eagle (22:27.241)
And so that makes churches much more, much more rife with the potential for conflict. And COVID of course, led to lots of sort of blew that whole, blew everything, blew that whole sort of world up. that before COVID you didn't have, you may not have known how diverse your congregation was, but once COVID hit and you had to, you had to debate about, we going to wear masks? Are we going to wear our vaccines for nursery workers, et cetera?

then you suddenly realize that there were people in your congregation who held wildly different beliefs on these topics. And that just put politics at the center of a lot of debates in church. And young pastors are really, really struggling to know how to deal with this, especially ones who are sent into parts of the country where there is more ideological diversity. And so we definitely see that as driving.

thoughts of leaving ministry for other professions, things like that.

Valerie Ling (23:28.185)
Yeah, certainly working with our clients in the US and having understood the research that's come out from the US space, the political landscape and its changeability and its impact, therefore an emotional.

States and the churches have huge thing in supporting pastors in the US. I do think though it probably comes back to a sense of I was I actually went to a very funny play last week and it was all about a group of friends who were looking at a latest

piece of art one of their friends bought which was essentially white. It was just a black canvas. And you know, these three best friends have been best friends for decades. know, this act of buying a blank white canvas, you know, the whole play is about them arguing over it. And one of them says, you know, his therapist is helping him to understand that I am who I am and you are who you are until who you are impacts who you think I am and therefore, you know, who I am impacts who you think you

This sense of belonging and these assumptions that we have around what that means for political ideology. But I think maybe in Australia it could be along denominational lines, sort of what we believe is how we do church, the governance we have. These things do filter in to what splits us apart in churches in Australia.

And one of the things that I've found consistent in reading across the literature, whether it's the Canada, UK, US, Australia, is that age certainly is a variable in well-being, younger clergy.

Valerie Ling (25:16.329)
generally have poorer mental health, generally. And we are wondering in Australia whether that's around things like self-concept, self-identity, whether the formation of seeing who I am is still so soft.

And so when you enter a church environment, when you're a young clergy person, you assume that we'll all do belonging really well. And so as I enter the space where I'm soft in my whole sense of who I am, these strong views or strong opinions become very hard and you almost feel like maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't belong. You know, is that part of it, the sense of self and belonging, do you think?

David Eagle (26:03.615)
Yeah, again, we don't have a lot of data to support this, but I do think there is a lot of broader data out in the world that does back some of this up. We also think there has to be a part played here by virtual versus and digital community versus real lived community.

Valerie Ling (26:30.499)
Okay.

David Eagle (26:30.788)
And that definitely for younger people, they do live more of their lives in digital spaces and digital communities where it is much easier to self-select who your friends are and aren't. Whereas in real communities, that's different. It's a different set of skills that you need to build face-to-face kinds of communities than it is to nurture digital communities.

And I do wonder how much students are learning both through their families, through their primary and secondary schooling, through post-secondary schooling, how much they're learning about how real human face-to-face communities work and the kinds of skills and competences you need to make those kinds of spaces work. I wonder if some of that has been lost at a cultural level.

Valerie Ling (27:25.349)
Hmm. Hmm.

David Eagle (27:27.586)
as well, which is creating some of our challenges as well. That's my, that's a working hypothesis. I have, and, and it's, it's hard to know exactly, how you'd go about testing that, but that, that is a feeling that I get that, that younger people, don't have the same level of skillfulness when it comes to building, face-to-face communities, especially diverse communities than, than

Valerie Ling (27:33.913)
No.

David Eagle (27:57.546)
previous generations had when we didn't live so much of our lives online and in communities that that kind of self-select more strongly.

Valerie Ling (28:07.97)
So coming back to the adverse childhood experiences, we've just talked about some of the more challenging pathways as people enter seminary and they have the environment that they're in in Bible College and then out. What are some of the protective factors or maybe some of the adaptive things that you've observed in your cohort?

David Eagle (28:34.442)
So, so definitely some of the protective factors that we see in our cohorts is you have we have people with very, very, a very strong sense of the importance of things like community, a strong belief in justice. Stimulatory students are more honest and humble than the average person out there.

And you really can't also discount the fact that many students come from really strong faith communities that have nurtured them in lots of important ways. so I am struck always meeting students coming to seminary at just, at the passion that students bring, the desire to make the world a better place.

Valerie Ling (29:13.636)
I mean.

Valerie Ling (29:18.052)
Mm-hmm.

