Today, more than ever before, pastors are leaving the ministry. (Taken from The Barnabas Project: What Pastors Face Today, and Statistics and Trends Concerning Pastors & Reflections from Tony Cooke)
• 1500 pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
• Eric Reid, managing editor of Leadership Journal, writes that 19,200 pastors annually are required to leave the ministry. In 2009, Focus on the Family surveyed over 2000 ministers and discovered that almost 24% have faced a forced termination.
• 75% of those pastors who had to leave their churches because of sexual misconduct indicated that they were lonely and isolated.
• 80% of pastors’ spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
• 42% of full time pastors work between 50 – 59 hours a week. Pastors who work fewer than 50 hours a week are 35% more likely to be terminated.
• 45% of pastors who have said that they have fallen prey to depression or burnout say they needed to step away from ministry roles for a leave of absence.
• 80% of pastors and 84% of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
• Regular church attendees come with expectations that their pastor will cover an average of 16 crucial tasks.
Astonishing isn’t it? As I say in my church plant coaching, “if you can do anything else- do it” (referring to pastoring a church).
I didn’t leave for burn-out reasons. I didn’t leave for un-fulfilled expectations. I didn’t quit because there were setbacks, problems with the building or the people. I left pastoring behind to consider my wife and kids–over the church.
Let’s face it, when we begin the pastorate vocation we have dreams and a vision from The Lord. We have a sense of duty and there is an “all for one, one for all” mentality. We pull up our sleeves and work towards accomplishing the goal of winning souls for Christ, discipling, baptizing, empowering not yet believers, and encouraging the downtrodden. When challenges come we “keep calm and pray on.” The battle anthem is Onward Christian Soldier. The mission: to fill the church for the sake of the Gospel. Ain’t nobody got time for nothing else!
But somewhere in all of this, people get tired, weary, and don’t pay attention to the ones they belong to first, and begin to be tricked into making decisions rooted out of personal pursuit rather than “what would Jesus do.” May I introduce to you, exhibit A –my family.
“Men and women of the jury,” (I would say to my made up courtroom of justification). “I have to go to this meeting. I need to give Brother Jones a ride to the next town. I have to study for the Bible Study that I said I would do in addition to the 3 I already do. I have to counsel this couple who came in to my office late in the evening.” And the list goes on and on. What I didn’t realize was while I was doing all those noble things, my wife and kids were getting pushed away. They were having more and more dinners without me. Their dad who loved them was becoming more and more consumed by the pressures of the people than submitting to being a good and Godly example. My quiet times were quick. My sermons were dry. I was making steps to a failed marriage, misplaced values in parenting, and over all –jumping from “Lord, without you I must fail” to “I have so much to do, I have to stay late every night to make it work.” My motto became “in the name of Christ I will be busy.”
I can’t find that anywhere in the Bible. Nowhere. I looked several times. It was depressing.
Walt
I am approaching my one year anniversary of having to learn what it feels like to follow Christ without being a Pastor. When I got serious about living for Jesus at 17 I never really wrestled with whether I was called or not. For me it was simple: “I am taking my faith seriously so it must mean that I need to be in full-time ministry. The problem was that while I wasn’t wrestling with a resistance to the call, I also had to point if reference for counting cost nor did I wrestle enough with the person I had become leading up to my conversion. I had developed a secret compartment in my heart long before I surrendered to Christ at 17. A secret compartment full of explicit images, conversations, shame, lust and pride. The expectation of all this magically going away was quickly evaporated as this dark struggle continued to knock on the door of my new heart…and many times I answered.
My talents in music and my gifts with people quickly opened doors that my spiritual maturity was not equipped to walk through and the ministry “career” began. My divided heart saw seasons of fruit and seasons of desperate dryness and loneliness. I added a wonderfully godly wife to the equation and soon after two beautiful little girls.
My lack of maturity mixed like oil and water in the arena of several unhealthy congregations and we found ourselves licking our wounds and floating around quite often. My wife wanted to throw in the towel many times but my lack of courage mixed with not having a clue what I would do caused me to talk her into “persevering”
Fast forward 10 years and 5 churches later I am walking into a board meeting and unknowingly being confronted with the outing of my ugly sexual sin. The board of this new church didnt know what to do with me and after 6 months of counseling and healing they fired me.
The hardest and best thing that could have happened. I have discovered that I don’t have to be a pastor (and probably never should have been) to follow Christ and have value. I have put many of my gifts on hold for a season of learning and growing into how to do ministry in the business world. My wife has peace, I have purpose that is not just based upon my talent. And, I am building maturity muscle in ways that I was never challenged to in the church. Thank you for the posts on this blog.