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Here is the full post complete with comments if you want to read it. The premise is that a whole generation of leaders are leaving the church for these reasons.
1. The discontinuity between what they imagined ministry to be and what it actually is is too great.2. A life without weekends sucks.
3. The pay is too low (most pastors in my denomination make less money than a school teacher with five years experience).
4. They are tired of driving ten year old cars while their congregations trade in their cars every two years.
5. Many young pastors are called into difficult congregations that chew pastors up and spit them out because experienced pastors know better.
6. Even though the search committee told them they wanted to reach young people, they didn’t really mean it.
7. When the pastor asked the search committee if they were an “emergent church�, the members of the search committee thought he said “divergent church� and agreed.
8. Nobody told the young pastor that cleaning the toilets was part of the job description.
9. The young pastor’s student loans came due and the amount of money he/she owes on a monthly basis exceeds his/her income.
10. Working at McDonalds has alot less stress.
Fortunately for me - I’ve avoided a lot of those reasons but a couple of them hit a nerve…primarly #1, #5, and #6.
I don’t want to absolve my generation of all blame. Many of us got into church work without first wrestling with whether we were called. We then drug our wives into it before wrestling with whether she was called as well. And some of us are a lot more in love with the idea of being in ministry than actually following Jesus.
I think it was Spurgeon that said if you can do anything else besides pastoring, do it.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Mile20 // Nov 1, 2005 at 3:45 pm
I wonder if the attrition rate for young pastors is any worse than other jobs. Most people do not like their jobs. Many people are underpaid for what good they do (social workers start in the low 20s). So what is my point? Not sure, except, join the rest of the smucks that are trying to find meanful work. At least you have the benefit of doing something that can be noble, even if it sometimes feels like you are beating you head against the wall.
2 Grant // Nov 1, 2005 at 7:16 pm
great point!!!
3 Wayne // Nov 1, 2005 at 8:26 pm
M20 stole the words right out of my brain — wow, that’s a SCARY place to be! But, he’s right — I spent too long,getting too many degrees, all the right credentials, doing all the right “Professional” things and yet my feeling of doing meaningful work is pretty much nonexistent. In fact, some days, OK a lot of days, I feel somewhat like a failure. But, if you look at my resume, I appear to be “succesful.” Wow, what kind of can are you trying to open here, Grant?
4 Zack // Nov 1, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Well since I am one of the younger guys here I will give my opinion. I agree with M20 about G’s job being noble. I would also like to do something noble with my life, I am trying to figure out what that means.
Oh and Wayne….. You do have a noble job, you just don’t get paid for it.
5 Heath // Nov 1, 2005 at 10:44 pm
now THOSE are words of encouragement, Zack.
6 Buggy-Buggy // Nov 2, 2005 at 7:44 am
M20 said that we pastors have the benefit of doing something that can be noble, even if it sometimes feels like you are beating your head against the wall. Grant agreed.
My question is what good is nobility when you can’t pay your bills, the car won’t run and you can’t pay to get it fixed or get a new one, your family is falling apart because you’re all about the “noble” thing.
What’s so noble about watching everything you hoped and dreamed of - family, financial stability, future - comes crashing down around you?
There’s something to be said of those things that are not noble, but you can shut them off or leave them behind at 5:00 or for the weekend.
From personal experience, nobility is not what it is cracked up to be. But then I’m one of those guys who are ready to walk away from ministry and work my dream job - Starbucks!!
Sorry for the downer, it’s just a dose of reality.
7 Grant // Nov 2, 2005 at 8:09 am
Hey Buggy!
While I am sure that you would make one heck of a barista, I’m equally convinced you are one heck of a pastor as well.
I think one of the harder questions for us in the “bidness” is this do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?
In other words - if my current context of ministry sucks, does that justify leaving the whole thing. Or do I need a change of scenery?
(rhetorical questions, Grace people - don’t go into panic mode.)
8 Mile20 // Nov 2, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Okay, Buggy, like I said, join the rest of us smucks. The stats are that most people are in hock and struggling financially. I went to college for too many years and have been in the working world for the past 15 years. For all except the past 2 years I have driven a piece of crap and struggled from month to month.
If working for starbucks will solve your problems, you must be severely underpaid. In which case you need to kick your elders or congregation in the butt. Seems a pastor should make more than someone selling coffee.
The hardest thing for me when I was struggling more financially was the rampant materialism around me. I had to drive my piece of crap car through neigborhoods with houses 3 times bigger than mine and park next to rows of $50000 SUVs, and that was at church! What kind of jobs do these people have! As somebody with a noble (non-full-time Christian ministry) job, I would not trade what I do just for more bucks, though I would have to agree with your sentiment, Buggy, it wears on you big time.
What would have helped would have been some role models and support for simplicity.
9 Buggy-Buggy // Nov 2, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Ooooo - I sense I mistated something or miscommunicated it. I was simply saying the “nobility” of the ministry doesn’t always meet the needs of those in ministry. I have seen too many pastors (sr, youth, music, etc.) leave ministry because, as M20 stated, it wears on you.
I left the corporate world for the ministry, so I know what I was leaving and what I was leaving it for (financially). I was not blind by any means.
I threw out the Starbucks thing because of the reduction in the amount of stress and the fact that at the end of the shift I could go home and forget the job for a while. Not so easy to clock out of the job as a minister.
Even my wife could not understand how frustrating ministry was to ministers. She couldn’t fathom that’s what God had in mind when he called someone into ministry.
You’re right Grant, possibly it’s context. Right now I’m struggling with all the rules, regulations, and rituals of church ministry. I want to build relationships and help people - not worry about budgets or whether we can do something or not. You know what I’m talking about.
Both of you guys have great points - maybe we’re just not much different than the world we live in. But are we supposed to be . . . or not?
10 Anonymous // Nov 29, 2005 at 11:00 pm
I am no longer all that young. I began ministry in my 20’s. Now I am 49. I agree with all of the points listed. Especially in established churches, I found that there were a lot of politics and conflicts in the three ministries that I have been involved with. One elder even threatened to beat me up. Leadership in my past also informed me that I could do ‘whatever it takes’ to reach the younger generation. Though I was very successful at doing this, it turned out in the long run that they did not want change, and as a result they chased off all of the good people who were the true movers and shakers for God. Other jobs are not like this. Believe me. My wife has had a good job for over 20 years. She has a union unlike us. However, like The Apostle Paul I press on. PTL. I love Jesus too much to ever quit serving Him, although I am now a lot wiser about doing it.
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