What’s in this Episode?

Join us as we spend time in conversation with denominational executive Gene Roncone, who leads 160 churches, 525 ministers, and 44,000 constituents in Colorado and Utah. He discusses a crisis need among pastors and that is their isolation from others, including other pastors. Pastor Gene uses the phrase that “too many pastors are locking the door from the inside” when they most desperately need others to help them live whole and healthy ministry lives.

 

Read the Transcript:

Dick Hardy 0:06
Hey friend, it’s great to be with you on this episode of The Church Tips Podcast. And today I’m with my good friend from the great state of Colorado, Gene Roncone. Gene say hi to the viewers today.

Gene Roncone 0:17
Man, great to be with you and and everyone on your podcast.

Dick Hardy 0:20
Well, you know, we’ve really enjoyed Gene as as you would guess, communicating with pastors on the issues that are germane to them inthe pastorate and in the ministry today, and you and I were going back and forth over the last week or so on

something that you’re finding as a as a leader. Now this is a multi denominational podcast. Gene happens to serve in a fellowship where you have how many churches in the Rocky Mountain district?

Gene Roncone 0:51
We’ve got just under 170 churches and 550 ministers and 44,000 constituents in Colorado and Utah.

Dick Hardy 0:59
Yeah. So, so what are you doing in your spare time? That’s what I want to know.

Gene Roncone 1:03
Yeah, yeah.

Dick Hardy 1:04
So I we wanted to know that because, for the viewers, Gene’s, comments are very, very credible, in my mind, because he’s boots on the ground dealing with pastors who are dealing with the subject we’regoing to talk about here, of isolation in ministry, and it’s real, and it’s a it’s an issue that we need to be very open and honest about if we’re going to move forward and address it effectively. So Gene, talk to us.

Gene Roncone 1:34
Yeah, you know, I really feel the ground moving beneath me, Dick. It is… there’s something happening in the church right now, and it is not good. It’s like shifting tectonic plates. Pastors are crashing, they’re burning out at alarming rates. Let me give you a couple examples of how this has been documented. LifeWay Research said that one in four pastors struggle with depression and anxiety. Chuck Hannaford, he is the psychological counsel for the Southern Baptist Convention. He was recently interviewed about the uptick of ministerial suicide, and he said he just doesn’t see those numbers leveling out. He thinks that they’re going to continue to increase. Another study said 64% of pastors have less than five close friends, if you can believe that, it just kind of blows my mind.

Barna Research said 100 or 1500 clergy leave the ministry every monthand and here’s the staggering one dick, 50% of pastors indicated that they would leave the ministry if they had another way to make a livingand provide for their family. That was from the Hartford Institute of religious research. And so, you know, it really doesn’t take you long to dig down underneath all these symptoms that we’re talking about, of burnout, loneliness, moral failure, that you see the real problem, and that is isolation. So, for various reasons, a lot of ministers are allowing themselves to be separated from those life-giving relationships. And I personally believe the most healthy relationships a pastor can have is with other pastors. So from my line of sight, I see, from, you know, frommy view, kind of at the top of the mask, giving leadership to two states, I see five reasons why pastors must get out of isolation and start connecting with life-giving relationships with their peers.

Dick Hardy 3:33
Yup. Well, you know when you talk about even the thing that captured, I caught well, I caught all of it. But this thing that jumped out at me was they, they don’t have a lot of pastors. Don’t have five close friends,

and I can imagine even those who do have five close friends. If this becomes chronic over a lengthy period of time, the guys would get in the mode of thinking, I really have zero close friends, because they’ve already talked to this one and that one and that one and that one again and again and again and again, and they’re kind of going to themselves. There’s something wrong with me, because I’ve talked to my friends, and I’m still like this.

Gene Roncone 4:23
Yes, yeah. And I think the thing that is is scary about this is that many pastors lock the door from the inside, and so one of the great dangers is that isolated, isolated ministers are susceptible to tremendous temptation, more so than than others. I mean, you and I know this dickministry is going to find your weakness, right? It’s it’s not, it’s not if, it’s when. And I love what Bonhoeffer said, that sin demands to have a man by himself that that they resist the temptation to live and serve inisolation. And boy, that is a powerful statement. So you know, God hascreated all of us for community. God in Genesis, our first image of him is existing in community, in the Trinity. But when we deprive ourselves of those life-giving relationships with others, we are we are weaker, not stronger, and so we are susceptible to a lot of temptations that feed into that. So, you know, isolated pastors have way more temptation, but they also are dangerous leaders Dick.

