Shocking Stats Reveal How Pastors and Their Families are Negatively Impacted

Church size has always impacted the size of a pastor’s paycheck. This is an observation, of course, since I’ve not done much research on the topic. However, I have worked in many different church sizes throughout my ministry career and can tell you from experience, this is mostly the case. The size of the church, with possibly the exception of churches in affluent areas or pastors with higher levels of education, determines the size of the paycheck.

I suppose, when the Leadership Network/Vanderbloemen 2014 Large Church Salary Report, the largest-scale cross-denominational survey that garnered 727 responses, said that “the larger the church’s total budget, the higher the senior pastor median salary,” it could, in a way, support my claim. But in our survey we decided against tackling the salary conundrum. Instead, we wished to see how often the pastor was working and if they considered themselves overworked. And the majority said they were.

One hundred sixty-six participants (or 60%) said they would consider themselves overworked, while the other 109 participants said they were not. When asked to expound on their answer, one pastor said, “I worked endlessly and [was] always on call. Some times the work edified, but other times it drained. I wanted time to build the kingdom of God, but found myself struggling to maintain the institution of the church.”

60% of pastors consider themselves overworked.

Another pastor, who indicated he worked between 60-65 hours per week, wrote, “Every day I felt the constant call of all that needed to be done while knowing that to choose to do some things meant that others would go undone. In the world of time, I lived in the land of not enough.”

Pastors don’t enter the ministry hoping to make it rich. And I don’t believe they’re leaving the ministry because of insignificant salaries either. Though we did not ask the question in our survey, a different survey conducted many years ago by Dr. Gerald Jud showed that fifty-eight percent of expastors indicated money had nothing to do with their decision to leave the ministry.

We also feel, by reading through all of the responses to our survey, that such is probably true today. In most cases money doesn’t seem to be the issue. What seems more troubling to pastors is the amount of hours spent working each week (therefore less time spent with family) or the inability to meet the demands and pressures of the job.

Two hundred twenty-two of the 275 participants (or 81%) said they felt unable to meet the demands of the pastorate. This is similar to another study conducted by the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development in which they reported that ninety percent (90%) of pastors feel they were not adequately trained to cope with ministry coordination and the demands of the congregation. These stats reflect a bit of an increase from an earlier study taken in the late 1980s, which showed fifty percent (50%) of pastors “felt unable to meet the needs of the ministry.”

81% of pastors felt unable to meet the demands of the job.

Not only is being overworked and unable to meet the demands of the ministry damaging to family structures an unhealthy path which could lead the pastor down the road to departure, it doesn’t allow the pastor to set a positive example for those in his congregation.

Consider the question Gary Preston asks in his book, Pastors in Pain: “If I regularly work seven days a week and put in 60, 70, or 80 hours a week, how can I challenge someone who is doing the same to the detriment of his or her family?”

It’s a good question to ask. And a good response Preston gives. “While I know my work [as pastor] is never done,” he says, “I’ve discovered I need the discipline to say, “I’m finished.” Knowing when to finish each workday is crucial to a balanced life.”

This balanced life, as Preston puts it, is crucial not only for the pastor but also for his or her family, which undoubtedly feels the pressures and challenges placed on the pastor as well. Without making vital adjustments to work and life, the pastor, along with his whole family, might just spin out of control. The pastor’s family is affected in many ways. Because, you may be wondering, the pastor’s job is no easy task.

“There is no other job on earth,” author Ruth Truman explains, “that expects a man to work every possible waking moment, to comfort the sick and dying, to be the tower of strength for the bereaved, to counsel the maritally afflicted, to pray at a moment’s notice, to be all-wise in the problems of child care and in-family jousting, to administer a [large] budget, to raise money for loan payments, to run a church program efficiently with an all-volunteer staff that serves when it feels like it, to act as building and grounds maintenance supervisor, to prepare miraculously and preach eloquently, to dress meticulously but not too well, to be a saint in all interpersonal relationships with language that even your grandmother couldn’t question, to love his children and see that they are raised in an exemplary manner, to keep his own marriage and personal habits above question, to be never grossly (or netly, either) in debt, and to set a pattern of living that all can follow in personal faith and spiritual development.”

The responsibilities Truman points out in this passage come as an unexpected and overwhelming shock to the newly appointed pastor or seminary graduate who accepts their first position and to the seasoned pastor alike. And these unknown factors can impact the pastor’s family. One survey shows that 80 percent of pastor’s families believe that pastoral ministry is affecting their families negatively. When asked in our survey, 223 participants (or 82%) indicated they felt there were unrealistic demands or unwritten expectations placed on them and their families. Additionally, another survey indicated 47% of pastors say that unwritten expectations is a contributing cause of pastoral resignation.

82% of pastors indicated they felt there were unrealistic demands or unwritten expectations placed on them and their families.

When asked to expound on their reasoning behind their response, one pastor wrote, “I don’t think that the scriptures support anything like what modern pastors are expected to do. No position like that is described in the New Testament.”

Another pastor stated, “People in the church don’t have a real sense of all that a pastor does. They think he works a few hours on Sunday morning and that’s about it. They also have unrealistic expectations of his own humanity. Pastors are human and they sin, sometimes horribly, but the grace extended to them is far short of what members reserve for themselves.”

Although these unrealistic and unwritten demands come from within the local body, or perhaps from those in greater authority of the local pastor, it’s still the primarily responsible (a battle, some might argue) of the pastor to achieve this balanced life for themselves and their families.

“Was too much expected of us,” I’ve often asked my wife, Melissa, over the years, “or did we just take on too much responsibility?”

She usually hangs her head, trying to recall our days in pastoral ministry, when I ask her questions of being overworked, under-appreciated, or if our family was impacted negatively by our experience. I’m usually fed a plethora of answers and emotions that are often too difficult to put on a page. Instead, I’ll just say, she and I tend to agree with the stats.

Editors Notes
This is an excerpt from the (upcoming) revised second edition of Why Pastors Quit by Bo Lane.

References
Studies:
National Congregations Study
Leadership Network/Vanderbloemen 2014 Large Church Salary Report
The View from Pulpit & Pew: Provocative Findings on Pastoral Leadership in the 21st Century
Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development

Books:
Ex-pastors: Why Men Leave the Parish Ministry
Clergy Burnout: Recovering From The 70 Hour Week
Pastors in Pain
Underground Manual for Ministers’ Wives
It Only Hurts on Monday