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PART ONE:  THE SILENT KILLER (THE PROBLEM OF STRESS)

“Answer me, Lord, out of the goodness of your love; in your great mercy turn to me. Do not hide your face from your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.” 

–Psalm 69:16-17

 

CHAPTER 1: THE ALMOST-DEATH OF A PASTOR (AND HIS WIFE)

At mile 36, while pulling my team up the final ascent, I (Shane) felt a stabbing pain in my chest. I pulled off the front to recover, drafting from the bikers flying past me. I tucked into the back of the peloton, expecting to sit in their draft to lower my heart rate, which was pushing 195.

I couldn’t recover and couldn’t catch my breath, even on the descent. A harsh pain hammered my chest. A teammate slowed and asked me how I was.

“I’m good,” I panted. How could I be this out of shape?  I gave my teammate a weak thumbs-up to go on without me. My legs slowed in revolutions. I drifted away from the pack, pedaling lightly, panting, checking my numbers. Still 195. Not good.

Slowly, I pedaled alone back to my car and drove home. I stopped for gas on the way. At home, I showered painfully and told myself nothing was wrong.

Epic pastor-perspective. Grit your teeth and pray. You’ll get through it.

When my wife Sue found me hunched over the kitchen counter, breathing heavily and unable to eat, she gave me two adult-strength aspirin and insisted I go to the hospital because I was having a heart attack.

I dismissed the crazy suggestion but lay down on the couch. My doctors had always raved about what great shape my body and heart were in. I was certainly not having a heart attack.

At that point, my son Brent, a physical therapist, walked into the house. He took my blood pressure. Normally, 120/80, it was already at 160/100. Three separate times, Brent manually took my blood pressure. It kept climbing. Sue was already upstairs packing a bag. When my blood pressure hit 180/120, I agreed to go to the hospital.

The ER nurse took blood and hooked me up to two EKG machines, which both indicated a healthy heart. The doctor wasn’t sure why my heart seemed distressed. Pain medication dripped through the IV. My heart rate and blood pressure slowed. The pain decreased. I felt tired, but more like my post-race self.

“We’re going to let you rest a bit before you go home. We don’t think it’s a heart attack,” said the ER doctor.

Then a male nurse, only three months into nursing, studied my numbers and shook his head. “I know I’m not as experienced as everyone here,” he said, “but something’s wrong with these EKGs.” He paused, uncomfortable. “You should listen to the doctor…but I think I’d want to call the cardiologist.”

“Call him,” we said.

Minutes later, the cardiologist entered my room.  “I’ve checked your blood work. You’ve got cardiac enzymes in your blood. You’ve had a heart attack,” he said. “I’ve called my team. They’ll be here in 30 minutes. I’ll do a heart catherization first to see what the problem is.”

A heart attack? How was this possible?

 

The Silent Killer

         Many mental health experts refer to stress as “the silent killer.” We never think our stress is as dangerous as it actually is.

         We all have stress. We’re used to it. We complain about it. We even brag about it. We compare our stress to other people’s. If we’re endurance athletes, like I am, we experience stress as part of the training process. I max out my heart rate on purpose.

For years, I had endured long work hours, the weight of pastoral care, the abuse from angry members, the tiredness. At first, I thrived on it. 

I acclimated to the insomnia, the panic attacks, the stomach aches, the muscle tension. I saw doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists, pharmacists. When my body craved change, I responded with grit and tenacity. I never slowed because my ministry never slowed. 

Without realizing it, I engaged in silent, systematic and intentional dying.

         Physicians surmise that 80% of their patients’ symptoms are stress-related. Cancer, stroke, body pain, digestion, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and other diseases are all linked to stress and its negative effect on the body. I’m guessing you handle stress like we did.

         We all take vacations. We exercise. We change our diet and take some pills. We keep going, running at break-neck speed, trying to save the world. We’re living for Jesus, after all. Our families understand. They’re ministering right along with us. We’re at church every day, and we love it. We’re saving the world.

All the while, we’re killing ourselves.

 

Cue the wife

At 11 pm, while we waited for the cardiac team to arrive, I (Sue) called our kids, all young adults, to come to the hospital and see Shane before his heart catheterization. The cardiologist hadn’t promised what he’d find. It could turn into open-heart surgery. It had been nearly six hours already since Shane’s heart attack. We were already lucky.

“But Dad’s an Ironman,” one of our sons responded when I told him. “How is this possible?”

Although the cardiologist was confident, his harsh directives indicated that too much time had been lost already. He was anxious to look at Shane’s arteries and take whatever measures necessary. After Shane asked a few clarifying questions, the cardiologist snapped, “Do you want to keep talking about this, or do you want me to save your life?”

