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Rev. Brent Levy: Caring for Self, to Care for Others

 October 7, 2024

Pastors live to care for others, often downplaying or even disbelieving the importance of caring for themselves. But the very real stresses of service can create serious physical and spiritual repercussions. A little mindfulness goes a long way to helping pastors embrace the importance of sacred self-care. 


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Pastor Brent, in his clergy collar, walks in front of a church.

Christmas with the Cardiologist 

When Pastor Brent Levy first started practicing self-care, he felt his heart skip a beat. Several beats, actually. He ended up in a cardiac stress test three days before Christmas.  

Doctors determined that his symptoms were stress related. Thankfully, Pastor Brent had opted to participate in the Selah Stress Management trial program offered by Duke’s Clergy Health Initiative in 2020. Selah offered three interventions to choose from, including a course in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) that taught participants how to use self-care practices such as awareness of breath, body scans, walking meditation, yoga and Loving Kindness Meditation to reduce stress and increase physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.  

The new self-care practices allowed Pastor Brent to notice and address those symptoms before they became worse. Now, he incorporates the practices not only to address his physical and mental health, but also to address issues of pastoral leadership.  


Satisfaction and Stress

Pastor Brent is the Lead Pastor for a New Faith Community, The Local Church, a congregation in the Chatham County town of Pittsboro. It’s a post that brings him great satisfaction.   

For the past five years, Pastor Brent has attracted a multi-generational congregation that includes a lot of young families. He’s also drawn congregants whom he describes as “spiritual refugees”– those who determined their former spiritual homes no longer fit them because their faith had evolved, but who still wanted a place to feel included in worship.  

“Having the front row seat for experiences where people realize that they can be themselves fully in this space and feel safe experiencing the love of God is a real joy,” he says. “It's what gets me up in the morning.”  

But it’s also what keeps him up at night. 

Like his congregation, Pastor Brent often feels a persistent sense of fatigue and frustration that things in the world do not seem to be improving, despite the good works of so many.  

“I think that's what a lot of folks are feeling,” he says. “They might believe that participating in church doesn't have actual tangible results. They might feel their time is better served elsewhere and some would rather spend Sunday mornings in phone banks, writing letters, or canvassing for politicians. I understand those feelings but believe that what we're doing in church actually moves us in that direction.” 

Pastor Brent works hard to create opportunities for Christian inquiry and reflection beyond the church service. He coordinates book studies, engages in one-on-one conversations, and helps people find vetted information so that they can learn for themselves. He does this to create spaces where people can ask questions and push back if they need.  

But in making this space for his congregation, he also makes more stress for himself.  


Growing Awareness 

Pastor Brent had dabbled in meditation before, but the new practices still took some getting used to. “At first I thought, ‘okay, this sounds a little cheesy,’” he admits. “But I kept at it because I had a covenant with everybody else [in the MBSR class] – we were all going to do it and talk about it. There was homework and I wanted to be able to check that box. But once we started practicing as a group, there was an ‘aha’ moment for me of, ‘Oh, this is actually something. This is good.’”  

From among all the MBSR practices, Pastor Brent found that the body scan and Loving Kindness Meditation resonated most.  

“In doing the body scan, I realized that so much of my life is lived from the neck up,” Pastor Brent says. “I'm always thinking, talking, listening, dreaming, and scheming. I was very, very out of tune with the rest of my body. It’s difficult to fully grasp the power of incarnation when our lives are disembodied in that way. The body scan gave me a greater sense of compassion for my own body, for those places where I felt pain and those where I didn't feel anything, and for those spots on my body that I wish were different, or the world tells me should be different. I began to notice when my heart was beating faster, and when it was beating slower – and that’s when I noticed it was skipping beats every now and then.” 

“I became more aware, and awareness is half the battle.” 

Just as the body scan helped Pastor Brent become more aware of his physical self, Loving Kindness Meditation opened the door to mental and spiritual awareness, reflection, growth, and peace.  

“I think for a long time, I’ve wanted so deeply for others to know how loved they are, how they belong, and that there's nothing they can do to make God love them more or less. But I've also spent so long not believing it for myself,” he says. “Loving Kindness Meditation was a first step for me in claiming that truth for myself. To experience Loving Kindness Meditation and to actually feel that the Divine may be speaking these words about me, and that others might be speaking these words about me, went a long way in taking some of those first steps into a sense of self-compassion.”

 

Although originally a Buddhist practice, Loving Kindness Meditation has resonance with the Hebrew practice of checed, which is used throughout Scripture to refer to our imitation of God's mercy, goodness, and faithfulness towards one another.

Although originally a Buddhist practice, Loving Kindness Meditation has resonance with the Hebrew practice of checed, which is used throughout Scripture to refer to our imitation of God's mercy, goodness, and faithfulness towards one another. Practicing Loving Kindness includes invocations for happiness, health, safety, and peace, starting with the self and then moving outward to repeat those same invocations for those close to you, those unknown to you, and those who have caused you harm.

“I think the tangibility of it really makes it come alive,” says Pastor Brent. “It's given it a grounding, an anchoring that other meditation hasn't. It allows me to get out of myself, reset and change the narrative. I can be really hard on myself. I believe that evil, or whatever you want to call it, is actually rooted in that internal unproductive voice on the inside chirping at us, trying to tell us we're not worth it. But actually, when we know our belovedness, when we operate out of a place of security and trust rather than shame and fear, everything is different. Loving Kindness Meditation helps me do that.”  


From Practice to Pulpit – and Beyond 

Pastor Brent says that his experience with Loving Kindness Meditation has helped him approach the pulpit with greater compassion. 

“It's easy to get caught up in the media narratives, the sound bites and the outrage du jour, and to carry that into the pulpit on Sundays. It can be so tempting to do that, but reflection and meditation actually help me have more compassion for myself and for the congregation, to consider what's most important and sort through the signal versus the noise in a healthy way so that when I preach, I'm not just stirring the pot or just saying what the congregation wants to hear but actually listening to my inner voice and the voice of God.” 

He’s also creating more opportunities for his congregation to engage in reflective practice and meditation as well. Weekly text messages invite congregants to reflect on the previous Sunday’s message, set time aside for prayers and meditation, and make space to welcome the coming Sabbath – with the hope that individuals will use these prompts to take a pause and reflect.  

“If there’s no reflection, then there is no integration, and then there is no transformation,” says Pastor Brent. “Meditation affords the space not just to react and keep going, but to actually let something external work in you, to think about what matters, how it connects to you, and how you might be called to respond.”  

Beyond his own congregation, Pastor Brent encourages other pastors to consider exploring MBSR – and Loving Kindness Meditation, in particular. “As pastors, we can only give what we have received. Loving Kindness Meditation can help do that work of refilling us and reminding us who we are and what we're about, why we do what we do, why we were called to this." 

 

If there's anything we need, it's a greater sense of our shared humanity. Loving Kindness Meditation can give us a greater capacity for relationship. It has the potential to change your ministry if you let it.

"If you give this a shot, it will change how you view yourself and allow you to see others in your community with greater compassion, especially in a time that is as polarized and partisan as ours has become," Pastor Brent says. He goes on, "Relationships are critical for this work to be done well, to bridge those partisan divides that seem impossible to bridge. If there's anything we need, it's a greater sense of our shared humanity. Loving Kindness Meditation can give us a greater capacity for relationship. It has the potential to change your ministry if you let it.”  


This is the first of four stories from pastors using Loving Kindness Meditation to love their neighbors. Learn more about Loving Kindness Meditation and other evidence-based tools for ministry well-being on our Resources page.