A Gentle Discussion on Pastors Staying and Leaving
Over the past handful of months I’ve talked with several pastors about the desire to step away from their position or their vocation altogether. Some of these conversations have led to departures and some of these departures have led to church closures. The reasons for leaving are varied. Every story and situation is unique. In many of my conversations, these departures have come from years of prayers and counsel, not necessarily the circumstances of COVID-19 and the last few years of political turmoil, although it does seem that, at least for some, 2020 only intensified if not clarified the necessity to leave.
“Roughly 3 in 10 pastors report having given serious consideration to quitting in the past year.”
A new Barna Study suggests that “roughly three in 10 pastors (29%) report having given serious consideration to quitting in the past year.” Here are a few reflections on why some pastors are looking to step away and serve God elsewhere:
Dissatisfied With New Job Requirements
A few friends have mentioned that when they went into pastoral ministry, they desired to spend time with people and preach God’s Word. In the last 12-18 months, they’ve been on thousands of Zoom calls and preached into a video. This wasn’t what they were hoping for.
This has often followed previous discouragements of feeling scattered and mired in the “busy work” of pastoring instead of doing the things they have felt most called to and gifted towards. Eugene Peterson built a writing career around the problem of what he calls “running a church” instead of prophetically leading with the gifts and skills particular to the vocation of pastor. Many have felt this tension already and when pandemic dynamics came along, the struggle was suffocating.
Dissatisfaction With the Culture of Their Church
One friend mentioned that in 2019, he suddenly found himself a pastor of a church where it seemed every conversation was about politics and, even more disturbing, conspiracy theories. 2020 exaggerated and intensified everything. He felt his sermons were only listened to through a filter of whether he was being too progressive or too conservative.
I imagine this feeling is common, coupled with a new and inordinate pressure to be authorities on race, politics, justice, and viruses. One pastor described pastoring his church like trying to pilot a ship in a storm and at one point you lose absolute control and you know you aren’t getting control back. That’s what it has felt like culturally. At one point, he said, I knew the storm of culture wars took control and I didn’t see a way to gain control again.
Cultural Shifts Concerning Pastors
I don’t have stats or data points on this reflection, but many of the pastors in my age group (35-45) envisioned or began their pastoral ministry in a time when pastors were looked up to and respected both within and outside the church. Pastors were often thought of as being part of an elite group of spiritual and oftentimes intellectual people. I remember I began my pastoral ministry in New York City ten years ago and while the context wasn’t always friendly to Christianity, clergy still was held in high regard. Political leaders listened to us when we voiced our concerns. In most rooms I walked into (whether at hospitals, courthouses, public forums), I was respected. Most of us know the weight a pastor has and the authority he carries, and, for some, having that authority and status is attractive.
“Most people assume Christians are immoral and bigoted for their faith convictions. That has certainly intensified in people’s perception of pastors.”
While there may be places where clergy members still hold a loftier place in the imagination of the people, that is generally not the case anymore. I remember Mark Sayers saying somewhere that it used to be if you were a Christian, those around may not agree with you, but they at least assumed you were the more moral person because of your faith convictions. But now, most people assume Christians are immoral and bigoted for their faith convictions. That has certainly intensified in people’s perception of pastors. Six out of ten people do not find clergy trustworthy. For some of us, when we were in seminary, the pastors we admired were front lining extremely large conferences, but are now mentioned (wrongly or rightly) as bad actors in best selling books in the last year.
Frankly, pastoral ministry as a vocation is not very attractive to many. I’ve noticed that some are finding that they can use their gifts in counseling, coaching, and other consulting vocations that don’t carry the stigma or difficulties of pastoral ministry. We might feel a bit embarrassed to express this, but I think it might be okay for some of us to admit that being a pastor isn't as interesting anymore. That might be helpful in clarifying what we are actually called to without it being clouded with the allusion of cultural clout.
