Clergy Wellbeing Down Under

Strategies That Work for Every Clergy and One That Matters Most for Married Clergy

• Valerie Ling Centre For Effective Serving • Season 3 • Episode 6

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Dr Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, PhD, is a Professor of Global Health at Duke University and Director of the Duke Clergy Health Initiative, for which she has been the lead researcher since its inception in 2007. She is an expert in conducting clinical trials of behavioral interventions that integrate physical and mental health. She has designed and rigorously tested two interventions for United Methodist clergy: Spirited Life, which promoted holistic health and reduced metabolic syndrome, and Selah, which tested stress management practices and reduced stress and anxiety symptoms while enhancing positive mental health. 

In this episode Rae Jean  shares insights from extensive research on mental health, stress management, and the importance of positive emotions within clergy and their families. Main topics:

  • Impact of clergy well-being initiatives over 19 years
  • Physical health disparities and cultural factors affecting clergy health
  • The role of positive mental health: emotions, social, and psychological functioning
  • Interventions like mindfulness, prayer practices, and structured programs
  • Practical tools: daily wellbeing practices and the profiling of clergy health
  • Family and community influence on clergy well-being and resilience


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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!

SPEAKER_01

Hi everybody, I have Dr. Ray Jean Prascheld Bell, a psychologist and research professor of global health at Duke University. Ray Jean conducts research on the physical and mental health, including the positive mental health of clergy and others, and I love this, others in servant-hearted roles such as teaching and caregiving. Since its establishment in 2007, Ray Jean has been at the forefront of the Duke Clergy Health Initiative, which she now directs. Welcome, Ray G. Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be here. Well, we met at the Common Table conference, and you were a star because everybody was grabbing you. You noticed that you were having breakfast with people, you were having corridor conversations, there were photos being taken. Is that something that happens to you a lot, Regin?

SPEAKER_02

There are not that many audiences that are completely devoted to clergy and clergy well-being. But yes, oh my goodness, if I if I can be with clergy and with the people who care about them, then because my team and I have been focused on clergy well-being for 19 years, then it might happen. But it's very rare. It's really nice, it's really nice when it does though, because I'm so passionate about caring for clergy. It's so great to share it.

SPEAKER_01

You must have seen a lot happen in 19 years. Oh, I hope you've seen a lot happen in this space in 19 years. I haven't, I hope we haven't stayed stagnant. Have you seen a change yourself?

SPEAKER_02

Oh my goodness. Well, so there's been so there's so much more that we know now than we than we did before. Um interventions and and programs have also progressed, at least a little bit. Those are two ways. Things that we didn't didn't know, like at the beginning, we were really there had been studies done up through 1950. There was this great demographic study all around the world from like the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and clergy lived longer and had fewer, and had fewer um reasons to die. But those reasons really hinged upon like fewer accidents, less suicide, also less sexually transmitted infections. And so for these reasons, clergy lived a lot longer. But then, and so, so when when I entered in 2007, the United Methodist clergy in North Carolina were saying they were less healthy, but all the data suggested that they should be pretty pretty healthy. What changed in there is for society is that we we've got safer, like you're less likely to have an accident today than you were in the early 1900s. And at the same time, what's what's really harming people in the United States now, and I would imagine also in Australia, would be the non-communicable diseases that they the chronic diseases that often in the United States come from obesity, the hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, these things are really harming people's health now.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And at some point, you really got an interest in the positive mental health aspects. How did you get to that point? Yes.

SPEAKER_02

My goodness. So one of the exciting things that we got to do, like very early in my in those last 19 years. So, you know, we listened closely to clergy in the first year, and then we did a survey of all the United Methodist clergy in North Carolina, 1800 clergy. And um, and then based on that, we designed a holistic health intervention and rigorously tested it. Clergy told us that they really cared about holistic health. They cared about mind, body, and spirit. So we had components for all of those. And we ended up um, the intervention did a really good job in improving people's physical health. And so that was that was fantastic, given what I just said about there being worse physical health for United Methodist clergy. Clergy lost weight and they also got diabetes and hypertension under control. I also had this goal of reducing depression symptoms. And we have found that depression symptoms are higher amongst United Methodist clergy and some mainline Protestant clergy than they are with other groups of clergy. And again, not all clergy, which tells you you can do this job without having elevated depression symptoms. But to get to how I got to positive mental health, this intervention that we did called Spirited Life did not change the depression symptoms on average for its participants compared to the control group. Um, I'm a psychologist, so I took that kind of personally. How is it that I can help physical health and not mental health? And also what we saw happening is that some clergy with elevated depression symptoms, they would get better. Their symptoms would go down. But then a different pastor who had not had elevated depression symptoms would newly get them. So it was coming out to be about the same. And it really got me thinking like, how do you drop the depression prevalence across an entire group? And you can't just treat people as they get it, because that's what we were trying to do. And it and you just end up with the same rate at best. What you really need to do is is prevent depression symptoms in the first place. So that took me on a journey of like, how do you do that? And if you if you look at least in the US systems, one way that happens is you go to your primary care doctor for a regular checkup. You get screened with a couple depression questions. If they, if they a flag is maybe there's an issue, then your doctor might recommend therapy or medication, and maybe they give you medication. Likely they start you at an appropriate dose, but it's going to be a low dose. And then you likely don't get checked back on in a few, in a few weeks. And then you're likely to conclude that it doesn't, the medication doesn't work for you. And medications do work for a lot of people, but they also don't work for everyone. Anyway, the resistant doesn't work very well in terms of and that's all like a treatment paradigm and not a prevention paradigm. Looking at the literature, there was this sociologist, Corey Keys at Emory University, who had this had this article that said a national strategy for reducing depression. And um, I read it and I called him up, and he has joined our team. And um, and he had all these studies about positive mental health. And if you people who have higher positive mental health now are less likely to get a new case of depression in one, two, five, or 10 years from now. And they're also less likely to get a new physical health diagnosis. So I got really excited because it's isn't that what we want? Like that, that's the holy grail. If you can do something that helps people, both their mental and their physical health. I also thought, you know, I've done these studies, say, to reduce alcohol use amongst patients with hepatitis C. Like, that's actually really not so fun. Try telling people to drink less. I thought, okay, here we go. Now I can tell people that we want to lean into positive mental health. Like maybe this can be really fun. Maybe this can be something that a message and activities that people would enjoy doing. Nice.

