Also, two months before his burnout incident, my father’s first grandchild had been born. He was not prepared to be a grandfather as that seemed like something old people experienced. He was only 53 years old, which is certainly old enough to be a grandfather.
Dad did finally come home. We were so glad to see him. He resumed preaching and engaging in other responsibilities as a pastor. However, he knew he needed a fresh start. He needed a different type of challenge.
This was not a fairy tale where everything turned out fine once Dad got home. He was still stressed. This did not last days, weeks, or months. It lasted several years. It was three years before Dad could preach again without medication to help him deal with his anxiety, and the fear of another panic attack while preaching.
Four months after my father returned home, we moved to Philadelphia, where my parents went to start new churches as Southern Baptist missionaries. This was the new start Dad needed. Long-term it led to the most fulfilling 13 years of my father’s ministry. During this time, he became a regional denominational executive director and served a term as second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
My father was not the only one in our family impacted by his burnout. I had two married sisters. One lived in Baltimore and the other in North Carolina. The sister in Baltimore was invaluable to my mother during the seven weeks my father was gone. She also worried a lot about what would happen to Mother, Dad, and me.
The younger of the two sisters did not have primary experiences with the rest of our family during Dad’s burnout and the several years afterward. She defended Dad and felt the rest of us were being hard on him. It was difficult for her to understand the slow pace of the healing process because Dad seemed fine to her.
My mother was a spiritual rock. That does not mean she did not worry. She prayed a lot. She cried a lot. She counted on me. I did not always know how best to respond. She stayed on the telephone talking to our network about other ministry possibilities for Dad.
I thought through what I might have done that caused my father to burn out. I was in 10th grade, and it was my first and only year in a large downtown high school with major cultural and academic challenges. I had extremely low grades that year and worried I would not pass 10th grade. In a way, I was having my own crisis, but I was unable to fully express it because the focus needed to be on my father.
Moving to Philadelphia was a new beginning each of us needed. My personal challenges disappeared in a new environment. Dad’s emotional and spiritual health slowly came back.
Did my father become an ex-pastor? In a way. In retirement, after 13 years in Pennsylvania, he became a pastor again. That is when the final healing took place. I will save that story for another post. Let’s call it—Is There Ministry After Burnout?
This article originally appeared here.
