Record Live Podcast

  📍  We're back with another episode of Record Live.

We are back.

And we've got a really special guest, Dr. Brendan Pratt from the Australian Union Conference.

Welcome, Brendan. Great to have you today.

Thanks, Jarrod. Thanks, Zanita. Nice to be here today.

Now, Brendan, you do work with the Australian Union Conference. So that's the Seventh Day of Adventist Church in Australia and your role, can you tell us just a little bit about your role and what that work looks like that you're doing down there at the moment?

Yeah.

The official title is Ministerial Association Secretary. What that actually means is pastor to pastors, for Australia. So we have, , just over 450, pastors across Australia and. The ministerial association gets to work with them. So each of our conferences has a ministerial association secretary.

I coordinate with those, um, have an associate Lindell Peterson, who also works with me on that and Murray, who works with the school chaplains on pastor to chaplain. So together we get to and work on what we do to resource and look after pastors.

Awesome. Yeah. And, um, with that, I imagine that you. Didn't just find yourself in that position, but there was a bit of a journey to get to there.

Were you previously a pastor? What was, what's your kind of mini story been with that?

Um, yeah, my story, pastored in New Zealand for ten years and then spent eight years in Sydney where my job was Healthy Churches Coordinator and Discipleship and, and then I've had been doing this job for another nine, almost ten years in this role here.

Yeah, wow. Pastors. And I just better clarify, as we're talking about these issues, you introduced me as Dr. Brennan Pratt, which is correct, Jared, but it's a, it's a doctor, well a doctor of consumerism is all things, and so I just wouldn't want to mis connect that while we're talking about mental health, I'm not a medical doctor or a psychiatrist, it's a doctor of consumerism, so I thought I'd better clarify that one.

Yeah, that, that's fascinating. Doctor of consumerism, it ties into what we're doing. So we're talking about the mental health of pastors and we know as a society that mental health outcomes, um, whether it's just that they're becoming more. obvious, more understood, more prominently talked about, or whether we're actually facing a real increase in those things.

And they've always been with us, but not as badly. It does seem that consumerism and that is tied in with that topic. So I think that's why we're excited to have you on today, because I think, there's some definite crossovers there, but maybe just start there with what you're seeing with pastors.

Pastors are just like the rest of us, aren't they? They're just people, and so there's going to be amongst all of us, issues with mental health. Is it something that you've seen rise recently? Is it something that, or that the church is more aware of and is taking steps to address now. Just tell us a little bit about the state of play at

the moment.

Sure. And as you've mentioned, pastors are simply humans as part of a church community. And I think as a church community, are we talking about it more? Yes, that's a good thing. Is it more prevalent? I would feel that it is, but I don't have numbers that back that up. But are we talking about it more? Yes.

Reality is. One in 20 pastors who started pastoral ministry, and this is in the Christian Church generally, so not just the Adventist Church, only one in 20 remain in pastoral ministry, and no other the profession has a 95% dropout rate. And. While I would like to think it's different in Australia, we're pretty much the same.

Why do pastors drop out? There's all kinds of reasons, but one is certainly, one is certainly the expectations that we have, the, the mental health impacts. , the role of pastor, I think, Jarrod and Zanita has become increasingly complex in the time that I've been doing this job. And whether that's, you know, some of the, the factors of our, our society, whether that's, you know, social media, whether that's covid the last few years, there's a whole lot of factors that have come together, have made the pastoral job more complex amongst that.

Um, it includes pastors , who are working through the, the same issues that we all struggle with as far as what's it look like to have the, to look after mental health and, and have the, the energy that we would like to, to put towards our job.

Yeah, I think we're all aware of the fact that pastors are just normal humans like you and I, but I guess as a leader or someone who often counsels people, there's this expectation that you've got to have everything together and that you've got to have everything together because everyone is coming to you about things that they don't have together.

Um, and it can be really difficult when I'm not a pastor, but like I have been in leadership roles. It can be difficult when you've got your own stuff going on to be able then to support everyone else. How do you kind of manage that as a pastor?

And, and keeping in mind, and I'm not trying to say pastors have jobs that are more complex than anyone else.

But my job is pastor to pastors and, and I love pastors. And let me say, we have amazing pastors across Australia, and I'm very proud of how our pastors work through the issues of the last few years with COVID, but the pastoral role, it includes increasing compliance. And for good reasons, that is, by the way, so I'm not saying that's not, there's, there's reasons why, but there's more regulations around what we do.

