Velcro and Teflon in Pastoral Care

Teams offer the best pastoral care, not primadonnas. One particular reason has struck me recently — the complexity and depth of damage in some people’s lives in a consumer society can exhibit in a tendency to shop around. “I've tried 11 vicars — none of them was any good, so now I'm trying you, bishop.” Dangerously, this can hook into our own need to be needed, flatter our own sense of drama and, when the velcro attaches, we’re stuck — and so are they.

Ministry, and especially deliverance ministry, is one sphere of life where it really doesn’t pay to shop around. Every time a priest introduces boundaries to the conversation you bail out and find another, until, presumably, you can find one who mirrors your dis-ease perfectly = can reinforce your problem precisely. The only hope of healing usually lies in picking a small selection, if not one, taking the blindest bit of notice of any of them, and then sticking with the pastoral relationship for long enough for something good to happen. From the point of view of clergy, we can best offer help by communicating together and integrating care, not flying solo.

When people ask for deliverance ministry, it’s best to offer an organic integrated package where specific spiritual needs emerge as a strand within a holistic and relational approach, not zap-u-up pyrotechnics, silly voices, and cliché storylines from the Hammer House of Horrors. The whole key is not to make a drama out of a crisis. We centre carefully on the health, personal, relational, and spiritual realities involved, and go gently. Whereupon, I find, healing comes swifter and sooner than anyone usually expects.

Clergy stress and wellbeing at work

The slow days after Christmas are a good time to check back on the basics. After interesting posts and discussions here this year on Clergy bullying and wellbeing at work, I’ve revisited my standard list of stresses bearing on the health of clergy in multiparish benefices that I drew up a few years ago. An Occupational Health Physician asked for a copy of the person’s job description, to help her assess the health impact of the job. None. The parish profile? All it said was that they wanted a perfect vicar — telling, but insufficiently detailed information. This list was an attempt to summarize where the stresses came from, so as to enable a concerned professional to understand and help.

One of my ambitions for 2009 is to find better ways to care better for appointments and colleagues in work. If others know of other similar lists, I’d love to see them. Revisiting my summary, it seems to me to stand up fairly well to the experience I think colleagues are having — but does it? I’d love to know what I’ve missed, or mis-stated.

Factors bearing on the occupational health of incumbents in multi-parish benefices — a generic handlist

Many general facets of being a Vicar in the country are pluses when things are going well relationally, but significant sources of stress when they are not. For example, being housed free of rates rent and maintenance in a four bedroom family house would generally be thought to be a benefit worth several thousands of pounds a year, but the requirement to live in the parsonage house can become a source of significant stress, inducing a feeling of being trapped, if things break down relationally.

This job always requires a higher degree of capacity to manage a work/life balance than would be the case in an occupation which did not require as much working from home.

Particular dimensions and requirements of the job which bear on health include:

1. Interaction with volunteers and the public —
   dealing professionally with strangers, which requires significant discernment and versatility. For example, The partner of a person who greatly dislikes you may die, and then you have to conduct the funeral cheerfully and competently. Relating to people of all ages, positively and fairly, is easier if clean and effective communication has been established with a variety of people and organizations including key volunteers such as churchwardens and treasurers. Many members of the public have real difficulty knowing how to respond to anger in clergy.
2. Leading public worship —
   including family celebrations and funerals and teaching the Christian faith, by word and example, in a way which is sincere and competent, personally grounded, but outwardly focused.
3. Administration —
   Time and workload management in a basically unsupervised environment, including appropriate record keeping, calls for competent self-management. Work/Life balance needs diligent monitoring and management, and the careful holding of working and relational boundaries in a sustainable way that inspires confidence in others. Hours are mainly flexible and undirected. Clergy aren’t required to, but many of them work longer hours than they should and skimp on holidays.
4. On-call and occasional emergency availability —
   handling personal and family crises (sometimes acute) with an awareness of the needs of others and ability to manage sensitive and confidential materials professionally.
5. Acting as a professional representative of the Church —
   with all the complex and personal transference people may have about religion. This means relating to people with differing views, some of which conflict with your own, openly and positively. Sustaining appropriate behaviour in role requires self-discipline, clear thinking, and careful boundary keeping, especially where roles potentially conflict. The job can involve juggling the roles of a parent in the school/ school governor/ chaplain to the school/ Village vicar — all at the same time.
6. Leading volunteer teams in a voluntary organisation —
   sometimes (especially in a rural multiparish benefice), teams have conflicting and unclear traditions and aims. Local feelings and rivalries can run deep. Your job is to try and provide a focus for unity in the community. Word goes around villages. People are very interested in their vicars — this unlocks high levels of interest and personal support on occasion, especially when the relational infrastructure is there to support the person in their ministry, but can be experienced as oppressive.

