Why Therapy Tips
You know it was a little crazy to enter the ministry, right?
Hi, I’m Angela.
I’m a clergy person, like you. I served a congregation in New Mexico for fifteen years. I’m also a psychotherapist. That means I’ve spent a lot of time studying humans, the ways we make meaning, and how we flourish. And I know what it’s like to lead while living the same questions as everyone else.
Ministry isn’t what it used to be.
When I enrolled in a Master's in Counseling program in 2021, I did it because times are changing, and I wanted new skills for the new time. We were coming out of a pandemic. Climate change has reached a tipping point. Our unsustainable economic, health, and social systems are snowballing into a crisis. Authoritarianism is rising, with a scapegoating and violent rhetoric that offers a false, dehumanizing promise of certainty in times of chaos. There is collective and individual trauma.
We clergy can’t promise safety or fix everything.
Some of us are barely holding on ourselves. People and communities need a deep resilience now. We need to know how to heal from trauma. We need relationship and communication skills to overcome the polarization that is tearing us apart. We need new narratives that help us live with purpose and meaning. We need spiritual communities that support our spirits in a way that supports our mental health, too.
Those were my big reasons.
But also, just, some crazy shit happens in the ministry.
What’s with the guy brushing his teeth in the back row? Why did the congregation’s grumpy matriarch park a construction worker into a porta-potty in our parking lot? Why is the social justice council squaring off against the minister of all people? What do you say when three different members tell you they have a porn addiction? Is that even an addiction?
Colleagues, there are so many things they don’t teach in seminary. This Substack is about a whole bunch of those.
I’ll share tips from therapy specifically for clergy serving congregations. Stuff for you, the person, and for you, the leader. I’ll write about the stuff I’ve wondered about, and if you share your questions with me, I’ll try to address those too. Start or join conversations in the comments. I know you all will have a lot to add.
Make yourself comfortable.
Leading a congregation is… unlike anything else. Someone once said that, while ministry may not be the oldest profession, it’s certainly the weirdest.
It’s also a sacred gift. We enter it with all of our love and passion. It asks and offers a lot. That’s what this is about. Come on in.