Pastors

I am writing a report for one of our donors this afternoon.  Because our ministry revolves around Pastors, specifically trying to help them maintain physical and spiritual health, I am learning a number of things about Pastors, as a cohort, that I didn’t know before.  I learned that 50% of Pastors say that they feel they are unable to meet the demands of the job, 40% say that they have a serious conflict with at least one parishioner each month, and 90 percent feel that they are inadequately trained to cope with ministry demands.  That would certainly explain the burnout and exhaustion factor that you can read on many Pastor’s faces.  I am spending a lot of my time working with small church pastors; I am doing this intentionally because the smaller churches tend to have fewer resources, which means that Pastors can have an inordinate amount of pull at their lives over and above what the averages say is happening.   I am especially interested in working with the Emergent church Pastors as they tend to be really honest and open about the struggles and pressures that they are experiencing in their lives; they are willing to talk about what has cause them to desire and seek out rest and retreat.  The Emergent Pastors are working with such limited budgets that if there were not some kind of “free” retreat like the one that we offer, the would go without any type of intentional time away.  Any way all that to say, the data on pastors is pretty sobering stuff . . . almost everything we use for our ministry is available on line in a public venue.  You might want to spend a little time acquainting yourself with what pastors are up against these days; the data shows that the pressure is nearly evenly split between personal stuff and church related stuff.  There is enough there to make you tired just out of sheer sympathy.