My Heart Breaks for Pastors
My Heart Breaks for Pastors
Pastoral health in 2024
One benefit of a lonely path is thinking and praying freely without interruption. During recent Thursday hikes, I've been reflecting on the significant challenges and pressures that have weighed heavily on the emotional and spiritual well-being of pastors across America. I’ve been praying for a remarkable shift in pastoral vitality and calling. I want to share the prayer I’ve been praying during my hikes:
Divine Shepherd, from the current struggles and challenges weighing down the hearts of pastors, would you form and raise up a community of weighty pastors who will lead the next great revival in America?
Vocabulary Matters
I have been a pastor for 39 years. In 1985 I began pastoring a small Quaker community. In that little contemplative spiritual community that valued speaking out of the silence, I learned a new spiritual word: weighty.
I know it is an ordinary word. But that community did not use the word in any ordinary way. They used it to refer to the depth of a person’s soul. They would refer to members as “weighty.” Or if someone spoke out of a period of silence, you might hear later that the words seemed “weighty” to the community. I finally deciphered what was intended by this word: someone the community judged to be “weighty” was centered. They had traveled far along the path to a deeper life with God. They had depth. They saw things and understood things, and when they spoke, their words mattered.
I haven’t used that word much recently. I no longer pastor within the Friends community (Quakers). The community I lead does not utilize that term. I have never heard anyone described as weighty. I am bringing it back to life! It is the best word in my vocabulary to convey my hope for pastors: that the Spirit of God will lift the burdens that weigh heavily on them today and form pastors with profound weight.
The Current Health of Pastors
Abraham Lincoln, with the country facing weighed down by serious division, said, “If we [can] know where we are…we [can] better know what to do.” His weighty words had the ring of wisdom then, and now. That’s the benefit of weighty hearts—what they see and understand has enduring value. For the remainder of this article, I’ll share some data that paints a sad and grim picture of the heart health of American pastors.
The Great Pastoral Resignation
Within pastoral ministry, a post-COVID phenomenon has emerged: Pastors leaving ministry. According to Barna, 42% of American pastors considered leaving ministry in 2022. By 2023, Barna found that 33% of pastors had considered leaving ministry in the past year, 60% seriously doubted their calling, and much worse, 18% of Protestant pastors had contemplated self-harm or suicide in the past year..
The U. S. Department of Labor adds some statistical corroboration about the great pastoral resignation: today, only 1 in 10 pastors will retire as pastors.
Numbers Don’t Lie
Barna isolated 16 reasons pastors have either left the ministry or considered leaving the ministry. The top four reasons paint a bleak picture:
The immense stress of the job (56%). If you bore down beneath the numbers, you find stories of how congregants and church leaders are either unaware or refuse to appreciate the stress inherent within the pastoral role.
I feel lonely and isolated (43%). If you bore down beneath the numbers, you discover that only 19% of current American pastors feel that they have a true friend — and the number is even lower, if it can be, for pastoral spouses.
Current political divisions (38%). If you bore down beneath the numbers, more than half of pastors feel as if their church members were more loyal to their political views than their faith. About 40% feet that the church was too aligned with political conservatism or progressivism as opposed to aligned with the gospel.
The effect this role has had on my family (29%). If you bore down beneath the numbers, of the pastors who said pastoral ministry negatively affected their family, 33% said it was an outright hazard for their family. I could corroborate each of these data points with personal anecdotal evidence, but I will do so only here because I still feel the pain of the effect of my vocational calling on my family. My daughter, when she left for university and moved halfway across the continent, spent her first year attending a small Russian Orthodox church where they mostly spoke Russian. She didn’t understand much of what was said that year, but she felt loved and cherished by the community. She attended church dinners every month, sitting with women old enough to be her grandmother. The babushkis, those lovely Russian grandmothers, welcomed her into their quilting and sewing circles and showed her how to make borscht. I still thank God for that little Russian community of believers who provided an environment where my daughter could detox from the pressures and stresses she experienced as a pastor’s child.
Quality of Life Issues
The National Christian Foundation reported these sobering statistical snapshots about the decreasing quality of life of American pastors:
“…Between 2015 and 2023, significant measures of pastor wellness showed danger signs. In 2015, 24 percent of pastors reported excellent physical well-being. But in 2023, that same number was just 11 percent. In the same time period, those reporting excellent mental and emotional well-being plummeted from 39 to 14 percent. Pastors feeling they had excellent overall quality of life dropped from 42 to 19 percent…Over the same period, pastors who ranked the respect they feel from their communities as excellent fell from 22 to just 7 percent.”
Much more is needed than mere statistical pictures of the burdens weighing down pastors. In coming editions of Compass’ Wednesday Wanderings, we’ll dig into spiritual formation for pastors, rules of life, healthy patterns of life, formation of healthy church cultures and climates, and more.
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What You Can Do
Pray for your pastor. Here is the prayer I’ve been praying for pastors:
Divine Shepherd, from the current struggles and challenges weighing down the hearts of pastors, would you form and raise up a community of weighty pastors who will lead the next great revival in America?
You can pray this prayer, or much better, listen well to the Spirit of God about how to pray for pastors.
Do your own heart work. There is work for pastors to do to reclaim interior health and regain resilience. But there is work for all of us to do to help form a community of weighty pastoral guides and leaders. Read the words below written by the great apostle, Paul, to a church about how to care well for their pastor. Read the words several times slowly. What draws your attention? What is revealed about your own heart when it comes to your regard of pastors? What repentance is needed? What action is it asking of you?
Next Wednesday: Sabbath for Pastors
Praying