, but a pastor, we expect them to be a generalist. We expect them to be able to look after and give good pastoral counseling and care. We expect them to preach a sermon. And these days we've got church members who are comparing their local church pastor to the very best preachers on the planet because they access them online.

And all of a sudden, why isn't our pastor that we're expecting that we're expecting them to be able to, you know, look after people who are struggling, we expect to be able to contribute in the wider community. We're expecting them to chair board meetings wisely. We're expecting to work through so many different facets that you think what's on the plate of a pastor.

It's a, it's a complex role and, and so while I'm not trying to say that, no, that's a bad thing, it's a thing we need to realize that, you know, you might have a pastor who's excellent in one of those areas, and he's, he's very good at theological astuteness or whatever, but they're expected to be very good in lots of things.

And I often think, you know, we want, you know, the old analogy, the monkey that climbs the tree and the fish that swims, we want our pastor to climb the tree and swim. And sometimes we get upset when our pastor doesn't achieve all of what we expect and that puts pressure on our pastors. They might be really good in these areas, but we want really good in all areas.

And yeah, as a church community, if there's one thing I can say about church members is that we have wonderful people who are pastors, we have wonderful people who are church members, and I think together we can, we can just look after each other.

I've heard of the concept of compassion fatigue.

Can you talk a little bit about that in, in the space of pastoral ministry? What, what does it mean and what that might look like in terms of how it plays out in a pastor's life?

Yeah. And, and reality is you become a pastor because You sense that you want to contribute to this bigger mission of Christ, you want to do that, and you want to help the helpless, you want to be a voice for the voiceless, you want to do all these things, and that's why, that's why you know that we talk about this calling to pastoral ministry, and, and as I say, people turn up to train for pastoral ministry, and they just desperately want to see the kingdom of God work, but as you talk about compassion fatigue, and especially so I think during the COVID period, um, You're giving, giving, giving, giving.

But at what point do you put fuel in the fuel tank? , and sure, we can say, well, spend some time with God and refuel. And that's partly true, but it's also about investing in the lives of each other. Community is really important to mitigating factors of burnout. . Torben Bergland, who's a psychiatrist, who's an avid psychiatrist who specializes in pastoral burnout, who we had speak to all of our pastors at our big pastors meeting at the year.

He did talk about, now these are the factors, workload, that's one factor. More important is when your workload doesn't match your skill set. That's where it gets challenging. As Torben pointed out, the amount of work isn't the biggest factor. It's, is that work meaningful? But then he talked about the value of community.

And what community does to mitigate some of those factors of burnout or, no mental health and, and, you know, in during COVID that became difficult, and pastors pour a lot of energy in. But at what point as a community, do we all look after each other, including our pastor?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I've often seen, or I feel like I've witnessed in churches, the leadership team will look at the church members and they'll pinpoint certain gifts that individuals have. And often they'll be like, this person's really good at hospitality and this person's really good at greeting or whatever. And they'll be given one main gift.

Whereas a pastor, like you said, they're just expected to kind of fulfill the giftings of like. The whole church, like they're expected to be extroverts, they're expected to , be hospitable. They're expected to then pass it. They're expected to counsel. It's like they literally just tick all the boxes, which is a lot for our pastor.

I guess speaking on that, what are some things that pastor can be doing to , deal with these expectations that they have?

Yeah. Well, to wind that back a little bit, it is a challenge and when all our ministerial secretaries get together and talk about what challenges we're trying to address, This being one of them, which is why we had a psychiatrist speak to all our pastors, why we do workshops on pastoral burnout.

Why we are putting an emphasis on trying to, shift some of our focus away from what you do to who you are and even in our pastoral report, our past reports used to simply be, you know, here's your visits, here's your Bible studies, here's your preaching, get the job done, where now the report is more about who you are as a person and are your roots growing deeply into Christ?

Are you making space , to, Look after your key relationships. Whether that be family, whether that be key connectedness. So we're asking some of those questions, which is not really our business, but it's important that the pastor realizes that these parts. are an important part of being a pastor.

So that's the very start of our reports. Now you're talking about how am I going as a person? And reality is if we were to take a biblical model of how we use our fruits, , it's the overflow of the time we've spent with Christ. So we say, Hey, pastor, big emphasis, your roots grow into Christ. Out of that come these competencies and.

Now, in the AUC, we try to develop in seven core areas, which is, you know, your theological astuteness is your modeling, which is your teaching, preaching, your communication, which is your organizing. And we measure pastors on that and even I sometimes will jump to how's that pastor doing in the competencies ahead of how's that pastor doing as a person, as a child of God.

