Are Pastors Really Quitting? A New Survey Reveals Shocking Truths

A quick Google search will get you scores of fact-checking websites and organizations ready and willing to debunk the latest fact, comment, or statistical trend. With the power of the Internet and people who are eager to set the record straight, it’s easier than ever to find the truth behind the truth.

Surveys are conducted and statistics are generated for specific reasons, mostly for the benefit of people and organizations trying to better understand how their equipment works or how sales can grow or how lives can improve. However, as I’ve illustrated, these facts can just as easily be misused and manipulated to mislead and deceive the general population.

Some are intentional efforts to distort the truth or sway individuals in a certain direction, but others may simply be mistaken and, unfortunately, share this misinformation with others.

Pastors often fall into the latter category because pastors love to tell stories, of which I’ve personally heard many told over the years. Most, if I were to guess, were stories past down from generation to generation, retold with new vigor, or something the pastor heard at a conference, or something they found online. But the problem is that many of these stories or facts or statistics just aren’t true.

Take, for instance, how NASA scientists discovered a missing day that corresponds to the Joshua account of the sun standing still or how Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team but then rose to be the greatest basketball player to ever live. These stories sound good and they’re powerfully moving. They sound unbelievable, in fact. But, if it sounds to good to be true … it probably is.

But we’re flawed people and, aside from the intentional acts of the few, sometimes us flawed individuals give inaccurate accounts or misinterpret information.

Do Pastors Really Want to Quit?

Have you ever purchased a car? Sure you have. Well, there’s a strange thing that happens after you’ve purchased said car. For whatever reason, you instantly began seeing the same type of vehicle all around town. Like, at the grocery story. Or when you’re driving down the freeway. “Hey, that’s just like my car!” we tell whoever might listen. That same sort of realization occurred to me after ministry.

When I quit the pastorate, I became aware of others around me who had also quit the ministry. Everywhere I turned, it seemed, I was coming across many individuals who, like myself, had left the pastorate and couldn’t seem to find their identity. “Hey,” I’d think to myself, “your story looks a lot like mine!”

Now that a few years have gone by, it has become even more apparent that – through countless emails, comments on our site, phone calls, and face-to-face interactions with many individuals – I’m not alone. Pastors are struggling. Pastors are hurting. And the statistics I’ve read concerning burnout and stress, and family, money, and marital problems appear to be pretty accurate. It was for this very reason I launched ExPastors.com in 2012.

Pastors are quitting. Not all pastors are quitting, or even want to quit. But, no doubt, many pastors are quitting all the time. At least that’s what the statistics show us.

But, a small minority of folks would say, therein lies the problem: How accurate are those statistics? What is the methodology behind them? Where did they come from? Who collected them? When, why, and how were they collected?

I’ve written several times and for many years on the difficulties of being a pastor, speaking from personal experience but also relying primarily on statistics found in books and studies conducted throughout the years. Many of these books and resources have proven quite helpful in understanding how challenging clergy life can be. Yet, even with the goal of coming alongside pastors to help them find healing and restoration, there have been a handful of naysayers who have stood against the crowd and cried foul. And, for a long time, I had just dismissed them.

Until one day I received a phone call.

I happened across an article that blasted both pastors and church-goers alike, urging pastors to stop quoting statistics during their sermons and telling church-goers to stop believing everything they hear and to fact-check their pastor’s sermons. Pastors, the author suggests, are using stories that aren’t true, quoting statistics from unreliable or unverified sources, and therefore distracting and misleading their flock.

The article was good, actually, and rather compelling. And I sided with the author’s point. That is, until he included an article I had written about pastors wanting to quit their jobs and said the statistics I quoted were untrue.

I have been very intentional when gathering information regarding pastors and the pressures and stresses and demands of the job. I’ve only used statistics from sources I believed to be reliable, not to inflate a topic but rather to support my big idea. So naturally, when I came across this accusation, I did what any culturally relevant people would do. I sent him a tweet.

“It would’ve been great to hear from you,” I said as politely as I could, “before you wrote an article saying our stats on pastors were untrue.”

No more than five minutes had passed when my phone rang.

After a few awkward minutes of introductions and explanations, the author, who happened to write for a Christian research group, shed great light on the statistics I was quoting. The information wasn’t necessarily incorrect, he stated, it was antiquated. And this, I realized after ending the call and processing our conversation, changed everything.

In large part, I began to notice, books and statistics gathered about pastor pain, difficulties of the job, etc. were from surveys conducted many years ago – some twenty, thirty, forty plus years ago. Equally, many of the surveys were conducted on either a smaller group of pastors (thirty to fifty) or in larger groups when pastors gathered corporately for conferences. I didn’t dismiss the revelations the statistics in these surveys provided but it did challenge me to be more aware of the environment in which they were conducted.

Ultimately it birthed in me a desire to compare my own findings with many similar surveys conducted over the years; hence the reason for the ExPastors.com 2015 Pastor Survey.

Methodology

The ExPastors.com 2015 Pastor Survey was conducted online, between February and April 2015. We chose to host our survey on Typeform.com, a newer online-based survey and form website trusted by clients such as Airbnb, The New York Times, Red Bull, Sony Music and Adobe, to name a few. As of January 2015, Typeform boasted a total form completion rate of 59%.

Our survey garnered 275 completed responses out of 620 unique views, giving us a completion rate of 44%. One hundred sixty-eight of those responses were on PCs and laptops, while 107 were completed using a smartphone or tablet device. On average, our survey took 11 minutes and 17 seconds to complete.

Getting an accurate account of what pastors have gone through or are currently going through was more important to us than physical demographics. So, with the goal of attaining accurate information being at the forefront of our research, we decided against including questions pertaining to age or gender or whether the position the pastor had served in was paid or volunteer.

We wished to concern ourselves with getting accurate information on issues ranging from burnout and finances, to work hours and the demands on families With this objective in mind, we also chose to make our survey confidential and allow the option to answer basic demographic questions, the only exception being the initial question of whether the person filling out the survey was or was not currently serving in the role of pastor.

Of the 275 pastors who participated in our survey, 151 of them (or 55%) decided to fill out their personal information, either their name or email address or both. One hundred twenty-four pastors (or 45%) decided to remain anonymous. Additionally, 89 participants indicated that they were expastors. One hundred seventy indicated they currently held the position of pastor and another 16 said at some point they exited the ministry but are now serving as pastor again.

We’ve read, re-read, and then read again the information we’ve collected. We’ve categorized subcategories within each category. Although we believe our work to be prudent and meticulous, we are not statisticians. Because of this, we’re confident that perfectly interpreting and analyzing all the data is impossible.

But, alas, we tried.

View the ExPastors.com 2015 Pastor Survey