SPEAKER_01

Can I take you back? What is the spirited life trial?

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Okay, so the spirited life trial was from uh 2010 to 16. And in it, it was for each pastor who participated, it was two years worth of interventions. And we did three, and I was like, how do you keep someone engaged for two whole years? So what we did is we had um three overnight retreats and workshops. And so at the beginning, at the one year point, and at the 24-month point. So that kind of hooked hooked people in. And um, and we also offered everyone an online healthy eating program. We offered them monthly health coaching and then um and then also to hook them in at the one-year mark, they could have a$500 small grant to improve their mind, body, or spirit in a way that they, in a way that they felt. And from all of that, we wanted to uh reduce metabolic syndrome, which is um obesity, a large waist circumference, hypertension, high cholesterol in terms of triglycerides, and your A1C in terms of a diabetes indicator. We were trying to reduce those. We wanted to reduce depression symptoms, and we wanted to reduce stress symptoms.

SPEAKER_01

Right. So I can see that that's the early intervention from a physiological perspective definitely had an impact on the medical and physiological outcomes for clergy. And you had thought that it would then also spread into the mental health side of things, which led you to say, okay, there's another ingredient, perhaps that's positive mental health. What is positive mental health?

SPEAKER_02

Right? Great. Yes, yes. So we learned actually from our failure that we didn't affect depression. I think this is really important. Like you can't expect everything to work the first time you design something. And so, yes, so now we've been leaning into positive mental health. And positive mental health is really three things. It's having high levels of positive emotions on a regular basis. So this might be feeling, just feeling happy, feeling satisfied with life, interested in life. That's one way these things are measured, but you can imagine all kinds of other emotions of just like curiosity and satisfaction, savoring the moment and things like that. That's one. But you also need high levels of psychological functioning and social functioning. And so by psychological functioning, these are things like having warm and trusting relationships and feeling like you're growing as a person, having meaning in your life. And then for social functioning, these are things like having feeling like you belong to a community and feeling like you're contributing to making this world a better place. And there's an item on this measure that used to baffle me and now is making more sense to me. And it is, it says, I feel like society is becoming a better place. I used to think that's really that's really hard to answer. And like, what does this have to do with my positive mental health? But right now in the United States, we have a lot of political polarization and and people who share a lot in common still moving it to like the us them categories. And and it's it doesn't feel like society is becoming a better place. I imagine to to anyone, no matter where they are on the political spectrum right now. And that takes a toll on your positive mental health. If I if I could add, I thought about this a lot. If I I could add so these these specs of positive mental health. 12 years ago, I had breast cancer. Thanks be to God, I am all good, good right now. But it was it was a tough, it was a tough journey, had a scary kind, or scary, it was yeah, it it was serious. And what I learned for me is that that first kind of happiness and well-being, the positive emotions, are going to be harder for anybody to invoke in that moment where there's a lot of fearful things going on. And I'm not saying that there won't there won't be a moment, but as much as you might want to like laugh and joke as you see in the movies, we're I'm gonna laugh my way all the way through this this illness, like that is that we're not really hardwired to do that because we are hardwired to focus on what could go wrong. At the same time, so so my positive emotions plummeted, but the other two aspects of my life stayed strong. So the psychological functioning in turn in terms of having meaning in my life, meaning from my work, meaning from being a parent, and feeling like I had warm and trusting relationships, that was still strong, and people really showed up for me. Maybe it even got stronger. And then that that social functioning of like belonging to groups and making a difference, that can still stay strong. And so I've been thinking a lot about what to recommend to those of us who know people going through cancer and care for them. And and I I think you you don't have to like lean into the light things. You don't it doesn't have to be about the dessert that may or may not taste good, or the movie tickets that you might not be able to go to if you're immunocompromised, or things. It really can be telling people, hey, do you remember the time we did this? Or you really touched my life in this way? You can savor the past and you can savor your relationship, and that will boost positive mental health. That's so powerful.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's a whole episode right there. Thank you for sharing that. And um, I'm glad to hear that um 12 years ago was hard, but you're in a different space today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And 12 years ago was when I started focusing on positive mental health around clergy. It was an interesting. Yeah, it came together all at the same time. So I was learning it at a time when I needed it. Yeah, and then hopefully bringing it to clergy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

