Being a minister is hard. Being a lead minister in 2024, post-COVID in the United States, is harder than ever. Barna Research Group’s 2022 research revealed that 41% of lead ministers have thought about quitting.[1] When they did a follow-up survey in 2023, they saw an encouraging trend with only 33% giving serious consideration to quitting.[2] While that is encouraging, it still means a third of pastors are about to call it quits.
In my own research project for my graduate studies, 63% of those I surveyed had given serious thought to quitting, a third of them considering this within the past five years. While serving God in pastoral ministry is one of the most important and fulfilling roles a person can be called to, there are challenges to thriving long term.
There are three challenges that stand out as particularly damaging for long-term ministry.
- Expectations – According to many church people’s expectations, it seems a lead minister is supposed to preach great sermons every week, counsel like a licensed professional counselor, be available twenty-four hours a day, answer every theological question on the spot, and have a great family life. Many well-meaning ministers have run themselves into the ground trying to meet everyone’s expectations—all the while feeling like a failure.
- Emotional toll – There are so many needs a lead minister faces that they can easily over-identify with the needs and emotionally get lost in other people’s struggles. Add to that a tendency to try to match emotion to the situation whether you genuinely feel it or not, and it will take a toll over time.
- Busyness – Busyness can be driven by many causes, but perhaps the deadliest is due to a lead minister’s internal drive to please people and/or perform.
“While serving God in pastoral ministry is one of the most important and fulfilling roles a person can be called to, there are challenges to thriving long term.”
The list of pastoral challenges can go on and on, but my research project made one thing very clear. Beating burnout does not happen outside/in. Resiliency is created by working inside/out.
What Rhythms Prevent Pastoral Burnout?
Resiliency for long term, effective ministry is created through regular rhythms of renewal and recovery. Resiliency is born out of good recovery.
To take an example from fitness, in between hard workouts, good rest and recovery is needed. In the demanding lives of ministers, what’s needed is good recovery and renewal with Jesus. This means prioritizing life with God before work for God. Life with God is centered on a minister’s soul over a minister’s productivity. Life with God focuses on a minister’s attunement to God’s presence in their life before their productivity.
Eugene Peterson said,
“The active life in the world for God can only properly flow from a life with God. I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray. I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted, or dispersed. In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego.”[3]
Life with God is what Jesus described as abiding in Him (John 15:1-8). The power and fruit in a pastor’s life is directly related to their ability to stay connected to Jesus. This is why good recovery cannot wait until there is time for a vacation. Renewal cannot wait until there is an opportunity for a Sabbatical. Both vacations and Sabbaticals are important but not nearly as important as the daily and weekly abiding that leads to renewal.
“Life with God is what Jesus described as abiding in Him.”
Contemplative Practices
One of the broad categories for effective rhythms of renewal (a.k.a. spiritual disciplines or practices) I have grown to appreciate is contemplative practices. I define contemplative practices as those disciplines or habits that create space for God in our heart without an agenda. They are means for attuning ourselves to the presence of God in the midst of all the expectations and busyness.
One of the strengths of contemplative practices is that they return a person to their first love.[4] Most ministers want to be helpful, and this is good. The problem comes when wanting to help turns into needing to help. At the root of this is a desire to be loved, appreciated, and noticed. Many of the ministers in my research project were pulled in so many directions that they often did not take time for their own relationship with God. Contemplative practices help us slow down enough to fix our eyes on our loving Father and be reminded that we are loved and accepted apart from what we do.
Second, these practices help focus our attention on God’s presence through prayer. In contemplative prayer, the focus is less on talking and more on listening, less on expressing oneself and more on being with God. Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century monk, left an indelible mark on the world with his insight into practicing the presence of God. He described it this way:
“I do nothing else but abide in his holy presence, and I do this by simple attentiveness and a habitual, loving turning of my eyes on him. This I should call…a wordless and secret conversation between the soul and God which no longer ends.”[5]
“The problem comes when wanting to help turns into needing to help. At the root of this is a desire to be loved, appreciated, and noticed.”
A third strength of contemplative practices is that they clarify our identity and calling apart from our community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer stressed this by saying, “Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community. You cannot avoid yourself, for it is precisely God who has singled you out.”[6] This is not to deemphasize the need for community but to serve as a reminder that ministers are persons first. There is often an intermingling of roles and lives in church ministry. Contemplative practices help ministers differentiate themselves from their church, community, and work.
Practical Suggestions for Contemplative Practices
Contemplative practices do not require joining a monastery or moving to the desert, but establishing a rhythm of renewal and recovery does mean being intentional. Let me offer some practical suggestions.
- Withdraw – Create daily and weekly moments to detach from your duties and tasks and take a moment to be with Jesus in silence and solitude. Jesus often withdrew to isolated places to be with the Father (Luke 5:16). How much more do we need this?
- Pray with your ears – When praying, listen as much as you speak. Learn to settle into silence, and listen for God’s voice.
- Soak in Scripture – Approach Scripture for more than just sermon prep. Read Scripture meditatively. Read it with openness and expectancy. Ponder it. Let God stir your spirit through it.
- Reflect – Take time to reflect on what went right and what went wrong in your day and week. Ask God to meet you in moments of failure and mistakes and praise him for what you are thankful for.
- Share life with others – One of the most striking points from the research on ministerial burnout is that ministers often feel very alone. Our lives, even our spiritual lives, are not meant to be lived alone. Create space and time to be known by and know others.[7]
Creating rhythms of renewal and recovery take effort, time, and intention, but far from being a burden they become the “easy yoke” of Jesus (Matthew 11:30). Too many ministers are quitting, failing, or burning out. The answer is not to do more. It’s to hear and follow Jesus’ invitation to “come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest (Mark 6:31).”
[1] “For Pastors Who Want to Quit, Self-Care & Soul-Care Slip,” Barna Group, June 15, 2022, https://www.barna.com/research/spiritual-formation-back-seat/.
[2] “New Data Shows Hopeful Increases in Pastors’ Confidence & Satisfaction,” Barna Group, accessed June 26, 2024, https://www.barna.com/research/hopeful-increases-pastors/.
[3] Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 20.
[4] Richard J. Foster, Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1998), 49.
[5] Foster, 52.
[6] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 55.
[7] For an excellent resource on practices grouped by category, check out Adele Ahlberg Calhoun’s book, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2015).