Being a rural multiparish incumbent has many dimensions, and that is one of the satisfactions people derive from doing the job. Although no clergy person is perfect, they need to find an approach to their work and the people they serve that is good enough to sustain their sense of personal and professional wellbeing. If this is compromised, the whole structure of deference that used to surround clergy is no longer there, and they can easily find themselves in a lonely, frightening and even dangerous working environment. The occupation requires a high degree of personal self-knowledge, resilience and versatility, or it can turn into a nightmare.

Bullying: diagnostics (provisional)

Putting a finger on the problem. Since our discussion earlier this year about clergy bullying (sometimes of, sometimes by), I have been trying to work out how I, as a bishop, can respond operationally. What are I and my colleagues supposed to seek? What defines what’s going on? As a working toolbox, about which I would love further correction and enlightenment, examine four I’s?

1. Information. Most methods for protecting vulnerable people involve secure protocols about communicating information out of the war zone into places it can be processed and acted upon, like Childline. Entirely protected anonymous squawk procedures are necessary but wide open to abuse. The only way to protect against abuse of the reporting system is to make the open protected communication easily available, but have rigorous protocols about weighing information. Assume nothing; believe everything initially, but test it carefully. Check the infromation on which you act is evidence and possible (ultimately) to put in a form which natural justice requires vis-a-vis everyone involved, including (eventually) the alleged perpetrator. The more reporters take responsibility for their feelings, the further we are from the danger that all we are getting is one half of a scenario within which both sides are actually exhibiting traits of bullying behaviour towards each other.
   
   
2. Insecurity. What goes on in bullies? Why do they do it? Fear and personal insecurity have to be in there somewhere, surely. These will probably be evidenced in other areas of life that have nothing to do with the victim, as well as in the bullying behaviour — “probably” not “necessarily,” as the temporary relief provided by victimizing a vulnerable person may act as a lightning conductor and diminish symptoms of fear and insecurity elsewhere.
   
   
3. Insincerity. One personal trait that will pretty much always express itself in bullying behaviour is a (technically) psychopathic personality. The technical term “psychopathic personality” is unhelpful because of its loaded popular associations. All I mean (from prison experience) is a person who would score high on a Hare PCL-R test. Signs include a strong selection of these traits:
   
   a. People who may have many faults, but ever being wrong ain’t one of them: superficial, sometimes grandiose
   
   b. ...with an immense capacity to charm but also to manipulate — deceitful; economical with the truth
   
   c. ...where everything that happens to them is all about them, because they have a weak capacity to empathise with or even accept others are autonomous individuals, let alone feel accountability towards them
   
   d. ...where everything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault, ammo for blame, and everything that goes right is focussed on themselves and used to vindicate themselves in the face of a hostile or uncomprehending world; prone to blame the ref for the goals they let in,
   
   e. ... with a tendency to “them and us” thinking, to demonise perceived opponents and glamorize perceived allies, arising from a low-accountability world view in which I can only ever win if you lose
   
   f. ... bigger about threats and boasting than results and delivery
   
   g. ...with a preference for passive aggression and revenge as a dish taken cold. Watch out for grudges.
   
