Article of Possible Interest

Statistics on Pastors

Some statistics quoted from this article below.

• 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 feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastor.
• 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 the Word is when they are preparing their sermons

 

Cause?

I do not mean to presume on pastors. I cannot imagine the pressures and the challenges that you all regularly face in caring for our Lord's sheep. Certainly we laity should be praying for all and each of you regularly. After all, it is only by His grace that some of you do not fall into any of these categories.

I think, as the article suggests, that the final statistic is probably more of a root cause -- particularly if we reason with just the information provided. We see in this very forum how little reasoning comes from the Word of God -- whether it is a question of orthodoxy or orthopraxy. As laity, we rarely rise above our pastors and elders. Quite the contrary, we all tend to think that that particular level of piety and discipline is optional for the man in the pew. Indeed, similar statistics regarding the laity would probably be even worse. Nonetheless, if our pastors do not deem the Scriptures sufficient and necessary to faith, belief, and obedience -- or at least, if they do not live as those they believed that -- then we might as well expect that the average layperson would not either.

For me, this information makes me more conscious of my own responsibilities. I should be praying for you pastors more earnestly. I should be applying myself to greater study of the Word -- well beyond two messages on Sunday and a devotional on Wednesday night. How can I tsk tsk at those in the ministry if I am unwilling to have my own commitment to Christ impugned? You all will give an account, that is true, but we can have some impact on whether that will be done in joy or grief (Hebrews 13:17).

May God bless each of you ministers, and may He draw you closer and closer to Himself.