In fact, we have if I could tell you about one of our next trials. So I told you about the spirit of life trial, and that was very long, like two years, lots of components. We wanted to try something that was a real, it was a lighter lift. And so I hope your listeners will be interested because this will culminate in practices that they can do that doesn't require someone paying for them to go on three retreats and and things like that.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

And so we decided to test three ways of stress management because the other thing that didn't work from the spirited life trial was reducing stress symptoms. Oh my gosh. What was I even thinking? I was such a novice thinking that I could affect the stress symptoms of clergy. Like, like what a variety of um tasks ministry is, and it's very emotional and deep work. And oh, so so trying to decrease stress symptoms is is a really big deal. So we looked at mindfulness-based stress reduction, which is kind of the gold standard, and I can say more about what it is. And we we also looked at the daily examine prayer practice. So uh, and I'll tell you tell you more about that. And then we looked at something called stress proofing. And I'm gonna really focus on mindfulness-based stress reduction and the daily examine because those are the ones that had good outcomes. Please. Yeah. What is stress proofing? Oh, yeah. So so stress proofing focuses on stress inoculation, which is the idea that when you're not at all that stressed in your life, you introduce some stress to yourself while you can handle it, and you prove to yourself you can handle it. Uh with the idea that you'll be better later.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So it's a little bit like you you you cut you're able to restructure your perspective by introducing little incremental stretch.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, right. Yes, it it had some good outcomes, but not as many, and it was harder to do, and it was packaged as multiple, also had some like lifestyle change, like put away your phone an hour before bedtime and you know, try try a week without drinking alcohol. Alright. Yes. So now let's hear about the two things that did work. Yes, right. So so mindfulness-based stress reduction is um set of of practices, which can be like awareness of your breath, just like noticing your breath coming in and out, not trying to change it, just noticing it for you know, 10 minutes at a time, maybe longer. It can be a body scan where you notice, you feel one by one, you take every part of your body. I can feel my toes, I can feel the arch of my foot, like slowly coming all the way up or back down again, and taking a good 20, 45 minutes to do that. It can be mindful walking, where you feel every little bit of your footstep. And there's also yoga. Again, that there's multiples of these. And if any of your listeners take a mindfulness-based stress reduction course, they would be exposed to all of these and then encouraged to pick the ones that they like best. I really like loving kindness meditation best, and we have that on our on our website. And um, in loving kindness meditation, you you you pick a refrain and you apply it first to yourself and then to other people. So you might first say to yourself, may I be well, may I be happy, and may I be at peace. And then you might apply it to um a neighbor, congregate, your whole church, your whole city, and and and do it step, do it step by step. And by the time you're done with that, I always feel more peaceful.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so that's the mindfulness-based stress reduction practices. And I can put some links in the podcast to those practices.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, and anyone can do the online distance learning version from the Duke Integrative Medicine that our clergy participants did. But it is pretty standardized around the world if you get a certified mindfulness-based stress reduction program. And that was eight classes, 90 minutes each.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And then um, I had been at a couple conferences that always put together psychologists and philosophers. And I had said, I knew nothing about philosophy, so that was super interesting for me. And I had I'd said, you know, we're finding in our data that um that when clergy face criticism, if they think about what is it that God's wanting them to do in this season, and does that criticism relate to that or not? And if they decide the criticism is not actually really relevant to the work that the pastor is doing with God right now, then then and they can just let it go. And and we were finding clergy who were flourishing were telling us that that was how they were dealing with criticism. They were working in alignment with God. I was like, I don't, I don't know how to do an intervention for that, though. I was like, I just threw it my hands. I don't think we could do it. And I and I met this um psych psychologist uh from a Catholic university, and he said, You know, I know exactly how you do that. It's called the daily examine. It's an ignition prayer practice. It's been around for 500 years. And um, and his name is Tony Aranz. You like, I bet that will work. And so I said, Oh, so I I thought, well, I'd love to, I'd love to study that. So we in the Do Clergy Health Initiative have done one of the only randomized controlled trials of a structured prayer practice, and um, and certainly one of the only ones that was trying to say, could a prayer practice reduce stress symptoms? Wouldn't that be great? Like we know the prayer practice is supposed to bring you closer to God. And wouldn't it be just fabulous if at the same time your mental health also got better? And so the daily examine, and we have you can find apps on it, books on it, you can go to our website and get the the exact five steps that we used. But but basically, you thank God for the day. So there's some gratitude. You walk through your last 24 hours and remember everything that happened, which is a little bit of present focus. So not quite as much as mindfulness-based stress reduction, where you're thinking about like right now, how is my breathing right now? But it doesn't have you worried about the future and it doesn't have you sad about the past. You're just in the last 24 hours.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And then you ask yourself, like, where did I feel one of the greatest emotions in the last 24 hours? And it can be a pleasant emotion like like feeling content, or it can be an unpleasant emotion, like um, like like feeling really frustrated that you're criticized or angry. Um, and then you pray through it and you you ask God for help with it, and you you you you prayerfully work that through, um, and then you think about your very next step of what you might do and take away from that prayer, and then you thank God for the day. And so we we wondered, and as a psychologist, I also thought, oh my goodness, that's so brilliant. There's there's a little bit of positive practices in there, there's a little bit of cognitive behavioral therapy, but like with the source, you know, with God as the source.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Would this work? Would this work? So, like our so you know, what we really want is clergy to be managing their stress well enough that they can attend to their congregants, they can show up and do good counseling, they can think of messages that are going to be meaningful in sermons. They can be connecting with communities and doing the helping their communities or doing the social justice work. That's what we want for clergy. But instead, they're often really stressed out and running around doing too much and also this feeling criticized or alone and isolated. These are both kind of common experiences for clergy. So the first thing is you have to do these practices for them to make a difference. I'll be honest, I did not think that clergy would do 45 minutes a day of mindfulness-based stress reduction. And so we texted them every day and we asked them how many minutes they had done yesterday. And on average they did 28 minutes. But they thought that's intensive. Yes, think of where your next 28 minutes is coming from. I was I was blown away. And they did for six months. Uh-huh. Like five or six days a week. Yes. So that was so promising because that meant it could make a difference. And then with the daily examine, they likewise did it on about 80% of the days for six months. And it took them on average 12 minutes. And so it's a lighter lift. It's less time. And you don't have to take an eight-week class and learn it. I think I just taught it to everyone. Like you can learn it quickly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And so then we wondered, okay, would it reduce stress symptoms? And it did for both of them. We also wondered, would it reduce distress? And for both of them, it reduced anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms. We also wondered, would it increase positive mental health? These three things that I had just defined for our listeners here. And it did for both of them, especially so for the daily exam. And then we also wondered whether it would increase spiritual well-being. And it also did for both of them. And so I would say for I shouldn't actually say increase. I should say compared to the control group, the participants had better spiritual well-being scores and better positive mental health scores. They also had better depression, anxiety, and stress symptom scores. But there was a difference between the two of them, which leads us to really recommend mindfulness-based stress reduction if people will do it. You'll take those classes, if you'll do half an hour a day, please do it because it will help you sooner. We saw great outcomes at three months, whereas the daily examin took six months. The other thing is, is I have to just say I love the North Carolina United Methodist clergy that I've been gotten to work with all these years. During the COVID shutdown, they let our team mail them little ECG devices and they wore them for 48 hours at a time. The mindfulness-based stress participants saw a 15% improvement in their heart rate variability. Heart rate variability indicates your heart's ability to go back to normal following a stressor. Can it respond to that stressor? And it is linked with lower cardiac events and fewer strokes, which those are the ways stress can like flat out kill you. If you have a stroke, you can have a heart attack. And so the fact that mindfulness-based stress reduction saw a 15% better scores than the control group is just is just shocking. The daily exam, those the findings, it was a six percent better than the control group, and it wasn't statistically significant at three months. And had we been able to collect that data at six months, maybe it would have been, but um, but we only collected it at three months because it's so hard to collect and clean all that data.

