Church attenders do better — with Valerie Ling

New global research associated with Harvard University suggests that people who regularly attend church tend to do better in life than people who do not. 

The Global Flourishing Study is following more than 200,000 people across 22 countries and tracking not only happiness, but meaning and purpose, relationships, character, mental and physical health, life satisfaction and material stability.

But if churches are helping people flourish, what is happening to the pastors who lead them? Senior pastors carry grief, crises, expectations and organisational responsibility that most people never see. A church may appear to be growing and successful while its pastor is quietly being depleted.

And how do we know whether a church itself is healthy? 

Valerie Ling joins us from the Center for Effective Serving to explore richer ways of recognising flourishing in pastors, churches and the communities they serve.

Anglican Aid
To find out more about supporting Anglican Aid.

Transcript

Welcome And The Harvard Finding

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Church attenders do better. Valerie Ling is our guest. It's the Pastor's Heart. It's Dominic Steele. And new global secular research associated with Harvard University shows that people who are part of faith communities tend to do better in life than people who are not. It's called the Global Flourishing Study. It's following more than 200,000 people across 22 countries and tracking a series of metrics. Happiness, meaning and purpose, relationships, character, mental and physical health, life satisfaction, and financial stability. One of its striking early findings is that active religious participation is strongly associated with greater flourishing. Now, we might feel like this is a truth universally acknowledged and not new news, and I do take it that it is true from the Bible, but I still think it does this pastor's heart good to hear it from Harvard. The study challenges the secular assumption that religion is irrelevant or harmful. Now, there's a side issue. If churches are helping people flourish, what is happening to the pastors' lives? A church might appear also to be growing and successful while its pastor is essentially being depleted. And then what actually is church health? And we can look at metrics like attendance and giving, but there are potentially richer ways of recognizing flourishing. Psychologist Valerie Lean is with us from Sydney's Center for Effective Serving. Valerie's been pursuing these things at the Common Table Collaborative in the United States. Valerie, let's start with this assertion that um new global research shows that church attenders do better in life. That does my pastor's heart good.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Does my psychologist's heart good as well? And that's what led me to the US. Uh, in October of last year, I stumbled on this uh consortium of research papers and had a conversation with my husband and said, Do you think I should go to this gathering? Because this is where they were all gathering in January, so just a few months, and it blew my mind.

unknown 2:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Blew your mind. That's a big statement. Yeah. It blew my mind.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Well, reading the papers just at

Valerie Discovers The Research

SPEAKER_00 2:56

a static level, um, I was seeing how the things that God has put for us has been good for us, the abundant life. You know, things like loving him, following him, um, displaying him, his holy spirit, regenerating us, and then what it means to love your neighbor. I was just seeing this being operationalized, if you like, in what the research was finding. And I remember just sitting and thinking, Lord, this is a spectacular demonstration of your design and your goodness for people, not just for Christians. So when I saw that, I didn't know that these researchers were Christians, Dominic. Um, that very night I sent three emails. I was just a bit bold to them and said, I'm in Australia and I have discovered this. And then they wrote back saying that they were Christians and that the majority of the Harvard uh researchers are Christians.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Although operating, I mean, when I read the report, I mean, it's a secularly framed report and obviously surveying a much wider group than just faith communities.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Absolutely. And so religion is only one of the indicators that they're looked at, but it has turned out to be the number one indicator of flourishing.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Number one indicator of flourishing. Tell me more. I mean, what are the indicators? How does it work? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Well, you could look at things like age, gender, um, financial, the economic status of a country. So one of the reasons why the Harvard group wanted to expand their study into flourishing, into all those domains

Why Religion Ranks Number One

SPEAKER_00 4:35

that you spoke about, was because previously we'd had the Gallup Happiness Report, which is essentially a single question, you know, um that gets asked of people around the world, and it has more to do with your perception of happiness. So the Harvard study wanted to expand that into various domains. And surprisingly, um, whereas the Gallup Happiness Report had sort of your more richer countries reporting happiness, the Harvard Global Flourishing Studies had the poorer countries coming up on top. And then they asked the question, well, what's that about?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

