Upcoming series: Pastors and mental health

This topic is one I've thought the church has needed to address for some time. The stress pastors come under is intense, and the fishbowl they and their families live in is a situation the average churchgoer has no concept of.

We've all heard stories about a minister who lost his temper and didn't handle a situation tactfully, to say the least. At times these events don't just happen due to the stress, but because there is something wrong psychologically that needs to be addressed by a professional. We live in a world where there are more pastors being diagnosed as bipolar or with clinical depression. How is the body of Christ responding to those needing help for a wound that doesn't appear on the outside?

The Index is about to run a three-part series looking at this. I'm working on the first two parts while another writer is taking care of the third installment. My first story is going to be about a pastor who was dealing with these issues and even handed his resignation in to his church ... only to see the church reject his resignation. They stayed with him. Today, 15 years later, he's still there and the ministry has grown.

Remembers those lost in Honduras

Our current issue was a tough one to get out. First of all, it was centered around the deaths of three missionaries in Honduras. Two of them attended Tabernacle Baptist Church in Cartersville. In talking to the people there I saw how these two guys, Ric Mason and Perry Goad (Perry's on the left and Ric on the right), were not the type of church members to do nothing but keep a pew warm. They got out there. They were involved. They got their hands dirty.

Perry had his own heating and air conditioning business, a venture that I learned he treated as an extension of ministry in itself. His technical skills helped the church through the television ministry – a position that isn't very noticeable until you either mess up ... or you're not there. On the Sunday after his death pastor Don Hattaway said that after services Perry would have to chase him throughout the halls of the church to pass off the DVD of that day's service so Hattaway's parents could have a copy of their son preaching ASAP.

Ric had been known in Cartersville for years as owning a couple of eating joints, the last one being The Meating Place until he sold it. In addition to his work at Tabernacle, though, he was also the executive director for The Etowah Foundation, a group that provides grant money for students to go to college. Everyone seemed to have a memory of him and how he encouraged them to be involved in missions.

The most tragic thing about the loss of these two men is that they were solid family guys – the kind that you don't hear that much about. Service comes with a price, though we often don't equate that price with our lives. I never met either one of them, but every time the world loses men like these who are willing to set the bar a little bit higher, we all feel it.

When we're wrong ...

In putting together the paper, I basically read over each page at least twice and usually more than that. In that process, your eyes can play tricks on you and mistakes that are there are simply missed. It happens. When we get the finished product from the printer every other Tuesday I have a gnawing feeling in my gut because whatever is in there, is in there. Nothing you can do about it.

That being said, the San Francisco Chronicle has come up with an interesting way for readers to inform Chronicle staff of mistakes called Correct Me If I'm Wrong ... Their first one is an instant classic and will leave you hearing the phrase "pilotless drone" all day. I was crying at the end of it. Listen to it here. Warning: the poor guy on the phone is so irate he uses slang for "tee-tee."

To read what Poynter had to say about it, click here.