Save his life, please.

Shane said his good-byes to each of our three sons and one daughter- in-law (at the time), expressing words of love and blessing. Shane and I cried together and kissed good-bye, barely finding any words that could sum up the impact of a loving 30-year marriage. 

I began pleading. God, you can’t do this to me. Please, God. I can’t be a widow like my mother was. This can’t be happening.

The nurses wheeled Shane into the operating room for a standard forty-minute procedure.

As I sat in the waiting room, my emotions ranged from anger to despondency to hope. And always fear. My heart raced. I felt nauseous. For three years, I had been worrying about Shane’s heart (both body and soul). I thought the weight of the ministry was going to kill him. I asked him to change his schedule and filter the input he allowed into his life. He always agreed. But we had to get through the present crisis. And then the next one. And the next one. The crises never stopped.

I watched our sons, sitting close together in the tiny waiting room, speaking in hushed tones about things that didn’t interest them. Waiting for news. Barely looking at me. Maybe they could see the agony in my face.

I told myself that God was good, that He would bring us through all of this. No matter what happened, we would be fine. That’s what I had always believed. But in this moment, for this brief time, faith seemed cliché. Like an embroidered pillow or a Facebook post. Of no actual use to me.

Forty minutes turned to sixty, and sixty turned to ninety, and ninety turned to hundreds. What was taking so long? He must be alive, right? Or the surgeon would have come out?

Three hours later, the cardiologist emerged with the news: Shane had a 95% blockage of the LAD (widow-maker) artery. He would have surely died during the night if he had gone home. It was a miracle that he had even survived the bike ride. 

According to our veteran cardiologist, only one in a thousand patients survive a heart attack to the widow-maker artery if they don’t get to a hospital immediately following the attack. Shane should have died on the ride. Or in his car. Or at home. Or while I drove him to the ER. 

He should have become another shocking story of an athlete dropping dead, found hours later by a stranger on the side of the road. 

 

A light in the darkness

We love visiting the lighthouses. We enjoy climbing the winding stairs for an expansive view of the ocean. We enjoy ice cream at the local ice cream shop (there’s always ice cream near lighthouses); we walk the coastline looking for shells and take selfies in front of the ocean. 

Lighthouses have value for us as tourists, not as sailors. We find them picturesque but not necessary.

Every lighthouse has a unique shape, color, and pattern so that ships can easily recognize them from a distance. The lighthouse’s distinctiveness tells sailors which shoreline they’re facing and the dangers associated with it. Lighthouses stand in plain view on rocky peninsulas and sandy keys, warning sailors of reefs, rocks, currents, sholes, and other dangers. They also serve to guide ships into safe waters, to find channels and harbors with water deep enough to navigate.

At the top of the lighthouse is the lantern room, where the light gleams every night, giving ships enough warning to make course corrections. Before the invention of sonar or GPS navigation, lighthouse keepers walked the gallery deck and personally kept the lamps burning all night. Even today, 60-70% of lighthouses are operational. They provide a visual reference for ship captains, even those who rely on sonar and GPS.

Our body’s stress signals are like a warning beacon to our souls that race through the darkness toward self-destruction. Whenever we enter dangerous waters, our warning system flashes, “Don’t come this way! No safe passage here.” Each of us must decide whether to view the lighthouse (the body) and its glaring lamp (the body’s stress signal) as a beautiful structure or an important deterrent.

Based on our research and our personal experience, we can say unequivocally that your body is warning you about the dangers it’s facing. Before Shane’s heart attack, both of our bodies were signaling us about our stress and anxiety. We weren’t paying attention to the beacon.

“I want to go back in,” the cardiologist said to us early the next morning. “I noticed another possible spot in Shane’s widow-maker yesterday, a little further down from the one we fixed. We might need to insert another stent. I couldn’t leave him under any more radiation at the time.” 

On Shane’s second day in the hospital, the cardiologist performed another heart catheterization and identified a 75% blockage just millimeters below Shane’s first blockage. The first stent would have saved Shane’s life for the moment, but Shane would have likely died from a second heart attack later. We would’ve left the hospital thinking he was good. 

Because we ignored the beacons.

 

To quit or not to quit?

         Forty-two percent of pastors considered leaving the ministry in 2022 and 2023. That’s up from the 38% following COVID. Although the trauma of the pandemic has passed, pastors still haven’t recovered. Almost half are thinking about quitting the calling they trained to do. Of those considering quitting the ministry, over half (56%) cite stress as the reason. Pastors report that the stress of ministry feels overpowering. Even 34% of pastors who haven’t considered leaving their jobs indicate that stress has significantly affected their calling.

