How Pastors Can Stress Less and Lead Well : Charles Stone

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hello, friends. Welcome to FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each week, I have the honor of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we tackle a topic all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you really thrive in both life and leadership. Now, if you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better, and we’ll be praying for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow. You do not want to miss out on any of these great conversations. I’m excited today because I’m joined by Charles Stone. Charles has spent over 40 years in vocational ministry, the majority of that time as a senior pastor. Charles really spends a lot of his focus; he’s done a lot of writing and research, and has become a thought-leader on the intersection of brain science and ministry leadership. In fact, he’s done postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins University on this exact topic, and has written a number of books, including his latest entitled Stress Less. At this time, I’d like to welcome Charles to the show. Charles, welcome, brother.

Charles Stone
Jason, great to be with you, my friend.

Jason Daye
Good to see you. As we’re diving into this topic, we’re going to talk about stress. Super exciting, of course, one of those things that every single one of us in ministry experiences to some degree, right? So, to kind of frame our conversation, Charles, as we dive in, can you really help us understand when we talk about stress? That word’s thrown around a lot. When we say stress, what are we really talking about?

Charles Stone
Yeah, great foundational question. I illustrate it like this. The proverbial coin has two sides. On one side of this stress coin is the event that could potentially cause stress. Something out there in a relationship, church, in whatever realm, but also it can be from just what we make up in our minds. So there’s the stress event, let’s say, on one side of the coin. Flip the coin over; it’s how we respond to it. Now there’s a quick response, a physiological response, to a stress event. I’m not talking about that necessarily, but I’m talking about when we respond to that event out there in an unhealthy way over a long period of time, that’s when stress really does its damaging work. So that’s one kind of concept. Another concept that will help us understand stress is that it comes in two flavors. There’s acute and chronic. Acute stress would be kind of like what I feel when I have an interview like this, a few minutes prior. A little bit of butterflies, but it helps me be focused, because you don’t want someone to be just gonna, well, whatever. You want someone to be up. So, that’s acute stress, but after a while, you come down to baseline. What’s the chronic stress? That’s the other flavor. That’s the long-term stress that hurts us. So, having said all of that, stress is God’s God-given response to uncertainty or threat, the way we respond to uncertainty and threat. So that’s kind of the definition, with a couple of concepts important to wrap around that.

Jason Daye
Yeah, Charles, thank you. So, oftentimes when you think of stress, we always think of it in negative terms, but you’re saying that there is some stress that actually is a positive because it helps us focus in, right?

Charles Stone
Yeah, you know, pastors are listening and know that every Sunday you have a sermon. You want to feel a little bit of stress rising up to that when you step up on the pulpit or on the stage. It does help us focus more. It enhances our senses. It gives us that burst of cortisol that we really need to be energetic and really there and present with people. So yeah, it’s not all bad, but when we say I’m stressed, we’re usually talking about the chronic stress.

Jason Daye
Yeah, so let’s dive into that a little bit. This idea of chronic stress and how we in ministry often carry that because, as you said, the two sides of that coin, there are a lot of things that are going on, a lot of events that take place in our leadership, right? One, the flock that God has entrusted to us, right? They’re going through life circumstances. We carry some of that along with them. We also have kind of the leadership expectations. Guiding the church. We, as pastors and ministry leaders, want to kind of “get it right”. So, that’s those expectations. Talk to us a little bit about that chronic stress from the perspective of a ministry leader. What have you seen that kind of shows up the most that’s really unhealthy?

Charles Stone
Yeah. You know Peter Drucker, who’s the father of modern management, he actually listed the top two, three, or four most stressful vocations. And guess what fell in that list? Being a pastor. So he understood that. I think, for pastors, it’s interesting. The book I wrote, Stress Less, actually came from my research on 400 pastors in Canada, how they deal with stress, and then all the research behind it. Before COVID, it’s very interesting. Before COVID, when you looked at surveys like, what are the top 10 things that you struggle with the most, stress hardly ever made the top 10. After COVID, the two, three, or four surveys that were good surveys it was either number one, number two, or number three. So, COVID actually enhanced stress for pastors. I went through it, we all have, and so we respond in different ways. But we have deliverables every single week. That’s one source of stress. That sermon, or if you’re a worship leader, or you’ve got the kids program, or you’ve got your youth ministry, you’ve got that. Then you’ve got the pressure. I think most pastors don’t want to put on an air, but unfortunately, people hold us to this really, really high standard, and they should. We have a high standard. But beyond just the moral and ethical standards we should have, they hold us to an even higher standard. You know, we can’t be human. We can’t mess up sometimes. So those are probably two primary experiences that we as pastors have that enhance our stress. And the fact that work is never done, even on vacation. We need to learn to relax. You still got to come back and deal with all the stuff with people, sheep are dirty, those sermons come around every week.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. It’s interesting that you bring that up, Charles, because one of the things about ministry is, it’s kind of twofold. One is, ministry in some ways, never stops, because it’s part of who we are, although we need to be obedient to remembering the Sabbath, taking rest, and those types of things. So we understand that. But in ministry, there’s always more that can be accomplished because we’re working with people, we’re thinking of eternity, and the stakes are high in ministry. Then it’s that, not only is it kind of always “on”, but it’s a calling, you know? So, it’s something that’s like in the very fiber. It’s different than going and punching a clock. It’s different than going in, right? So, help us understand a little bit, Charles, in the research you’ve done, specifically with ministry leaders in this brain science. How is that, almost like the calling, and that always “on” sense, how does that relate to the stress that we sometimes carry?

