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Clergy Wellbeing Down Under
Welcome to the official first podcast of the Centre for Effective Serving, a research and consulting organisation focused on vocational wellbeing, burnout prevention, and training. In Season 1 we are focussing on Clergy Wellbeing Down Under. In Season 2 we looked at how ministry kids locally and on the mission field are doing.
In today's fast-paced and demanding world, support for those who serve by leadership is more crucial than ever. However, the pressures and challenges that come with leadership roles can often lead to burnout and exhaustion, both mentally and physically. At the Centre for Effective Serving, we understand the significance of addressing these issues head-on to create a healthier and more productive leadership landscape.
In each episode we delve into the latest research and resources developed by our team of experts, who are dedicated to enhancing leadership wellbeing and fostering a supportive environment for leaders to thrive. Our podcast provides valuable insights, evidence-based strategies, and practical tips to help leaders and their families maintain their well-being, improve their resilience, and prevent burnout.
Join us as we bring on renowned experts in the fields of psychology, mental health, leadership, and well-being to share their knowledge and experiences. Through candid interviews and engaging discussions, we explore various topics, including stress management techniques, emotional intelligence, work-life integration, team building, and much more.
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Clergy Wellbeing Down Under
Episode 1: Ministry Kids' Wellbeing Survey 2024 Results
In this kick-off episode, we dive into the heart of the Ministry Kids Wellbeing Survey to explore the main findings and what they reveal about the lives of children in ministry families. We unpack key themes that emerged from the survey, shedding light on the unique experiences and challenges ministry children face.
To get a copy of the full report head here
Podcast Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution. This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!
Welcome to Season 2. It's all about the ministry kids' well-being down under episodes this time. My name is Valerie Ling. I'm a clinical psychologist and we asked 100 kids in ministry how they were doing. These are kids who are either serving locally in Australia with their parents or internationally on the field. I really recommend catching up on episode one of the podcast series because that'll give you the background to our survey and our findings. I hope you enjoy the next episode of the Ministry Kids Wellbeing Down Under. Kids' well-being down under.
Valerie Ling:In season one, about 12 months ago, the Clergy Wellbeing podcast was presented to try to unpack and understand what 200 Australian clergy were telling us about their experiences in ministry A year ago. They told us that about a third of them were thinking about seriously leaving ministry and one of the top reasons for wanting to leave ministry was the impact on their family. We also discovered that quite a few of them were being exposed to really toxic levels of conflict in the church, and the team of the Center for Effective Living comprised a psychologist who, just through our years of being in clinical practice, had seen quite a few ministry families come through our doors, quite a few kids who are on the missions field, coming back and we're checking in on them. By virtue of our work and our experience, we started to wonder well, how are the kids doing? Are they being exposed to some of the things that their parents experience? What's their experience of being a ministry kid? What's their experience of being a ministry kid For me? There was a time when I first started doing this work, in one of my very first conferences that I presented in, where an adult ministry kid actually pulled me aside and said don't forget the kids. Many of my peers who grew up in the ministry family didn't make it out without our own wounds and scars. And so, fast forward to 2024, the team and I, we thought well, let's find out. Why wait till they're adults telling us what it was like retrospectively? Why wait till they're adults telling us what it was like retrospectively? Why not ask the kids right now, as they're sitting in their bedrooms in their homes, and check in on them and say to them we want to hear, we want to find out how you're doing, thank you for your service.
Valerie Ling:Ministry kids don't really have a choice about whether or not they're going to serve a church or a cross-cultural context. They follow their parents and so it was clean survey data. That's not a large pool of kids. Quite a lot of them were from Anglican, presbyterian and Baptist backgrounds and about 40 of them were from cross-cultural ministry families were from cross-cultural ministry families. It is quite possible that we've got a rather skewed sample population. It really shouldn't be taken to extend to all ministry kids in Australia. Treat this as a little dip into the pool to just touch base and see what's happening.
Valerie Ling:The way that we crafted the survey was to look at the current literature on ministry kids, particularly given by the kids who are now adults, looking back at their time as kids retrospectively, and so the themes that we pulled out were guided by the themes in that research. That means that we weren't able to ask everything that we could. We wanted to catch the kids attention span and not lose them, and so there were a number of things that we didn't tap into, and you can download the full report where we discuss some of the limitations of what we found. So here's what we did find. From the 100 kids that did respond to us, about two-thirds of them said that being a ministry kid is great. I should say that the main distribution of the kids, the mean age was about 12 and we had the most kids in the age range between 10 to 14. So, within that age range, when you ask both kids who are serving locally as well as kids who are on the field, two-thirds of them said being ministry kid is great. One-third about 33% said I not sure or nope, not at all.
