Caring for our physical bodies as clergy

Dr Matt Edwards has been a Doctor in the UK for over twenty years before transitioning to work with Thrive Worldwide with a vision to helping people and organisations to thrive. His role with Thrive has developed from Medical Director, Director of Individual Thriving and now Chief Clinical Officer. This role involves overseeing the multi-disciplinary clinical team of Medical, Psychosocial and Occupational Health clinicians. He is on the executive team helping the oversight of the organisation. He is passionate about promoting health and wellbeing in the whole-person context.

Dr. Matt Edwards discusses the physical and psychosocial health challenges faced by ministry workers, the importance of physical health, and strategies for thriving in ministry and retirement. 
 



"Chronic stress damages the body over time."
"Plan your transition to retirement carefully."
"Self-care isn't selfish, it's essential."


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Thrive Worldwide and Dr. Matt Edwards
02:08 Understanding Thrive's Mission and Services
04:16 Psychosocial Support in Ministry
07:34 Resilience and Self-Awareness in Ministry Candidates
09:49 Medical Observations of Clergy Health
13:35 The Impact of Ministry on Physical Health
20:00 Chronic Stress and Its Effects on Clergy
22:25 Aging and Health in Ministry
23:23 The Unique Challenges of Pastoral Care
26:09 Understanding Loneliness in Ministry
31:11 Physical Health Concerns for Ministry Workers
34:53 Navigating Retirement in Ministry
39:05 Honoring Ministry Workers in Transition

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!

Transcript

Valerie Ling (00:00)
Greetings friends. I have with me today Dr. Matt Edwards. Matt is the chief clinical officer working with Thrive Worldwide, which is an organization I'll actually get him to describe in a minute. But his role in Thrive developed from being the medical director, director of individual thriving, and now he's chief clinical officer overseeing a multidisciplinary clinical team.

Matt Edwards (00:00)
Thank you.

Valerie Ling (00:25)
You've got medical, psychosocial, and occupational health clinicians, and essentially you see a very global population. Welcome, Matt.

Matt Edwards (00:34)
Thank very much, nice to see you though.

Valerie Ling (00:36)
Before I ask you about Thrive, where are you dialing in from? Which part of the world,

Matt Edwards (00:41)
So I'm from the UK in the southeast of England, about sort of 45 minutes from London. So I'm sort of heading towards the Kent coast.

Valerie Ling (00:50)
And did you always want to be a medical practitioner?

Matt Edwards (00:53)
Um, not really. I think I wanted to be a professional football player or soccer player. think you call it. Um, yeah, my, so my dad's was a doctor and I always had the question when I was growing up, do you want to be a doctor like your dad? And I suppose my instant sort of child rebellion was like, absolutely not. No. Um, but then as school went on, the, the courses that I chose, the subjects I chose were, were certainly geared towards medicine. And I always had that.

sort of desire to want to help people. I think it was a choice between law and medicine at one point and my subjects were biology, chemistry and maths. was definitely medicine was the direction of travel. So, yeah.

Valerie Ling (01:34)
I did not know that you wanted to be a professional soccer player. That never came up when we met at the common table.

Matt Edwards (01:38)
Yep.

Yeah,

that was my childhood sort of dream.

Valerie Ling (01:45)
and tell us a little bit about Thrive worldwide.

Matt Edwards (01:49)
Yeah, so Five by Ride Up has been in existence for about eight years now and we work with basically any organisations that are trying to make the world a better place. So we deal with all sorts of people, aid workers, humanitarian workers, mission workers, and we do quite a big work with faith leaders, especially church work in the UK, but also globally.

Yeah, so we have people all over the world. have a bit of a hub in the UK and a bit of a hub in Nairobi and Kenya, but we have a number of practitioners, both medically but more psychosocially dotted around the globe. So we provide clinical support, which is my remit, but we also do leadership work, training, a whole array of services to support teams and

individuals and organisations to essentially thrive and that's you know our word thriving is what we're really wanting to seek to do to those organisations and teams so that they can go out and do the good work that they do wherever it is in the world.

