A local mental health professional was on an entrepreneurship podcast this past week, and he started talking about the impact of the mental health of leaders on their organizations. He said,

“The anxiety you haven’t named in private shows up as decisions in public. Your team? They’re absorbing your unprocessed shame. They don’t know what they’re carrying, but they’re carrying it.”

He called “I’m fine” the “most expensive sentence a leader can say” for the way that unprocessed anxiety and shame can derail an organization, and lead to burnout, tension, and high turnover of staff. If that’s even somewhat true for an entrepreneur, how much more would it be true for a pastor? 

In the recent Netflix hit, Big Mistakes, Dan Levy plays an (admittedly unconvincing) pastor who gets wrapped up in a series of ever escalating organized-crime based hijinks. In the midst of it, he is wrestling with relationship issues caused by his shame around keeping his boyfriend a secret from his congregation and his family. In the middle of this chaotic unraveling of his life, Dan’s character gives a sermon that made me wince at the tv. The character is so unwound, using a stole to cover the stress rashes and mob-inflicted bruises, that his questions of how you are supposed to believe in God when the world is so terrifying turn from rhetorical to literally asking the congregation, spun out, pleading for someone to save him from himself while the congregation watches, confused. 

It was so viscerally uncomfortable not because of the scene itself, the show is a comedy, and the scene is played as one, but because I know I have stood on a church stage and looked out at a group of people, trying to say something that sounded like Good News, all the while knowing that my I’m covering up my own bruises (metaphorical) and stress rashes (literal).

All of us who lead ministries are human. We have anxieties and shame and grief. We have weeks, or even months, that we feel like we’re gasping for air. That doesn’t negate our call. It’s not responsible to bring those open wounds to the pulpit, but also sometimes we’re the only person who can go up there, and the wounds are open regardless. 

So what do we do? How do we show up as ourselves but not in a way that causes harm, and how do we remain a safe place for others while figuring out how to be a safe place for ourselves? 

In the interview I listened to, the therapist calls this portion of yourself that feels unshareable the 3%. In his framing, at our best we’re 97% honest, and the 3% is where the shame hides. For the record, this therapist and I disagree on some of these numbers – I don’t think anyone in ministry is 97% honest. But the point stands, it is those things you can’t say, for long enough, that begin to creep into your sermons, your bible studies, your pastoral care, and create a weight in others that they feel but can’t name. As the therapist said, “Shame compounds the way debt does. Quietly. Until it’s not quiet anymore.” 

He offered this as a framing, a permission slip for vulnerability:  “I want to share my 3%.” There are people in our lives who want the whole 100% from us. Not people in our organization or congregation, but our partners, our siblings, our trusted friends, our mentors, even our own therapists or counselors. That 3% (or more) needs to see sunlight, it needs to be held carefully by the hands of someone who is willing and able to take it. Because if it doesn’t show up in those conversations, it will show up somewhere else, it will make itself known in times and places you wouldn’t have chosen. 

This week, think about who you would want to share your 3% with, and about who’s 3% you feel like you want to make space to carry. If you need an opener for the conversation just send them this blog… or this Netflix clip, and tell them that this is what you’re trying to avoid. 

Thanks for your patience these last few weeks as the blog hasn’t come out. There are a couple of unpublished drafts that felt a little too much like that clip above, and we should be back to regular posting.