by Tom Stuckey
When I candidated for the ministry in the 1960s my wife and I both understood that we were embracing a life of self-sacrifice. This idea of sacrifice was re-enforced during my three years of residential training at Richmond College, founded in 1842 to train missionaries. Each day we students passed beneath the Memorial Boards of those pioneer students who had responded to the missionary call. It was salutary to see how many of those who went out and died ‘in the field’ after serving for less than two years. Dietrich Bonheoffer, who had stood beneath these boards before returning to Nazi Germany, wrote, ‘When Christ call a man he calls a man to die’ We students could not fail to absorb this idea of ‘making the sacrifice complete’. Our partners knew this too.
I recall also how in 1965 the President, Professor Gordon Rupp, spoke to the Ministerial Session of Conference on the subject of the ‘Pastoral Office’. He suggested that the survival of God’s people depended on the effectiveness of the Pastor who like the Good Shepherd ‘sacrifices himself for the sake of the sheep’.
This word ‘sacrifice’ does not sit easily today within a middle class culture of self-fulfilment yet its reality still challenges the contemporary family. For example; do you, as a responsible parent, put your career before your family? In times past the role of each parent and the children was clearly defined. Not so today where parents attempt to balance competing expectations. What however remains evident is that within a family someone, if not everyone, has to make some sacrifice if the family is not to be fragmented.
Within the ministerial family of former days, the husband’s vocational demands usually came first forcing the wife and children to make the greater sacrifice. Thankfully we live in a more enlightened age. Today’s ordained ministers are advised to work two sessions out of three each day, guard their days off and take their quarterly breaks; all ‘well-being’ matters designed to reduce stress – sensible yes but theologically questionable? Moreover, today ministers have to deal with issues which were not there thirty years ago and these have changed the very nature of how we spend our days. The shortage of ministers, the ever increasing statutory demands and the burden of responding to and producing data for our ravenous technological machines, is turning active pastoral ministers into desk-sitting managers. We are suffering from what Christina Maslach calls ‘structural stressing’.[1] I must therefore ask, ‘At what point does the concern for ministerial well-being undermine the vocational and theological call of Jesus ‘to deny self, take up the cross and follow? (Mk.8.34).
In June I wrote an article in the Methodist Recorder with the above title within the series of Elder Voices. Since then, I have continued to think further about this idea of ‘making the sacrifice complete’. I have been helped by John Barclay’sarticle Is Self-Sacrifice a Christian Ideal in which he approaches this issue in a different way. He rightly points out that self-sacrifice can lead to harmful self-negation. The ultimate end of sacrifice, he argues, is not simply about loss but also about gain. Self-sacrifice is about giving one’s self into a relationship of solidarity with others, such that ‘all can flourish together’. It is not a binary concept but a corporate one. ‘Give and it will be given to you’, is one of a series of texts in Luke 6 which sets the idea of loss in the context of gain. Barclay concludes, ‘Our self-other polarity makes it almost impossible for us to understand how a gain for others can be also, and legitimately, a gain for oneself… if we understand ourselves as made to flourish ultimately as we conjoin our identity with that of Christ, we have a vision that is richer and fuller than the heroization of self-sacrifice.’[2]
Both Christine and I look back over my sixty years as a Methodist Minister with gratitude. Yes, the Church has generated many stressful times for us and our children, yet these occasions of anguish and agony fade when compared to the abundant joy and sense of well-being that we have experience. God has blessed us! This, I suggest, is a by-product of attempting to ‘make the sacrifice complete’.
[1] Christina Maslach, BurnOut, ISHK. p.69.
[2] Methodist Sacramental Fellowship – August 2025.
Theology Everywhere 
And yet our vows include.’let no one suffer harm from your neglect’ what untold harm has been done to children of the manse by ministers neglecting their family, or indeed by neglecting their own wellbeing. We are commanded to love our neighbours as ourselves. It is a difficult and fine line to walk.
Kind regards
Gill Hulme
07985099403
Methodist Minister for Bishop’s Stortford and Stansted Free Church.
My normal day off is Friday, and as I am part-time, I don’t normally work the last full week of the month
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Thank you for your very helpful comments. Having suffered profound emotional neglect/abuse as a child, I find the differentiation between self-sacrifice and self-negation extremely helpful and the concept of building mutual solidarity with others offers a well-balanced path between the two. I don’t take the Methodist Recorder because I already have a pile of unread magazines and I do not wish to add to the pile, but I would be delighted if you could indicate where I might find John Barclay’s article.
Thank you again
Liz
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There seems an important non-sequitur in para 4. Tom observes that ever increasing statutory demands etc are turning active pastoral ministers into desk-sitting managers. But he “therefore” goes on to ask whether well-being measures risk undermining the vocational and theological call of Jesus. I don’t understand why his focus is not upon the phenomenon he himself has just identified?
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Called to minister or to administer?
It might be interesting for presbyters to undertake an honest appraisal of how much time they spend in meetings, how much sat in front of a computer or on the telephone dealing with administrative matters, how long preparing and leading services and bible studies, how much time in personal devotions or study, and what proportion is spent actually ministering to people on a personal level or reaching out through mission. Time is our most precious resource, so how we use it tells us far more clearly what our priorities really are than any mission statement. Ministers might then compare the results with what they felt their call to ministry to be about.
Richard Baxter, an eminent 17th clergyman, suggested that 30 minutes of private, pastoral conversation may accomplish more than 10 years of preaching in the impact it has on a church member. How many can remember by Wednesday the subject of the previous Sunday’s sermon, let alone the three or four points made? Yet increasingly the Sunday service is the only contact an individual member has with her minister, unless there is a death or serious illness, or the member is on a church committee or attends a bible study..
A few years ago, a minister new to our circuit included in her self-introduction in the circuit newsletter that she would not visit people unless they were in hospital or seriously ill. Yes, we have to break down the idea that only a visit from the minister counts. But how does a minister get to know his or her congregation, if s/he doesn’t talk to them on their own ground? How does s/he make an impact on the community, if s/he isn’t seen around the area in a clerical collar chatting to people about their concerns?
Every week more people in the UK stop attending church for a variety of reasons. “Suppose a man has 100 sheep and loses one. Does he not leave the 99 and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” (Luke 15:1-7.) I take this to mean that such people are very important to God – even more important than the efficient management of the church. So how do they fit into the church’s priorities? How much of our time, effort and resources are they worth and how much do they get? Is it really more important to make sure that Head Office receives the GDPR return on time? When my father retired, he would often “just go for a little walk”. It was only when he died that several people came up to me quietly and said, “The reason I’m still in the church is because your father came to tell me how much I had been missed.” Is all that kind of work all down to the laity these days?
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