YOU Can Make a Difference!
by Charles Chandler, MTM Executive Director
In November 1993, the Federal Government mandated state employment commissions to provide a higher level of services to displaced workers whose profiles indicated they need additional assistance in their transition to new employment. The services include workshops where recipients train in fundamentals such as resume writing, search techniques and interviewing skills. While state agencies cannot attempt to meet the emotional needs of displaced workers, they do recognize the needs exist.
Consequently, the workshops provide a component on networking, on making contacts with friends, colleagues and churches in an effort to heal from the trauma of losing one’s job and on moving into productive employment. For one group of people, however, the most basic network has been eliminated through their loss of employment. They are pastors or ministers whose church congregations have terminated them from their ministry positions.
At first glance, the problems of these professionals seem insignificant to the larger community. However, recent studies indicate the population of this group is much larger than anyone realized. A study by Leadership journal (Winter, 1996) found that 22.8 percent of the responding readers have been forced out of their church ministry positions at least once during their careers. In 62 percent of these cases, the same congregation had forced the previous pastor out.
Those forced to resign have limited resources to cope with their situation. I know, I’ve been there. They no longer have the basis of their support system — church and friends. They have little, if any, idea of their legal rights. While conflict mediation organizations are becoming more prevalent, they demonstrate an allegiance to the church, not to the process of mediation.
At the Ministering to Ministers Foundation (MTM), we seek to address the unique needs of men and women who have experienced forced termination from churches or who are in the midst of conflict with leaders within their congregations. That’s our mission, our reason for being!
Modern society has difficulty accepting the fact that ministers need support. When these people become displaced workers, fewer services are available to them than to a layperson in a parallel situation. The pastor has no pastor to provide spiritual support. Members of a congregation still have a church family to support them through the loss of employment, but a minister does not. Often, the friends of a pastor withdraw and do not provide the support needed during the crisis.
Churches must face the enormity of this problem and its devastating results, which dampen the effectiveness of God’s message to His Family on earth. That being the case, what role does the individual church member play?
What can YOU do?
• YOU can pray for your minister and his or her family. You can pray for your church leaders. Prayer support is one of the greatest needs. Pray especially for the participants and leaders during our Wellness Retreats. Retreat dates and locations are listed in The Servant.
• YOU can assist in slowing down the process in your church when a mob mentality begins to develop. This enables “sane minds” an opportunity to prevail. YOU can seek decisions based on facts rather than rumor. YOU can foster a spirit of love and grace rather than anger and retaliation. Sometimes it takes only one person speaking up to stop a movement or to slow it down. YOU can be that person.
• YOU can work toward creating a healthy organizational system in your church. Laying the problems on the table may be painful, but it can be the first step toward health.
• YOU can contribute financially toward the support of the MTM ministry so that we can reach out to more of God’s “called but wounded” servants. Financial resources are a major factor in MTM’s effort to help more ministers and their families experience healing. Healthy ministers help produce healthy churches. And, healthy churches help produce healthy communities.
YOU are important because YOU can make a difference. You can be part of a movement toward fairness and health. Your investment of prayer, leadership and money can be multiplied through committed servants being more effective in their ministry. I think you will feel good about such a decision, and I believe God blesses this kind of personal investment.