You were happier if you're in a poorer country than if you're in the United States, Australia, that kind of you're flourishing, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

So if we look at the various things about flourishing, it's about your relationships, how satisfied you are, how connected you feel, whether there's a sense of meaning and purpose. And so I think why religion has come up as a number one indicator there is when you attend a faith community, you're deeply socially connected, you're deeply anchored in teaching that is meaningful and transformative. And it's deeply pushing you towards looking beyond circumstances to your neighbor, um, to the people around you. And I think that's where they're landing on is to show that uh when we attend religious uh services or when we're part of a faith community, there are these really great ingredients that come with that.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Now, what about? I mean, those things you just described are, if you like, um horizontal things about me and my neighbor. What about me and my creator?

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah, so there is a parallel study that's come out of the Harvard Global Flourishing Studies. They're actually looking at Christian flourishing, right? So they're actually looking at things like character, contentment. So the degree to which it's not just about how often you're you're doing religious things like reading your Bible or praying, but it's the degree to which those activities are now transforming you as a person. Are you more loving? Are you more generous? Are you more gracious? Are you more forgiving? Um, and these seem to be some of the important factors. And and really that's mirroring the character of God, isn't it? To one another.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Now, as I was researching and preparing for this, I then started to think, well, I kind of like that there's news now or empirical news that um I will do better in life if I have the gospel in my life. But I I I then think, well, hang on, the prosperity gospel says, come to Jesus and you'll flourish um rather than come to Jesus and have your sins forgiven. Um now um

Gospel Freedom And True Flourishing

SPEAKER_01 7:22

uh I want to keep preaching come to Jesus and have your sins forgiven. But this other aspect you're saying to is true.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

So you can look at it from the point of view that there is an oasis of goodness built into God's way. Um the fact that the Savior came to die for us and there's nothing that we can do, uh, no good works, isn't immensely freeing and probably something that is uh it is unique to the Christian um religion, if you like.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

So but it's Well, every other religion is do things to get acceptable.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

This is Jesus has done.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

That's right. Um I don't think they've actually teased out yet the differences in religion. That's coming. Um there's there'll be a paper published, but I think the hypothesis or the working hypothesis then is with that freedom and that knowledge, what do we give back to one another? Grace, forgiveness, love. Um, and so one of the things that the Harvard scholars are saying is it's probably deeply linked to the teaching of the religions as well. Which makes sense. Yeah. So, and that's what I'm looking forward to see. Um, what are those nuances? What does make the difference? So, one of the things that I've learned, uh the paper hasn't been published yet, but the people that are looking at Christian flourishing, so they're looking at um the qualities, if you like, of Christian character that leads to a sense of uh spiritual flourishing. They're finding that in a church, let's say, even though they may be strong on material and financial stability, like they're ticking the boxes on that sense of flourishing, they may not be ticking the boxes for stewardship. In the same way, they may be ticking the secular measures of uh happiness and purpose, but not ticking the boxes in terms of feeling contentment. So I reckon when we drill down even further, there's something about being able to anchor deeply into who God is and how that transforms us into his nature, and then how we mirror that to one another. That's that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

And I'm taking it also being at peace with my maker and this sense of forgiveness from him.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Yeah. So they're just they've actually just published a paper on forgiveness. Um, and that is strongly linked to flourishing. Now, forgiveness, their definition may not necessarily be completely uh biblically anchored, but it is that attitude that I can uh release and relinquish wrongs, and that it is the right thing to do for others to be able to forgive.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So when you came back and you shared this with your pastor husband, what impact does it have on you as a couple in ministry?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Well, I think we're far more intentional. Some of the practices we'll talk about that um I learned from their research, we probably make a lot more space. So one of the things Josh and I have done is um one of the key researchers in the Harvard study talks about how every year he reads My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