Valerie Ling (02:55)
So my imagination takes me to thinking that some of these individual workers, would be humanitarian aid workers, expatriates. Yes, everyone on the track? Yes.

Matt Edwards (03:04)
people that we support, the people that we support,

all sorts, yeah, humanitarian workers, aid workers, missionary workers, NGOs, but yeah, all sorts of people, also, yeah, a vast majority, vast amount of church workers in a few different ways, as I said, partly the occupational health, partly the medical, partly psychosocial, also training and leadership workshops and so on.

Yeah, there's a lot of support that we offer.

Valerie Ling (03:29)
We just unpack those areas. So I think we can understand the medical component. What is it about the psychosocial component?

Matt Edwards (03:38)
So if we focus on the church bit, then we are involved in some organizations from the very beginning of their vocation. So actually the discernment process for some, couple of big church denominations, we're involved in supporting them in that. And part of that is doing sort of like a psychological resilience profile where we'll talk with them and go through sort of areas in their...

life that may show possible risks for future ministry but also areas of strength so you're trying to give advice for the individual but also the organisation that's looking to sort of train them up to say this is how you can support them to do well and occasionally it may be that actually this may not be the right time for you because of whatever reason so in that early stage you're involved then doing their actual

ministry, may be counselling, coaching, spiritual direction, may be areas of training as I said, we do a number of training sessions for helping clergy in the early stages of their ministry, dealing with conflict, managing difficult situations, so there's a number of different training sessions that we support them throughout their ministry and then we even do some stuff towards retirement with psychosocial debriefs.

how to finish well and that sort of thing. So that's the psychosocial part. then occupational health is really more to do with ill, the way that we use it is more sort of ill health generally. But equally we're involved with the occupational health in the early stages of ministry. So again, that selection phase, we're involved in doing a sort of screening paper-based tool.

that we can then advise the organisation that's looking to train them up again on how you can support them with whatever conditions they may already have to thrive, to do well in their ministry. What is it they're going to need to be successful in their ministry? So that could be some kind of physical illness, be some mental illness, could be neurodiversity, all sorts of different aspects, but it's trying to help. it's not, again, it's not saying this person isn't

Valerie Ling (05:45)
you

Matt Edwards (05:48)
fit for ministry, that's not what we're involved in, we're about how to support them to do well and how to get the church to adapt or put things in place to help them do well.

Valerie Ling (05:58)
So I'd imagine because we, the Center for Effective Serving, we provide these sorts of psychological assessments for candidates. I'm curious to see whether our experiences match up. You know, deep in your heart, we know we're not supposed to make decisions based on just an assessment, but what have you observed as being, when you look at a person, you go, yeah.

Matt Edwards (06:12)
Okay.

Valerie Ling (06:22)
This is going to be okay. This person is going to thrive in ministry. What are your broad observations about what contributes to that?

Matt Edwards (06:30)
I suppose in one sense I'm not directly involved in that, some of my colleagues generally do that, but I think on a general basis when you're seeing them, there's showing signs of resilience, there's good coping mechanisms, there's signs in there. It's not saying that they've not had bad stuff happen, but it's how they've adapted to them, how they've coped to those situations and what things they've put in place that helps them actually.

to do well moving forward. So it's those aspects of resilience and actually somebody who's completely not had any problems and almost denies the existence of any problems is almost more of a worry than people who are very aware of themselves. So it's that sort of not being very self-aware is almost more of an alarm bell than people who are very self-aware. So that's one of the things I hope

Valerie Ling (07:09)
Yeah.

Matt Edwards (07:25)
learned from some of my colleagues.

Valerie Ling (07:27)
I think that's an important point that you've raised and I'm gonna take this back to my team to tinker around a little bit. It's that denial, isn't it? I mean, for us, it's part of a clinically working as therapists. think it's like, it's part of a stage of change that everybody goes through when they're thinking about vulnerabilities. But that's a really good point. So we met.

