Pastors in Crisis: The Bad News 

Maria can tell you I hate to be late. But the other night I was late. It was all the more frustrating because I’d been looking forward to this event for a long time—the first post-vaccination social gathering I could have with some also vaccinated friends. But I was late for the same reason I’m late to a lot of things these days. A pastor called me to say that he’s wondering what he did wrong, and why he was such a failure in ministry. He didn’t do anything wrong (at least more than any other human leader), and he’s not a failure. But it seems like I have this conversation fifty times a week. 

Every one of these pastors thinks they are the only ones who are exhausted, feel beleaguered, and are wondering if they should be in ministry at all. Now, I’ve been in various sorts of ministry for 25 years—a lot of those in training future pastors—so I’ve seen this before, but never like this. The pastors I’m hearing from are not the kind we see collapsing into moral failure or substance abuse. They’re not the spiritually manipulative or egomaniacal types you might envision. These are the best sort of pastors out there. Some are in rural churches, some in urban areas. Some in large churches, some in small. They are of almost every imaginable denomination. And they feel like they are in crisis. 

With every one of these pastors, I say the same thing—“Here’s the good news; it’s not just you; Here’s the bad news; it’s not just you.” There’s some reassurance for some of these ministers that they are not alone in this—but it also signals a much, much larger problem. 

What I’ve seen anecdotally is borne out by some data. The veteran religion journalist Bob Smietana wrote that—after COVID and the 2020 presidential election, among other factors—many pastors are feeling isolated and sometimes almost despairing. Smietana cites a recent survey of Protestant pastors by the Barna Group, showing that 29 percent of them had given “real, serious consideration to quitting being in full-time ministry in the last year.” Barna’s president says that the year past was a “crucible” for pastors and that the pandemic “was a great revealer of the challenges churches face.” 

Smietana pointed to several personal accounts of this phenomena—one of them by a pastor I have admired from afar for many years, and I didn’t even know that he was out of ministry now. “Up until 2020, we had a fantastic time,” Brandon Cox said. The article noted, “The trifecta of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 election and the racial reckoning in response to the death of George Floyd hit like a ‘wrecking ball.’” It seemed, Smietana writes, “No matter what Cox did, someone was angry.” 

This reminded me of a Twitter thread from September of last year from respected Presbyterian pastor David Cassidy. He noted the statistic some were offering that COVID could end up permanently shutting down one in five churches over the next year (this does not appear to be the case, thankfully). Cassidy wrote that he didn’t know about that, but that he did know this: “Pastors are also dropping. We are walking away, many after decades in this work. The exhaustion level is simply too high, the demands impossible, and the ‘make bricks with no straw’ expectations are killer.” He wrote that he expected maybe one in seven pastors to seriously contemplate getting out of ministry. 

Pastor Cassidy went on to say that this is all exacerbated not only by the sorts of pressures on church members (depression, unemployment, health crises) needing ministry, but also “QAnon craziness” and “political attacks.” This is a persistent theme that I’m hearing from the pastors who call me feeling beleaguered. 

Pastors are hit for asking people to wear masks—and are hit for not supervising that everyone on the premises is in one. They are hit for the time they closed services during the pandemic—and for when they opened. And all the while their people are watching high-profile church celebrities denying the seriousness of the disease at all—suggesting that almost anything other than huddling together in mass crowds, unmasked and unvaccinated, is a violation of religious liberty. 

Some pastors are blasted for not supporting particular political candidates. We all know pastors under fire even for just praying for President Biden (as commanded in Scripture) by those who argue that Biden is not, in fact, the president, or for saying that insurrection and attacking police officers are wrong. But it works the other way too. 

A national political leader was venting to me the other day about how “the pastors” ought to be the ones turning around all the political craziness in this country. He said, “these insane pastors are destroying this country!” I responded, “I know you see a lot of insane pastors on television, but the pastors I know who are serving out there are the sanest people I know; they are trying to deal with congregations that are torn apart by various kinds of insanity.” He said, “Well, they need to get some courage, and speak to these things! You do that; why can’t they?” 