SPEAKER_01

And they were in either or groups, weren't they?

SPEAKER_02

We let them choose. It was what we called a preference-based, partially randomized trial. So if the pastor told us that they didn't care whether they did mindfulness-based stress reduction, the daily examiner stress proofing, we randomly assigned them. And then we and then we randomly assigned to whether they got the intervention right away or went into the weightless control group. If they had a preference, if somebody told me there's no way I'm doing mindfulness, then I wasn't going to give them mindfulness because we know humans. Like you're not going to do something half an hour a day for six months if you're telling me at the front end that this is not for you. And so in that case, we went ahead and gave them their first choice, but we still randomly assigned them to getting it right away or waiting.

SPEAKER_01

I have a hypothesis that I wonder about the incremental effects. Because on the Australian side of what we've looked at, not myself but others, there's this thinking that rumination and reflection, two different mental processes to make sense. And that for clergy who are really experienced and practice at reflecting and not ruminating, they also experience benefits to their well-being. And I think mindfulness is provides the brain with so much calm. Like it just resets the whole neurosystem to give you the ingredients to then be more present-minded and more still and more focused and deep in the other things that you might do. So whether you were doing the daily examine prayer, or whether you were reflecting on scripture, or whether you were reflecting on your day. What do you think about that hypothesis?