Matt Edwards (07:48)
Thank

you.

Valerie Ling (07:48)
in Houston and

I think you were the first workshop or session I attended and I was interested I think in two things that you presented on that I think I haven't spoken before about professionally but also the podcast hasn't had before which is one the medical the physical health of people in clergy

But you also spoke, I think, a little bit about the whole spectrum of taking care of our ministry workers, inclusive finishing well and retirement. So I'd love to delve into that a little bit more. And before I do that, I also have this question of Thrive Works with the Diocese of Oxford. Is that correct?

Matt Edwards (08:31)
Yeah, amongst others, but yeah. ⁓

Valerie Ling (08:33)
Amongst others, okay, I'm sorry, that's what my AI notes took of your workshop. It says here, HR feedback with the diocese Oxford.

Matt Edwards (08:42)
Yeah, so I think I shared a quote from the Diocese of Oxford that just was, yeah, just saying thank you for the sort holistic work that we did with them. But yeah, they're one of about, I can't remember the actual figures, about 30 different diocese we work in in the UK, which is just over half, I believe.

Valerie Ling (09:00)
What is the nature of that partnership when you are working with the whole diocese? What does that entail?

Matt Edwards (09:06)
So quite often it is to do with the occupational health side of things, that's the big part of what we do with a lot of these and diocese and we've got a good reputation in the UK for that work and it's sort of been spread by word of mouth largely. So essentially when either there's a problem with the clergy or some other

person who's working in the diocese, so it could be an HR person or somebody in their team as a whole, then they will refer them to us to review them for returning to work, how to return to work. We also do things like ill health retirement. If somebody needs to retire on the basis of ill health, they need a third party to sort of give the rubber stamp for their pensions and that side of things.

We are one of the providers who do that. Also some in the UK at least to keep practicing after the age of 70, you need to have a sort of a, because the retirement age is 70, so you need to have a medical go ahead that this person is still okay to carry on with the demands of the work. And that's what we do sort of with over 70s review as well. So working with the diocese, that's one of the areas. There is also that area earlier.

mentioned about the teaching and training, so sometimes we put on workshops for different areas and we'll either go to them to do it or we can do them remotely as well. that would be our main bits that we do that with. Occasionally we've got a few of the diocese signed up to do medicals, which obviously we'll talk bit more about later, and we've got some a couple of larger denominations.

who also signed up to do medicals for their more senior church leaders.

Valerie Ling (10:49)
Yeah. What motivates a whole diocese to take this approach? it legislation, desperation?

Matt Edwards (10:55)
I think there's a certain amount of duty of care for their staff and so on. Obviously as part of employment law for the general staff, I believe the ministers aren't on a traditional employment contract so it's bit slightly different with them. But again it's wanting to

Valerie Ling (11:01)
Okay.

Matt Edwards (11:20)
to do the best for everyone who's working together for the common good and they're wanting to look after them. So again, every different areas have got different budgets for these things, but again, if you're trying to keep somebody in work or you're trying to support them through an illness or a condition or so on, then it's sort money well spent.

Valerie Ling (11:39)
Okay, so let's talk about the medical observations you make of those of us who are in ministry. What do you see?

Matt Edwards (11:47)
So I think when the gathering that we met at, was a few sort of simple statistics that we had from a cohort that I looked at this last year. And it does show sort of similar conditions and problems that the general population have, possibly at slightly increased rate, I would say. But again, the cohort I specifically looked at were slightly older. But even looking at the comparison.

to a similar age category, some of the areas did come up a little bit more percentage wise in the church leaders that we looked at. you've got things like obesity was, so for the group that we looked at was about 83%. That was overweight and obese, Then we've got diabetes was about 20%, high cholesterol was about 70%.

high blood pressure was about 50%. We had mental health stress related issues were around 30%. So there's a lot of sort of non communicable conditions there that aren't necessarily particularly a consequence necessarily of the role, but are things that actually you still need to bear in mind. They could shorten your ministry. They could certainly affect your ministry and

Valerie Ling (12:39)
Yeah.