I responded, “But that’s my literal job, to speak to ethical and cultural questions; and I’ve kind of been doing it for the last thirty years.” Most pastors have never expected that they would have to be ready not just “in season and out of season” with the Word of God—but also with epidemiology, political science, debunking conspiracy theories, and all the rest. They know how to handle criticism, but when political maneuvering is used against them—no matter from where or about what—they never expected to deal with that. Nor should they have.” 

It’s not just that everything they say will be ripped apart by someone. It’s that if they say the opposite, that will be too. And if they try to help cool tensions, they will be blasted for their ‘silence.’ They are doing the best they can—and the very things that make them good Christians and good pastors are the things used against them. They won’t defend themselves and they won’t counter with the same kind of intimidation. 

One pastor told me that he had lost friends over his alleged commitment to “critical race theory”—with friends of his wife refusing to speak to her. The idea that this conservative evangelical Bible preacher is imbibing postmodern critical theories is absurd. He preached a sermon series, in the wake of the George Floyd murder, on why the church should care about racism and should bear one another’s burdens. Suddenly, it was suggested that he is reading Foucault when he’s actually just reading Ephesians. But he’s doing so in a time when—as Amanda Ripley calls them—“conflict entrepreneurs” are turning any biblical teaching on the sin of partiality and injustice into charges of subversion and liberalism. It’s surreal to be told that you are denying the “sufficiency of Scripture” not despite the fact that you believe the whole Bible, but because of it. 

That’s especially true when the sort of conflict a lot of pastors—at least the ones I’ve heard from—are facing is just different than some of what we’ve seen in the past. In many situations, people are not moving from issues they care about into anger and cruelty. That would be bad enough. But—just like our national political and cultural climate—the anger and cruelty are often the point, and the issues come along later. 

And, sometimes, when you really look into it, some of these pastors are beaten down not because of their views or their decisions, but because they’re not theatrically angry enough. They don’t seem to hate the people they're supposed to hate. That’s not because they are lacking conviction, but because they really believe that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost—and that he is a Shepherd, not an Adversary; a Lamb, and not a mockingbird. 

And, then, as another pastor told me, he feels like a failure when he watches the social media feeds of his members. “With all the anger and the rage against other people,” he said. “I just wonder, what have I even been doing in discipleship all these years?” As another said, “I already had to fight feeling like a failure by comparing my church to the big, exciting churches with lots of ministries going on in my community, but the way I did it was by knowing that I was caring for and discipling the little flock God had given me. Then I look at their Facebook pages and wonder, ‘Is this the end result?’” 

I am sure there may be situations where some pastors are facing this from the majority of their congregations, but none I’ve talked to are. Most of their congregations are made up of a majority of people who love them and support them and are Christlike, growing in the Spirit. But a church is not a country. Five percent of a congregation can set the emotional temperature of the entire church—if that five percent is willing to use hardball psychological warfare. And lots are. The pastors, at least those I’ve talked to, love that five percent and don’t really love conflict. They are trying to patiently bear with them. 

And the Christlike majority in their congregations don’t really understand the mentality at work of that five or ten percent—for entirely noble reasons. They assume that most people think like they do—that if you just give a little ground, find some way to make the five percent happy, that they will come to their senses and realize that they’ve been acting awfully. 

That’s true, of course, with those who just have legitimate concerns and want to change some things in their churches. People with legitimate concerns, though, aren’t the people who appropriate tactics such as inviting people over to lunch to share “concerns” about the church, writing anonymous letters or emails meant to dishearten and discourage, or threatening to leave or to withhold giving as a way of retaliation, or going about with the words, “A lot of people are concerned…” with the hopes of creating enough suspicion in the congregation that even those who like the church and the pastor will think, “Yes, but he is kind of controversial…”

Are there pastors who need to be confronted for doctrinal or moral or ethical wrongdoing? Oh yes. And we have seen over the past couple of years how many there can be, engaging in spiritual abuse and predation against their flocks. Those pastors are usually the ones citing “Touch not mine anointed” when any form of accountability is put forward. We need lots of pastors out of ministry—but, at least in my experience, those aren’t the pastors grappling with leaving. 

Instead, I’m hearing from pastors who are tired and discouraged, precisely because they love Jesus and their people. They feel like they’ve failed. And as I hear myself saying to them over and over: “You haven’t failed; you’re living in a world that’s going through a nervous breakdown.” 

