The Story of My Interest in the Topic of Emotional Intelligence and Pastors

So people asked me a lot of times, "So how did you get interested in this topic of emotional intelligence and pastors?" After all, I'm working as a counselor and a psychologist.

I'm going to tell you the little story about that, which I call the story of the clanging pipes.

Way back in my early 20's, I was working overseas in a ministry and what amounted to a storefront church, except it wasn't really a storefront church. It was more of a residential. It was a residential building. We were on the bottom floors like a flat, and then there were other people living above.

Get your copy today!

There was the sanctuary. There was the little apartment that I lived in, and then the church and the apartment shared the kitchen and the bathroom, which wasn't always fun.

Then, finances being tight, we also rented to another American church that had church on Sundays before ours. This church was if you know the type really loud. I mean, banging the drums, shouting really loud.

If you know anything about Germans, Germans like it very quiet, especially on Sundays. We would have changed that situation, but we needed that arrangement financially.

The upstairs neighbor didn't like all this noise, and so he would protest every Sunday morning once they got started, and he would bang on the pipes, bang, bang, bang! He would hit those pipes throughout the entire worship service.

The problem was where the sanctuary was, it wasn't over the sanctuary. It was over the small little area where I sat right above my head every Sunday morning, that banging.

Eventually, I started having red splotches on Sunday morning for real. Then I started having red splotches before the Sunday morning service started.

Now, there were a lot of great things about that ministry. I love it! But there were also a lot of stressful things, but that story of the clanging pipes is the story that shows where my work got started because from that point on, I became a student of the phenomena of burnout.

—-

If you enjoyed this article, please “like” or share on your favorite social media using the icons below.

___