T.D. Jakes Fights Pastors Mental Health Issues

this is TD Jake and he thinks that taking care of pastors so they don't turn into a bunch of Raving lunatics is a good idea hey yeah so this is Church's lame we're going to talk about how this doesn't break the church for once because you know hey it's Thanksgiving you know so he gobble gobble yeah we gota we got to talk about something positive of course I got to talk about something kind of maybe negative before the positive so um TD J is just kind of responding um and uh to like the condition of pastors and he has a couple of numbers here so 63% of pastors report in the last 12 months having been frequently overwhelmed um with 42% of pastors um having toyed quote this is a quote toyed with the idea of uh leaving their Ministry uh in the past year and that's like way too many pastors right um and and like I don't want my pastor to be one of them um and I mean I don't know it's like I'm sure like you can kind of relate to you know having seen pastors that were overburdened yeah I think I think we actually talked about this a couple weeks ago um unfortunately these numbers 63% feeling frequently overwhelmed and 42% to toying with the idea of leaving these are not surprising numbers these are probably um I would say um it's interesting to see it in print actually see something beyond your own suspicions right but but yeah that uh it's it's a tough slog um and it's it's amazing that uh that actually it's amazing that more pastors don't quit and it's amazing that pastors are able to stay as sane as they do with the incredible responsibilities and burden of of ministry leadership yeah in a church I used to go to I mean we had a pastor that was in a in a a situation where like he was feeling kind of you know I shouldn't say kind of he was feeling isolated yeah um and and that led to just a whole bunch of stupidity I mean just bad things happened not like super gnarly like you know sleeping with the congregants bad but you know like he just like he was making bad decisions doing things he really shouldn't have done but he felt like he was supposed to take charge of them and he wasn't you know conferring with other people because he felt like he couldn't like was that it was the expectation so like yeah having been through that it's like you know it's nice to see you know TD Jakes um trying to do something to contribute positively toward that situation and and I'm not saying that I agree with TD Jakes you know any other day of the week on anything um right but you know a good idea is a good idea yeah I'm glad you mentioned that because I wanted to say that as well it's it's really important that we remember that aside from Joel Lin and Brian Houston very few people are 100% bad or 100% good right they like they they they have good days and bad days they have great ideas and they have bad ideas every time they put their hand out and ask for money for a private jet that's a bad idea but every time they put they put their hand out and say hey could could we get some money together so we can make sure that pastors like don't commit suicide like the like the one Pastor did a few weeks ago can we make sure that never happens again and so and so you just have to give credit where credit's when a good idea comes out yeah and especially since um you know he is making this and he's calling it The the faith and mental health Hub um uh and he's making it a free resource and ijah that's a great thing um yeah you know because I mean there are other resources out there for pastors but there's there's not nearly enough right um but making it a free Ser a free resource I think is a really great thing um because you know it's it's something that I mean it's it's kind of small at this stage of the game there's over a dozen videos that pastors can watch but it's like you don't have to make a monetary commitment as a pastor so if you're unsure uh if this is the kind of thing you need like there's no risk exactly so like I'm hoping that that will bring in pastors to want you know maybe who feel weird about mental health kind of giving it a try just just to kind of feel it right and the thing is nobody ever like you to P you go to Seminary and you learn theology you learn hermeneutics you learn uh you know how to study the Bible you learn how to preach you learn how to teach you learn how to do all these things but nobody ever teaches you um how to not how how to be able to counsel people through burdens without living their burdens with them right so a lot of young pastors especially the burden of their congregations the burdens weigh them down so much that that often it feels like they're being like they're they're drowning along with the people they're trying to rescue and so I'm all for uh this resource if it helps if it helps pastors identify that in themselves or if it helps leaders identify that in other leaders and other members of their congregation to say Hey you are in a bad place and we are going to send you on you know 2 we four week sabatical just so so you can get some healing and and and figure out where you are in in this in this um uh I don't know what's the right word uh Spectrum right in the spectrum of of drowning this you know yeah and I mean this wouldn't be an episode of Church's lame if I didn't complain about something well that's who we