By Jeff Fulmer

I should confess right off that I voted for George W. Bush in 2000 because, in part, he was a man of faith.  He called himself a “compassionate conservative,” which was how I liked to think of myself.  After a couple of years, I realized the man I had voted for wasn’t very compassionate or conservative, at least not fiscally.  By the end of his second term, I was ready for someone totally different.   Yet, even though my politics had shifted, I still wanted to vote for someone that shared my values.

In 2007, I heard a rumor that Barrack Obama was going to visit the Bethel AME Church in my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.  He was here to campaign with Harold Ford, who was running for the US Senate.  While then-Senator Obama wasn’t yet running for President, he was obviously considering it.  Like a lot of people, I’d heard Senator Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and was intrigued enough that I drove across town to see him in person.

When we got there on Sunday morning, we were surprised that the small church wasn’t even full.   It didn’t seem like word had gotten out.  I don’t remember any cameras or reporters.   While we were about the only white people, we were warmly welcomed.   The young minister admitted he was nervous and then went on to pray in a moving way.  The singing rang to the rafters and there was a real feeling that the Holy Spirit was in the house.

When it came time for Senator Obama to say a few words, I expected to hear a well-rehearsed stump speech.   Instead, he openly and enthusiastically talked about his background and his coming to faith.   Apparently, he told us a lot more than he told Franklin Graham about how he came to accept Christ, at least more than Franklin chooses to remember.   We all left moved by the entire service and I felt that I had not only witnessed a great speaker, but someone I could believe in again.

As President Obama’s first term nears completion, I am still proud of my vote and the record he is running on for re-election.   He has not worn his faith on his sleeve or taken up the social issues that divide us as a country.  For me, that’s a huge step in the right direction. To my continual amazement, he has consistently risen above the rancor and the hostility that is regularly hurled at him.  And, whether conscious of it or not, he is quietly following the principals I find in the Bible.

For example, President Obama has provided access to medical care for people who least can afford it.  He expanded the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to insure four million children and pregnant mothers.  (President Bush vetoed two attempts to expand coverage to this same group).  Prior to the Affordable Healthcare Act, anyone with a ‘pre-existing condition,’ could be denied coverage, charged two or three times what they were paying, or have their benefits slashed.

Another tangible way of sticking up for the little guy is through the Credit Card Reform Act. This caps and cuts an assortment of fees, gives consumers more reasonable opportunities to pay off their debt, and restricts a credit card company’s ability to arbitrarily raise interest rates.  President Obama boosted funding for the SEC to fight insider trading and started the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, once again standing up to challenges from the powerful banking lobby and Republicans.

While domestic oil production has increased during President Obama’s first term, he has given the EPA more tools to enforce existing laws on the books. He’s also been investing in cleaner forms of energy, such as wind, solar, and bio-fuels.   Perhaps over-reaching at times, he’s at least attempting to give alternatives a chance to compete with big oil, gas and coal.  Taking a stand for the environment sometimes comes at political peril and there will be many who will ridicule anything that deviates from business as usual.

President Obama is in the process of ending two foreign wars that have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars.  While no can accuse President Obama of being weak on defense, he has sought peaceful solutions first.  His critics will point to the deficit, which is a valid concern.   However, slashing the budget during a recession is a sure way to extend the economic downturn.  It also seems to me that President Obama has been more than willing to negotiate in good faith on deficit reduction, putting cost-cutting measures on the table in exchange for very modest tax increases on the most wealthy.

These are the types of the issues that affect people’s lives and where principles intersect with reality.  Despite his critic’s inexplicable outrage, President Obama seems to be a pragmatic politician who is gently nudging the country toward being a fairer and more just place for all of its citizens.   And many of the issues he’s promoted are the modern day equivalents of what Jesus cared about in his day.  Whether it’s standing up to bullies (the Hate Crimes Bill), defending “the least of these,” protecting creation, or being a peacemaker, President Obama continues to represent my values as a Christian.

Jeff Fulmer lives in Nashville Tennessee and is the author of the book Hometown Prophet. http://www.hometownprophetbook.com/ If God spoke through a prophet today, would we really want to hear what he has to say? For more information, visit the Hometown Prophet website.   Follow on Twitter or like on Facebook.

By Erin Wathen

It is no secret: vocational ministers are burning out, leaving the Church, and experiencing a rise in stress-related health problems.  I’m grateful that this issue is getting some attention lately in mainstream media, and also for the good work of organizations like The Lilly Endowment.  These folks are taking proactive measures to curb the trend. They not only help raise awareness; they help equip congregations and pastors with resources, better practices, and networks of support to keep everyone healthy and happy.

And while churches have a great deal of liability in matters of “clergy killing,” I think it is important that pastors say out loud to our congregations: you are not entirely the problem. We are.

While I do not presume to speak for all clergy everywhere, I can tell you that, across the board, most people who feel called to pastoral ministry tend to be fixers, do-ers, and dreamers. Furthermore, at least in some small measure, we are performers and people-pleasers.

I’ll translate what all this means: We DREAM of being able to DO something that will FIX everything. And then, we’d like to be told that we did it all just right.