SPEAKER_02

Oh my goodness. I think that has been shown for mindfulness. Like those mindfulness practices, they do, they build over time and it and it can get better. And you can do bring it to other areas of your life. The thing about stressors in your life is like they come at you all the time. Like you might start your day off without any yet, or maybe you are worried about something from the day before, but then they build across the day. And so being able to like boost yourself with like that real peace and calm and train your brain, like like the fMRI brain studies show that really as as little as a month, you've got very distinct brainwave showing, showing that calm.

SPEAKER_01

I do wonder if you walk into your daily examine already with a psychological sense of belonging to God, not anxious, a sense that you're doing it in partnership with him, that you derive, you know, incremental benefits again from any spiritual practice that you have. And whether the more you do the daily exam, the more it brings you to an alignment to remember a perspective. This is God's world, this is his work, this is his ministry, he is in charge. You know, whether you get that sort of build-up of perspective that then adds to the value of going, this prayer is not just words, it's anchored on something deep. I don't know, maybe. That's right.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm not doing this alone. Yeah. And and and that uh, you know, there's lots of positive mental health studies on like the arc of time. And that, you know, w when you're just looking at right now, like, and and and your worries right now, what's coming ahead, that it is is so helpful to us to be able to look back and remember when times have been better, when times were worse and got better again. And and and of you know the the United Methodists I work with believe that you know the arc of social justice is long, that it but that bending toward justice.

SPEAKER_01

Perspective, isn't it? Yeah. Read your bio and you said you have discovered four things that clergy can do. So did we already talk about the four things?

SPEAKER_02

No, okay. One of my things that we did is we we took survey data and from it we knew we identified clergy who were flourishing based on that positive mental health definition I gave you. And we also screened out and made sure that they didn't have high depression or anxiety symptoms. So we just took flourishers. And then we took clergy with burnout. We have separate measures on burnout, which can be like feeling emotionally exhausted and almost like cynical toward the people you're working with and like you're not accomplishing anything. So we took people with high burnout scores and also made sure that they weren't having high depression or anxiety symptoms. And um, and we interviewed them. We interviewed uh 51 and we didn't ask them, why are you flourishing? Why are you burned out? We we asked them, how do you approach ministry? Like, what are your challenges? What are your joys? How do you go about your day? And from really careful qualitative analysis, we were able to discern four behaviors that flourishing clergy were doing that clergy with burnout were not doing. Okay. So let me tell you what these four are, right? The first one was that, and this is all on our website. Um, there's a fully alive resource. So if you search for Duke Clergy Health Initiative and click on the resources tab, you'll be able to find that. But the the first one is that flourishing clergy actually preserve some time every day just for them. And it could be, when I say just for them, it could be family dinner, it could be alone time, but they actually have some time set aside for them. They figured that out. They also have a an intentional well-being practice. And we didn't see that it mattered whether it was a spiritual well-being practice or mental well-being or physical well-being, but but they had something. And I'd like to say from other studies that you might feel like all different kinds of ideas come at you all the time of like, oh, I should do this mental well-being practice and I should do this one. And yeah, it is like that because people are offering them all up. The thing is, is you just need one for the season you're in. Pick one that's speaking to you now, and you can change it up. I would say make it an evidence-based one that has had research behind it, but like many different things can work, even for the same person. So flourishing clergy had an intentional well-being practice that they found time to do. Clergy with burnout did not do that. You remember what I said earlier about how flourishing clergy handled criticism by asking themselves is it related to what God's wanting me to do, and letting that criticism go if it wasn't related. Well, that was one that came from this study. And then the fourth different behavior that flourishing clergy did is they um shared with other people the good things that they saw happening in this world. In the world, not necessarily it could be with them, it could be in the world. It was not like a prideful thing. It was not like, oh, I won this award. It but it could be like, oh my goodness, I've been, you know, counseling this congregant for a while, and now I and now I I see God moving in their lives. Like they it could be that. It could also just be that, you know, the daffodils came up in my backyard. But there, but there was this uh flourishing clergy only would reach out to others and share something good. And we we know that works, and it has been found in other studies without clergy. It works because you're extending the positive emotions. And unfortunately for us humans, the negative emotions last a long time. They can last until you've taken care of the problem. So, like back to my cancer diagnosis, I was worried about that until I got good health news. But when something positive happens, often there's nothing for you to do about it. You're like, I passed that test. Wonderful. Maybe I savor that moment, but there's really almost no reason a week later for me to like remember that I passed that test. But you can extend those positive emotions by calling someone up and saying, Hey, I was really worried about this test and I studied really hard for it. And oh my gosh, I did fine. And like they'll celebrate that with you and you'll remember it again, and it it will make your day go better. And it builds on itself. It might not matter so much doing that one day. The thing is, is if you make it a practice and you do that multiple days in a row, it does start to make a enough of a difference that your positive mental health can go up.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh, I love this. There's lots of light bulbs dinging from over, making all kinds of connections because we know clergy are actually a lot of what did you your caring professionals are are poor at help-seeking behavior. We don't want to bother anybody. Um, but this is a practice of reaching out, of actually, and it builds community as well. Um, it it builds familiarity and intimacy. I mean, people can know all the bad stuff that's happening for me, but but if I'm sharing also the things that I found delightful or hopeful or things that have been a real win for me, um, that can actually give us feedback. I'm remembering actually, because I've always had a mentor in my life, not because I even knew what the definition was, but I think it's a God thing. You know, from as long as I can remember, uh, people would write to me to encourage me. And so I know the benefits of anticipating a connection time with my mentor when we can high-five one another or, you know, sort of have a real like fist bump moment together. And you're right, it does build because when you do that regularly, you're building on the knowledge of also what's meaningful for you as being positive and a win.

