This is the scary stuff:
The following statistics were presented by Pastor Darrin Patrick from research he has gathered from such organizations as Barna and Focus on the Family.
Pastors
* 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 and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
* 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.
Pastors' Wives
* Eighty percent of pastors' spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
* Eighty percent of pastors' spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
* The majority of pastor's wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.
He goes on a gives some advice to avoid it. Worth a read, even if you aren't a pastor.
3 comments:
From my own experience- out of the group of 15 of us who studied and fellowshipped together in Seminary I alone am left in the ministry. Each and every one of the others got out within 6 years. I'm sure lots of folks wish I would get out too.... ;-)
Still, what you have here is completely accurate. 100% on mark.
Makes sense to me. It's the people at the front lines that get attacked the hardest...
Wow. None of this really surprises me, but the honesty of it strikes me. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of it that my dad would agree with and identify with, but it makes me sad to be reminded of it in black and white. It's a heavy thought that God actually calls people to such a life. But he never said life was about happiness. As Bob Dylan (& Switchfoot!) would say, "happy is a yuppie word."
[I would sign this, but I think it's pretty obvious who wrote it.]
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