David Eagle (29:33.798)
and a commitment to fairness, to justice, all those sorts of things. I think those are all really important factors. Seminarians tend to grow up in relatively good families. That is one thing that we do find that seminarians are more likely to have grown up with two married parents. Of course, it's not the only way that you can have a be a successful adult, but there's definitely protective factors associated with growing up in.

two parent married family. things like that, I think are of major importance. And the fact that most of these people grew up in churches as well, not all, but most seminarians grow up in a church where they did have other adults in their life likely who took an interest in them. Many students that we talked to about their call stories, why did they come to seminary? Often family members get mentioned.

grandfather, father, a mother, grandmother who was a pastor or involved in a religious vocation. Somehow we get lots of stories about experiences from Christian camps and the really formative experiences that they've had there. So I think all of these kinds of experiences speak to people who have had a lot of positive social support growing up that's led them to this place.

Valerie Ling (31:01.669)
Is there anything from your findings that we haven't spoken about David that you think might be good for us to know about?

David Eagle (31:13.545)
What else have we? That's a good, that's a very good question.

David Eagle (31:24.457)
One, you know, another, another large piece of our research looks at beliefs and how students beliefs change while they're in seminary. At least in this country, there's lots of fears that universities are really indoctrination factors that, and I definitely heard this going to seminary. had people from my church say, you know, I sure hope your faith survives seminary.

Valerie Ling (31:36.805)
Mm.

David Eagle (31:52.202)
because it's probably going to get destroyed by your professors there. That was definitely a comment that I heard from a few people. And so we've looked at this question of how people's beliefs change. And what we found is really interesting in that what happens in seminary is not so much, is definitely not indoctrination. It's actually sort of surprising how little students talk about courses. Courses, professors are important. They're an important reason people go to seminary.

Valerie Ling (31:52.303)
Yeah.

David Eagle (32:21.139)
But the experience of seminary is a lot more than just coursework and professors and readings. And the influence of peers is really, really important. And so what we find very much, very strongly is that, you know, who come to seminary with questions and with doubts and with things that they haven't.

resolved. When they get to seminary, they tend to find other people who are in similar places than they are. And because seminary is a place where doubts are okay to have, where questions are okay to have, and often students find, questioning students find other students with similar questions, and they, and through that process of finding community,

their beliefs tend to shift and they often shift in towards a deeper, stronger sense of identity. so identity has really formed in many students in seminary, somewhat through coursework and through professors, but most of it is a process, a social process that takes place within peer learning communities. So I think that's one really, really important and interesting thing.

We do see a certain set of student who does come in and they are convinced that everybody is trying to indoctrinate them and change their theology. And so they come in saying, I am not going to change. And those students don't change. And most of it's because they really don't engage in relationships for many significant relationships with people in seminary, except with maybe one or two people who believe the same as they do.

So definitely the process of getting to know people, of building friendships with other people, that is where our identities are formed. And I think it has really important ramifications for our churches, for our families, for our places we train our pastors. So that's one thing. The second piece that...

David Eagle (34:37.777)
I think is important to say, again, we haven't done a lot of research. I would love to begin to do more work in this area. But we definitely see that leading organizations like churches has become maybe not more difficult, but it is at least as difficult as it ever has been. I think it probably is more difficult. More churches are in decline.

and facing financial struggles. like we've already talked about, managing ideological differences is harder. More people move around a lot more, so there's less rootedness in local communities. So I think forming Christian community has become more difficult. And if you combine that with the fact that students can...

more students coming to seminary who want to be pastors have some difficult situations in their backgrounds. I think that really does speak to the need for seminary and programs that work with clergy, especially early on, to not only focus on the theological and the biblical, students get a ton of that, but also to focus on the human side of things as well. So I'm really a big advocate for thinking about.

How do we build the human capacity of Christian leaders, which is equally as important as the theological understandings that our pastors bring. Knowing how to work effectively with people is really, really important. The church I attend right now, we have a phenomenal pastor and she's so phenomenal because she is such an incredibly good, she's so incredibly good with people.

and with community. She knows how to shepherd people and she knows how to shepherd communities. So think anything that we can do to be helping students and young clergy develop the human side of who they are is really, really important.

Valerie Ling (36:46.789)
What have you seen that works towards that end? Building the human capacity, integrating relational skills.

David Eagle (36:50.857)
Yeah.

David Eagle (36:58.505)
So I am a huge fan of Marshall Linehan, the developer of dialectical behavioral therapy, which I think is one of the most incredible contributions that a single researcher has made to our world. What I really love about dialectical behavioral therapy is I love its focus on mindfulness. I think there is a ton within the mindfulness tradition that is that

Valerie Ling (37:14.681)
Yeah.