SPEAKER_02

That's uh and a lot of coaches, and and I do think clergy benefit from coaching, a lot of coaches ask, well, what is what is going well? And they have you hold that up. And also when something's not going well now, though they will often have you remember a time when you've been challenged and then you worked your way through it. And like, what did you do? So the the things that went well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's all that broadening of that perspective, isn't it? It's we have not tested this in clergy, but a psychologist, Sonia Lubermirsky, has studied this idea of ending your day on a high note. Yes. And so, and the idea of I do this sometimes, especially actually if I've had a challenging day, I will try to turn it around by the the last thing I do. And I know clergy don't necessarily clock out at five o'clock, but like if you think about when you're transitioning to something, to dinner to your family, to exercise or something, if you're making a transition and to say, okay, I'm gonna take 10 minutes and I'm going to end my day on the high note. So, like, I'll call up someone, like one of my colleagues, and I'll check in on my favorite project. I'll be like, Did you make any progress? Did you learn something? Have you told anyone? How's that going? Or I will call someone and I will share the good things that I did learn today or that happened today. And so, in that way, even if your day's been hard, if your last moments of it felt good, it actually kind of paints the whole day a little brighter.

SPEAKER_01

Opens up the window almost and and and lets more. Well, Chris Adams, who is whose episode is today, he it dropped today, he in his flourishing in ministry research, he's actually found that that the daily well-being practice, which includes he says do 20 minutes at the end of the day to really attend to where things have gone great or well, and also where you feel like your your ministry was most connected to your gifting, your strengths, and your conviction. So he actually says that that's one of the key connectors to flourishing in ministry.

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's great. Well, your listeners should definitely listen to him. I I I love Chris Adams. Chris Adams came to one of our initial spirited life interventions, and we've been able to work together all this time. And if he's saying that from his flourishing in ministry work and program, then uh then that sounds like good advice.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And with these four practices, it almost strikes me like, do you think like you kind of have a try a few things out for size? Like you were saying that you have time for yourself. I know a lot of pastors who criticize or self-criticize themselves for watching Netflix. Oh, you know. Oh.

SPEAKER_02

No, we all we all need we all need some time. We just, we just really, we really do. Um and we all need a little boundaries around the time. Like I guess I I had wondered if, you know, it it can feel so beautiful to me sometimes when my whole life comes together. Like, like what my family is doing has the has the spiritual meaning and purpose, and and it's also pleasurable at the same time. You know, maybe we're doing a volunteer project while on vacation. Like sometimes I feel like it can all come together in in a great way. But what we've learned with with clergy is like you still need some of that personal time to yourself. Don't feel like you have to make every every moment of everything weaving, weaving together. Those breaks are are very important.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And and you can experiment too with what works for you. Just, you know, something that works for you for someone else may not be like, you know, those well-being practices, for example, some people like running, some people don't. Some people shouldn't, because you know, their knees and their body um wouldn't be good for them. Those well-being practices, I find too that um clergy that grow up in really duty-bound households, just as children, they didn't actually really know what it was to be playful or have fun or have anything that resembled a downtime. And so it may be difficult to figure out what that well-being practice might be for you.