Burnout and Burnout Culture
Burnout has been by far the most common explanation for pastoral exits, but I want to throw a few caution flags about the burnout explanation. Katie Heaney says the “use of burnout is a somewhat misleading way for workers to express dissatisfaction with a particular job.” Burnout originally was a way of describing something clinically wrong. It referred to “the consequences of severe stress and high ideals within the helping professions like medicine and social work” (and obviously pastoral ministry). Quoting Irvin Schonefeld, professor of psychology at City College of New York, however, he says “There are many good reasons to quit: You’re overworked, you don’t get enough time with family, your boss is terrible, you want a break, or all of the above. None of these necessarily rises to the level of burnout, at least as traditionally defined. I think it’s enough for someone to say, “I became dissatisfied with my job.” Why do we have to pathologize it?”
Well, there are lots of reasons why we might want to “pathologize it.”Heaney says, when we do we get taken more seriously. “Burnout is an attractive diagnosis for the self-aggrandizing.” In some ways, there might be good explanations (mentioned already above) that are just fine and do not need to be explained as burnout, despite the fact that laboring in a politically divisive culture or with a job description you do not feel called to can be extremely taxing.
“Burnout syndrome occure when the ego overheats.”
Nevertheless, burnout is a significant issue. Byung-Chul Han’s Burnout Society argues that burnout is “the natural result of “excess positivity,” capitalism’s unflagging belief in the power of individual productivity.” It’s not a surprise to many of us that pastors can oftentimes mirror the cultural idols of our society. Burnout syndrome, Han explains, “occurs when the ego overheats.” Heaney summarizes our current situation:
“If Zoom and other technologies made many jobs technically possible throughout a year of death and isolation, they also promoted the idea that continuing to work as usual amid unrelenting global suffering was emotionally and spiritually feasible. For many people, it turns out, it wasn’t. As Han explains, “The complaint of the depressive individual, ‘Nothing is possible,’ can only occur in a society that thinks, ‘Nothing is impossible.’”
I think it’s important to recognize that this pandemic has been a wilderness experience for us. You generally don’t survive in a wilderness if you enter empty-handed. To survive a wilderness wandering, you enter with many resources. A wilderness doesn’t offer much in the moment and is dangerous as we begin to grasp for things when we reach survival mode. If we were just humming along with the values and ambitions of a “burnout society” then we likely didn’t have the spiritual and emotional resources for when we entered the pandemic.
But every story is different. Some of us got handed a situation that we had no way of maintaining within human limitations and, despite trying, it took us out. Call it burnout, call it exhaustion, call it weariness. Whatever you want to call it, there are some situations that exceed our capacities and limitations and that’s okay—even healthy—to recognize it and make changes.
A Word About Staying
I was recently reflecting on Psalm 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” It struck me that while the pandemic has surely exposed what is fragile in our world and in the church, it has also exposed what is in vain. One pastor who had just announced to his church he was stepping away mentioned to me and a few others that he doesn’t think the Lord has been “in his work for years.” I don’t think he was confessing to open sin, but just that it felt like he was doing one thing and the Lord was doing something different. The structures, financial stability, and even cultural dynamics that made space for his work to go on that way were taken away. What was exposed was that he had been trying to build something that God had no intention of building.
“For those of us who are not leaving pastoral ministry or our churches, we might want to reflect more deeply on the fragility of our vocations.”
For those of us who are not leaving pastoral ministry or our churches, we might want to reflect more deeply on the fragility of our vocations. Many of us may depend on our dispositions too much. We have the wiring to just stick around for a long time and weather some storms. But our dispositions are more connected to our physiology than our spirituality. What many of us realize in life is that we often don’t have the same energy, desires, and ambitions at 40 as we did at 30. We may even have the staying power to persevere in building something that God has no intention of building and doing so we labor in vain. We need something more sustaining than just our disposition.
With pastors leaving, churches closing, and adults ranging from young to mid-life “rapidly moving away from religious affiliation” (See Ryan Burge’s, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going), there does seem to be a need for a renewal of those in pastoral vocations who, as Eugene Peterson encourages us, operate on the margins.
“This is modest work. This is not glamorous work, this is behind-the-scenes, ignored, patient servant work. Forget about being relevant, about being effective. Friends, you are living in exile—get used to it…The less people notice you the better.”
John Starke is pastor of preaching at Apostles Church, a Harbor Network church in New York City, serves on our Board of Directors, is the author of The Possibility of Prayer and co-editor of One God in Three Persons. You can follow him on Twitter.
