I’m writing from the top deck of a bus and we’ve just gone by a shop called Lonely Planet. And I’ve just finished reading an article published in The Lancet which begins like this:
Imagine a condition that makes a person irritable, depressed, self-centred and is associated with a 26% increase in the risk of premature mortality. Imagine too that in industrialised countries around a third of people are affected by this condition, with one person in twelve affected severely and that these proportions are increasing. Income, education, sex and ethnicity are not protective and the condition is contagious.
Such a condition exists – loneliness.
Loneliness is a unique condition in which an individual perceives himself or herself to be socially isolated even when among other people.
Singer-songwriter Tracey Chapman asked the right question: ‘Why when there’s so many of us are there people still alone?’
In the conduct of pastoral ministry, it will be almost impossible NOT to come across lonely people. Even in busy congregations where the people pride themselves in being welcoming and friendly, you can be sure that there will be people who feel lonely – maybe even more so than normal when others all seem to be in friend groups.
‘All the lonely people, where do they all come from?’
Ministers themselves, of whatever kind, are not immune from loneliness. Here’s a role which certainly has you among people pretty much every day and yet can leave you feeling very much isolated. I know from ministers I’ve met that there are good numbers who know the pain of it and who know the truth of what Hank Williams wrote: ‘I’m so lonesome I could cry.’
How to address this will vary from person to person but proactively investing in friendships will likely be key – and especially with people you knew before ministry and with people outwith the congregation or other church context.
These are the friends who know you for being you and who don’t relate to you through the lens of the dog collar (metaphorical or literal.) These are the people you can relax with, without conversation turning to the latest Kirk Session issue or whatever else. These are the people through whom you’re able, from time to time, to burst out of the church bubble. And these are the people through whom you get to see the world as most do.
For my own part, a good number of my friends aren’t part of any church and wouldn’t make any pretence of being Christian. They respect me for who I am, and I them, and thereafter we get on with being friends.
There is, I believe, a danger in only hanging out with fellow Christians. I’ve always wanted my ministry – and not least my preaching – to be informed by where people are at; what’s making them tick, what’s worrying them, what they make of the big things going on in the world and of the wee things going on in their lives. How do you get that if you’re never out of church-land?
And in the mix of all that, friends are what the doctor orders when the condition is loneliness.
By Rev Martin Fair