Ministry Life After The Findings

SPEAKER_00 10:42

And so we've been doing that devotion together because I thought, oh well, this researcher um seems to be getting. And one of the things that has really impacted us in doing this devotion together is we realized how much of it it is a perspective of letting go, you know, and saying, my utmost for his highest is actually to allow him to be the higher one in our lives. And so I think it's we've slowed down a lot more. We've um not been in a hurry to do but to wait to pray and to seek him.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Right. Um let's just think if churches are helping people flourish, then what's going on with the pastor? Because um often one of the issues is, and this has also come out of this uh study in the States, is that um uh there's particular pressures on pastors and they seem to be increasing.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yes. So the US is a different beast to Australia at the moment. Um, they've had a lot of political,

Pastors Under Pressure And Out Of Sync

SPEAKER_00 11:45

racial, um, ideological divisions that have come into the church. Yeah. So for the pastors there, um, they have, I guess, lost a sense of solidarity and assumed belonging in their churches. So one of the things that um I discovered in being in the US was how concerted researchers were to not just study individual well-being, which is where we've we've been going with self-care and you know, appropriate boundaries and things like that, but to actually look at how clergy and their churches can be more relationally um in sync with one another. And they're finding more and more that that is an important ingredient, the degree to which we can bring our pastors back into fellowship with their churches. Um, so that's one thing that I think is really interesting and important.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

What does that mean in our context? I mean, yeah, how might I be out of sync with my church and how might I come into sync with my church?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Or well, uh, we know universally, at least in the Western world, pastors are lonely and increasingly lonely. But what does that mean? Uh, you could go out and have a lot of friends and have a lot of neighbors, but the thing that's really lonely is to be in a church full of people that you know you're supposed to belong to and feel like you're on the outside. So, what that looks to, I think beyond vision alignment, beyond strategic alignment is foundationally friendship. You know, do I know what Dominic's reading? Do I know what his favorite ice cream is? Do I understand what's going on in his family? You know, am I aware at his stage of life what are some of the things that he's he's worried about? Right. And you can only answer those things if you're interested in the human being, not the role. Right. So I think that's what it looks like that we can get really carried away by disagreements on the how to do and the what's and the whys and the whatnots, and just forget the human in the picture. So I'm really keen to encourage churches and pastors to take note of their affection for one another, right? How much is contempt building up? How much is unforgiveness building up? Because that's an important indicator, I think, of the alignment in the relationship.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

How much is contempt building up?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

I mean, what does that look like? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

That kind of roll your eyes thing. So in in relationship literature,

Contempt And Trust In Church

SPEAKER_00 14:27

so in marriage uh literature, there are four, they call it the four apocalyptic horsemen. Um, the criticism, um, stonewalling, pushing persons away. But the number one indicator of divorce is contempt for one another. And that's almost resentment, like uh an assumption that I actually really will never agree with you, and I actually don't really like you, and I just don't want to be in your presence. And that's usually a buildup of lots and lots of little arguments or unresolved things that leads to a sense of um your contempt. And then what we can spend a lot of our time doing as congregations is policing our pastor because we no longer trust him. We might be dissecting his sermon as we're sitting there. We might be talking about them. So um I put contempt, it hasn't come out in the literature yet, but the literature in terms of clergy health in the US is very big now on looking at things like congregational support, uh, congregational uh linking arms with the ministry, the partnership, the quality of the partnership that the pastor and the church has.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

So, I mean, I'm I'm thinking that if if if I'm if I'm feeling a sense of contempt towards the pastor, then I'm not sitting humbly under the word of God, thinking, how am I growing in Christ? You know, this today.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Potentially. I think I think it's true in any relationship, Dominic, right? I think if you're feeling that for anybody that you love, you're not going to be open to what can they teach me? Yes. Oh, their perspective even. So, yes, so if we put it in a church context, um, we may not be open to the influence of our pastor. Um, we might have preconceived. And I do want to say that that it's not always the congregation going out. Sometimes pastors do unhelpful things as well, the feedback into it, right? So tell me that. Well, uh, I've been thinking a lot about power. Um, how we we think about power really from a relationship point of view. I think like we we know about family violence, and we know that um we need to be mindful if we're a boss and employee relationship. Uh, but power is is intrinsically there. It's never gonna go away. It's between a parent and a child. Uh, it's between a neighbor that's