So we're trying to. Um, in our code of conduct, and we've recently, you know, over the last year, gone around to all our ministers meetings, chatting through the code of conduct, we've tried to rework our code of conduct. So it's not just don't do this, but rather do make time to look after who you are and your physical health.

That's part of being. Do make time to honor your calling to be a dad if that's what you are, or a mom if that's what you are. Do make time to invest into marriage. Do make time to, so we've tried in a code of conduct, which is a tricky thing to do in a code, but we've tried to put in there. Um, this is what it is to, to live life well, and it's not.

Just don't do this. We want the past to be able to feel like that when they're investing in the family, when they're investing into their health, when they're investing into growing their relationship with God or significant people, they're actually doing what we need them to do to be a healthy pastor.

Um, because yeah, if a past is modeling life in the kingdom, then that's life at its best. , and sadly, sometimes that doesn't end up being, and we end up with pastors who. Take on excessively, um, you know, whether it be problems, the congregation, whether it be, the demand for this church to be thriving, take that on, and I think if you talk to most pastors, they'll reflect on times when they've been so busy in the production mode, abounding that they haven't done the abiding stuff, which all of us can be prone to do, all of us can be prone to do all the abounding of ministry, you.

And that's pastor or anyone who's called to be a follower of Christ. What's it look like to the abiding part? So as an association, we're trying to put more effort onto what's it look like to abiding Christ? And what's it look like for ministry to flow from that place? Rather than immediately jumping to your performance.

Um, the other thing is our pastoral care helpline.

So that's a 24 hour service whereby a pastor or their family and spouse children has a number that they can call 24 hours and they can choose what sort of level of help or support or conversation they would like. And it's provided by Converge. You provide a Christian counseling service. So it's not about to be something that.

You know, it becomes well known in the system. It just gives pastors a spot where they have conversations with someone else who understands ministry, , and talk about what issues and challenges they have. That's been a really useful thing to us to implement and wonderful to see pastors utilizing that service, , and having some of the conversations that otherwise get shut down or pent up or they feel like there's not a safe enough place to have that sort of conversation amongst people who know them.

This gives them. some of the help they need. So that's a really useful thing that has been put in place over the last year. , so we're trying to work on what's it look like to have our pastors having, putting in place the right kind of practices that hopefully mitigate, but also being aware of that this is a challenge that we have.

And when you're having these challenges, what happens there? We've also been trialing supervision for pastors. What's it look like for pastors to have regular supervision? We've been trying a few different models just to work out, , where do pastors, where are they able to have those conversations that help them reflect on who and how they're going about their pastoral role?

And is that healthy or are there practices that are possibly undermining their well being?

And I think that's important. I don't know if you've got any. Other things that you can share in terms of examples of that, because I guess just thinking about it as a layperson, it does seem that, and perhaps this is from the past, but there seems to be an impression that pastors are put out into the field and to some extent after their internship, they're in the deep end, like Sink or swim, do it yourself.

Um, the pastoral care line, , and the supervision for pastors ideas, to me, it seems really important and helpful, because many other industries, you wouldn't see sort of very little contact or reporting back for someone. And and. a lack of support for those people. So it's exciting to hear that there's some things coming in that can provide support.

What does that look like for supporting a pastor once they're out in the field? , it's great that there's the care line and, and some of these things practically like on a day to day basis. Is this weekly check ins with a mentor, like? What are some things that the church is starting to do that, that is actually recognizing that need and filling that need for pastors

in the field?

Yeah, and first of all, James, I don't want to pretend we get it right all the time because there's lots of cases where we don't get it right. And you make an important point that even some of our interns. , they're a long way from anyone else when I say anyone else, , they've got church connections and community, but they're a long way from, , their, conference office.

They're a long way, sometimes a long way from other pastors. We have interns out in the middle of Australia who are a long way from their next pastor. And so it's not always ideal is challenging situations, your sink and swim analogy while. an internship. They have a mentor, who's contacting them, ideally at least fortnightly and working through that.

They complete internship. Now, while every conference has a pastor to pastors, some of our conferences are very large and, and so they're not going to get. As much contact as might be ideal. And so they're working in, some incredibly complex situations and incredibly complex roles. And, we will do what we can to, to be working through situations and debriefing and.

But many times on most times, that's not the case. The pastor, the pastor does a lot of stuff alone. And while we'd like to have our pastors in cluster groups and while we encourage and have their accountability partners, and while we have our seasonal reports that are checking in, how they're going, the pastor does spend a lot of time just working through stuff and often stuff that they can't talk about to other people.