When you start isolating yourself and you don’t have these kind of people. And the reason I’m a big fan of peer relationships is I can have immediate traction with another minister if I’ve even known him for 30 minutes. We have so much in common right out of the gate. I can’t always share with people my church or people in the lay community, but boy, a peer understands what you do, how you do it, the pressures of it. And so when you isolate yourself, you become a dangerous leader. I love what Eric Geiger said. He said, the sting of criticism burdens responsibilities, and the pace of leadership constantly nudges us towards isolation, and every step we become more and more dangerous. And so, you know, you think about those crash and burn stories that all of us have in our in our head, and you really come to the conclusion that isolated leaders, they lack meaningful relationships, they don’t have the support system, the accountability structures, the peer communication and so with no authentic relationships or systems, their greatest gifts, no matter how great they are, sooner or later, become overshadowed by their weakness. When I,when I think about this Dick, I think of Judas. You know, you read that passage in John where it says, you know, at the Last Supper, the sacred moment, it says, as soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered him, I’m scratching my head going, how? How does one of Jesus’s inner circle become possessed by a demon? How does a man who experienced all the things that that Jesus had…

Dick Hardy 7:15
Healings and everything.

Gene Roncone 7:17
Yeah, walking and calming the sea, you know, casting out demons, and it’s because Judas got on that road of isolation and he just couldn’t get off of it.

Dick Hardy 7:26
Wow. So talk to us about those five and that you were referencing earlier.

Gene Roncone 7:33
Yeah, so we talked a little bit about the first two, and that is that that we’re more susceptible to temptation when we’re isolated. The second that we talked about was, you know, we become dangerous. We become toxic leaders on ego trips, narcissistic. We just are not healthy.And the third thing, the reason is that I think isolated leaders are prone to destructive emotions.

I spent some time researching a lot of these pastoral suicides and Dick, I wish I could tell you a different fact, but in the last six years, three of my close friends took their lives in the ministry. And, statistics show that an isolated leader experiences more frequent and more intense feelings of things like sadness, loneliness, depression, you know, anxiety, stress and so pastoral suicide is becoming more and more common. And we read these things, we kind of roll on without looking at them. Family Therapist Jim Hopkins says that a minister’s close and authentic relationships can be preventative, and they can bean antidote to emotional wounds, mental illness, depression and even some addictions. I mean, that’s how powerful relationships and community are. So I think isolation takes us to a dark place and sometimes we don’t we go there not realizing where isolation is taking us.

Dick Hardy 9:05
Yeah, wow, wow. Any others that really are identified?

Gene Roncone 9:11
Yeah, I let me touch on two more. One is, is that isolated leaders are much more prone to pride and Dick, I, you know, it’s hard for me to say what I’m about to say, I love pastors. I am an advocate for pastors. On the bottom of my email is is not my title, it says helper. And it’s hard for me to say this, but one of the most discouraging things about my role is to see the prevalence of pride and ego in our our ministers. And Dick, I’m not talking about mega-church pastors. I’m saying ministers of all sizes of ministry, all scope of ministry. And I think, I think what happens is sometimes ministers isolate themselves. Most of the time, ministers get what they want. And I can’t think of a greater recipe for disaster than to be isolated and get what you want most of the time. And so what happens is isolation manifests itself in things like competition with our peers, jealousy, narcissism and pride keeps usfrom reaching out to others because it isolates us. We begin to we begin to elevate ourself above our peers. And so that old Proverb, Proverb 16:18, just rings true too often. Pride goes before destruction. So when you see competition, arrogance, hyper-spirituality, all these things or ways that isolated leaders try to elevate themselves above others instead of connecting with them in relationship. Does that make sense?

Dick Hardy 10:50
That absolutely does make sense. I remember reading here just a couple of years ago secular book, Ego is the Enemy. B

Gene Roncone 10:57
Boy, yeah.

Dick Hardy 10:58
My goodness, and that just has church and pastoring written all over it, as you said, in churches of all size,and we’re all susceptible, including Gene, including Dick, everybody.

Gene Roncone 11:12
Absolutely. I’m convinced Dick, that you know, when I pastored for 35 years, you know, you don’t always get what you want, but the things that were important to me, 90% of the time, I got what I want. And I think that there are times Dick that God deprives me of very good andnoble desires for no other reason to keep me humble and dependent upon Him, and so, you know that leads to to what I would call the the next, the next danger, and that is that isolated leaders, they’re at a way higher risk for burnout. Barna Research found that there is a direct correlation between the absence of friendships and the propensity towards spiritual and vocational burnout, and that happens when we don’t have friends. So, you know, we are hard-wired for community. We are created in the image of God, who is a relational creator. And so we are our best selves when we exist in community, weare worse selves when we live in isolation. So you know, if there is a pastor that is here and and boy, I have, I have been in every church model, and when I was younger, I served in a small world church, before going to district ministry, I served in a larger church, and I get all of the but once you believe you don’t need your peers… man, that is the beginning of the end as far as this isolation thing. So I think one of the saddest things Dick is a quote that I love from Rusty George’s book better together. He said this, “the saddest truth is that we are the ones who lock the door from the inside” and and, boy, you can’t help someone that’s locked the door from the inside. Can you?

Dick Hardy 13:08
No, you really can’t do it.