Some of the worst people in ministry can look like successes, and some of the best can look like failures. This is because some of the worst of them know how to use the same methods of intimidation or manipulation, bullying or fits of rage,  or Machiavellian coldness. The best—most of them in ministry—seem to be at a disadvantage because they just won’t do all that—and lots of them feel like “failures.” But do you really want one of the angry intimidators or manipulative hacks at your deathbed to pray with you? Do you really want to be one? Isn’t a faithful kind of failure better than an awful kind of success? 

Yes. 

But that’s easy for me to write and to say to these tired pastors—and very hard to feel when one is in the pulpit week after week wondering when the next hit will come. 

And a lot of them feel guilty. One minister told me that he had told a colleague that he was thinking of leaving ministry and describing why. The colleague told him, “Well, this is what you signed up for when you surrendered to ministry.” The minister responded, “I was twenty-two! I couldn’t be trusted to rent a car, much less to know what I’m capable of with my whole life!” 

So that’s the bad news. What’s the good? 

Pastors in Crisis: The Good News 

David Cassidy warned of a “reckoning” coming in the church, with the strain on so many pastors. But he also noted, correctly in my view, that most of the pastors he knows are “the hardest working, creative loving people on the planet, giving it their best shot.” 

Again—I can only speak to the pastors who seek me out to tell me their stories—so there’s nothing scientific about this. But here’s what I’m finding. I hear almost no bitterness and resentment. The pastors who are discouraged are discouraged—but they are not cynical. They love Jesus—more than ever. They love the people who are hounding them; that’s why it hurts. And, at the same time that I hear from these pastors, I hear from a lot of church members, who can sort of see the strain in their pastors and want to know how to encourage them. 

I would be willing to bet that most of the pastors mentioned in Bob Smietana’s article will be back in ministry—in some way or the other. They are not the ones who are destroying themselves with substances or affairs or fits of rage. They’re just tired and disheartened and brokenhearted. I say to most of these pastors, the following: “A friend of mine once said, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted’—and I’ve come to believe he knows what he’s talking about.” 

Crisis can, of course, be bad and destructive. But a “crisis” means a turning point—and sometimes those turning points are good. “COVID year has been crazy,” one pastor told me. “But I can see the Lord, slowly during that year, making my ambition less and less important to me—and kindness more important.” Another said that watching his church members descend into madness on social media was rattling to him—but that it also prompted him to examine how he did the same thing—though in a more sophisticated way—sometimes in his own mind, about other people. He found in his life a crisis of repentance—a slow changing of mind and a slow turning toward something better. 

So—I say all that to say this: If you have a good pastor or, frankly, even a mediocre pastor who loves you and is trying his best, say so. Pray in private, and send a note. That may be even more important for a pastor that you disagree with on some things than one with whom you agree. I don’t mean, of course, a pastor with whom you disagree on first-order things such as the Incarnation or the Resurrection or ethical matters such as mistreating congregants or subordinates. I mean a pastor with whom you disagree—even strongly—on one of the matters the rest of the world wants to eviscerate one another about on social media. 

Maybe you disagree—even strongly—with your pastor on how the church came down on COVID protocols. Maybe you think he’s wrong for not debunking conspiracy theories hard enough in his sermons—or that he spends too much time on such things. Maybe you think a building is the wrong thing to do right now. Maybe you and he disagree on political candidates—or you think he’s not doing enough to address political crises in his preaching. Let’s assume you’re right. Spend some time thinking about what the motives and intentions are. Often they are coming from good and biblical impulses—even if they might be wrongly applied. Commend those impulses—and give the benefit of the doubt everywhere that it wouldn’t be immoral to do so.

If you have a wicked or intentionally hurtful or spiteful pastor, work for accountability or leave. But if you have a pastor who’s goodhearted (even if sometimes misguided), and people are trying to use intimidation and manipulation, be the people who say to the critics: “We love you, we want the best for you, but you won’t do that here.” 

If you’re a pastor in a town with other pastors, seek out a group of others you can spiritually respect—no matter if they’re in the same denomination or the same “style” of church. See if you can commit together not be competitors but to learn to trust and love each other and to see that you’re really not alone. 

