Tag: clergy misconduct

A portrait of the minister as a misconductor

Recently I received an unsolicited book in the mail. As a minister and as a blogger, I sometimes receive unsolicited books in the mail, usually on topics in which I have no interest, and I generally toss them straight into the recycling bin. Upon opening the envelope, I read the title of the book, Being Alive and Having To Die: The Spiritual Odyssey of Forrest Church, and having no interest in Forrest Church I headed for the recycling bin. But before I tossed the book, I thought to myself, “I wonder if the author dared tackle Church’s sexual misconduct?” The author did dare, so I decided to read on.

Dan Cryer, the author of Being Alive and Having To Die, portrays Forrest Church as having come from privilege. The son of Frank Church, a prominent U.S. Senator, Forrest Church could trace his ancestry back to the Mayflower through both his mother and his father. He grew up in large part near Washington, D.C., in a county with the highest per-capita income in the country. His father went to Stanford University, and that’s where Forrest received his undergraduate degree. Although he was estranged from his father during the late 1960s, as were so many upper middle class young men of his generation, he once avoided arrest because U.S. Forest Service troopers liked his father’s pro-conservation initiatives in the Senate. Forrest Church continued following his father’s footsteps: his father had gone to Harvard Law School, and after a year at Pacific School of Religion Forrest transferred to Harvard Divinity School.

He married Amy Furth when they were both undergraduates at Stanford. Cryer’s descriptions of their marriage makes Forrest Church sound like a male chauvinist pig, e.g., “…the young husband did have a bad habit of wounding Amy by making important decisions without consulting her” (p. 65). Beginning in 1976, Church began having affairs with other women, although he himself “declined to characterize these as ‘affairs'” (p. 188). After he was called to the prestigious pulpit of All Souls Unitarian in New York (in “that nation’s wealthiest ZIP code”[p. 110]) in 1978, the affairs continued, though not with members of the congregation. By 1991, the marriage of Amy and Forrest Church “had been shaky for a long time” (p. 187). It was in that year that the whole thing blew up. Continue reading “A portrait of the minister as a misconductor”

Fewer committee meetings, more talking about life

It’s still start-up season, that time when many congregations increase their activity levels after a summer slow-down. This start-up season has been as busy as any since I started working in congregation in 1994, and more intense than any other start-up. And then in staff meeting this week, Amy, our senior minister, said she was experiencing a very busy start-up season as well.

Perhaps it is just coincidence that we’re both experiencing busy start-ups at the same time our congregation appears to be on the brink of a size transition, from a pastoral-size congregation to a program-size congregation (that is, from less than 150 average attendance to over 200 average attendance). But I don’t think it is a coincidence. Other ministers who have been in congregations in this same size transition zone have also reported feeling intensely busy; so have lay leaders.

The thing is, sometimes that feeling of intense busy-ness can lead to burnout among clergy or lay leaders. I have documented a few instances of clergy burning out to the point of leaving the ministry. (I’m half convinced that some clergy sexual misconduct can be traced to burned-out ministers in transitional congregations who engage in stupid and/or self-destructive behavior.) Because when a congregation is growing, the first impulse of most people is to do more. You do more, but all it gets you is exhaustion. And it scares newcomers away — who wants to be part of a congregation where the clergy and lay leaders look burned out?

So I’m thinking the best way to handle an intense start-up, especially in a congregation that is on the edge of a pastoral- to program-size transition, is to spend less time doing, and more time just being. Fewer committee meetings, and more time spent in small groups just talking with one another about life. Less email and more face-to-face conversations about matters of the heart. Less writing of reports and more singing. Fewer tasks and more meditation, prayer, and worship. Doesn’t that sound more pleasant?

This year’s Berry Street lecture

The text of this year’s Berry Street lecture is now up on the Web. At the Berry Street lecture this past June, Rev. Dr. Deborah Pope-Lance spoke for over an hour to some six hundred Unitarian Universalists on the topic of clergy misconduct. I found it to be a riveting lecture in June, and it is well worth reading the text of the lecture, if for no other reason than the link to the Web page that discusses whom Carly Simon might have been thinking about when she wrote the song “You’re So Vain.”

After Deborah gave the lecture in June, I was one of the many people who crowded around her, wanting to shake her hand. She shook my hand, and all I could say was “Thank you.” I meant: Thank you for telling the truth of clergy misconduct, and for doing so with grace and humor, and in such a way that rather than provoking resistance perhaps we can deal productively with the aftereffects of misconduct. And now I would add: Thank you for pointing out the role of narcissism in clergy misconduct, and thank you for pointing out how “clergy misconduct is nested in an ecology that either promotes or inhibits breakdowns in the ministerial relationships.”

But enough of this. If you weren’t at the Berry Street lecture in June, now is your chance to go read this important document.