Matt Edwards (13:06)
either catching these things earlier will allow you to sort of manage them and treat them better or maybe stop something happening at all. So what do you what do I notice generally with this kind of group of people who are a real vocation, who are about serving others? They tend to neglect their own self-care somewhat. And that's not everybody by any stretch of the imagination. And there is not

all aspects of their self-care but certainly physically we do tend to see that there is a bit of a neglect there because they're so focused on looking after everyone else and because of the demands of the role I suppose.

Valerie Ling (13:47)
In the same room with us was ⁓ David Eagle who tapped me on the shoulder and he said he had US stats about prevalence and he confirmed that in their cohort North Carolina they certainly would agree that the medical burden or the medical diseases of clergy are worse than the general population. Aside from, and I don't mean to dismiss it because I think it is true, ⁓

Matt Edwards (14:04)
Mm.

Valerie Ling (14:11)
I've noticed that our clients just don't think about their medical appointments. Sometimes cost is an issue as well. If you've got a stipend that's challenging, you prioritize maybe sending your family, your kids, and hope that you can do some exercise and eat a little bit better and you'll be fine. So I do think there are general issues of time and a mindset around physical health.

But isn't the role of ministry also that contributes to that, do you think?

Matt Edwards (14:42)
definitely think there's aspects of the role that do do that. It depends on, again, there's individuals and there's different things, but I think there's less chance to do exercise. Maybe that's in terms of the role, but also the time constraints. If you think of a classic view of a vicar going to a parishioner's house and there's that

Valerie Ling (14:55)
Yeah.

Matt Edwards (15:08)
phrase of more tea vicar, know the tea and cake kind of scenario, you know do you offend the person that you've gone to to say no I'm not going to to do this or do you take part? I spoke to a vicar just I think it two weeks ago and he I think he admitted to drinking up to sort of 12 cups of tea a day and that's part of his

Valerie Ling (15:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edwards (15:31)
you know, daily routine, maybe it's meeting with other people, it's the social aspects of it. that's quite a lot of caffeine to intake in a day. yeah, so I think there is, there's the role in terms of what's involved, but there's also the role in terms of the toll that it takes on the church leader, because it is a demanding role. It is a vocation, so they're giving their all to it.

Valerie Ling (15:49)
Mmm.

Matt Edwards (15:57)
I remember hearing one of the talkers at the conference saying it's a high stakes role as well. you're thinking your role is partly of eternal significance to the people that you're serving and looking after. You don't have an off switch in terms of if you're a pastor or a clergy in that particular parish. Most of them are sort of

Valerie Ling (16:03)
Yeah, it's good.

Matt Edwards (16:19)
but you're available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Unless you take yourself out of that situation, like physically, and I've had some, that's what they do. They have somewhere to go that they go away for a weekend or something. they, people can't just knock on the door and so on. But it's still hard, know, nowadays we can be accessible all the day, every day with emails, with phone calls, with text messages. So you've got to be really...

And that's one of the things I often talk to people about is their boundaries. What are your boundaries? How are you going to try and create a view to at least give you a bit of you time and to enable you to switch off? Because you do find, and again, was talks at the current table about the sort low level stress that we can carry that of quarters old build up and continuation.

Valerie Ling (16:49)
Mm.

Matt Edwards (17:11)
that ultimately will have effects on our bodies whether we like it or not eventually. And if you don't have those times of rest, you don't have those times of good sleep, of time away, of time out, then eventually something's going to break. So, yeah.

Valerie Ling (17:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

you've mentioned a few things that I was thinking about. So chronic stress as a medical professional, because as a psychologist, we are thinking is that chronic stress in some ways is more costly than a single event acute stress in some ways, repeated

Traumatic stress is not great for your system, it has a similar psychological mechanism. You're always in that sort of state of your body's not your body and mind's not at rest physically chronic stress as in that sort of even if it's a humming stress being switched on morning to night thinking about your parishioners before you go to bed. They're the first that email is the first thing that you think about in the morning. What does that do to the body?