are right so yeah so so here's my complaint um and that is you know having you know when like when I was looking at at at grad schools to go too um you I was looking at a lot of mdiv programs um at the the universities around here which there's a lot to choose from right yeah um and and the one thing I noticed about like all the MD programs is that they were just really weird I mean like and like there it didn't seem like there was a really strong focus on Ministry like it was you had to have a class in like Church administration and like this other thing and this other thing so it's like they're trying to pack all these functions into a pastor and I'm like well you're not as a pastor going to be good at like any of these right um and then consequently I feel like it it did kind of lack in the academics side of it like there's a lot of practical things of course you expect that for for a pastor to learn um but when it came to the academics that's why I ended up going to Wheaten College um is because it was a more academically rigorous program because I feel like well if if lead pastors are are taking on this much more um diverse role then there's a room and a need for people to become a little bit more specialized and focus on just kind of like the nerdy things so when people have questions about well what does the Bible say or what does the bible mean or blah blah blah you have somebody who's very prepared to respond to that right yeah I hear that it's it's it's an interesting um dichotomy uh nobody can be the master of all things um yet um very few churches get to the place where they they become uh financially strong right and so you have church budgets that are dwindling to the point where most where the future of pastoral ship is really the is really like bivocational or multivocal you know and so we're asking pastors to do more and more while paying them less and certainly not expecting them uh to to um to expect a full-time salary so in a sense even though we don't want them to become masters of everything uh I don't know how to avoid it yeah cuz I you know when you say you know like a lot of pastors are bivocational my my pastor is a bivocational pastor um and it does put a lot more responsibility on us as a congregation to take charge about things which I think is maybe generally a good thing um and and that's one of the things when I was looking at this program um I'm kind of bouncing around the notes a little bit so sorry about that yeah I mean because like pastors don't necessarily have the skills to take care of themselves right and so something like this it's free which means that like you or me you know as congregants like we can go and watch these things and maybe it'll help give us skills because a lot of people like you know you like we are involved in church ministry but like it can teach us things that can help us to better take care of the pastors as well so I think it's a good re it might be a good resource for just everybody absolutely and I think it's one of the things that um that it's really hard to put um like a real metric behind is how valuable it is to have a celebrity name behind it right so in this case uh TD Jake right like I'm sure the internet is full of all sorts of Crisis management websites and free resources right but who the heck knows where to go and so a resource like this that makes waves because TD Jak is behind it uh kind of really helps to to create a a a a single point right that hopefully this may get some momentum and this really can become like the the de facto standard of mental health care training for people in Ministry yeah and I think you know when like we talk a lot about you know the celebrity pastors and we have no end of Suspicion when it comes to celebrity pastors but I agree with you like this is a good use of That Celebrity ship that like that somebody can use this way to just to bring attention like you already said this is a great way for for L for regular people for for your church volunteers deacons whatever you call them to care for pastors it's also just a good way to remind everybody in the church that the job isn't just for the pastor to care for you and the job isn't for you just to put money in in the offering plate the idea is that we all take care of each other we take care of each other we take care of those in the community who can't take care of themselves we take care of our relationship to God and this is the kind of thing that just kind of reminds us that we're all in the boat together and I think in today's day and age where where we are making others out of every Niche group that we can this is a great reminder that that maybe we ought to put this down May that attitude down for a while and take a look at those around us and see who it is we can care for yeah like I was just um thinking of uh Galatians 66 um you know so where Paul writes you know those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher um and I think you know when you're when you're learning from a pastor it it's this is one of those all good things taking care of them taking care of their their their mental health needs I think is is definitely part of that not merely giving them a paycheck of course you know making sure they're not starving on on a street you know that's good too but yeah oh like you bought them the smallest