And and so so it is it is challenging in that regard. So while we've made some good improvements, when we have all our ministerial team together again, we're still talking about how do we do this better? What's it look like to more ably support? Our pastors and mind you, that's where all of us come, come into being part of this because at the same time, the pastor is simply part of church community , and so as a church community, , I will often say to congregations, if I get a chance to talk to them, especially if they have an intern, they look after this pastor, look after them, are they perfect?

No, but are they someone who's sold out on, um, Wanting to give the best use of their life to the cause of Christ. Yes. So what can we do to encourage and what we can do to support them? What can we do to, to help them along? What can we do to, as a congregation, support our pastor and pastors who are supported by congregations when, when a pastor knows the congregation is praying.

And Ed Stetson writes this in a book where he says, congregations thrive when they pray for their pastor. , it's a simple thing. And as I say, I don't want to mask over the real challenges, but as a congregation, if we're praying for our pastors, if you can get that moment to say thank you to a pastor, , if you're a church member listening to this, if I can plead with you, just be nice.

to the pastor. Um, that will do things that tick you off because they're human as well. But being nice, you don't know, and you talk to pastors and sometimes just a little thank you can go a long way or someone who just shares a little thought, shares a card, does something nice. We know how it feels when something, someone does something nice for us.

, so yeah, you can do a lot to help the load of the pastor just by some of those little nice things along the way. And , when that happens to pastors, um, it's incredibly helpful.

Awesome. I love that. I think it's so true , I mean, you spoke about the importance of pastors belonging to a community, but like you said, oftentimes pastors can't talk about a lot of the stuff they deal with because confidentiality and because they're dealing with like big stuff. And so that can be a really tricky line to kind of balance, I guess, because.

There's this vulnerability that's expected, except they can't always give it, um, because of that. , this year at the Empower Conference, which is a conference for ministers around Australia, there was a bit of an emphasis on mental health. What stood out here?

Yeah, what was driving that? At Empower, we always try to address the issues that our pastors are working through, and particularly coming out of a couple of years of COVID, you know, mental health was a challenge widely, and so that's why, um, you know, we did bring Torben over, um, and, As I say, he's a psychiatrist who's done a lot of research on, on mental health and burnout but throughout our presentations, in our worship, we had, , you know, some of the, the presentations focused on some of those practices that allow pastors to, to thrive.

And so you're right, Zanita, you did pick up on. One of the big emphasis we had was, pastor's mental health. , we talked a lot about, exercise. We talked a lot about what's it look like to grow in your relationship with Christ. We looked, we talked about, what's it do to on a family.

Now we talked about no various addictions that, that can be challenging as well. And so the emphasis was there intentionally because we realized that this is one of the factors that, we lose pastors for various reasons. But one of, one of the factors is it, the pastor gets to a point that, they're not feeling fulfilled in that role, or it's just getting to a spot where they can't see them thriving as humans and being passed at the same time, which is unfortunate.

And and so we do try and address those issues. We do try and talk about them. Could we do it better? Yes, we certainly could do it better. And, you know, we've I've got meetings coming up soon where I'm talking to some other, , industry leaders who are dealing with similar challenges and saying, how do you do that?

What can we learn from you? , so we're still trying to learn how do we do it better? Because sadly we're still, we still lose our pastors. And I know as I say, I know it's a wider problem, but for my, role, , I'm very proud of our proud, I guess it's the right way. I'm very proud of our pastors.

I think our pastors, , are wonderful people doing a wonderful job. And so my job is how can I help them thrive in their job? And we don't want to lose any pastor. , but especially to factors that sometimes I think it's really sad when we do lose a pastor. I think we could have done something to help mitigate that.

And, and I feel particularly sad when we lose pastors that if only we'd done this or that we might've been able to. Help them through that

just to switch as we sort of are running out of time. But, just to switch to your passion, your interest in the consumerism space, , Sabbath is in some senses, an antidote to some of the burnout, some of the business that we experience in our lives.

Yet for pastors, they don't always get to enjoy that Sabbath gift because the Sabbath is the busiest day of the week for them. They've got church responsibilities, they're running a service, they might be preaching, one or multiple messages across the Sabbath hours. So, how can we do, I guess, better in terms of that for pastors?

Are there any... Things you've found as a pastor that help you to find that rest and that Sabbath without, , yeah, doing something different or, . What's

that Jared? Um, because you're right in my PhD, I'll do a whole big section on how the Sabbath addresses consumerism. And I've talked about that a number of times.