         In 2023, we began a podcast called Stress Test: The Heartbeat of a Healthy Leader. By interviewing great leaders, we wanted to learn how to better manage stress, lead through crises, and encourage other pastors to share their catalytic leadership moments. We hoped that by sharing our heart attack story, we could warn ministry leaders about the dangers of ignoring “normal” stress. 

Every leader we’ve ever talked to (or heard about) has at least one catalytic story. Every leader has a moment when he or she decides to change because something unhealthy has happened or is about to happen. We found that pastors, pastor’s wives, and non-profit leaders are concerned about personal health and ministry stress, but they often think distress is unavoidable. That’s what we thought.

Pastors’ answers to our stress questions are nearly universal:

• They have thought about leaving their ministry or they think about it with frequency
• They feel emotionally beaten up by other Christians
• They spend an enormous amount of time handling staff problems
• They’re worried about their spouse and/or their kids
• They regularly receive harsh or cruel criticisms over circumstances beyond their control
• They have had serious health issues caused by stress 

These are the signs of the stress that kills.

Stress always begins slowly, like normal work stress. At first, the problems seem strangely exciting to manage. People need our help! Then we experience the weighty stress of loving people while they’re suffering under addiction, grief, and pain. We give counseling, but they do not take it. We love them, but they leave our church anyway. We try our hardest, but we can’t seem to make people happy. 

Stress feels like empathy combined with fear. We unknowingly carry the overwhelming burden of unmet expectations and disappointment. A love of serving morphs into a confusing blend of performance, resentment, and exhaustion.

We want to handle stress how Jesus handled his, but it doesn’t seem possible. We must get honest about the tension to release it. More on this later. 

 

We didn’t see it coming

Within the first year of assuming the lead pastor role, I (Shane) noticed a dramatic increase in the leadership stress I was used to. I had been managing half the staff and preaching half the Sundays, but I hadn’t carried the unexplainable weight of being the lead shepherd.

I began seeing doctors about my stress. No one seemed worried. Granted, I didn’t often eat clean and lean, but that’s why I raced road bikes and burned 2000 calories per ride. I did triathlons and competitive running and cycling. I felt like I had a good plan for healthy living. 

My physician offered an easy fix: anxiety and sleep medication. Calm your brain and get some rest. Also a cyclist, my physician assured me that I was not at risk for a heart attack because I possessed none of the physical contributing factors for heart disease. Check any that apply to you:

• Family history of heart disease
• Overweight
• Not exercising
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Rapid heart rate
• Smoker
• Abusing alcohol or drugs

“We wish everyone were as healthy as you,” he always said.

Ironically, the morning following my heart attack, my cardiologist ran through this exact list of contributing factors. Do any of these apply to you?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The cardiologist responded with surprise. “Do you have a stressful job?”

Sue and I laughed, immediately and simultaneously. It was 2021.

Stress?

“Yeah,” I said. “You could say that.”

“Well, maybe you should change that or find another job,” he said.

Huh.

That’s a complicated decision. Leaving a pastorate usually means leaving your church family, your town, your kids’ schools, and your friends. Pastoring opportunities don’t abound everywhere, certainly not ones with a healthy DNA from the previous pastor. 

Pastoring doubles as your calling, not just a job. You were called to your church.

Or at least, calling and job feel like the same thing. We think, This is what I’m meant to do. This is who I am.

But is it?

Jesus doesn’t link our calling to our identity. Our calling is simple:

• Prioritize Jesus over everything (Matthew 10:37).
• Make Jesus-followers (Matthew 28:19).

 

The big scary question

When I (Shane) woke, I felt Sue’s hand in mine. Her eyes were brimming with tears. 

She quietly asked, “Can we be done?” 

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.” 

But I didn’t know how to do that.

We didn’t know how to quit the ministry. We only knew how to work harder, how to tough it out. We had not prepared ourselves for this seismic crisis of faith and practice. It was time to change everything. We knew that for sure.

 

Healthy Heartbeats for “The almost-death of a pastor (and his wife)”:

1. Write down the most stressful situations you’ve been through in the last five years. How have you processed the stress? Who helped you? Run the list by someone who knows you well and get their feedback on the stress you experienced during these times and how you handled it.
2. Take the “Stress Assessment” in the Resources at the back of the book.

Read Zeal Without Burnout by Christopher Ash and The Resilient Pastor by Glenn Packiam.