David Eagle (37:28.201)
that pastors can really benefit from. Pastors have a lot to do. There is a lot going on in their brains. Pastors are facing a lot of criticism and there's a lot of emotion when you're a pastor and you are dealing with a lot of emotional situations. So developing mindfulness skills is really important to know, you what do I do with all of these? Often strong and difficult emotions and mindfulness is definitely one place. The other thing I love about

dialectical behavioral therapy as well as the it teaches a whole suite of skills and in very extremely practical and useful ways teaches you know what from basic things for emotional handling handling strong emotions you know teaches you what is an emotion i don't know that a lot of us in seminary stop to think you know what is an emotion like why do i have these things called emotions and how can i and how can i

manage strong emotions. How can I think about the goals that I have for relationships in my life and put those front and center and then think about how can I manage my emotions, myself, my interpersonal relationships in ways that help me reach my goals rather than simply reacting out of emotions, et cetera, reacting out of our childhood trauma. It really gives, I think that...

the dialectical behavioral framework really gives people the skills to be able to live into the kind of vision that they have for their lives without their emotions really getting them into a lot of trouble. And so I think that's one suite of skills that I think is really, really important.

Valerie Ling (39:15.301)
Mmm.

David Eagle (39:17.556)
Unfortunately, most most dialectal behavioral therapy is targeted at people with borderline personality disorder and other related conditions. I think, boy, I just think there's a set of there's there's a foundational framework for what humans are, how emotions work, how interpersonal relationships work, and then skills to manage our emotions and our relationships effectively that everybody ought to ought to learn and especially pastors because

Valerie Ling (39:26.402)
Yeah.

David Eagle (39:47.655)
Yeah, pastors do lots and lots of things, but at their core, pastoral work is relational. is about, you know, it's about individual managing individual relationships, and it's about managing a community and that whole network of relationships. And the more that pastors are going to become adept and learn the skills to manage and personally to manage a community, I think the better. And again, it's something that most seminary curriculums do not.

put at their core, most of it's Bible theology, preaching, et cetera, which are important. I think we've gone, I think we need to figure out how to incorporate that sort of human set of capacities somewhere in the training process.

Valerie Ling (40:31.297)
Yeah, I'm surprised that you've mentioned, Linehan, I know that you're a fan of mindfulness. And I think I had just assumed that your entry point into that was what we know about leadership well-being. But what you just said there about borderline personality disorder, well, in a sense, that's the pathological outcome. But the process to that is a fragmented sense of self.

that's really sensitive to what others think or say about you. you can have a few reactions to that. You can attack, you can acquiesce. So, you know, it makes sense to me that what your...

your thinking is that if the formation issues who were having coming in early into seminary have had some adverse childhood experiences, they've kind of got a fragmented sense of self, then one part of it is not just knowing or identifying what you're feeling, but also then how to regulate that so that you don't further feel like you're losing who you are. So even the kind of thing about, yeah.

David Eagle (41:37.798)
Yeah, that's really helpful. Really helpful. Yeah, I think that's a nice tie to this. And pastors think about identity so much. They think about their own identity. They think about the church's identity. They think about how to form Christian identity in other people. And so this identity stuff is so incredibly important. there's just a lot, there can be a lot of really

Valerie Ling (41:50.703)
Yeah.

David Eagle (42:07.471)
strong emotions that get tied up with when our hoped-for identity doesn't come to pass or when we can't live up to the expectations that we have for ourselves or for others or for our communities and learning how to do that effectively is really important. And I think it is very true that pastors often

Valerie Ling (42:16.399)
Yes.

David Eagle (42:35.194)
It is around this having a solid, firm sense of identity that pastors can struggle.

Valerie Ling (42:43.077)
So let's round it up here David. So you know we probably will have a range of people listening but first of all your heart as not just as a researcher but a fellow Christian and someone who has been in pastoral leadership. If we do have early career pastors or ministry workers listening you know what do want to say to them? What can they take away from this?

David Eagle (43:08.956)
So the number one thing that I wish that somebody would have said to me was that it is okay that you are not a perfect human being. I think that was the first thing. And that they had given me places where I could go to deal with my imperfections in a place that was safe. Because of course the problem you always have as a pastor is who do you go to when you are struggling with something significant?

Because most of the people you can go to are people who have some power over your job and your livelihood. So where are the places you can go? So I do really think that for clergy people finding both groups of peer groups of other clergy where they can honestly and transparently discuss the challenges and struggles that they are having in ministry, I think that's important.

