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The first in an occasional series on pastors and mental health

Click here to view the related articles in the series

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DULUTH — The dump truck in front of him had stopped, but Mike Woods thought about keeping his foot on the accelerator. He could end it here. The stress. The preoccupation with death. The emotional outbursts.

Instead, he applied the brake. He drove home, got in bed, pulled the covers up, and started crying.

He had to get it together. His people at church would be expecting their pastor.

Mental health of ministers has traditionally been a taboo subject in the Church and can take on many forms from stress to depression to Bipolar disorder. However, mental health counselors and Convention leaders say it’s an area that affects not only the individual, but the local church, and can’t be swept under the rug any longer.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, roughly 1 in 4 Americans ages 18 and older suffer from a diagnosed mental disorder in a given year. That number translates into 57.7 million people, equal to a broad swath of the Southeast from Mississippi to the Carolinas and Kentucky down to Florida. Of that group, nearly half – 45 percent – meet criteria for having two or more disorders.

Newsweek magazine recently reported that six million men will be diagnosed with depression this year. In a culture where being a man means toughing it out, millions more suffer on their own, and the wounds can’t be treated by rubbing dirt on them.

And in the world of a pastor, the problem can lie deeper than conventional reasoning such as unconfessed sin.

“I used to think that I could just get up and go on, but I couldn’t,” said Woods, pastor of First Baptist Powder Springs who has been diagnosed with depression. “We [pastors] put expectations on ourselves that are unreasonable. My personality is one where when I see someone hurting, I want to heal that person. I want them to have relief.”

In 1989 Woods was walking with his wife, Myra, through a Kroger’s parking lot when something she said triggered a verbal assault from him.

Woods can’t remember what his wife said to make him angry, only that 20 minutes after his tirade began he was weeping and asking her to forgive him. A visit to his doctor a few days later resulted in prescribed medication to treat anxiety and a non-negotiable demand that Woods take some time off.

Events repeated themselves, though, in a Panama City, Fla. parking lot during the mandated vacation.

Not long after returning home Woods found himself thinking about plowing into the back of the dump truck to end the pain. He was admitted to the psychiatric unit at Emory Medical Center in Atlanta.

Dealing with the pain of others in addition to maintaining the image of a spiritual pillar can become a pressure-cooker. Robert Anderson, Georgia Baptist Convention Pastoral Care consultant, says that when some ministers reach that point of breaking through the façade, they reach a turning point and get the needed help.

“When the pain gets great enough and the disappointment significant enough, many pastors get real with themselves,” he added. “That’s when they see the reality of the problem.”

Woods’ reality should’ve come before that day he thought about plowing into the rear end of the truck on Thornton Road. He says now he can see how, at 11 years old, the death of his father and a string of naturally occurring funerals throughout his teens left him with a fixation with death.

“Add to it that I chose a profession where you deal with death a good bit,” he says. “After graduating from Southern [Seminary], I took a ‘graying’ church in Atlanta. I had my first funeral there before I officially took the office at the church. I helped with funerals for people who weren’t even members of the church. Once, I led/performed/officiated at 53 funerals in one year.”

Due to the nature of their position and prominence in a community, even one numbering only a few hundred, psychiatrist Michael Lyles says pastors and their wives are prime candidates to suffer from clinical depression.

“These people experience their depression in private. They don’t feel comfortable letting others know what they’re going through,” said Lyles, a Sunday School teacher at Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Roswell who has practiced for 20 of his 24 years in the metro area. “The wife is even more susceptible because there is such an expectation of her to be perfect.”

During his career Lyles has spent considerable time working with pastors through different addictions and mental conditions. He’s one of the keynote speakers at the American Association of Christian Counselors’ World Conference to be held this September in Nashville.

“Pastors are naturally caretakers. They have work stress, and deal with the stresses of other people. Taking care of others and not themselves eventually adds up. Their personal problems come to fruition and they can’t deal with it.”

“Expectations begin in oneself,” said Anderson of the GBC. “Those expectations are affected according to what we perceive others desire of us. We all know in our head that we have an audience of One, but don’t act that out in our schedules, activity, and planning. If a pastor doesn’t hear affirmation he only works harder.”

Woods’ wife, Myra, has been on both sides of depression, having been treated for it before her husband began experiencing symptoms and finding herself in the caregiver role.

“I can’t tell you which side is worse,” she said. “Eventually, you reach a place where you can’t deal with it yourself and depend on God. Going through depression gave me some compassion for Mike, and I’m not a merciful person.”

Myra knew she had reached a crossroads when, after working with her husband and his depression for a period of time, she walked through the couple’s garage on her way to do some laundry.

