Greetings from your Director of Missions:
Just thought I’d share some things you might find interesting, and hopefully, with concern. The info comes from R.J. Krejcir (Francis A. Shaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development). Part of this comes from research they distilled from Barna, Focus on the Family, and Fuller Seminary.
- 1500 pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
- 50% of pastor’s marriages will end in divorce.
- 80% of pastors feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
- 50% of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
- 80% of seminary and Bible School graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
- 70% of pastors constantly fight depression.
- 70% said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons (this is key).
Many say statistically, that 60% to 80% of those who enter the ministry will not still be in it 10 years later, and only a fraction will stay in it as a lifetime career.
Krejcir goes on to say that perhaps “over 90%…gets derailed, lose their passion and love for the call.”
We don’t talk about how frustrating it is for our pastor’s ministry among us, but it’s true none-the-less. Church leaders tie up his hands by making power decisions that negate his spiritual input. His biblical counsel is more often refused than taken, thus making him the church fireman putting out fires of disobedient believers rather than leading the church to win the lost.
Churches call a pastor to be their spiritual advisor, then overwhelm his time schedule with foolish non-essentials that deny his call to “study to show himself a workman who needs not be ashamed but rightly dividing the word of truth.” God does not call a man to be a spiritual referee for church fights. Is it any wonder that the afore-mentioned pastoral statistics are not only true, but alarming! If churches continue to polish their fighting image they will soon find there are no pastors left who will take on their need of a pastor.
Vance Havner wrote a book entitled, “Why Not Just Be Christians?” In view of what goes on in churches, the book’s title is self-explanatory. Find it and read it. I promise you won’t be the same afterwards.
Am I writing to an “empty chair?” No! I believe the choir is all in place. I will write, you will decide. It’s that simple. I write out of forty-two years’ experience in the ministry; thirty-five as a pastor. I’ve seen most all the worst and nothing shocks me about church anymore. Never once has a drunk (or anyone else) came in off the street and disrupted a business meeting; but many a church member has. A church treasurer once withheld my salary for weeks without the church’s knowledge, merely out of contempt for the office of pastor. My life was once threatened by disgruntled leadership, of which one said, “The only charge we have against the pastor is he preaches the Word and we don’t like it!” I was present when he stated it. One church had those who accused me of “not being competent enough to lead their church as pastor!”
These are enough random samplings to let you know I fit in several of the previous statistics of pastors. So does your pastor. Go ahead, ask him. But be open-minded enough for his response.
The only way to have a better Association is to have better churches. It takes better Christians to have better churches. So it’s up to us. If we’re going to talk it, let’s make sure we walk it.
Blessed to be in
the King’s service,
Jack Holland