Matt Edwards (18:13)
Yeah, exactly. that's where these things like the blood pressure is going to be at a level where it's not coming down. It's sort of staying up. So that's not going to be your metabolism is not going to be as good. That's where the sort of diabetes comes in, the obesity side of things. So, yeah, it definitely will have a knock on effect on the physical health as well. So it's it. And everyone carries stress in different ways. And for some people,

that low level stress will start to exert itself through physical manifestations, whether it's stomach conditions, whether it's acid reflux, whether it's problems, neck problems, headaches because of muscular tension and so on. Your body releases it some way and it's quite often not necessarily in a way either you think you can relate to it or you want it. But yeah, it will come out.

sadly in one way, shape or form eventually.

Valerie Ling (19:08)
So, you I was also thinking that when you start your ministry, you're younger. And by the time you're in seasoned ministry, you're probably doing a lot more complex ministry as well. And you're at a stage of life sort of heading, you know, mid forties into fifties, your body composition is changing. But I don't assume that that would be true of any kind of executive. So you see the broad range, you know, senior executives are in a similar situation. So what's the deal with

Matt Edwards (19:18)
mean.

Valerie Ling (19:35)
our clergy as they age and their health. What do think that's about?

Matt Edwards (19:40)
Yeah, it's a tricky one, but I think it is just a cumulative effect of this, the things that we've been talking about, because on the whole, think when they're starting, they're, again, similar to any of the general population generally, but it's that cumulative effect of not making time for yourself, of not getting out and exercising, of maybe eating the wrong things.

as comfort or being given it and not being able to say no and that low level stress that we talked about because I don't know of any other job that is quite that full on. An old fashioned doctor who equally used to be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the same area, that's a similar kind of thing and you do see

Valerie Ling (20:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Matt Edwards (20:27)
sort of caring professions, vocational professions, whether it's teachers, social workers, doctors and so on, equally have sort of similar problems of not looking after themselves, they're too busy looking after others and so on. But I think the unique thing with being a pastor, a vicar, a clergy is that thing of not being able, almost not being able to get away, you there's no clocking off.

Valerie Ling (20:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edwards (20:52)
that you're always accessible. Now, unless you've

got those good hard boundaries in place, where you've got a good team to support you and take some of that load. And the other aspect that I haven't, we didn't mention, I haven't mentioned yet is, and again, it came up in the conference, is loneliness, which is a whole nother thing to talk about. But actually, even though somebody can seem like they've got lots of contacts and a community.

Valerie Ling (21:00)
Yeah.

Matt Edwards (21:19)
they can still be lonely and especially as a leader, they may experience that loneliness and COVID really taught us the detrimental effects of loneliness on again, our physical bodies, on our mental health. And I think that's another aspect that we really need to look with this particular role where you're kind of on a pedestal for a lot of people and how you manage that. Do you try and...

Valerie Ling (21:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edwards (21:46)
and act up to this person that is impossible to be, or do you realise your own problems and difficulties and accept that? It's a tricky one. Do people want to be friends with their parishioners? Do they see that as a boundary to cross? It's complicated role and I think that's part of the issue.

Valerie Ling (22:06)
Yeah, I've often, mean as therapists, we learn that there are different ways to understand loneliness, but one of the most physically, not just emotionally, painful experiences of loneliness is being in a room full of people where you believe and you think and you should belong and yet still feeling on the outside.

that does things to us not just psychologically but at a cellular level. think psychological studies have shown that it actually induces physical pain. Which brings me to not necessarily a direct correlation but one of the startling things that I discovered is that you said that musculoskeletal issues in this group is also of concern. Can you?

Matt Edwards (22:27)
today.

but yeah.

Valerie Ling (22:53)
Can you tell us a bit about that, Matt?