Charles Stone
Yeah, one of my books, several years ago, called People Pleasing Pastors. I did some research, and whatever personalities pastors tend to have, they’re all these different kinds of personalities. I’m a personality expert. One of those personalities a lot of pastors tend to have as a component is wanting to please people. There’s another group called politicians who are also in that category. So I think in some ways, just the way we are wired, and we want to serve others, if your heart is right, and in serving others, we want to please them. And there’s nothing wrong with pleasing people, but when it gets beyond into that people-pleasing mentality, that really amps up the stress that we can feel. And it’s interesting, the survey, this research I did. Something like over 80% of pastors self-identified as people-pleasing in some way. The unhealthy kind. Not just wanting to do a good sermon so that people are blessed. You want a good counseling session or a good hospital visit. You want to do that stuff well, but it’s pervasive. It’s just the kind of personality a lot of pastors have. We tend to want to do that. Now, hopefully as we get older. You know, I consider myself kind of the geezer category. I turned 70, so I’m a geezer. And boy, I wish I knew what I know now that people-pleasing in an unhealthy way never works out. It makes things worse. More stressful.

Jason Daye
More stressful. Yes, exactly.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find this for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation, as well as reflection questions, so you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network.

Jason Daye
Charles, one of the things I really appreciate in the book Stress Less is how you actually walk through not only the brain science around stress, but you kind of pair that up with biblical perspectives, right? One of the things that you point out is that the word stress never shows up in Scripture, and yet, Scripture talks so much about stress in so many ways, right? So, I think this is helpful for us as ministry leaders for ourselves, but also as we’re serving others. How does Scripture really talk about stress, and what are some of the key things that can help us as we navigate the stress in our lives?

Charles Stone
Yeah, well, kind of a big picture response. I’ll respond first is that all truth is God’s truth. St Augustine said, Calvin said it, and a bunch of people did. The way I illustrate it is, imagine an umbrella. That’s scripture. That’s truth, capital T. God made the world, and he gave us the desire to learn about his world. That’s what scientists do, and they want to know. They may not be a theist, but they want to learn about God’s creation, because God created that in us. So everything else, the truth below that is God’s truth as well, little t. So all truth is God’s truth. Now, the word stress is not in the scriptures. Now, in two versions, I think the message has two times where it shows up as stress. New Living Translation, two times, and I’ve got it on the screen here, I want to read it. One, really good one for NLT. Psalm. 119:143 goes like this. It says, As pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your command. So that’s, I think, a good translation there. But although you won’t find it a lot, you find the concept there. Tribulation, persecution, trials, burden, testing, and temptation. All of those are really stress-causing events. You look at the characters in the Bible, especially Paul. That guy was always in trouble. He was either drowning, almost drowning, at home, getting beaten up, or stoned. So it is throughout Scripture. It’s pervasive because that’s life in a broken world.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. So then what are some key things that we find in Scripture that we can hold on to ourselves, as ministry leaders, as we’re wrestling with our own stress? What are some key things in Scripture that help us stress less?