And it is a challenge for pastors. You know, I've sat with pastors. And some well known pastors in the USA who run the highly significant churches, and I've sat with them, they know I'm Adventist, a number of them keep a Saturday Sabbath, but they run their churches on Sunday. And they say to me, how can you possibly keep Sabbath and run your worship services on the same day?

We just couldn't do that. Because there's just. There's just the demands of making it all work and it is a challenge for pastors to how do they get that Sabbath blessing because it's not as simple as saying, well, let's give them Sunday off because you and I both know that why don't I mow my lawn on Sabbath because it's Sabbath.

I don't need to mow my lawn, but on Sunday, I can't sort of. It changes the game. Um, and, and so we talked to pastors. What's it look like to try and not be at everything? Because sometimes pastors, you know, we have the expectation. They're going to be with the young people on Friday night. They're going to do this and they're going to be that, that, and that, and then by Saturday afternoon, they're running this program.

What's it look like to try and at least build some Sabbath moments into Sabbath? Especially our pastoral families. Well, I shouldn't say especially our pastoral families, it's all pastors, but, um, What's it look like? I guess the biggest challenge for me came that once I had Children, I needed to rethink what am I doing to make Sabbath special for them?

Otherwise, they're going to grow up in a home where Sabbath is just crazy day. So it's not an easy answer. I don't pretend to have all the answers. Some pastors seem to it. I put some boundaries in place that make that work better. , once again, if you're a church member listening to this, and if your pastor doesn't turn up at the event that you want them to turn up at, cut them a bit of slack sometimes.

Because otherwise you can, you can fill Sabbath up with, with everything and. Each of those little things are great, and each of those little things are good fun, but when it's all the time, it can mean that sometimes pastors will miss out on, on Sabbath. And it also comes back to some pastors love to beat everything because that's why they're energized.

Um, for other pastors, do we have introvert pastors? Sure we do. And, and for them, and some of our excellent pastors, they just want time where they actually just take a break and, and re energize. And so, yeah, different situations. I guess there's not one way it works, Jared, um, but that was a significant challenge for me, trying to work out what Sabbath looked like and in my current role, that's an easier thing to do because, , I'm not directly responsible for a congregation on Sabbath.

So it does make it easier, , but it's, it's a huge challenge. What does it look like , to get a Sabbath for our pastor? And maybe that's something church members can also, church boards can also work with their pastors on what are the expectations on Sabbath and what's it look like for us to make the space for you to get some Sabbath moments or sometimes when you get a genuine Sabbath.

No, that's great. , as we finish up, is there something you'd like to leave us with? How can we help, whether we're members or pastors ourselves listening to this, how can we help in a nutshell, pastors with their mental health? Give us something to go away with this week that we can, take and practically implement maybe in our church or in our family or in our congregation.

. Mine's just simple. Just be nice. Just be nice. We live in a world that's really quick to criticize. We live in a world that's really quick to compare. , we live in a world that's quick to. To pull people down and and quick to, you know, social media, I think, has given us a lot more tools for good and for bad and part of the bad part is we want to criticize real quick.

If I can ask you to take a step back and before you criticize anyone, and while we're talking about pastors here, I think constant criticism really hurts and people can think they are being smart or smug or the cynicism. Um, so, so yeah, if I, if I can ask for one thing, just be nice to everybody.

I know that sounds like a general peace and love kind of message, but just be nice and especially think, how can I be nice to, to our pastor? , pray for your pastor. , try and understand, be quick to encourage, slow to criticize. And, I think together we can be a more loving and lovable community. And you know what, pastoring a loving and lovable community is fun.

Our pastors sign up for what they do because they believe it matters. And and pastors want to get it right. Pastors don't really want to be burnt out and they don't want to be cynical. Pastors sign up because they want to get it right and and I think together we can do that. I think together we can we can be congregations that show our culture a better way of being human.

That includes how we treat each other, how we treat our pastors, and the dignity we're to give to everybody.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for everything you've shared with us today, Brendan. It's, yeah, you've given us some awesome information and just, I guess, a better understanding of the importance of us supporting our pastors.

Being nice to our pastors, and just realizing the load that they've got on them. So thank you for everything you've shared. It was great to talk to you.

And well, and thank you for the opportunity to talk about it because as I say, it matters. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some things that matter to me.

Thank you. Awesome.

Cool. , we will see you next week for another episode of 📍 Record Live.

Bye.