You know, this has been so good Gene, I’m gonna I didn’t tell you this, so we’re just gonna wing it and see how this works. You got a guy who’s watching this podcast right now, or a gal, and they’re at the end,they’re at the bottom. They recognize 1,2,3,4 or 5, all five of the things you just talked about, they have cried out to God. They’ve screamed out to God, yeah, to deliver me, to help me, and they can’t find their way out.

They may be contemplating the end…

Gene Roncone 13:48
Yes.

Dick Hardy 13:50
And they don’t disagree with anything they get help. Is there anything we can do to penetrate what seems to be the reason they’ve locked the door from the inside?

Gene Roncone 14:08
Yeah, yes.

Dick Hardy 14:09
It’s play or not. You know, they’ve done this. What can we say to them is there, and I know I’m putting you on the spot with this.

Gene Roncone 14:15
No, I would love to respond to that. I think, I think there’s a couple of things that are important for for pastors. One is, is Dick, this is the hardest time to lead. You know, I it is, you know, outside of the Civil War years, where many pastors buried half of their churches, I think this is the hardest time to lead. Lay people are impossible to please these days. So I think what is healthy is reaching out. So I had a great mentor in my life who taught me many years ago, ministry is so demanding, every five years you should go to a counselor and get an emotional checkup. Now, Dick, this was before you know that it was hip to to go see or get help. Right back in the day it was, it was frowned upon, you know, and I’m talking about a Christian counselor. But every five years I go to a counselor and say, hey, I’m in a job that sucks everything out of me. Am I okay? And there are, you know, three or four inventories, it might take three sessions, and there’s times Dick, that I have had counselors say hey, man, you’re doing great. Just keep doing what you’re doing. The second thing is, is sometimes they’ve said, you know, man, you’re you’re starting to strain this area. Do this, this and this. So I think making sure you’re doing what I call an emotional checkup. I would say the second thing is to understand that relationships are something that we have to initiate. And the problem they’re so valuable. We talked about how valuable they are, but the problem is, you got to have them before you need them. You know, when you’re experiencing burnout, when you’re on the verge of a marital affair, when you’re on the verge of suicidal thoughts, boy, if you’re not careful, it could be too late to get traction in those kind of relationships. So find people you trust and and reach out to them. I’m a big proponent of peers, Dick, peer relationships, ministers to ministers, because we have so much traction. Our very first meeting, you know, I, I’ll be in an airport, I’ll meet another minister. And I, you know, a few months ago, I almost missed my plane. We just got into a conversation. There was immediate traction. We had so much in common. And so I would say those things are the way, the way to go and reach out. I think the third thing is, I would say all of us are part, usually part of some kind of ministerial organization, accrediting agency, when you think you’re too good for that, when you think you’re bigger than the organization, well, you got a problem. So, those organizations provide meetings and conventions and go to those things, man, even if it’s hard for you be the guy that can walk in the room and have emotional courage and sit down to people you don’t know and get to know.

Dick Hardy 17:01
Yeah, no, that is so good. Gene, this has been so value, valuable. Ifyou’re going to give the men and women watching this a parting shot, what is the thing you’d want to say to them to give them some sense of encouragement that there is light at the end of the tunnel, they don’t have to live in isolation. What would you say?

Gene Roncone 17:27
I would say that I think the Holy Spirit, no matter how hard ministry is, no matter how much culture strays, God always gives us what we need. This is the greatest opportunity for the church. It’s the greatest opportunity for ministers. So rise above that. Don’t be a thermometer reflecting culture. Be a thermostat that is setting setting the atmosphere around you.

Dick Hardy 17:52
Yeah, no, that’s so good. That is so good. Gene Roncone, thank you very much for your help. Just this has been great content. We applaudwhat you’re doing there in Colorado and Utah. And to our viewers, if you have any questions or comments, be sure to send them to us. Email [email protected]. And if we need to get something to Gene we’ll do that. And I know he’ll stand ready to be of whatever helphe can be to you. We’ll try to get you some additional resources in terms of counseling options and so on. So stay tuned for that in the in the show notes. But thank you again. Gene, if you have any need just in your leadership of the church, we stand ready. Jonathan Hardy and Dick Hardy stand ready with Leaders.Church and Church University to help you in any way we can. You can go to Leaders.Church or churchuniversity.com, and we’ll be glad to serve you in that way.

In the meantime, thanks so much for slicing some time off for us today.Thank you again. Gene, make it a great day and be blessed.

Jonathan Hardy 18:59
Hey, Jonathan, here real quick before you go, everything in your ministry rises and falls on your leadership. So investing in your leadership is essential to staying healthy and growing the ministry, and that’s why I want to invite you to join us inside the Leaders.Church membership, this online streaming service for pastors gives you access to more than300 videos plus training material to level up your leadership and improve your ministry skills. If you’d like to do that, I want to invite you to go to Leaders.Church/boost. Again, that’s Leaders.Church/boost. Well, thanks again for joining us on the Church Tips Podcast. We’ll look forward to seeing you next time.

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