Dark Energy: The Psychology of Ministry in the Time of Covid

The surprising thing, for me, is that the Covid crisis hasn’t made me depressed. Stressed, yes. But that’s a different feeling, with an obvious cause. However, while I pretend to copy Paul in his concern for the church (2 Co. 11.28), there is a danger of burnout. According to John Sanford, ministry burnout occurs when we use up our ‘fuel’, the spiritual and emotional resources, needed for pastoral activity. But where to find new fuel? My spiritual director recommended once that I look for where I find ‘energy’ during the day, suggesting this would be a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence in my life.

What I feel now, however, is a different kind of energy, a ‘dark energy’ (to borrow a cosmological term). My anxiety is deflected into busyness: organising the church, even writing this Blog (an attempt to understand the crisis, my theological equivalent to Maurice Blanchot’s “Writing the Disaster”) – but it’s frequently a form of displacement activity, to avoid feeling the weight of the disaster. I suspect the same is true of other pastors. We too often take refuge in activism, rather than discerning the signs of the times (Mt. 16.3). Although understanding the times is essential for knowing what to do (1 Chron. 12.32), we tend to follow our initial instincts, rather than listening.

Many of us are feeling a nervous energy, which can lead easily to nervous exhaustion. What will be left at the end of all this? What will we take out of this with us? Will the Son of Man find faith on earth (Lk. 18.8)? Eugene Petersen compared ministry to a “furnace”, where God tests and tries, refines, the pastor’s soul. As a mentor, Hugh Shelbourne, once told me: God is more interested in what he’s doing in you, than what he’s doing through you. What steps can I/we take to ensure we leave this time stronger than when we entered?

Perhaps this covid-wilderness is a ‘zone’; as in Tarkovsky’s film, “Stalker”, where the central character (Stalker) leads a group through the “The Zone” (a pycho-cultural premonition of Chernobyl: watch the brilliant recent HBO series), encountering sunken signs of transcendence and otherness, in pools/puddles: crosses, crucifixes, icons. The open question is whether these travellers leave transformed? Although Tarkovsky himself had a mystical bent, it’s unclear whether he ever found personal faith in Christ.

My daughter works with a charity mentoring young people in London. She is very aware of the need for emotional awareness in the stress of the crisis. Often, people are only conscious of feeling ‘bad’ or ‘good’; there is little ability to be more precise. Our feelings remain a confused mass of conflicting impulses, which we are then unable to resolve, or to act on in any sensible way. Hence the appeal of courses during lockdown, which encourage mindfulness. Often criticised as being for ‘snowflakes’, however, this concern for “well-being” is one God shares.

“The Lord be exalted, who delights in the well-being of his servant.” (Ps. 35.27 NIVUK)