This morning I watched a powerful talk from Tommy Nelson. Tommy is known for his Song of Solomon study on Love, Sex and Romance, but is also the Senior Pastor of Denton Bible Church in Denton, TX where he serves as Senior Pastor. He is an extremely gifted communicator, but in recent months Tommy was diagnosed with severe depression. He has since come out of it and in this video you can watch him discuss his ordeal with hundreds of students at Dallas Theological Seminary. If you are in full time ministry I would greatly encourage you to check this out for two reasons:
1. It will help you deal with those under your care who are going through it. (There are probably many more than you know of)
2. He has some great admonitions concerning the dangers of full-time ministry that can cause this type of thing to occur in your life.
You can watch the video here. After you watch it you'll get why I titled this post the way I did. Tommy is a pretty funny guy. Great to see him not lose his sense of humor in this process.
(HT: JT)
2 comments:
Thanks for this post Zach. My senior pastor has gone through this and he has been a model to me of humility in revealing how depression has affected him. You're right, there are many pastors suffering with this.
This is a great message. And I've heard Tommy before (someone gave me his very first edition of Song Of Solomon tapes a long time ago) and really respect him. But I'm REALLY REALLY surprised to hear him giving this message as if it's such new information. And perhaps, in the South/Bible belt churches - perhaps things like depression are still swept under the rug. But I lived down there, and frankly, I don't believe it is. But he's talking about this stuff as if it's really new information when this sort of thing has been out in the open for years now and by all means SHOULD BE. (My wife and I have BOTH dealt with severe depression over the years.) I had to look to see that this message wasn't from 15 years ago. I remember being a new Christian in 1991 listening to Minirth Meyer on Moody Radio talking ALL about depression and getting it out in the open. Bill Hybels went through this same exact thing at Willow Creek in the early 90s and made it very public in books and messages over and over again so others could learn from it - I'm surprised a guy like Nelson didn't pick up on that and learn from it also so he didn't get in the same place. Hybels had a VERY similar story of burnout through ministry and doing what you love doing - but way too much. Not to mention all the other resources that are out there. That and I'm always surprised to hear someone talk such an insane schedule they kept before they burned out - like Tommy did here - as if no one including him could see that was totally insane. Where does common sense play into this sort of thing? I've seen SO many people in ministry do this same thing (and yet those of us who try to keep a sane schedule under leaders like this often get reprimanded or feel guilty for not living up to the leaders that push themselves so hard) and then of course, years later, the leaders that pushed them (and everyone else so hard) burn out and hit a wall. It's like a formula and has happened every time I've seen it to the point where now, I can almost predict that it will happen to someone when I see it taking place. Well anyway - great information and glad it's out there. But really, it seems as if he's just found out he has cancer and had never heard of it before or something. I guess I'm just really surprised that someone in such a high pastoral position of mentoring and counseling for that many years could seem to be that removed, when something like depression is, at least in my knowledge anyway, very known and accessible in terms of treatment, and not the bad stereotype that it once was long ago. Perhaps this is a generational thing?
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