Power Dynamics In Pastoral Leadership

SPEAKER_00 16:54

lived in there for 10 years versus the new one coming in, right? Um, so I think about how little we we think and and cogitate our power dynamics in relationships. And when you're a pastor, you already have positional power. Most of the time in our circles, you're also male. So you also have a type of a gender um power in situations. So I think sometimes we just don't know that we're aggravating a relationship. And power is one of those examples. There could be a whole bunch of other things.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Um what are some of the other, if you like, unhealthy behaviors that we as pastors might um either get into or do um that makes this worse?

SPEAKER_00 17:44

We don't have all the time to talk about that, but uh from a compassionate point of view, I think it's a tough gig. It's a really tough gig. And I think one of the things that um one of the researchers that I I've really spent a lot more time with, we talk about how there's no other role like the clergy role. And sometimes I get pushback on that when I say that, but I'm kind of like actually the literature kind of does establish that. Um pastors are much like uh deployed military who live on military bases, their life and their vocation are deeply enmeshed, and their family are brought into the situation if they have family. So I think it's got to do with um if we're not aware and we don't have intentional practices. So four things, right? So, what else gets us into trouble when we're depleted?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

What are the closest jobs to past? Is it small business person or I think that well, this was the my viral post.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

So on Facebook, I just I was experimenting using Claude AI and I did a brain dump and it and I said, just draw me a picture of this. And I did first responders, I did non-for-profit CEOs, I did healthcare professionals, and I can't remember what the other one is. Um, and then I put clergy in the middle just to demonstrate that that's not even sufficient. You've got a lot more roles. Um, so from that perspective, it it's it's a complicated role and has become more complicated, I think. Um so that got a lot of engagement. People kept adding, and what about this? And what about this?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

I mean, I I feel it this morning. I'm having a conversation with you, and my next meeting is about fobs for this who gets fobs for security for our church building.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

That's that's that's one extreme to the other.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

I and I think it's hard to have empathy, Dominic. Uh I I feel for our congregations. I think pastors, we may not, I'm not a pastor, but pastors may struggle to have empathy for what congregations are going through in their everyday life, and vice versa. It's a really hard job to imagine if you're sitting there. So I've got good news for you. Um, four things that have been found in the literature to help for clergy flourishing. So clergy flourishing being their own sense of well-being. Yep. Uh, number one, daily practices is really, really important. It was found that if you have a daily practice of something, it's better than having a daily practice of nothing. Right. What are those practices? Number one, if you make time for yourself. So um, that's one of the things I've implemented. I start my morning mornings by myself in my room looking out to the garden with my cup of coffee. Right.

Four Practices For Clergy Wellbeing

SPEAKER_00 20:23

I used to go out, wash the dishes, etc. Someone else does that now. So intentionally every day, making just a little bit of time for yourself. Number one. Number two is having a well-being practice that you like. So you got to experiment with it. I'm not gonna run a marathon. I will, no thank you. That doesn't um bring me any joy. Um, so you got to find a well-being practice that you enjoy. That's the second one. Third one's really uh interesting. Being able to take the perspective uh that God is at work. So what they found is the difference between clergy who flourish and clergy who struggle is also how they internalize criticism. So what they found is if a if a clergy person asks if the criticism is valid to what God is uh intending for them in this ministry, you know, is this in line with what God has given me to do in this ministry, attend to it. If not, let it go. And the fourth one, at the end of the day, taking some time to think about the things that have gone well, not just in ministry, but it might be in your family or you might have gone out or on the news. And then this is an important step, tell someone. Right, message someone, call someone. I even think as a ministry team, it's a great practice at the end before we all sign off. Can we send around the things that we've noticed God has done? Uh, you know, some of the good that we've seen, some of the positive that we're seeing. So four practices. And I will just say one more thing. They found the difference that for women in ministry, for men in ministry, having multiple sources of support and friends was important. But for women in ministry, if they were married, um, the marriage relationship was critical as a support.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, what about the church in terms of the church? We talked about, if you like, um individuals flourishing, then the pastor flourishing. Yeah. Now, what about the church as a community? Now, we've talked about things like um measuring giving, measuring um uh attendance, but you're saying that. There's some deeper measures that are in there.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yes. Now, this is some of the newer research that's coming out. Um, they're they're trying to move away from this descriptive metrics like attendance and financials to