Matt Edwards (22:55)
That's just some information, a bit of data we got from our occupational health team, some of the different conditions they see in their general work but also in the work with the church leaders and you know there's a high proportion of what they deal with is mental health, then a slightly lower proportion is physical health related and then a proportion of that is musculoskeletal.

and the percentage varies on which sort of month we took, somewhere between 25, so a quarter of the referrals up to closer to about 45 percent. So somewhere between a quarter and maybe up to a half had some kind of musculoskeletal element, which is interesting. Talking with my colleagues didn't really seem to be any major issue from a role perspective.

Valerie Ling (23:44)
Hmm. Hmm.

Matt Edwards (23:45)
contributed or caused any different to any other profession that perhaps we deal with. But I suppose it potentially comes down to, again, if you've got issues like overweight and obesity, that's going to have an impact on joints. If you've got some of these other conditions, diabetes can affect joints and so on. So that may have a knock on effect. And then you've got the general bits of wear and tear and...

sitting down, maybe sitting in an office that hasn't had a proper ergonomic assessment so that you're getting some repetitive strain injuries, your back's not right because you're in the wrong chair, you your seat, your desk position, your laptop's not right, your mouse and so on. And especially nowadays, again, in the last five years since COVID, so much more is done online now and from the desk that maybe wasn't done in the same way prior to COVID.

Valerie Ling (24:37)
So we're talking back pain, neck, shoulder, headaches even maybe?

Matt Edwards (24:43)
Yeah, so I suppose that would probably come on more under physical, it's all certainly the shoulders, arms is all related to headaches or can be because of that muscular tension you then get in that part of your neck that then can give absolutely headaches, migraines can all be related to that.

Valerie Ling (24:59)
Alright, so...

One aspect is maybe the setup of how we're doing our work. I agree with you. as a small business owner, I have to do a work health safety ergonomics checklist for all my employees. They have a right to actually say, I'm not comfortable with the way my desk is set up. I mean, it's embedded into our processes, but I don't think that we have a similar thought for our people working in church offices or working from their bedrooms sometimes, because they're working from home.

There's a fair amount, I think, too, of movement, and tear ⁓ on ministry workers. They're meeting in food courts, they're driving, sometimes they're taking public transport. There are all kinds of these sequelae that comes, I think, from maybe being an occupation that hasn't had a full, thorough check.

⁓ as to whether things are set up well for them, not just psychologically but physically as well.

Matt Edwards (25:54)
Absolutely and again you you lead to the fact that there'll be all sorts it's not as straightforward as let's get your desk set up right because there's so many different parts of their role where they may be sitting in a seat in a church, a village hall, it may be doing something at the school one day so sitting in a school seat that's you you know not right, sitting going into somebody's house where their sofa is not really great for their back, maybe their car they've got the seating

Valerie Ling (26:09)
Hmm.

Matt Edwards (26:22)
certain car manufacturers that are quite renowned for good seats and those who are about to renounce bad seats and if you're in there for quite a period of time that's going have an impact.

Valerie Ling (26:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Do know, I remember too, when our kids were little, they got the best shoes. But I'd go into the local, like, Kmart or something like that and I'd say, you know, the budget is 15 bucks for me, you know. And of course, I do everything in those shoes. So it's also probably a way of thinking about how we make decisions for our own physical health, our mattress, our shoes, those sorts of things.

Matt Edwards (26:39)
Yeah.

just keep doing the thing.

Yeah,

yeah, how often do they change their mattress? know, that's a good one for backs. Pillows, you say, footwear can have an impact. You quite often see people who have a problem with their, I don't know, hips or knees or back. And actually it can be something as silly as the shoes they're wearing because of, know, poor fitting shoes and so on, because there's that sort of knock on effect with your skeleton.

Valerie Ling (27:14)
Mmm. Mmm.

Matt Edwards (27:24)
if something's out of line slightly then it has a knock-on effect elsewhere. yeah there's all different aspects that could be important.

Valerie Ling (27:30)
I've been very conscious about how I'm sitting right now, Matt. I'm convicted.

Which brings me, think, now to this part that I really wanted to talk to you as well about the finishing well, the retirement picture, the physical health for our people in ministry who've done their time. And what are you noticing and what are you concerned about in that space?

