Pastoral burnout is hardly breaking news. For years I’ve seen all sorts of troubling data about the high percentage of ministers stepping away from their congregations, resigning, young pastors leaving the ministry within their first five years, suffering breakdowns, losing their faith, and more.
For the most part, I wasn’t that concerned. I wasn’t ready to join the “sky is falling” forces.
But that’s been changing.
Once upon a time, I discounted most of the leavers and resigners as pastoral dilettantes. The guys (and they almost always are guys) who were supremely confident they could pastor successfully. They had good hair. They could grow a mega-church. They had the answers. Afterall, they’d taken a six month mail-order course from somewhere in South Carolina. When, after three or four years, they gave up, I wasn’t surprised. And it could be that my unkind impressions are not overly accurate.
In the last few years, however, it seems like more people I know and respect are stepping away from the pastorate – sometimes even stepping away from faith altogether. They’re bright. They have wonderful potential. They’re well-trained and capable. They are good people, very good. And they say “Enough!”
This saddens me. This troubles me.
Of course, the last few years have been hard on everyone. Covid. Political polarization. Schisms. Christian Nationalism. And behind it all, the not-so-slow but certain decline of the American church.
But are there other reasons behind pastors leaving and losing faith?
Sometimes it is portrayed as a generational struggle. A church of older people resistant to a young pastor’s new ideas. A young pastor weary of hearing “no” again and again, or just the passive-aggressive heel-dragging.
Some have framed it as about work-ethic, tenacity, and life-work balance. I’ve heard more than a few call today’s young pastors “snowflakes” – afraid of hard work and criticism, hiding behind a shield of so-called “professionalism” – basically, wimps. But equally, I’ve heard that young pastors are the leading edge of a new, better life-work balance. They are refusing to jump when the congregation says jump. They insist on healthy boundaries. They are beginning the long process of redefining the pastoral role, especially as bi-vocational and part-time ministers become more common.
I’m told that medical schools believe that if a physician quits within a few short years it is poor stewardship for the entire medical community, a significant loss of an extremely valuable resources. In the church, I hope we can avoid these metaphors of commodification. Nonetheless, I think med schools are on to something. It isn’t simply the money and time and energy invested by seminarians, churches, and seminaries that is lost – although that isn’t insignificant. It is also about the hopes dashed, souls drained, and lives deeply wounded.
“I tend to be circumspect toward theology or church statements when I read ‘the church must!’” So said Eugene Heidemann to me many years ago. He went on to say that his point isn’t to protect the church from criticism, or act as if people have no prerogative to tell the church what to do. Rather, these “must” statements typically display an immature, maybe superficial or impatient, understanding of the church. Who is this big and amorphous “church”? How do you address “the church”? It’s too easy to dump your frustrations to no effect. Too easy to make broad demands, big “must” statements to the church that dissipate like a dying wind. Of course, the church needs to change and will change, although never at the pace we think it must. And despite the sluggard pace and all the challenges the church faces, it will somehow press on.
I thought of Heidemann’s comments as I considered pastoral burnout. Often the church is cast as the problem, the bad guy. And in many ways that’s true. But throwing “must” statements and our legitimate frustrations at the church doesn’t really accomplish much. It’s taken 50+ years for the church to let go of a vision of the pastor’s spouse as a demure woman who wears white gloves on Sunday and directs the junior choir. And that vision probably still persists more than we even want to know.
Likewise, changing understandings of pastoral expectations, better work-life balance, and what it means to be “professional” will take several decades. Sadly, many pastors (mainly young, but not exclusively) will be grist for the mill of change in the meantime.
How can we move beyond the blame game or inert “must” statements?
A colleague observed that nearly all people going into ministry have come from relatively healthy churches. At seminary, students typically intern at stronger, often vibrant churches. But then their first call is to struggling, stuck, sometimes sick congregations. The newly minted pastors aren’t prepared.
When people come forward sensing a call to ministry, I wonder if today’s insecure and needy church is prone to be so elated that no one wants to ask the tough questions. Does this person have the (I don’t want to call it thick skin) personal resources and strength to last in ministry? Are there better ways to evaluate this or ways for ministers-to-be to grow these resources? I recall St. Benedict’s wisdom, that when someone comes to the monastery seeking entrance, they should be turned away twice, and accepted only if they come back a third time.
And maybe pastors need some better role models. How many pastors fantasize about leading a “quaint and out of the way” retreat center, or being able to make a living as a fulltime spiritual director? We seem to think success in ministry is demonstrated by writing a best-selling how-to-church book that enables us to leave the pastorate, to become a keynote speaker and author. If escapism is our fare, it’s not surprising so many pastors don’t last.
My guess is that there are no easy “solutions.” We can do small things that might improve things a bit. Maybe it is all simply collateral damage of a collapsing church. Just naming the problem helps. In the meantime, for the church and for my colleagues, I grieve.
Header photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels
Frustrated woman photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels
“I QUIT!” on keyboard photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
As a parishioner, I just want to have guidance and reassurance through life, celebrating births and milestones, honoring others’ lives while mourning deaths, encouragement to live the gospel—not be the target or means to a Big Significant Project or Campaign—I want a pastor to lead me to green pastures and still waters.
Yes, as a minister in specialized ministry (and thus a regular Joe on Sunday mornings), I agree. I just want to worship and do ministry that is meaningful to me, not be a cog in the next big initiative that will bring the gospel to 2 more people at a cost of thousands of people hours.
