Pastors need encouragement in their roles

Pastors need encouragement in their roles

"I just don’t think I can do this anymore.”

Michael Wilson, program director for the Resource Center for Pastoral Excellence at Samford University in Birmingham, said he’s talked with “more than a few” ministers who have said those words.

There’s no single reason pastors leave the ministry, Wilson said. Usually it’s a combination of factors.

“More often than not, however, the underlying cause is a growing sense of disillusionment, discouragement and disappointment related to ministry,” he said. “If little or nothing happens to change this, the minister eventually comes to a crossroads.”

Church people need to be aware that pastors need encouragement and the sense that they are “making a difference for good,” Wilson said.

Dale Huff said he agrees, but he’s not sure it’s as widespread a problem in Alabama as some broad information may seem to indicate.

“I agree with the discouragement, failure, loneliness, financial pressure, burnout, health, marriage and family reasons, although I question the percentages,” said Huff, director of the office of Leader-

Care and church administration for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.

The United States has about 350,000 churches and more than 400,000 ministers, Huff said. “If more than 1,700 leave a month, 20,000 a year, that is a 5 percent rate. That rate may be similar in many or most vocations or professions.”

Still, many pastors are significantly overworked because they work another full-time job, he said. “The fact that 90 percent of pastors … work 55–75 hours a week could be due to the fact that a majority of churches are bivocational, which means pastoring is their second job.” 

(TAB)

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