This week I found myself doing something I encourage others to do, but am not always good at doing myself. After picking up what my daughter cheerfully described as “freshers’ flu”, I took some time off to recover.
The decision should have been straightforward. Yet, like many people, I found myself weighing responsibilities, commitments, and the sense that there was work that ought still to be done.
I was struck, therefore, by a recent BBC report which quoted one employee saying, “I drag myself in because I don’t want to let the team down.” The challenge is rarely a lack of commitment. More often it is that commitment itself becomes the reason we struggle to stop.
This is something we recognise at St Luke’s as we seek to support clergy wellbeing.
One difficulty is that clergy sickness is often invisible and frequently underreported.
Some carry on regardless, work from home when unwell, cancel only the most essential commitments, or simply absorb periods of illness without formally recording them. We know a great deal about vocation, service, and availability. We are often less comfortable acknowledging limitation.
Many of us know the quiet internal conversation. There is always one more email to answer, one more meeting to attend, one more pastoral conversation that feels too important to postpone. Ministry is deeply relational work, and relationships do not easily fit within office hours. The privilege of accompanying people through moments of joy, grief, uncertainty, and transition can also make stepping back feel uncomfortable.
Yet I find myself returning to a verse from 3 John:
“Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, just as it is well with your soul.” (3 John 2)
What strikes me is the wholeness of the prayer. Physical health and spiritual wellbeing are not set against one another. Neither is treated as an optional extra. Human flourishing involves both.
What are we being formed to believe about faithfulness if we consistently neglect our own wellbeing in the service of ministry?
Of course, there are seasons when demands increase. Emergencies happen. Crises do not consult our diaries. The call to ministry includes generosity, sacrifice, and availability.
But there is a difference between responding to occasional need and adopting a pattern that quietly assumes we are indispensable.
One lesson reflective supervision teaches is that exhausted people rarely see clearly. When we become depleted, our capacity for listening, discernment, patience, creativity, and compassion can be diminished. We continue to serve, but often from a shrinking reservoir.
Acknowledging illness can feel counterintuitive. It can even feel like a failure of commitment.
Yet perhaps the opposite is true.
Perhaps one of the most pastoral things a minister can do when genuinely unwell is to step back and recover. Not because ministry matters less, but because it matters so much.
Illness reminds us of something vocation can sometimes obscure: we are not simply ministers, leaders, carers, or pastors. We are people. We have bodies that tire, immune systems that occasionally lose the battle, and limits that cannot be negotiated away by goodwill.
This also raises an important formation question. If clergy repeatedly work through illness, what are we teaching ourselves, and what are we teaching others? What assumptions about calling, faithfulness, and worth are being reinforced?
The example set matters. Congregations notice whether their clergy allow themselves to be human. Colleagues notice whether sickness is acknowledged or hidden. Those we serve are often more likely to seek permission for their own recovery when they have seen it modelled in others.
There is also an institutional question. Churches and Christian charities like St Luke’s need cultures where sickness can be reported honestly, recovery is encouraged rather than apologised for, and taking time to heal is understood as responsible rather than disappointing.
Healthy ministry is not simply a matter of resilient individuals pushing through adversity. It is shaped by the expectations, practices, and cultures in which people serve.
Those in caring professions often struggle most to receive the care they readily offer to others. Clergy, in particular, have rarely been good at reporting sickness. Whatever the reason, an inaccurate picture of clergy wellbeing makes it harder for individuals and institutions alike to respond wisely.
Faithful ministry is not strengthened by pretending we are well when we are not.
As I return to 3 John 2, I am struck again by the simplicity of the prayer. The writer hopes that physical health and spiritual wellbeing might flourish together. There is no suggestion that one should be sacrificed for the other.
Perhaps part of wise and sustainable ministry is learning that recovery is not an interruption to our calling. Sometimes it is an expression of it.
Read more: when clergy continue working through illness, who else may quietly end up carrying the consequences?