trailer in a trailer park that that you could afford that you could you know spend money on you bought them the cheapest car in the used car lot you make sure they have a stip in for food like well that's big of you you know so yeah do more than the minimum yeah but that like you can be totally broke in the world but still have enough love to share and to take care of your pastor that'll preach that'll preach well hey let's take let's take a break and after the break we'll come back and talk about some headlines that were actually too good to ignore a new segment that we're trying out and we'd love for you to let us know if it's actually working or not um is headlines that are that are that we can't ignore but we also don't want to spend the whole time on the episode on and we had one this week that was especially good and I wanted to bring up because it's Mark's alma mater yay yay and Mark what does Alma moer mean alma mater means nourishing mother I should have figured out a way to like make you put it in the form of like a Jeopardy question oh yeah that that would have been something to think about is jeopardy even culturally relevant I hope so like it's when reruns right they actually do it on streaming services run on streaming services and like like we we routinely you know reference you know John clud vanam movies or whatever that nobody cares about anymore so why should I care I think just like the Price Is Right is not the Price Is Right without Bob Barker I think that Jeopardy will never be Jeopardy again without Alex drec no no it just it won't be okay well back to our headline though yeah so so yeah you go ahead and give this some context because you'll do it much better than I will all right yeah so um the Evangelical theological society which is a a a big one um there's also the society for biblical literature like those two are like the real big names uh you know where you know academics uh you know professors like you know they're going to deliver papers and and things like that um and the etss uh just elected their their first women president uh Karen jobes uh who is a professor at Wheaten College which is I think pretty awesome I just I just want to take take a minute as it's Thanksgiving to talk about what we're thankful for it's been a big year for the Wilder family um we moved from Chicago land area down to the Indianapolis area and it's been great for everybody we're closer to family we're going to have Thanksgiving with family this year um you know I have a stable job that allows me to you know to meet the basics to to keep a roof over our head and and healthy meals and nobody has to wonder where the next meal is coming from uh so just a ton of blessings for for the Wilder family Mark I'm thankful for you and your partnership your continued partnership in this endeavor that sucks out a lot of time and doesn't make a penny for us um I'm I'm thankful for the show and for everybody who listens um and Views uh the show and gives us feedback uh knowing that we're not alone um in thinking that the world the Christian world is a little bit of skew and maybe need some correction so so much gratitude for so many things I just thank you all and I wish you the best holiday season ever yeah there's just it's just been it's been a year uh with you know it's ups and downs like every year of course you know I mean it's the the most trait possible thing I could say right um but for sure you know like having this podcast it's it's been a real it's been a really good time um you know for one and it's nice to have you know a spouse that supports you know me doing this and you know dedicating this room to this process yeah nice um yeah so it's like this like I I ended up just you know stealing this room of the house um it's a good thing we don't have children I guess you we can just do whatever we want um but you know um yeah I mean just things have been good you know it's like you know uh you know like little things like you know the the car not it's paid off and you know now we can uh we were able to save up enough money we can start looking about fix some of the things in our kitchen so maybe that one air vent actually has cold and hot air coming out of it when it's supposed to um just just like all those little things um and especially for me um like being able to become uh more involved at my church you know having you know more uh doing more Sunday school teaching and being on a regular on the preaching schedule now and that's just it's just an amazing thing um just to be able to build up that Ministry experience at uh you know at my home Church um I'm not going to do my usual Spiel um it's Thanksgiving we're thankful for you we're thankful in general um now that I'm moved and we're settled in Indianapolis I've been like getting myself back on the horse in terms of discipline and like website and the YouTube and all the different behind the-scenes things so if you would please go check out the website www. churches l.com and click around a little bit and let us know what you think um we appreciate you and we thank you for watching and with that go in peace and serve the turkey in the sorry I couldn't stop myself go in peace and serve the Lord amen and if you look um above my shoulder somewhere I'm sure there'll be a card that will take you to someplace interesting thanks a lot