Charles Stone
Yep. Well, Romans 5:3-4 is one of my favorite verses. It says, we also rejoice in suffering, because when the suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. So, one of the benefits, even though difficult and painful, of going through stressful experiences is that it produces character. It’s character-building. I use an illustration to kind of make this come to life. But let’s say I was going to be a guest at a church and teaching on this, and I have an end table on the stage with a glass top. I have three items I bring. I bring a big rock, I bring an egg, and I bring a tennis ball. So I hold up this big rock six feet or eight feet over the glass table. I ask the audience, What will happen if I drop this rock? What are they gonna say? Gonna break the glass. It’s going to shatter. Okay. What would happen if I drop the egg on it? They’re going to say, egg’s gonna break and make a mess. Some people don’t, some pastors, we’re talking about pastors’ perspective specifically, don’t know how to respond to stress. They can be like the rock, and they can break things. They can break a church. They can break a team. Some pastors are like, have no stress. They’re like the egg, they just break up when they face stress. But our goal, building character, Romans 5:3-4, is like the tennis ball. If you drop the tennis ball on the glass table, what’s going to happen? It’s going to bounce back. And that’s what God’s grace enables us to do as well. Just remembering and practicing some of these practices I suggest. That when God allows a difficulty to come into our lives, in our ministry, or in our family, it is an opportunity to build character. That tennis ball is what I describe as resilience. It gives, but it bounces back. But not just bouncing back, it adapts and learns from that. So, the big picture really is that stress is a character-building opportunity for us, and all throughout Scripture, it talks about becoming more Christ-like.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely. I love that illustration. Then in the book, Charles, as we’re looking at this idea of stressing less, right? You share these different practices that we can build into our lives to do exactly what you said when stress comes. We build character through these practices. Can you highlight a few of those practices that you have found in your own ministry life, right? You’ve done this for years and years and years. What are some of those practices that you found to be most helpful?

Charles Stone
One of the ones that ended up being number one on my list is what I call seize and breathe. Now the words breath and breathing are all throughout Scripture, like 75 plus times in the scriptures. In Genesis, God breathed into Adam. He became a living being. Early on, Jesus, when he breathed on a small group of the early church, the Holy Spirit came in that incident. So we have all through Scripture. Well, there’s a very interesting insight that neuroscientists have discovered. Now, we all breathe. You know, we breathe without thinking about it. But one key tool to lower the stress response is deep breathing in this way. It’s called the physiological sigh. I call it sniff breath, and here’s how it works. It’s simple. Every pastor can take this with them. I did this before, actually, I had another interview earlier this morning. I was a little more nervous with that one versus you, because, man, this is pastors. I love pastors, and coming into that setting. So here, it’s like this. It’s breathe in and then another little extra breath, then breathe out slowly. Now the key is letting your out breath be longer than your in breath. The exhale being longer than the inhale. That is a very practical way to deal with stress. Now, when I say seize and breathe, the seize part is this: when you find yourself in a stressful situation, just stop. Get away for a few moments. Maybe it’s a heated conversation in the hallway with one your staff, like, this is not going well. You know, just take a break. Get away, stop, and practice a few of these deep breaths. Longer exhale than inhale. Labs all around the country found that this really does help lower the stress in that moment. So that’s one I recommend. That’s number one, if you’re gonna only get one, get that one. Take that one.

Jason Daye
Very interesting. Let me ask you real quick on that. So, what is actually happening whenever we do that? When we do that breath, breath, then exhale, what’s going on?

Charles Stone
When we exhale, actually, the cavity where our heart is decreases a little bit, so the heart is a little smaller, and our brain says, Okay, you need to speed up a little bit to get all the blood flowing through. Just a little bit. And what that does is that changes our heart rate, which changes something called HRV, heart rate variability. That’s the time-space between each heartbeat. It’s not how many beats a minute, but the time-space and that variability, the higher it is, the healthier it is. I’m kind of a health geek, and have all these kinds of gadgets I wear. But, one of the things I look at when I kind of check my vitals, probably too much during the day, maybe a little obsessive-compulsive there. But, anyway, when I say, Oh man, this day I’ve had a little higher HRV. So it has to do with that cavity where your heart is. It just slows the heart. It decreases the heart rate because the brain says, Oh, you need to push more blood through there. So that’s kind of the mechanics behind it.

Jason Daye
Fascinating, fascinating. Okay, so that’s a practice, an easy practice, that anyone can adopt right now. I mean, today, we can do this breathe thing. What are some other practices that you found helpful?