   I would expect some if not all of these traits to be evidenced in a true bully, pretty much every time.
   
   
4. Intentions. There are two sides to victimizing — victimizing others and victimizing oneself. We can’t play the one off against the other, and everybody remains responsible for their intentnions and actions, but anyone assessing what is going on has to make the distinction in their own mind.
   

Emotional roots of bad ministry

The way things work out for good or for bad is as about far more than the quality of the people we recruit. Quality of work is a matter of attitude and feelings as much as capacity. People perform very differently according to context. With a very complex, subtle and personal job, people who fall below par are often unhappy. One enemy of high performance is the puritanical “you’re not here to enjoy yourselves” flog-it kind of mentality some people have about their ministry. It leads them to ignore feedback and reinforces emotional unintelligence about themselves and everybody else. It doesn’t mean vicars have to be happy all the time. Some people can only write poetry if they’re unhappy. It’s the not being aware of emotions, theirs and other people’s, that’s a bigger problem than any particular emotional state. Self awareness is a big requirement of this job.

When things do go wrong, the Bloody Fool theory is never enough. It seems to explain everything; in fact it explains nothing that really matters. It’s all very well pointing out people’s faults to them. But from where are they going to get the energy to act differently in future? Without considering that, at least as carefully as the simple story of what’s gone wrong, nothing is going improve. Blame cultures can actually cause the underperformance of which they complain. Kicking-the-cat behaviour of all kinds is actually a vile but understandable cry for help; whether the cat is the vicar or the congregation.

And when things have gone wrong, people are fantastically adaptive if they have the spiritual rootedness, motivation, capacity to receive feedback and self knowledge to be. If, however they’re out of touch with their own sources of spiritual and personal energy, the wheels are far more likely to come off the wagon.

Bully pulpit — On baiting of the Clergy

Much interest in the media about clergy being bullied, stimulated by Rachael Maskell of the trade union Unite. Do vicars get bullied? Undoubtedly Yes.

I have been lucky — very blessed, on the whole — about the people I served during 24 years as an urban and suburban parish priest. They trusted me and supported me, way beyond my deserving or the call of duty; coped with my immaturity and uncertainty, my blundering attempts to understand what the job was about, my occasional depressions, fits and starts. These were the people who comforted me when my father died, and left meals on the doorstep when our children were born. But among them were, I reckon, three Prize Bullies. I felt it was somehow my fault that they were so overbearing. I felt trapped by my role in a place where I could do little or nothing about them.

I don’t buy “Pure Church” fantasy, and I believe that Rachael is drawing attention to a serious issue. Every area of human endeavour can become a toxic working environment, including this one, which has its own particular risk factors.

1. Pretty much all other professionals live far away from their work these days. Not vicars. Everybody knows where to find them.
2. Most Vicars are at heart altruistic, caring people, and this brings its own vulnerabilities. People have a tremendous longing to believe all is well in Church, sometimes in the face of what they know to be the truth. There are even people who behave in Church much worse than they would in daily work, where some of their antics would simply not be tolerated. Vicars, who often believe sincerely in going the second mile go to tremendous lengths to believe the best of people, some of whom may not have their best interests at heart. Vicars sometimes feel that if everybody is not happy it’s their fault.
3. For many vicars, their life is their work. Drawing boundaries between the two doesn’t always come easily to them, and in many instances wouldn't be appropriate. Anyway their job is also tied to their home. If they have to be off work, they can’t get away from it in the way that they could from a conventional workplace.
   
4. Being a Vicar means radical availability to all comers, and can involve unanticipated bouts of harrowing work — children’s funerals, personal disputes and tragedies. When our Occupational health physicians ask if someone can be given light duties in the post room, as it were, the honest answer is probably not, because there isn't really a vicar job that can be guaranteed not to involve unexpected painful encounter with people in need.
5. At one time Casualty departments and underground stations didn’t need to be festooned with notices warning the punters off punching the staff. In earlier and kinder times people were more deferential, and this relieved some strain on clergy to establish themselves as leaders. Large numbers of able and articulate people enrich the life of the church, but when things go wrong can make clergy feel desperately anxious and exposed, not always intentionally.

