17 Marks of a Healthy Minister

Dan McGee

From 2001-2008 Dr. Dan McGee supervised the Counseling & Psychological Services of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT), a ministry to ministers, spouses and children of those serving in some 5,500 churches, 9 affiliated universities, and several major medical and social service systems in Texas. Based on his conviction that a proactive solution could prevent burnout and dropout of ministers, he helped to create the Congregational Leadership Team and served as its Coordinator of Leader Research and Product Development. He was responsible for initiating and coordinating a 2-year leader research study of hundreds of effective leaders from which emerged a leadership assessment instrument based on the world renowned Birkman Method®. Today McGee leads Dan McGee Associates, Inc. (DMA), an organization created at the request of BGCT to provide confidential referral, counseling and leader assessment services. McGee came to the BGCT from Hardin-Simmons University where he was Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Graduate Program in Family Psychology. Prior to his employment at HSU he was in private practice in Arlington, Texas for over twenty years. For seventeen of these years he served as president and CEO of a mental health and management consulting firm that provided employee assistance programs (counseling services) for thousands of employees over 17 states. Before his career in the mental health field he served Texas Baptists in numerous positions, including pastor, minister of education, youth and music minister, and directed the church services department in a metropolitan association. In recent years he has taught on the adjunct faculty at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University. Dr. McGee’s organizational client list includes a major defense corporation, hospital systems, federal agencies, a professional sports team and several universities. He has created a graduate leadership course that incorporates pastoral psychology and ingredients of effective leadership. A graduate of Baylor University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Texas Woman’s University, where he received his Ph.D., he is licensed and nationally board-certified in marriage and family therapy, behavioral medicine, medical psychotherapy and clinical sexology. He completed two years of graduate work at the University of Texas at Arlington in social work and urban affairs where he was selected to do research in intergovernmental policy management at The White House and US Congress. He has been designated a Fellow and Diplomate by several national and international professional academies. Dr. McGee is co-author, with Dr. Frank Larkey, of the BGCT Leader Report & BGCT Leadership StylesTM Report, designed to identify interests, strengths, needs and predictive stress behaviors, as well as the matching of the respondent’s personal leadership style to one of five effective leadership styles. The instrument has been used by thousands of Christian leaders and is currently the primary ministry assessment tool used in 9 universities and 2 seminaries. Early in his career Dr. McGee became known for his research in stress management and his writing and public speaking in the field of sexual intimacy in marriage. He and his wife, Sandra, wrote Celebrating Sex In Your Marriage, published by Family Touch Press, and he co-authored Beyond Termination, with Myra Marshall and Jennifer Byron Owen. Dr. McGee’s latest publications include Choosing Balance: The ABCs of Stress® Management (2011) and Experiencing God’s Presence: A Personal Journey Through Six Spiritual Disciplines (2010). He is currently working with Dr. Leonard Derogatis, former Director of Medical Psychology at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, to create a new systemic model and assessment profile for the DSP® (Derogatis Stress Profile), the instrument used in Dr. McGee’s original stress research in 1984. The DSP® measures personality mediators, environmental stress factors and emotional stress responses. Dan and Sandra McGee have led marriage enrichment events together throughout the United States. They have two daughters and eight grandchildren.