Charles Stone
The second one is what I call reveal how you feel. Now, hopefully, I’m seeing more among the church; it used to be that you put on a happy face, and that’s what Christianity is supposed to be. But I think we’ve gotten more open to mental health issues. It’s the real things. You look at Psalms, especially where David’s writing about his life, and the guy is like sharing all these really painful emotions. Like, if David can do it, I guess I can do it, too. Well, here’s the insight, the brain insight. Naming our difficult, unpleasant emotions is called affect labeling. Affect is another word for emotions. It turns down their intensity. In other words, a little phrase is this: name it to tame it. Now, here’s how you would do it. I don’t know if you talk to yourself sometimes. I talk to myself, but not in public. I find myself like they’ll really think I’m crazy, crazier than I am. Having a conversation with yourself can actually dial down that stress response. Let me give an example. The next door neighbor’s name is Kevin. Great guy. He’s always bringing us food over. Brought some over a couple of nights ago. Let’s say Kevin did something that really made me mad. This is not the way to do it. I am so mad at Kevin. I could just punch him. That’s not the way to do it. The way to do it is to have a conversation with yourself. It would go like this, so I’m talking to myself. Okay, Charles, I see you are really pretty ticked off at Kevin. Maybe what he did was not the correct way, but for you right now, what would be the most God-honoring way to respond to that? That simple conversation with yourself dials down the stress response. There’s a secondary way to do that. When you are in a stressful situation, view that situation not as a threat, but as a challenge. Something in church, like, oh man, we have had a whole month of low offerings. As a pastor, I checked the offerings. We all understand that that part is not so fun in ministry. Instead of thinking of like, Oh man, we’re gonna have to lay off staff, we’re gonna have to shut the church down, you know, our mind goes like that. See it rather as you know, Lord, You know what we need, but I’m going to see this as a challenge to trust you and trust that you will give me and our team wisdom for the right way to respond to this. When we see it as a challenge, it dials down the stress response.

Jason Daye
At Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you want to learn more about how you can qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. That’s PastorServe.org/freesession.

Jason Daye
Yes, that’s excellent. So the idea of really, kind of naming what you’re feeling, having a conversation with yourself, and I love the God-honoring part. I mean, that’s huge, right? If we can just remember to ask that one question, that would help with a lot of things. But just in a lot of this, even the breathing, it is slowing down a little bit. It’s been more intentional instead of reactionary, right?

Charles Stone
Right. There’s a big word I usually share that everybody needs to know when we talk about stress. It’s called metacognition. Metacognition. It’s basically thinking about your thinking. What happened, Jason, and this has happened in my life, it’s probably happened in your life. Something happens. A stress event. Let’s say it’s the size of a marble, and it’s real. It’s a real stress thing out there. But what we do is, with all the conversation and the narrative we wrap around that, which is usually negative, it becomes the size of a basketball. So now it’s no longer that was the issue. But what I have made it to be. Metacognition is developing the discipline to regularly check in on your thoughts and ask yourself just something like this. Okay, Charles, what were you just thinking about? Oh, okay, well, that’s not really good, healthy thinking. I need to change channels. Lord, I need you to help me shift what I was thinking about. So, metacognition, developing the discipline to check in. You know, who’s sponsoring those thoughts? Is the evil one sponsoring those thoughts? Is my worry sponsoring those thoughts? Or is God’s word informing those thoughts and that they’re honorable, honoring to him? So, metacognition is another really key general idea to keep in mind. Now, here’s how I do it. Sometimes I have my watch, every hour, hour and a half, just remind me. Also, I have a little program that comes up on my computer. It kind of makes a screen go Gray. I can make it for three minutes long, or whatever. It’s easy to do, to think about your thinking. It is hard to remember to do it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, exactly. I’m glad you had a couple of really practical pointers because my next question was going to be, in theory, that sounds great, Charles, but life goes at life speed, right? So, how do you stop to think about those things? So, little reminders, either set a timer on your phone, your watch, or whatever.

Charles Stone
Yeah, a Post-it note somewhere.

Jason Daye
Okay, excellent. I love that. As you are working with pastors and ministry leaders, you’ve mentored and coached a number of pastors over the years, as well as being a pastor, living it yourself. When you look at this, the research you’ve done, when you look at these different practices, for a pastor who says, Listen, I recognize that I have some unhealthy chronic stress, what would be your recommendation for kind of where to start? Where do you start in tackling this, right?

Charles Stone
Yeah. Well, I would say the first skill would be that seizing and breathing, and that seizing relates to metacognition. I think for pastors, because we get it on spiritual disciplines. We understand how important they are, and we understand how important the Sabbath is. But unfortunately, the Sabbath becomes the day when we do all our chores. Not exactly, but we want Sabbath to be. But, I think kind of piggybacking on what we pastors agree on is our spiritual growth. I think it would be what I call soak your soul. We look at the life of Jesus, this God in the flesh, fully God, fully man. What is he often doing? He had a busy schedule. His to-do list was all you know, still stuff. People clamoring for him all the time. Mark 1:35, very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went to a solitary place where he prayed. Well, again, I’ve kind of taken scripture and neuroscience and brought them together. It’s amazing how neuroscience is catching up with what the Bible says. What neuroscience has discovered that we already know is that spiritual practices like prayer, like meditation on God’s word, like contemplating God, His work, and His Word, decrease the stress response. So we all already have, most pastors already have the desire to have a healthy life of spiritual disciplines. But I would say just to remind yourself, we don’t do these things to get the benefit. We do it because it honors God and makes us more prepared to be the leaders that we want to be. So I would say that’s another one. Just soak your soul, prioritize spending time with God. Turn off your alerts on your phone. Turn off your alerts. Yeah, just do it. Get away. You know, that’s huge.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. I love this. It’s a great conversation. I do have one kind of question I’m just interested in, Charles. You’ve done a lot of study. A lot of neuroscience study, brain science study. What has been most surprising, maybe? What like, just capture, is like, whoa, this is wild, as you’ve studied this.