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's right. Yes. I think experimenting is a great idea. And it can be different things in different seasons. They have done studies that have found that if you find the well-being practice to be pleasant, you're more likely to keep doing it. I mean, duh, right? You're more likely to keep doing it if you like it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I would encourage everyone sometimes to try something you think you're not going to like and try it a few times. Like in particular, if it's there are some things that are so powerful that they work on multiple levels. And so physical activity is one of them. You don't have to think about it as exercise, but anything that gets your heart rate up will help both your mental health and your physical health. And so it's well worth well worth like trying it for two to four weeks before saying this this is not for me, or it's well worth experimenting with different kinds of physical activity until you find one that you like. Even if it's like playing hide and go seek and running your dog around the park, it does not have to mean that you have to go to the gym.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, Rachel, one of the reasons why we really connected um at the conference was because we've tried to operationalize one piece of your uh team's work, which is your profiles of well-being. You've got your flourishing, your languishing, your burden but fulfilled, and you're distressed. And we've tried to put together something to do it justice. So we've got a little tune-in quiz on the website that expands those categories a little bit because, you know, one day I'll email you and say, could we get the scoring rubric from you? But we because we hadn't met when I created that, I was I was just looking at means in that I could put together. I would love to hear straight from you though. You know, those profiles were, I believe, because you were looking at shifts as well. Yeah. I'd love to know your practical takeaways from, you know, you can you can be in these profiles. And it can shift. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yes. Oh my goodness. This is really great work on our team done by Jane Lee. And she knows how to do a fancy statistical technique called Lincoln Class Analysis. And so she she took mental distress measures like depression, anxiety, burnout, along with a the positive mental health measure that measures those three aspects that we talked about earlier. And and looked to see clergy profiles where where there were large enough groups of clergy where their um answers to those those distress and positive mental health measures were similar. And so we expected a distressed group. And that's where everything's going wrong. And we did find that. I I think maybe like 18-ish percent of the clergy. We also found a flourishing group where everything was going well, and that was like 40% of clergy. We were this was using data from uh 16 and 19, 2014, 16, and 19. We took like a five-year period and three survey waves to do this. So, okay, so we had our great groups. You got your flourishers and your distress group. And what was really interesting is that there were also two groups in between. And so after the flourishers, there was this other group that we named burdened but fulfilled. And so this group, their depression, anxiety, and burnout scores were starting to creep up. They were lower than the cutoff scores of concerning levels. But they felt they had high positive mental health. And so I'm like, oh, that's an that's an interesting group. I wonder how many of your Listeners feel burdened but fulfilled. And that was like 20-ish percent. And then we had another group that we called languishing, by which we met they just really didn't have much positive going on. The negative aspects were there creeping up, but again, not at concerning levels. And then we looked at does this shift? Like what happened between this five-year period ending in 2019? And then we got more surveyed data on the same individuals. So we could see how the same person did over time in 2021. And so for the clergy we were working with, there was the COVID shutdown here in the US. The United Methodists were also splitting around really important issues around Gayle, whether or not you could ordain a pastor in a same-sex relationship and whether or not this clergy could marry a same-sex couple. So there was there was a lot of hard conversations going on within congregations. And you know, in the United States, we've had a very long and fraught and damaging history around race. And it was heightened during this period. Right. And so we wondered what was going to go, what was going to go on. And the good news is that the clergy who were flourishing were really likely to still be flourishing in 2021. You might think nothing would allow you to still be flourishing in the face of all of that. So that was just incredible. The distressed clergy stayed distressed. And so then our question was is like, okay, what about these middle groups? What about the burden but fulfilled? And what about the languishing groups? What would what would happen to them? And I've got to say, in my heart, I was really rooting for those burden but fulfilled groups. 24 of them, 24% of them became distressed. So they moved a couple levels down, and and that's a lot. And languishing, 24%, just coincidentally, the same percentage also became distressed. And so our takeaway message is that if you're like a denominational official, like you want, you want your clergy to be flourishing. You really don't want to stop at burdened but fulfilled. Um and and then and also it means if you're if you're a a minister listening to this this podcast, please do take a little bit of that personal time and share your good news and adopt one of these practices like mindfulness for the daily examine or the other ones that we have on our website. Because you really do need to be at your best because we don't know what's going to happen.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So I had a well-being quiz running only for six months last year. So as a clinical psychologist, I'm very well practiced in ill health disease. But, you know, in the course of doing my PhD, I was convicted by the, you know, well-being that has got, you know, a positive mental health. And so when I chanced upon your work as as a result of doing my literature review, this year we changed it to include the positive mental health. So we're getting those um and uh the the profiles. Because I think you're right. It's I often say when when I'm talking to clergy, there's about 50% of you that are okay, and you don't even know that the person next to you is probably not okay. And you know, there's going to be about probably uh 20%, which is what our um stats show us, that are in the distressed, and they probably need clinical help. But this middle group, they're the ones that people don't see and forget, but this is where we can really make a difference to encourage. And so when I saw your paper, I was like, we have to put this into our emotional health screen because it'll give the heads up to individuals. Because we know professionals, we're not great at identifying how we're going. And we're not going to ask people either. We we just sit there. So it would give us, it would give the individual a heads up to say, oh, you know, I really need to pay attention to what's going on inside of me. But it would also get um, because we've now enabled the report so you can opt to send it to someone. And sometimes people opt to send it to their coach, their uh mentor, their spouse. It enables then a conversation of saying, oh, look, let's let's really pay attention and let's ensure that we're putting some nourishing things in so that because you know, when I saw that 24% in both of those middle categories were going to landslide down, I was like, no, no, no, let's do something about this, right?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, I just love it that you're you're taking action and trying to make it better. And you're right, the first step is to be aware of where you are and to to have hope that you can change. Yes. Like we've seen people in every category change, people from distressed also move all the way to flourishing. Like it is, it is possible. And some of it takes really hard personal work. Sometimes it's the environment you're in, which can be the church that you're in.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And how we perceive and react to stress, like we do have some control over that. Although there's nothing as good as a good environment. The other thing is like if you're a denominational official, you still need to put resources towards clergy who are distressed.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

But I wonder if it might take fewer resources and be very impactful to put them toward clergy who are languishing or burdened but fulfilled and get them to move up.