“I walked down the steps and saw an orange electrical chord tied in a noose slung over a plumbing pipe with a chair underneath it,” she remembers. “I sat down with the Lord and said ‘I can’t keep him alive.’

“I left the noose and the chair, thinking it was a decision he had to make on his own. It stayed there several weeks until he took it down.”

Thoughts of suicide are common of those with depression, Lyles added.

“I was speaking at a pastor’s meeting in another state once when at the lunch break a minister came to me and asked if we could talk. He told me how the night before he had sat in his room with a loaded gun, thinking about suicide. His wife talked him out of it.

“What I’ve found from pastors over the years is that they feel they can’t talk about it. They don’t want to tell others for fear of losing their churches and homes. This totally goes against what the church is supposed to be. No one should suffer in isolation.”

While a patient at Emory, Woods did something he only thought was natural for a pastor in a mental care facility. He wrote his resignation, but the church said no.

“We didn’t accept his resignation primarily because we knew it was a depression situation,” said Jerry Winton, deacon chairman of First Baptist Powder Springs at the time. “We loved Mike so much that we didn’t want to accept it when he wasn’t capable of making such a decision.”

After leaving the hospital, a process of gradually working Woods back into the church began.

“He attended Wednesday nights not to preach or be in charge, but just to be there,” said Winton. “He’d show up a couple of Sundays and pop into the office during the week. It was probably at least six months before he tried preaching a sermon. Even then he’d preach a few and then rest.

“Every other week we’d go eat breakfast at this little place in Douglasville. He wouldn’t come to business meetings, but I’d drop by his house and let him know what happened so he’d be up to date on things.

“Before we knew it, he was himself again. It took a good year to get to that point.”

The congregation at First Baptist Powder Springs did it right, stated Lyles.

“A pastor needs to see someone professionally. Don’t threaten his job. His problems could very well be medical and not have anything to do with sin. Pastors need to find someone they can talk to and get evaluated by their primary care doctor. The face-saving and putting on a false front are really kind of scary, but I’ve seen people do it through the years.”

Winton agrees.

“He’s not just a pastor, he’s a person. You love other people in the church. You should love your pastor even more so.”

Mike Woods’ thoughts of suicide and his stay at Emory happened in 1990 while he was in his ninth year at First Baptist. He’s still there, having seen the church grow. Since getting help, he and his wife both note significant changes in his personality.

“There are things we think we can handle because we’ve been trained to do that,” said Mike, “but there are certain things in our lives that we realize we can’t handle in the flesh.” Describing the pain of depression isn’t easy, says his wife.

“If you’ve never seen green, how do you describe it to somebody else? If you think you know what it’s like to be down and depressed, you don’t know the difference with clinical depression. It’s hell on earth. You need the support of a professional, friends, and medication if necessary.”

The couple has two children, neither of whom have shown signs of depression. Micah, a senior at McEachern High School in Powder Springs, plays on the golf team and is described as an “optimist” by his mother. Their daughter, Mary Lynn, is a serving through the International Mission Board as a Journeyman in Rome, Italy, building relationships and witnessing to students among three universities. Her parents will travel to visit her this fall.

Since letting his depression become known, the couple have found themselves in another role – counselling others experiencing it for themselves or with a family member.

“A lot of men have come to him to talk about depression,” said Myra. “Many women have asked me how I got through it.”

Mike Woods still travels down the road where he had suicidal thoughts years ago. The highway is near where he lives, so he drives it for various reasons.

Recently he found himself at the same stoplight. He says his mind went back to that day, but not to thoughts of hopelessness. When the light turned green, he pressed the gas but didn’t go home.

He went on to church. His people were expecting their pastor.

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Help available for pastors

The Georgia Baptist Convention provides supplemental funding for services rendered by counselors/psychotherapists and family therapists from an approved network of counselors.

These counselors have documents of clinical certification and/or licensure, professional liability insurance, and are active members of a local Georgia Baptist church. There are currently 54 counselors in 34 different locations across the state.

A $35 supplement per counseling session with a counselor approved by GBC Church-Minister Relations is provided. The patient’s name is not revealed and kept within privacy guidelines with the counseling service.

LifeWay offers multiple resources through the website www.lifeway.com/leadercare. A toll-free hotline for pastors is available as well as information on retreats sponsored by LeaderCare. The retreats, one held in March and a second slated for Aug. 20-24 in Memphis, are free to pastors and their wives who qualify. Travel expenses are also provided for. Related articles can also be found on the site.

For more information contact: GBC Church-Minister Relations (770) 936-5364; LifeWay LeaderCare (888) 789-1911; Dr. Michael Lyles (770) 993-0051; or Mike Woods, First Baptist Powder Springs (770) 943-9333.