Matt Edwards (27:51)
So we're lucky enough to do a few sort of retirement talks for people as they're approaching retirement. My mum's actually a vicar and she's involved in helping the clergy in her area in their retirement. They have like a couple of days to go through various things, pensions and so on, but they have this physical health talk as well that myself and my colleague has done over the last few years.

And so it's just an opportunity to talk to them about some of the problems of physical health as we get older. Some of the important things that either screening tests that are available or vaccinations that actually are available, certainly in the UK, like shingles and pneumococcal vaccine and flu and different things that are available at different ages. There's screening for aneurysms, for bowel cancer.

breast cancer and so on that are all available at different stages and it's encouraging people to make sure they're doing those things if they haven't already. Also giving them some awareness again often people aren't aware of what actually is available for them so that's really important but it's equally the one of the key things we talk about is that whole thing of your your role and it's you've

had this role that is your identity for the last however many years and it's learning to be kind to yourself in this time of transition and to have a bit of a plan for it. I think one of the things I notice as a doctor and it's more anecdotal than anything particularly of ⁓ scientific value but people who sort of stop hard quite often struggle.

in their retirement and physically and sometimes sort of seem to have a premature early death because for whatever reason something's happened that they've gone from having this role, this identity, this focus to nothing and that's not healthy. So it's looking at what for you, for some people a hard stop is actually okay and they've got other things in place but what is it for you that is going to help you?

Valerie Ling (29:44)
Mm.

Mmm.

Matt Edwards (29:56)
manage this transition well. You're going to a slow, know, reduce your hours. You're to do a little bit of something to keep you busy for a period of time, six months or something. You know, what's your plan? What's your idea? So really, and then really it's just a case of, okay, you've got to this stage, whatever conditions you've got, try and manage them well. Let's try and give you a long retirement and

Yeah, and if you haven't got anything great, amazing, let's try and keep you that way. So again, it's reminding people of the simple things of eating well, of exercise, all the general health things. Get your blood pressure checked, your blood sugars checked, your cholesterol checked. Know what's important for your health in this stage of life.

Valerie Ling (30:42)
I actually haven't looked at any stats on this, but anecdotally from the practice, can tell when someone walks into our practice, whether they were a career ministry or missionary person, if they're an elderly person, they may be coming in for grief or coping with the death of a loved one. But as soon as they enter, I can say,

this person has been in in career ministry and largely it's the sort of you can you can almost see them in comparison to this sounds horrible because psychologists shouldn't compare but you know physically how they look and I'm not talking about weight I'm just talking about that their skin the level of being run down in their body I've noticed it so

Matt Edwards (31:19)
you

Valerie Ling (31:28)
I thought when you mentioned it and that it was an important thing to attend to. Do you think that I've got a few questions to follow up and then we'll finish. Do you think that that's part of the responsibility of caring well for our ministry workers that you can leave the ministry and so-called retire? But then I've often found that for ministry workers, because they're lonely, they have been isolated from family and care networks.

Matt Edwards (31:37)
you

Valerie Ling (31:57)
They kind of have to make sense of how to care for themselves themselves. Do you think there's a different way or maybe you're seeing a different way?

Matt Edwards (32:04)
I think it is quite easy for a church or an organisation to wave that person goodbye and that's it when that's done. think there's a real place for that, as long as it's obviously a planned retirement, for the year to two years before to be really planning to do it well.

Valerie Ling (32:15)
on it.

Matt Edwards (32:25)
Again, we offer a psychological debrief for people to again think about their life, their ministry, what have they done well, what are they pleased about, what are they looking forward to, to focus on that sort of mental health side of things. I think it's important just to support them and help them in that transition before you get to it and not that it's just left till, you know, this is the date that they

Valerie Ling (32:46)
Hmm.

Matt Edwards (32:51)
They're due to move out, right? Let's get them out of the vicarage or what have you. we need to find our six months or however long it is to find our next vicar. Yeah, I think there's a real. So again, comes out that almost duty of, well, duty of care, but this person has invested their life into this ministry for however long. It's almost like honoring them for what they've done.