Sadly, like the question, the answer isn’t always as simple as might appear. Incumbent and Complainants sometimes say mirror image things about each other. The fact each says the other is bullying them doesn’t mean bullying isn't going on, but it’s an indication of the complexity of the problem. Both might be right — Clergy may be bullies as well as bullied. Indeed school experience indicates that people do to others what they feel is being done to them. We have to be very suspicious of simple “bloody fool” explanations and seek the truth all round carefully, steadily and openly.

How could things improve?

1. Anyone who believes a member of the clergy may either be being bullied or, indeed, be bullying, owes it to themselves and everyone else, including the perpetrator, to draw hard evidence to someone’s attention — bishop, archdeacon, area dean. Ditto gender or racial discrimination. Of course they will have at some stage to give evidence for what they are alleging in a form that can be communicated to the other person involved. I once was bombarded (bullied?) by over 100 emails from an angry person who wanted to complain about a vicar but refused to be accountable by providing evidence in writing I could lay before them at the preliminary stage. Clergy have a right to protection from malicious gossip. I did not give in on this point and would not. Measured natural justice all round is the only conceivable way to protect the human beings involved when feelings are running high.
   
2. This is a desperately unfashionable thing to say, but law and due process, sometimes an ass, no doubt, are there to protect everyone from abuse. Ditto working guidelines for clergy. We all, of course, want to live in a low deference informal society. The flip side of this desire is that anger will often out in intimidating and radically disrespectful ways. The advent of emails speeds the process up, discourages reflection, spreads pain and gossip round networks instantaneously, and enables people to say, for good or ill, things they would never dream of saying face to face.
   
3. Irresponsibility about hitting the send button sometimes spills over into letter-writing, and I receive letters that are Anonymous or from “a concerned parishioner.” The best way I can help these people is by giving them the opportunity to write a letter to which they could put their name. That means popping their letters straight into the shredder, where they could themselves have popped them the night before, if only they had had their wits about them. After many years of hearing confessions, the contents of their letters are in one ear and out the other, and I look forward to hearing from them in a less shameful way that shows higher character and accountability.
   
4. One simple fact is that clergy work in a much more open unsupervised environment than pretty much any other occupational group. On a good day, that gives us enormous historic independence, discretion and liberty about how we work, compared to others. On a bad day it can create an isolated, toxic working environment. In most contexts, most of the time, there is a strong community of loyalty and support for working clergy. We need to think through better ways of helping when that community is divided or non-existent. The involvement of a union is usually a good and positive thing if it brings any church based dispute within the ambit of good working practice in other areas of life. The Church of England is moving towards Common Tenure, for which legislation has gone through and should be implemented by 2010. Bishops and senior staff are receiving active HR training to help this happen well. CT will give licensed clergy access to tribunals and better HR support. With it, however, comes more responsibility about capability. Like everyone else, probably, I'd love to preserve the best of the historic freedom of the clergy, whilst attaching to it the best protection and support from more closely supervised working environments. This is going to be quite a difficult thing to achieve, though, especially in a workforce as “flat” as that of the Church of England.
5. Most people are better learners than they think. I am often deeply impressed by their grace and ability to reinvent themselves if they don’t feel trapped where they are, or in other contexts that suit them and their gifts better. The Bloody Fool theory is almost always wrong. We need to invest significantly in training and independent career counseling for clergy. In this diocese we have also developed the Developing Servant Leaders programme for all clergy to help them develop positive skills and attitudes that may help. We also have a network of work consultants, and are experimenting with developments in the role of area dean in places, to have more time to support colleagues. I also take professional HR advice in a variety of situations. All these things are moves in a good direction, but I would say we’ve a way to go yet...