Might I suggest that the real or perceived pressure to do these big significant projects and campaigns, rather than preaching, administering the sacraments, and visiting and listening to the people as they go about their daily lives is part of the problem of pastoral burnout? I don’t think the Belgic confession describes capital campaigns or evangelistic events as among the means of Grace..
I’m sorry to hear of those who for various reasons haven’t been able to “find it” in parish ministry. Maybe I’m an outlier, but I’ve found—and still find even in retirement—the pastoral life to be the best Iife possible. To have been provided a livelihood that gave me the absolute freedom to explore, to pursue a journey of discovery. To learn about people’s lives—and, in the process, my own. To delve into the Scriptures, no longer in search of sermon material as much as to encounter the living God, often surprisingly, along the way. To write sermons with no idea how they were going to end; like my Sunday hearers, waiting to see where it all was going. To step into an intensive care room without a script knowing half a hundred could likely do it better; but that I was Christ’s representative for that moment. To be addressed as “Pastor” in so many varied situations. Not a life for everyone, I know. But I have so loved doing it.
Still processing this one. There are still some healthy churches and healthy pastors. Some, especially in the third world or marginalized communities, are facing true hardship, but it is from the outside, not the inside. When entitled people (and we are an entitled and comfortable society) focus on beung bigger and better than the church across town, the pastor’s job becomes very discouraging. We have the luxury of obsessing over our identity. It is complicated but I suspect pride is in there somewhere.
And then there’s those parish vicars who help the local inspectors solve mysterious crimes . . .
But how many parish vicars leave the ministry to devote themselves to full-time sleuthing?
Following up on Jeff’s comment describing a pastor’s role (which I deeply appreciate), It is worth noting that all of these things happen best in community worship. Please, pastors, (and church leaders) put your energy into that.
Thanks, as always, Steve. Several matters come to mind. First, an article, “Reforming Our Pastoral Ministry: An Essay on Role Conflict in the Ministerial Office,” which was published in Reformed Review 46 (Spring 1993). VanVoorst’s essay traced the multiplication of pastoral roles, from being primarily sacrament-oriented, to expounding on the Word, and increasing rapidly from there. I believe he concluded – in 1993 – with at least these roles in which every pastor was expected to display what standard test graders these days would call “proficiency:” celebrator of the sacraments, preacher, teacher, leader, evangelist, builder, pastoral counselor, enabler, administrator (which, I might add, includes a sizable collection of sub-specialties), entertainer, spiritual director, and cross-culturalist. That was 31 years ago. I think I could easily add marketer/sales rep, technology whiz-bang, community organizer, media manager, political neutralizer, cheerleader, and, probably, organizational hospice chaplain. The multiplication of roles has made me begin to wonder whether – if proficiency in all such areas is actually required – ministry is still a possibility for any one individual to bear. (Seems to me that if you’re principally a sacramentalist, and you’ve got 7 sacraments to deal with, that ought to be enough) Now, some of the onus is on us……we do need to say, “Yeah, well, I’m no good at that” rather than trying to be even passable at all of them. Some of the onus may be on parishioners, particularly boomers, whose expectations I suspect have only grown, without subraction. Some lands on the fact of the decline of the mainline church in the USA. In any case, there’s enough accountability to go around. We need a kind of Kondo-izing for the ministry; not that we toss everything that doesn’t give us joy, but that we shed what is not our proper vocation. The murkiness of what counts as ‘proper’ probably contributes to departure from the pastorate.
I imagine that many readers of this blog will have read Eugene Peterson’s sobering indictment:
“American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationery and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connect with what church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries…
The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns–how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.
Some of them are very good shopkeepers. they attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists…
The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades”
Once, when talking with a former staff person in the “Ministry” office – when the denomination had the resources to help match ministers with congregations – I mentioned that I saw my role as being a shepherd of souls. The staffer said, “Well, I’ve never heard anybody say that before.” I was dumbfounded and deeply disappointed. What have we come to?
I could go on, and have already gone on longer than I should have. Thanks again for stirring my brain.
Yes. We’ve gone from a shepherding model to a sheep ranching model of ministry.
Thanks for starting this conversation, Steve!
“The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.” (Eugene Peterson)
Methinks that perhaps, just perhaps, this observation lies at the heart of the radical rise of Christian Nationalism in our country today.
Thank you all for some really good observations. Kondo-izing the pastorate! I like it. However, I do think it is wrong to think that it is only “success-driven” and overly-striving pastors who struggle. Or that it is all the fault of unrealistically demanding congregations. I agree with Peterson and everyone who commented, but there is also a bit of naive nostalgia to think that pastors can stay in their studies, reading the New Testament in Greek, then bring the Lord’s Supper to some home bound folk, and call it a day. There is insurance, and boilers, and personnel, and all the other things Paul listed. And it doesn’t take many malcontents in your congregation to quadruple the sense of pressure and failure.
Not sure I should respond a third time, but I let elders, deacons and lay folk who knew a hecka of a lot more than me tend to those things.
Works in congregations that are large enough, spirited enough, financed enough, generally healthy enough. Not an assumption I can make of all that many congregations these days.
Yes. You’re right—as my wife has also pointed out in our discussions.
Is clergy burnout equally frequent among respective denominations and traditions? Is it equally frequent among Lutheran’s? Anglicans? Orthodox?