Soul Care Summit: Caring for the Whole Person — Part 1
When Pastors Are Running on Empty: Why Ministry Leaders Need Soul CarE
At FOR.NYC’s Soul Care Summit, pastors and ministry leaders gathered for an honest conversation about the interior lives of those who spend their days pouring into others. The discussion brought together Scott Abbott, founder of Abbott Mental Health Counseling; Guy Wasko, Director of FOR.NYC; Dimetra Barios, Director of the Cares Network; and Charles O. Galbreath of Alliance Tabernacle to explore a question that is becoming increasingly important for the church: How do we care for the whole person—body, mind, and spirit?
For ministry leaders, soul care cannot simply mean finding another way to serve others. It requires making intentional space to recognize our own needs, develop healthy relationships, understand mental health, and know when additional support is needed. For those looking for Christian psychotherapy in NYC, this whole-person approach can provide a framework for integrating emotional, relational, psychological, and spiritual care.
Recognizing When the Soul Is Becoming Unhealthy
From a clinical perspective, Scott described the importance of becoming familiar with our own patterns under stress. Mental health counseling can provide a structured space to recognize those patterns and understand how stress, relationships, emotions, and behavior interact.
Each person has behaviors that can signal when they are moving away from health and toward exhaustion, burnout, or unhealthy coping—things like unhealthy snacking, doomscrolling, daily drinking, skipping workouts or devotions, isolating, irritability or impatience with loved ones. The first step is learning to recognize those signs.
A helpful approach is to develop some kind of regular check-in: How am I doing? What changes when I'm under stress? What behaviors show up when I'm tired, frustrated, angry, or overwhelmed?
Having someone who knows us well—a trusted friend, accountability partner, counselor, or another person who can recognize those patterns—can provide an important outside perspective. Sometimes another person can see that we're heading toward a crash or relapse before we recognize it ourselves.
For ministry leaders, this kind of awareness is particularly important because the demands of ministry can lead us to power through an continue pouring out long after our own internal resources have become depleted.
The Loneliness of Leadership
One of the recurring themes throughout the conversation was loneliness.
Dimetra Barios shared that the Cares Network regularly encounters leaders who are tired and struggling but don't feel that they have a safe place to talk about it. Leaders may be surrounded by people and still experience profound loneliness.
This distinction is important: being around people is not the same as being known by people. Anyone who has lived in New York City can attest to this.
For ministry leaders, the experience can be especially complicated. Pastors are often expected to be available to others, carry responsibility, provide spiritual direction, and create community. Yet they may not have created the same kind of space for themselves.
Charles Galbreath connected this experience to Howard Thurman's description of “contact without fellowship”—being surrounded by people without experiencing genuine connection.
The result can be an increasingly isolated interior life, even within a thriving church community.
Soul Care Doesn't Always Have to Be Complicated
Near the end of the conversation, the panelists were asked a simple question: What is one thing a ministry leader could do to care for their soul in the coming week or two?
Scott encouraged leaders to think beyond sleep and consider the different kinds of rest they may need—physical, mental, emotional, creative, spiritual, sensory and social by taking this assessment.
Charles' answer was considerably simpler: “Take a nap.”
Sometimes soul care really can begin with recognizing that you are tired.
Other times, it may mean spending time in nature, reconnecting with a trusted friend, talking with a counselor, or simply creating enough margin to notice what is happening internally.
The goal isn't to wait until everything falls apart; it’s to make room for the soul before the crisis comes.
If you're a pastor or ministry leader who has spent years caring for others but hasn't had a place to be cared for yourself, Christian counseling may be one way to create that space. Abbott Mental Health offers faith-integrated psychotherapy for individuals and couples in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and through telehealth.
Continue the Soul Care Summit Series
Part 2: [Pastoral Counseling and Clinical Counseling: Why Churches Need Both]
The Soul Care Summit conversation also explored an important question: Where does pastoral care end and clinical mental health care begin? The answer isn't always simple. Part 2 explores how pastoral relationships and professional counseling can work together to care for the whole person.
Part 3: [Gen Z, Social Media, and Mental Health: Helping Young People Navigate a World of Emotional Overload]
The conversation eventually turned toward the next generation and the unique emotional environment young people are navigating today—including social media, emotional exposure, psychological literacy, and the need for wise guides.