And I don’t mean we want to fix our respective congregations, or neighborhoods, or immediate friends and family.  What we’d REALLY like is for all those things be perfect already, so we can go about managing the rest of the world. Small things, really, like global warming, peace in the east, and poverty. Not necessarily in that order.

Perhaps I exaggerate. But i do think, at the heart of every minister’s calling, is a bit of a savior complex that not even Jesus can help us with. And there is the rub. The Church does not always want to be saved by us. And neither, it turns out, does the world.  Sometimes, believe it or not, our own friends and families do not want us to be the boss of them. Can you imagine?

These are painful truths to live with. Especially when we live with them, unaware of their pull on us.

To the end of promoting my life-balance and self-care, my church does everything right: they give me ample vacation time, sabbatical, retreat and continuing ed time; they even give me resources to fund all these things.  And I still manage to get run-down and exhausted several times a year.

So in many cases, the church cannot be blamed. It isn’t even that we, the pastors, are over-scheduling and extending ourselves.  It is that we carry a mental weight around all the while–and even in those blessed “off” times–making it hard to rest. We are always scanning the world for sermon material; always aware of that-which-is-broken (and furitively looking for glue); and at any given moment, gearing up for–or down from–a ‘performance’ moment.  The work of carrying that self-imposed burden around can render us fragile, exhausted, and vulnerable to the first hint of criticism.

A few other factors in fatigue that are not the fault of the congregation:

-A growing ‘performance culture’ in every aspect of our shared lives. These days, it practically starts in the womb: people want, and expect, to be entertained at every moment. In the car, at work, in ‘waiting’ places, and–you’d better believe–on the weekends. Maybe it’s worse in an affluent suburb, but i feel an increasing pressure to make worship not just meaningful, but also fun and–i hate this word–”inspirational.” This is not a healthy dynamic for those of us who are already, shall we say, applause hounds.

-A “Family Last” culture. While our politicians talk about “family values” (in the interest of being “inspirational”) there is little in our society that actually points to a shared valuing of families. Like affordable, accessible healthcare; affordable, accessible child care; generous family leave policies in the corporate world for the making of babies, or the care of aging parents. In fact, quite the opposite is true.  Much of life-as-we-know-it speaks to the tragic de-valuing of family. So, lord help us all when women ministers want to also be mothers; or male ministers have children, and also a wife with a career; or single pastors want to adopt children on their own. Even though my congregation has been extremely supportive of my evolving work/family balance, I still get strange looks from neighbors when i mention that my husband is a stay-home dad.  The church cannot control the effect that has on my psyche, nor should they be expected to. It is up to me to process how that makes me feel, and why.

Which brings me to, –a culture that looks at you funny when you say you’re a minister. In an age of increasing hostility towards organized religion–and all that represents in public imagination–it is getting alot harder to tell strangers that you are a  minister. You can see the wheels turning, you can see the judgements being made, you can see the walls going up… Not only does that make it hard to do “neighborhood outreach,” it is a painful reality for (did I mention?) we who are addicted to being loved and adored in every frame.

Knowing these truths about myself, and the world in which i live and serve, helps me to not blame my people–or the big-C “Church,” as a body–when i get frustrated, exhausted, or just weary of the world.  But awareness is only half the battle. We’ve also got to find healthier ways of coping with our big, complicated selves.

In Naked Spirituality, Brian McLaren shares a painful truth about the patterns of burn-out, the cycles of elation and defeat, that go with this pastoral territory.  And he talked about learning to shape his days, not in terms of what he could/must get done, but rather “what God is doing in the world, and how I can be a part of it.”

I felt like he was knocking on the door of my worn-out heart a little bit. I find that passage full of painful truth-telling, and powerful freedom.  If we–pastors and congregations–could learn this spiritual practice of moving through the world, perhaps we could all be saved a great deal of stress and heartbreak. And maybe, in some cases, the expense of anti-depressants and blood pressure meds. (BTW, it is not lost on me that the Lilly foundation, who perhaps stands to benefit most from all these drugs we’re needing, are the ones out in front of the charge to get us all healthier. Say what you will about evil pharmaceutical companies, but I dig that).

To be clear–there is no shame in needing professional help to deal with depression or anxiety. But perhaps, if we all work together, we can make sure that the Church is never, ever, about the business of inflicting pain that needs medicating. Even if that means we–do-ers, dreamers, performers–must quit inflicting it on ourselves, in the name of Jesus.

I think there’s a healthy equation to be learned from all this destructive love: Awareness+accountability=alive.

Which is to say, if pastors and churches live in awareness of the systems and personalities that contribute to the problem, we can set up healthy systems of accountability: and everyone comes out alive.

Again, I can only speak for myself, what I see and experience… But it isn’t about me; nor is it about You, big-C Church. This is about US–the great sacred, capital-U, all-encompassing US, that makes for the Body of Christ in the world. In the post-post-modern age, as the Church discerns what it wants to be when it grows up, we’ve got to be having these conversations about personal and social liabilities to ministry. With any luck–and with a great, whopping deal of grace–there will still be an Us to speak of, this side of glory. And we will all be doing our part to live, and live well, into this life of faith and discipleship.

Photo via flickr BlakJakDavy