SPEAKER_01

I'd love to encourage you with this new work that we just did. We experiment it. We actually did it for a team, not in Australia, in Asia. So the whole team took out the quiz. That is I'm sure you turned it out. We were able to input into a team well-being intervention so that those who were going okay could share about what was helping for them and create ministry team activities to bring to share and collaborate and encourage and and to bring that in. So that's one of our newest inventions. Hopefully, you think it's okay.

SPEAKER_02

I do. Oh, I very much do. People should take that if they have a way to get feedback from you to kind of know where their profile lands, that would that would be brilliant. And then the question is, what do you do do with that? And so there are, there are resources and practices that you can do.

SPEAKER_01

Excellent. I I would love to know what you've discovered about marriages.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my goodness. Okay, we are diving into this now. First of all, I think this is a real understudied area. So I encourage other researchers who might be listening to to go into this and find out more and tell me about it because we we'd like to learn more. Yes. Yeah. Um okay.

SPEAKER_01

Uh okay. So if you're male, multiple sources of support is works for you, not necessarily just spousal support. That if you were a female, the the key is the support of your spouse. So interesting. Yes. And I know this is hot off the press because I didn't even realize that this research was been done. Because I when I looked at your profile, I jumped at it. And so there's a is this quantitative, is this qualitative? Do we have we have inheritance? Yeah. As in it impacts the marital quality, the marital relationship.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's not interesting. Yeah. Interference.

SPEAKER_01

Anything else? I'm like just soaking it in. Yeah, yeah. We'll we'll link that. So now this is again pinging some things for me because in our in my Masters of Leadership project 2023, one of the top reasons for clergy thinking about leaving the ministry was the impact on family. So it was loneliness and impact on family. And in my sample, that was actually higher than the workload. So I think you know that it speaks of that sense of belonging. And then last in 2024, we did a ministry kids well-being survey. So we actually asked the children. And I think it's interesting that for children, they have a resource in their parents, the individual parents, but also in the relationship of the parents and then all the sibling relationships. So that network of care and love and attention and focus serves as a a huge engine for children to feel well. And so when that's impacted, if there were things coming in from ministry or the outside into their parents' marriage, that also impacts what the kids get as well. And so when we discovered that pastors were actually saying I'd leave the ministry because of the impact in the family, we knew that there were some scattered pieces of work on the clergy's spouse experience, even though it's not a lot, that they're scattered. But we we couldn't find actually anything on how the kids were feeling. And again, cross-sectional, correlational, but this is what we actually found is that feeling understood by their parents was correlated to feeling positive about being in ministry, as well as not being as bothered about being different. So we were having kids because we we got their comments, qualitative as well as quantitative. We were getting children that were telling us I turn up to school and people tease me that my father's a pedo because of what's happening in the media, right? So, but feeling understood with parents was actually a protective factor or a correlational protective factor to not being bothered about being singled out as being different. And having enough time with parents was related to feeling less of an impact on what was happening on their parents' ministry on them. Because we know, children know, like people forget that they're at the morning tea table, they can hear what you're saying. And, you know, my kids would tell me we would we would just scan and watch people's body language when dad preaches. Like, whether they were right or wrong about the interpretation, but they were watching the body language. And here's another thing. So girls were more likely to be impacted about the feeling different from their peers, and girls and older children were more likely to feel the impact of their parents' ministry on them, the older children.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It thank you. I think it speaks to the ecosystem of care. Where else these days in society can you turn up every week, rock up every week where people will love on you? Very few places. And so here we have churches that can be that ecosystem, that reset for everybody, including the pastor, if they're married, their spouse, and if they have children, they're children. It's actually such a protective mechanism if the ecosystem is providing all of that care. So I guess I just was reflecting on that. You're finding it in the marriages. I reckon if we really drilled down, we would actually find that it spills into children. And of course, if we're thinking who's going to be the future ministry work, you know, these kids are experiencing and you know, making meaning and making sense of it too. Yeah. Wow. I've got goosebumps. Rajan, thank you so much for your work. I mean, when I had my rock star academic moment, academic rock star moment at the conference when I saw you there, it's because of your work that got me thinking operationally, really, how we can help our ministry folk here in Australia. And but I just want to thank you for your faithfulness, for your tuning in on a group of people that, you know, other people don't tune into. It's so hard for us to find, you know, not even just quality research, but just research. And the fact that you've you've got this long history, you know this segment so well. It has really thoroughly brought me so much encouragement and has benefited our work here. I'm so, so thankful for you, for your work, for your team, and also for your time today.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my gosh. I love I love hearing that. That's why we do do it. And you are doing it too. I mean, that and thank you for I can't believe you have a whole podcast devoted to clergy well-being. Like this is really And what you do is so research based. And I and that's just that's just fantastic. Because we only have so much time in the day. If you're going to adopt a new practice, make it one that the day that should show works for a lot of people and then you can decide if it works for you or not. Oh, it's been such a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for that.

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Valerie Ling

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