Valerie Ling (32:59)
⁓ Mm.

the transition.

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edwards (33:14)
to help them in that next stage.

Valerie Ling (33:14)
that.

On that honoring bit, what would you say then to let's say our ministry families who've retired and they go to local congregations. You've just caused me to think about another point, is sometimes you can be in a local congregation and people don't want to burden you some more when you've retired, like, ⁓ you know, let's not get them involved. But conversely, there could be an advantage of asking.

Matt Edwards (33:43)
Yeah.

Valerie Ling (33:43)
them

how they would like to continue their ministry. Because you were saying that retirement is like it's a crash of identity as well, probably even more significant when you've been in ministry and your acts of service are wrapped around your formation of who you are in Jesus and who you are to his people. So maybe there's also an element of recognizing that if you've got people in your congregation who have

so-called retired that they're actually still needing our care and attention.

Matt Edwards (34:16)
Yeah, you do find, especially if you've a church where there's only one leader as it were, they will often make use of people who are in the parish, the church, who have been leaders before. And I think that's when it really works well for everyone. It takes the pressure off the leader because they've got some support.

It keeps the people who are, as you say, retired, but again this is a vocation, this is who they are, unable to take part in some bits, but without that responsibility, overarching 24-7 responsibility, they can actually, and a friend of mine worded it when they were retiring from not church work, but actually what's your passion? Do passion projects.

And that could be maybe you love the speaking, you love the preaching, focus on that. Maybe you love the small group connections and focus on a bereavement group, focus on a young persons group or an over 50s group, whatever it is. What's your passion and work on those passions? And one would hope that you will discuss that. The difficulty again is where do they then retire? Are they going to stay in the same area? Do they move out and start afresh?

which brings in all sorts of other bits as well. it would be good to do that well by if they're staying, being able to see what it is that they enjoy and what would they like to continue to do without saying, I've got these gaps, can you fill them? Sort of fitting them in to what you want. Actually honouring to see what would you like to do. And again, somebody coming into a new parish, hopefully getting to know

Valerie Ling (35:45)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

you

Matt Edwards (35:54)
the new vicar and again that whole conversation of how can, how can, you know, almost we serve you by allowing you to keep doing what you want to do. So even the, I did listen to your podcast with David and he said about when he started his as a, as a pastor, how there were three or four older, more experienced people. And it was only through their sort of mentoring and support that actually he was able to really do that well at the beginning. And it's

Valerie Ling (36:11)
Yes.

Matt Edwards (36:20)
it's that, it's being there to support the new person in or it's you being able to take a bit of that pressure and burden off them to allow them the space to have a day off or have a time off preaching or what have you. So I think it goes both ways, it will benefit the new people and it will benefit the individual who's retiring.

Valerie Ling (36:39)
just to finish up, if there was one thing as a medical doctor who's seen a lot of these lives, if there's one thing you'd love to say to someone about their medical, physical health, who's in ministry, what would you say?

Matt Edwards (36:53)
It might sound corny, but it's the whole thing of self-care isn't selfish. That's kind of a bit of my motto. I really think it's important to look after yourself and your well-being. If you want a long ministry to impact most people, have the most impact for the kingdom, you need to look after yourself because only if you're well and thriving and so on that you're going to have that longevity of...

your ministry or at least give yourself the best chance to. So yeah, self-care isn't selfish and it's again it's the whole thing of your body, know, according to the biblical phrase, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit so look after it, you know, really look after that vessel so that the Holy Spirit can do its work throughout your lifetime.

Valerie Ling (37:40)
Thank you so much, Matt, for spending time with me all the way from the UK. It was a joy to talk with you today on the podcast, as it was a joy to get to know you and talk to you at the conference. Thank you so much.

Matt Edwards (37:54)
Thanks, Valerie. Great to talk to you.

Yeah.

Valerie Ling (37:56)
See you later, Matt.