Charles Stone
I think one I’ve mentioned, like, stress did not really rise up on these surveys. But let me think what would be something that was surprising. Yeah, okay. Most pastors are pretty smart. Education, you’ve got to have some smarts. You’ve got to have emotional intelligence, and all those kinds of things. But we so easily get sucked into this vortex of the busyness. And I’ve been there. I wish I knew back then what I know now. And I think it’s the we know I shouldn’t be like this, but we actually do to stay there. Now, one little point here is, if a pastor’s like close to burnout, they’ve been under high stress, it’s not like taking a couple of days off or just a couple of weeks off. It really is, if you want long-term health, physical health, spiritual health, and emotional health, it’s not going to be an easy just, oh yeah, I do 1, 2, 3 these things. It’s a commitment to making some radical changes because when we are in our 60s or 70s, which should be the most productive time, and I’m not talking about maybe you’re in retirement, but the most productive time to leverage all this wisdom from the back that you’ve had for years, you don’t want to have a beaten up body that you just can’t do that. You can’t have coffee with the pastor because you’ve got so many doctor appointments, or you’ve got high blood pressure, all these kinds of things. So I think it’s that we know, but we don’t do.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. Brother, you’ve got the eyes and ears of brothers and sisters serving in ministry and on the front lines of ministry. I want to give you an opportunity, kind of as we’re closing down. Just what words of encouragement do you have for them?

Charles Stone
Yep, I would say, don’t let stress define you; rather, let it refine you. Don’t let stress define you; rather, let it refine you. Because it really is, Romans 5:3-4, an opportunity to build character. Then the last word of that Romans 5:3-4 is hope. There is hope. If you are spinning out or feel like you’re spinning out of control because you’re so stressed, there is hope. You can respond differently to the stress events of life by applying some of these biblically-based, neuroscience-informed practices. So there’s hope. You can change the way you respond to stress. Now, we can’t change what’s out there. We can’t change the fact that we may have a chronically sick child. We cannot change quickly that we may be in a little tiny church, and there’s no option for growth. There’s hope. We can change how we respond to those stress events. Those are the final two things I’d say.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love it. Absolutely love that, Charles. If our audience wants to connect more with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Charles Stone
Yeah, just go to my website, CharlesStone.com, 2 S’s in there, CharlesStone.com, and there’s some freebies there. There’s a little pop-up. You sign up to my blog, and you can also always unsubscribe. That’s easy to unsubscribe. But when you sign up, you get access to a whole bunch of free goodies around this book, around my book, Every Pastor’s First 180 Days, some other books, and a lot of free tools. One specific one on stress is like a one-pager that kind of gives you like a 21-day, or however long you want to make it, plan to reduce stress. So some freebies there, CharlesStone.com, and the book is on Amazon.

Jason Daye
Excellent. I love that. I love those resources. Thank you for that. And for those of you who are watching or listening along, we will have links to Charles’ website, so you can pick up those free resources. Links to Charles’ latest book, Stress Less, so you can order that as well. Then also, we create a toolkit that compliments every one of these conversations, so you can get that toolkit as well, which has not only insights that we’ve pulled from our conversation today, but also some questions for you and your ministry team at your local church to reflect upon and really think about this conversation and learn how you guys can stress less in your ministry and in your life. So you can find that at PastorServe.org/network, so be sure to check that out. Brother, it has been an absolute pleasure. Always love hearing just the new things you’re learning. You’re one of these people, Charles, that now I’ve known you for several years, and every time I talk to you, there’s just fresh stuff that you’re digging into, and it’s inspiring and encouraging. And I’m so grateful that you take those things that you learn and you are blessing the church with them. You’re pushing them back out. You’re engaging with ministry leaders. So thank you for all that you’re doing, my friend.

Charles Stone
Thanks, Jason.

Jason Daye
All right. God bless you.

Charles Stone
You, too, man.

Jason Daye
All right, thanks. Bye-bye.

Jason Daye
Here at Pastor Serve, we hope you’re truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage BackStage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend, and don’t forget our free Toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.