I also think that finding a therapist who you can confide in about what's really going on with you is also really, really important. And that, you know, I would encourage young clergy to find someone. And if you do find someone to be honest and transparent about the struggles that you are having that...

that it's okay to struggle as a pastor. It's okay to have problems. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to have doubts. I think the biggest problem is that we often feel that there's something about being a pastor that means we have to be holier than the average person or better than the average person. And so we tend to sort of just try to deal with all that stuff internally and that does not work. So I think that's...

That's number one. And then number two, I think the other piece that, you know, I think I did this well as a pastor was that you cannot be a pastor and keep people at arm's length and develop friends with friendships in your congregation and build the community with the people you are in ministry with. think that's another really important piece. Sometimes I think pastors can get too tripped up in

David Eagle (45:29.279)
in worrying about, what if I become, I'm supposed to pastor these people, how can they become my friends? Yeah, I think the research is very clear that that's not a great way to go, that the best pastors are the ones who allow themselves to be loved by the communities that they serve.

Valerie Ling (45:44.486)
And your message and hope for colleges here in Australia, what would you love to say to them if there was one thing they could take away and consider in their formation spaces or in the way that they set up the curriculum?

David Eagle (46:00.988)
Yeah, I think very much just going back to what we talked about earlier, that yes, Bible theology, preaching, some church history, some of this stuff is of course important, but it is not the totality of what people need as religious leaders and that exploring the human side and giving people the skills and tools to be effective at managing their own selves, their own emotions, their own...

their own stuff as well as the skills, the interpersonal and the sort of community competence, community building competency skills is also really, really important. So seminaries should figure out how, whether it's in the context of spiritual formation curriculum or other, or things that are outside the curriculum, find ways to human, to build sort of human leadership capacities alongside with the theological.

Valerie Ling (46:59.833)
to say the the colleges in Sydney that we work with they've really made a lot of advancement in building emotional awareness and reflective capacity but one idea you've given me David from this podcast is we know the the benefits of

of well-facilitated peer support groups. And you've actually talked about that, about what you've found. And I wonder if baking in some of those reflection, not just reflection, but emotional awareness and formation, self-formation, that is quite a safe space to do it with peers if there is a structured, well-facilitated way to do it. I might email you and see what ideas you have about that. And lastly, one of the things that you said that I have

David Eagle (47:41.927)
Wonderful.

Valerie Ling (47:45.234)
thought about David is that space between I've just come from an environment of Bible college where everybody wants to know how I'm going. If I can't get the assignment in on time, I can talk to someone and then you step into church and you got to preach on Sunday. You have to do it. It's a very different environment.

If we are a church that's receiving someone and we know that they've just come fresh out of Bible College to serve us, what can, what do we need to know as a church about caring for them?

David Eagle (48:24.667)
Yeah, I think it's definitely like everything else in life. People do not arrive out of a graduate and training program fully formed and that there's still lots and lots of learning that needs to happen on the job. So having compassion, with people as they learn and grow into.

their capacities as a leader. And then secondly, to again, I think one thing that the congregation that I served did really, really well was they had three people in the congregation specifically. They're all men who had been in the church for a very, very long time, were very mature Christians. And they all formed mentoring relationships with me and were there.

Valerie Ling (49:18.053)
Mm.

David Eagle (49:20.261)
And we're also part of a really supportive leadership team as well that shared the load for preaching and took some of the more complicated sort of leadership tasks away from me at first, because they knew the congregation better and then sort of mentor me into my role as a pastor. That was a really, really important thing. I'm not sure that I could have survived that pastor without

Valerie Ling (49:35.781)
you

Valerie Ling (49:39.781)
Mmm.

Valerie Ling (49:45.463)
No, no, no, no.

David Eagle (49:49.735)
those three people who took such a strong, active interest in helping me get my feet under me as a pastor. It's a hard job.

Valerie Ling (50:03.225)
That is so helpful and fresh. I've not heard that before. Well, thank you so much, David. I'm really pleased that you did tap me on the shoulder in that room and it sparked. I hope what will be the beginning of many, connection points and we do have to get you over to Australia. I just, even just listening to you today, we spoke primarily as me as a fledgling PhD student.

David Eagle (50:07.239)
Thank

David Eagle (50:14.638)
Thank

Valerie Ling (50:32.261)
you know, when we met, but listening to your pastoral heart, that's been really encouraging for me. And I do hope someone listening here who can make it happen will bring you over. Thanks so much, David.

David Eagle (50:46.236)
Great, thank you so much and I look forward to seeing you in person someday soon, I hope.