Some stats on ministers (emphasis mine):
- Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
- Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
- Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
- Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
- Eighty percent of seminary and Bible School graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
- Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
- Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
- Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying is when they are preparing their sermons.
Number four has been feeling close to home as I've been sending out resumes. I remain convinced that the "Master of Divinity" line on my resume is a ticket straight to the circular file.
But to the more general question: what can faith communities do to make sure this doesn't happen to their ministers? What sort of restructuring is necessary to change this untenable situation? (Hat tip to CMS.)
so, they’re human. that does suck doesn’t it? that is why i decided that i couldn’t be one. not so much because i don’t think that i am human as i know that i am. if everyone else didn’t expect that they not be, maybe it would be a different story. pretty soon i think that “christlike” will be narrowed down to jewish carpenters.
I think that may be the root of the problem, Trouble: expectations that are just too damn high.
The linked article also has some stats on clergy spouses. Too high expectations there too. I remember when we got married and my wife moved into the parsonage. We were shocked at all the meetings she was expected to come to, and all the casseroles she was expected to make. And this in a left of center mainline church in liberal Boston!
Pastoral care has to go both ways.
Interesting.