Growing Up a Preacher's Kid...

Anne Jackson wasn't your typical nine-year-old.

While most fourth grade girls are content throwing tea parties for their stuffed animals or having sleepovers with their friends, Anne preferred spending her Sunday nights hiding in a janitor's closet attached to the room where her father, a west Texas pastor, would gather with the church's deacons. Crouched behind a stack of cobweb-covered tables, Anne would spy on these meetings.

Why? Because Anne wanted to hear what went on that would cause her normally very happy father to fall into a depression, withdraw from his family, and spend hours away at work...or as some would call it, "ministry."

Although she didn't realize it at the time, the pain she saw her family go through while her dad pastored was causing a hole to form in her heart, a burden for the Church.

Seven years later and a couple churches later, as a sophomore in high school, Anne sat through an explosive church business meeting that led to her father's departure from that church. Afterward, she climbed up on to the church's fire escape and wrote a letter to God, giving him an ultimatum: Either she was going to part ways with the church entirely or she begged Him to give her a way to help bring restoration and unity.

Rebelling and Medicating

Following that encounter on the fire escape, her family relocated from west Texas to the Dallas area. Her father fell into a deeper depression. Evidently God didn't care if she left the church. At least, that's what she thought at the time. For years, neither Anne or her family went to church. The burden she carried was medicated by a variety of negative vices: pornography, materialism, alcohol, workaholic tendencies, and inappropriate relationships.

When Anne was twenty-one, she moved to Kansas City. On a whim, she visited a church where her future husband was playing guitar.

Hiding in the back of the auditorium, alone, God began to whisper to her spirit. This is where I want you. Look around. Can you feel it?

A Renewed Vision

That night served as a catalyst in Anne's life. She began working in full time ministry at a parachurch organization. Shortly after marrying Chris in 2003, she became a full time vocational staff member at that same suburban Kansas City megachurch.

As time went by, she realized something.

All around her, leaders were falling apart. Not just staff, but volunteers. She saw first hand how families were being torn apart by "ministry," the hours it "demanded," and the "sacrifices" it required. Once a girl spying on church meetings, now she was a part of them. Two of her closest friends on the church staff had an affair. Then two more. And she heard stories from friends in other churches.

Heartache...was rampant. Hope...seemingly gone.

People were suffering left and right, victims to burnout. Drug addictions, adultery, depression, anxiety, rejecting their faith, leaving their families, escapes into pornography, emotional affairs...the list of symptoms is endless.

Anne's Crash & Burn

In 2005, a few years after she had started her tenure on a church staff, Anne wound up hospitalized for gastrointestinal inflammation. At the young age of twenty five, she spent a week in severe pain. Every imaginable test was conducted with one conclusion: the only thing making her ill was stress. Stress she had brought on herself.

She returned back to work informing her supervisors she wouldn't continue the crazy work schedule. However, even with working fewer hours, Anne realized she could no longer function in a healthy manner in her current environment. A friend and coworker asked her, "Does working at this church interfere with your communion with Christ?" That provocative inquiry wasn't just a question, it was also an answer.

Five months later, she resigned. After leaving, she realized the long-term impact her previous seventy hour weeks had on her marriage, her health, and her relationship with Christ.

Currently...

It's been almost twenty years since Anne's days in deacon meeting espionage, but the hole in her heart has only grown larger. After many well-known leaders had fallen victim to ministry burn out, including two who have been mentors in her own life, she had a revelation: now is the time she must do whatever she can do to help bring God's message of restoration, light and love to those who are pastors, or other church staff, their families, and the volunteers that give so much time on top of their busy schedules.

Anne is on staff at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN, where she and her husband reside.