I answered the call to pastoral ministry in 1989 as a teenager and began working in ministry in 1990. I was eighteen, I was called, and I was ready to give my life to it. Nobody warned me what that would actually cost.
For years I gave everything I had. I preached, I counseled, I led, I built. I showed up for everyone. Funerals. Late hospital visits. Marriages in crisis. Board meetings that seemed to go nowhere. I wore every hat needed to do the job and reported to people who often had no idea what the job actually required. I did it becauseGod called me to it. I still believe that.
What I did not see coming was the slow erosion.
Depression does not announce that it’s coming. It creeps in. It taints every victory until nothing feels worth celebrating. It makes every struggle heavier than it should be. It sits on your chest at 2:45 am and tells you that you are failing, that you are a fraud, that the people in the church would leave if they really knew you.
I kept showing up. I kept preaching. I kept pretending.
In 2016 I finally told the truth to my elders. I told them how bad it really was inside. I told them I was struggling, that I was not okay, that I was thinking about suicide, that I needed help. In stark contrast to what was happening inside me, the church was growing. We were about to launch a new campus. By every external measure things were working well.
They fired me.
Six months severance so I could “heal.” That was the word they used. What they meant was: we don’t know what to do with a broken pastor, so we’re going to pay you to go get well.
You want to know what is harder than depression? Depression and unemployment. You want to know what is harder than unemployment? Unemployment because you were fired for being depressed. That’s the worst because every church you try to work for after that asks why you have a gap in your resume. You can’t lie. So you tell what happened. Potential ministry opportunities see nothing but risk, so they pick someone else who looks better on the outside.
The shame of it nearly finished me before anything else could.
It took two years to find another church. Two years of watching my savings disappear. Two years of doing jobs I didn’t enjoy and didn’t pay well. Two years of watching my marriage strain under the weight of a man who had lost his mental health along with his pulpit. I took the next ministry job I could get because I had no choice. I was not ready. But I convinced myself I was and I accepted the position to plant a new church in different state.
We moved my three kids across the country as teenagers. My oldest was a senior. It broke him.
We launched the new church and COVID came crashing in.
The new church struggled. We never caught momentum. The ministry funding the launch was kind, but they wanted to see results. The funding was reduced. I took a pay cut and a part time job. The depression roared back worse than before. My marriage did not survive it. The church closed. I was out of road, out of money, and out of fight.
I went to the bottom.
I do not say that as a metaphor. I mean I went all the way to the bottom. I made a decision that I was done. I meant it completely. It was not a cry for help. I was not trying to get someone’s attention. I wanted it to be over.
So I swallowed a truck load of pills.
I woke up the next morning.
I should not have. There is no clinical explanation for why I survived. I was terrified of what I might have done to my body so I went to the emergency room. They ran every test they had. They told me I was overweight and had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
That is all.
I call that a miracle. I do not know why He saved me and not others who have been in that same place. I no longer try to answer that question. What I know is that I am still here. That God chose to save me. That He gave me another chance to serve His Kingdom, and I am not going to waste it.
Here is what I want you to hear if you are a pastor reading this right now:
What happened to me did not happen all at once. It happened slowly, over decades, while I kept showing up and telling myself I could handle it. By the time I realized that I simply could not, I had already lost my marriage, broken up my family, and lost all my retirement to medical expenses. My health physical health was a disaster as well.
That is the path you are on if you do not get help.
I am not trying to scare you. I am trying to tell you the truth that nobody told me: Ministry is the hardest profession on earth. Why? Because Satan hates pastors and knows if he can take them out, he can do massive damage to the church. His weapons are pride, money, and sexual immorality, but his most devious tool is depression. Depression does not plateau. It progresses like a cancer in your soul. And pastors are uniquely isolated in ways that make getting help for depression feel impossible, shameful, or somehow unfaithful.
But there is hope.
I am still here, and YOU are my ministry. I still believe God called me and that the call is worth while. But I would give anything to have found someone sooner who had been where I was and told me the blunt truth before I lost everything.
That is why I am here now.
I am that person for you.
I will not hold your hand. But I will hold you up. I will not commiserate with you. But I will fight beside you. Depression is a war that you’ve been fighting alone. Get the help you need.
Therapy is a good start. Medicine can help. But a brother-in-arms will pull you off the battlefield, drag you to safety and be your ally through the darkest parts of healing.
I will always tell you like it is. I will help you talk to your elders, deacons, personnel committees, boards and even your families. I will help you articulate what you’re afraid of saying.
Why? Because that’s what I needed and there was no one by my side.
I don’t want that to be your story. I don’t want that to be another pastor’s story ever again.