Measuring Church Health Beyond Attendance

SPEAKER_00 22:46

get at more attitudes and characters. So one of the people that I spoke to, I'll just give you a list of what they're looking at. They're going to congregations and asking them to rate their sense of relational rootedness within the church, but also in their immediate surroundings, so with the neighbor, with the community. Compelling clarity, so a degree to which your sense of personal identity is aligned with your Christian mission and it's guiding your decisions as a church. Then dynamic collaboration. So what sorts of partnerships do you have? Um, is there a local prison? Is there a school? Is there a are you doing um a pantry? You know, the yeah. So what kind of dynamic collaborations you have? Now, this one's an interesting one. Holy tenacity. This has got to do with the church telling the story of their church. So some people have been around for 10, 15, 20 years, and the degree to which they can articulate perseverance, right, that comes from knowing Christ is still at work. Um, we can persevere because of what God has done and being able to narrate that through the history of their church. And the final one, and this is, I think, what the NCLS talks to us a lot about.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

It's the National Church Life Survey for Australia.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah, faithful agility, innovation, the degree to which we can be open, um, creative, not critical, not jump to conclusions and uh look at what's around us and our resources and be creative about it. So those are some of the things. And I'll add one more thing that blew my mind. Lots of things blew my mind when I went to PUS. I discovered that there is this thing called multiple belongings, Dominic, and it makes so much sense to me. So you could be um uh someone in a church that goes to village church, let's say, but really enjoys playing, um going line dancing at the Baptist Road, the Baptist church down their road.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Or, you know, really appreciates a specific type of ministry in another church.

Multiple Belonging And Church Partnerships

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah. And in the US at least, they're actually finding that this multiple belongings um is a thing.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

And so is are we also looking that they might come to this church, for example, but have their kids go to the kids' club at a different church?

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like this mindset, and I'm staying neutral in in judgment. On my podcast, when I did that episode, I said it was a very difficult one for me because I wanted to judge that behavior. I'm like, you should be committing to one church.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

To our kids' club.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Um, but I kind of got interested in why would someone do that? And the researchers were saying, because life is so complicated and so complex. If I have to figure out how to drive four kids or how to get my elderly mother to the church that I I come to every Sunday, it's just too hard. And so one of the things that I was encouraged to think about is that we can actually be in partnership with the churches around us to say that, you know, this dynamic collaboration, um, that the outpouring of the goodness of God through flourishing communities, if we know that those of us who come to church can access the wonderful ingredients of God Himself and a flourishing community, that we can share that amongst ourselves in our neighborhood, the various churches, and maybe even say that that's okay. Uh, we might find maybe that we all grow in our service to our neighbors um and being attractive to him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

And and so I I guess at that point we're sitting a little looser.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Yeah, maybe exploring creatively. And it may not be the case for every neighborhood, but there might be some neighborhoods where this is actually already happening. So why not come together and see if we can um invest in that some more? Great.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Thanks so much for coming in.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah, pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Valerie Ling has been our guest. She uh, well, she's the founder and behind the uh Center for Effective Serving and the Center for Effective Living in Sydney. And uh super helpful to hear her today. This has been The Pastor's Heart. My name is Dominic Steele. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.