One last thing: don’t guilt the pastors who take a break, or even who leave ministry. I confess that I am more guilty of this than probably anyone reading this. After Hurricane Katrina devastated my hometown, a year or so later many pastors left the Mississippi Gulf Coast for other places. “Isn’t it convenient,” I said, “that God just happens to be calling all these guys north from here, right when the going gets tough?” 

I was not only sinfully judgmental in my attitude, I was also just flat-out wrong. They didn’t leave “when the going got tough.” They endured with their people through unbelievable hardship and stress and rebuilding. And, afterward, they had given everything they had—for now. They weren’t turncoats but heroes. Their church members knew that, I think, and I know it now—but I wish I had known it then, and I would have been a better Christian and a better son of Biloxi. 

Most of them are not Jonah running from God’s call on their lives. They’re not refusing to persevere. They haven’t betrayed you. They’re just exhausted. Most of them have the best days of ministry in front of them. Let’s resolve, together, that we will be the sort of church that can love and be loved by them then. 

Helpful Advice for Meeting with Your Pastor 

My colleague Daniel Patterson crafted a brilliant post on social media that sums up how to ask for a meeting with one’s pastor. You might think, “Why would it matter how I do that?” Well, see above: your pastor has probably heard people say, “Can we talk sometime this week?” to mean, “Get ready, because I’m about to tell you how annoying your sermons are” or “Get ready; because I’m about to tell you I’m not coming anymore until we have more worship songs than hymns” or “I think the Lord is calling me to be an arsonist. What do you think?”

Daniel suggests a better way. 

Faithful Presence 

The other night a group of us gathered for a dinner celebrating the launch of our friend Bill Haslam’s new book. Bill is the former two-term governor of Tennessee—and one of the Christian leaders I admire the most. The book is Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square, published by Thomas Nelson. 

Here’s what I wrote about it on the endorsements page:

In this era of perpetual outrage, one could easily conclude that the Sermon on the Mount cannot co-exist with the Federalist Papers. Indeed, many seem to be giving up on either the idea of democracy itself or the hope that this democracy could produce, and demand, leaders of character and conviction. This book shows a different way. I can think of no leader in public life who better exemplifies character, reasonableness, prudence, and tenacity more than Bill Haslam. This book takes the reader through major decision points in Gov. Haslam's life while elaborating how we could have a politics of principle and even humility. This book calls us away from the way of Machiavelli, and toward the way of Jesus. This book is not just for those in, or considering, a political life, but for everyone who leads in any arena of life. This is the book we need right now, and it comes not a moment too soon.

But the blurb that tells you the most about the book (and the man) is not mine. It’s the next one—from the chair of the state legislature’s caucus of the opposite party from that of Bill Haslam. He wrote about how they could disagree and still respect each other. 

Event with George W. Bush 

Some of y’all have asked where you can watch the video of the event that George W. Bush, Yuval Levin, and I did on Thursday. Here’s a link for you. You might have seen the video where Yuval and I were laughing uproariously. That happened more than once—and a lot more than that in the conversation after the cameras were off! You can also order President Bush’s new book here. 

Desert Island Bookshelf

This week’s submission is from Ben Fedorko. I don’t think Ben included any commentary with his, but these books sort of speak for themselves. I like that Ben included both Antifragile (on resilience) and a volume on a tsunami and other natural disasters. Both topics would need some pondering, I would think, on an actual desert island. 

What do you think? If you could have one bookshelf with you to last you the rest of your life, what volumes would you choose? Send a picture to me with as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like.

Quote of the Moment

“If God is now the God of justification but has gone into hiding as the God of justice, are we not merely dispensing evangelistic Watergate pardons to people who have no sense of public guilt?”

— Carl F.H. Henry

The Courage to Stand 

You can order a copy of my newest book, The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul (B&H) here (or wherever you buy books). 

Questions and Ethics 

I have re-launched the “Questions and Ethics” part of my podcast. You can subscribe here. Please send me your moral dilemmas—about life, school, work, spirituality, family, whatever—and I’ll do my best to answer (and I’ll never, of course, use your name, unless you ask me to do so). You can send your questions to questions@russellmoore.com. 

Say Hello 

And, of course, I would love to hear from you. Send me an email if you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, other things you would like to see discussed here, or if you would just like to say hello! 

If you have a friend who might like this, please forward it along, and if you’ve gotten this from a friend, please subscribe!

Onward, 

Russell Moore