Valerie Ling:Again, when we asked them whether they felt understood by their parents and they felt they had enough time with their parents because remember from the clergy well-being survey we'd found that a clergy's top reason for leaving ministry was the concern on the impact on family when we asked the kids, did you feel understood by your parents and you feel you had enough time with them? Again, about two-thirds said yes and about a third said not, really, not at all. Again, about two-thirds felt different from their peers. However, most of them were not bothered by this. Quite a lot of them, almost 80% of them, said that they felt connected to their ministry community. So wherever it is that their family was serving, quite a lot of them actually felt that they were connected to that ministry community. When we actually looked at the comments that came from this because we also asked the children, just open questions many of them cited what a privilege it was to be able to be prayed for and cared for by so many adults, that there were so many people who were interested in them adults that there were so many people who were interested in them.
Valerie Ling:What we then did with that data was to do a bunch of correlations. This is a type of statistic that does not tell us which direction it's going. We can't predict cause and effect. We can only say that there is a significant relationship. What some of these relationships were is that we found that the relationship with parents feeling understood by their parents, feeling like they had enough time with their parents, had a correlational relationship with feeling good about being a ministry kid, about not really being bothered about being different from other kids, and that was also correlated. So time with parents being understood by parents was also correlated by not really feeling the impact of the types of things that were happening in their parents' ministry on them. So things like the parent relationship is a protective factor for these kids. Somehow it contributes or is part of the explanation for their scores, or as part of the explanation for their scores.
Valerie Ling:We did find again that if the parent relationship was rated positively by the children. This also was related to feeling connected to their faith community and not really being bothered about being seen as being different community and not really being bothered about being seen as being different. When we actually asked the kids whether they felt lonely, almost half of them said that they struggled with feelings of loneliness. We did also tap into depressive, anxiety and stress-related items that were appropriate for kids to respond to and loneliness had a positive correlation with lower mental health. About 85% of the kids that we sampled were in the normal range for symptoms of depressive, anxiety and stress-related items, but for the 15% who did say that they were feeling some levels of depression or anxiety and stress, they were also the ones that said that they were lonely and were struggling to feel connected and understood by their parents.
Valerie Ling:Statistically, I ran a bunch of analysis to see if there were any other differences between groups, between girls and boys, between younger kids and older kids, between kids who were in a local ministry and the kids who were in cross-cultural ministry. You know the number of moves they've made, made. I put a whole range of things to see if there were any differences between different groups of kids and here's what we found that came up being significant. Girls were more likely to be impacted by feeling different from their peers. Girls and older children were more likely to feel the impact of their parents' ministry on them, and cross-cultural kids were more likely to view being different from their peers as being negative.
Valerie Ling:We did ask the children to share with us what would be some of the things that would make their life better, what would make them happy, and here's what they said. The ministry kids express a range of ideas on what could help them feel happier, with many unsure of what would actually make the difference. Some recurring themes include a desire for more quality time with their parents, who are often busy with ministry work, stronger connections with friends, especially other ministry kids who share similar experiences. They also talk about the importance of being treated equally by their church communities and not being held to different standards because of what their parents do. They told us that they would really value time to relax, time to have fun and engage in regular kid-like activities.
Valerie Ling:Some kids highlighted the need for space for them to develop their own personal faith, without feeling like they had to have all the right answers or feeling like just because they were the ministry kid they should know.
Valerie Ling:They suggested that having a space for them to access counseling and opportunities for them to connect with other ministry kids would be really valuable for them. They also asked that we would understand and recognize that there are some differences and challenges that they face, that they can't always go to school to share with other kids. Overall, the ministry kids said they would value more time with their parents. Overall, the ministry kids said they would value more time with their parents, having more connections, the ability to express hard feelings and the chance to be understood and supported in their unique circumstances. Many of them professed how much they loved serving the Lord, how much they love being a part of what their family did and how much they knew that it was a privilege and a joy to be in this situation. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you liked what you heard and you think others should hear it too, don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Catch you later.
