Date

11-13-2024

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (EdD)

Chair

Matthew Vander Wiele

Keywords

African-American pastors, the fruit of the Spirit, joy, self-care, burnout

Disciplines

Educational Leadership | Religion

Abstract

The role of a pastor today involves spiritual duties, administrative tasks, counseling parishioners, and preparing and giving Sunday morning sermons. Moreover, African-American pastors who have churches in inner cities face additional roles related to race relations, social inequality, and lack of resources. Due to the incredible demands of ministry and leadership, a pastor’s maintenance of self-care strategies can become secondary to the people they lead. When self-care is put on hold, the demonstration of the Spirit’s work in the pastor— “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”—may become overrun by feelings of stress and burnout. The purpose of this multi-case study was to explore the relationship between self-care and the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of African-American pastors who serve at inner-city churches in Buffalo, New York. Self-care will be defined as the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s physical and emotional well-being during periods of stress. The pastors in this study participated in semi-structured interviews and completed a research-designed demographic questionnaire about self-care’s role in manifesting the fruit of the Spirit, emphasizing joy. In addition, five members of each pastor’s leadership team were given a survey regarding the pastor's manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit, and an observation of each pastor’s church service was conducted.

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