Wesley’s spiritual discipline
can help pastors fight anxiety

Visiting bishop shares
ways to boost spiritual
vitality of clergy leaders

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
United Methodist pastors can use the discipline for life set out by John Wesley to help them find rest in anxious times.
That was the message from Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher, Illinois Episcopal Area, to the 2006 Bishop’s Convocation in Kerrville.
The 14th annual Bishop’s Convocation was an opportunity for Southwest Texas Conference clergy members to gather for reflection and renewal. More than 250 clergy members attended the March 6-7 session at Mount Wesley Conference Center.
Bishop Joel N. Martinez invited Christopher, who grew up in Southwest Texas and answered a call to ministry at Mount Wesley as a teenager, to be guest speaker. She focused her remarks on the need for spiritual vitality in Christian leaders.
“What is the meaning or importance of spiritual vitality for clergy?” she asked. “What is essential for spirituality in offering Christ to all?”
Insomnia—“caused by sleeping with the bread of anxious toil”—erodes spiritual vitality, she said. She listed five characteristics of what she called “national chronic anxiety,” the source of much of the country’s insomnia:
n Reactivity: an automatic response that perpetuates a supercharged atmosphere.
n Herding: the process of adapting to the behavior of the least mature of the group.
n Blame displacement: focusing on the forces that victimize rather than taking responsibility for our own being.
n A quick-fix mentality: seeking symptom relief rather than addressing the underlying problem.
n Lack of self-differentiated leadership: failure of nerve on the part of leadership to lead.
Christopher said human nature includes a space between stimulus and reaction that shrinks as anxiety grows.
When that space narrows to nothing, she said, “a lot of people are living out their lives in an anxious knee-jerk reaction.”
As a bishop, she said she spends a lot of time “ungluing people’s knees from their chins so they have the space to choose in a thoughtful way their responses to life rather than reacting.”
“If even a fraction of a second exists between stimulus and response, that represents our power to choose our actions,” Christopher said. “In those choices lie decisions to be faithful disciples of God.”
High anxiety lowers the level of maturity of a nation, a group, a denomination, a conference and a congregation, Christopher said.
“The question before us,” the bishop said, “is how do we manage our anxiety and not be a victim of it? How do we remain spiritually vital as we lead in the midst of the anxiety of others? How do we live out God’s call to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, inviting others to join this walk and accompanying them along the way?”
The answer, she said, is the “time-tested practice of spiritual discipline that Jesus preached and that was tweaked by John Wesley.” That spiritual discipline is “embedded in our Wesleyan DNA,” she added.
“Early Methodists developed a reliable way of living methodical discipleship experienced in the general rules,” Christopher said. “The antidote to anxious living is the practice of our Wesleyan general rules.”
The general rules have been buried in The Book of Discipline for years, she said.
“In the 21st century, I believe the general rules have practical application for saving our lives,” Christopher said. She called the general rules a source of substance for those who lead in anxious times.
She reminded the assembly of Wesley’s rules:
n Do no harm. She said doing what you’re not supposed to do is to discount God. Following this rule involves “cleansing oneself.”
n Do good. Inherent in this rule is observing the Sabbath, she said. “This is saying in the midst of the business of life I am focusing on my relationship with God,” Christopher explained. That involves “filling oneself”—which requires that pastors take one whole day during the week to listen to God.
n Attend to the ordinances of God. That means “feeding oneself” by practicing spiritual disciplines such as prayer, Holy Communion and Christian conversation.
Christopher recommended a daily spiritual inventory to answer these questions:
n Where have I done harm? That includes sins of omission as well as sins of commission.
n Where have I done good? That looks for the good God is calling us to do.
n How have I attended to the ordinances of God?
The Rev. John Elford, senior pastor of St. John’s UMC, Corpus Christi, said in his life, the space Christopher described was formed by his parents. His father was agnostic, his mother a believer.
“When I prayed, I always had an agnostic voice in the background saying I’m not talking to God but talking to the ceiling,” he said. That internal conversation was a barrier to enlarging the space.
The Rev. Donna Strieb, minister of education at Alamo Heights UMC, San Antonio, said she had never thought about “using the general rules to focus my life.”
It is important to take time to do “those things that give us space to do that which is important and we definitely need in our lives,” Streib said.
Christopher spoke of her own experiences in waking every day at 3:22 a.m. despite adjusting her sleeping habits. She said that in prayer she learned that to relieve her insomnia she needed to “change my soul, not my environment.”
“If real changes in my sleeping were to take place,” she said, “transformation would come only if I intensified my walk with God by intensifying the rhythm of spiritual practices that already framed my life.”
She told the pastors that slowing down and tending to their Wesleyan heritage would “wrap us in grace for the ministry to which we are appointed.”
“I learned to realize that I have been bustling around the kitchen with Martha long enough,” she said. “It’s time to spend my time with Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet.”
A Corpus Christi native, Christopher was elected a bishop in 1988 from the Wisconsin Conference. She served eight years as leader of the Minnesota Episcopal Area. Since 1996 she has served the Illinois Episcopal Area.