Lessons from pastors who have left parish ministry
The Rev. Afi Dobbins-Mays proved resilient amid adversity throughout her first pastorate, serving two rural United Methodist congregations outside Madison, Wisconsin. But in 2022, a decade later, no amount of grit could keep her in ministry. By then, she was demoralized and needed a change.
She had overcome racism, aimed at her as a Black woman, including when individuals in her nearly all-white congregation had repeatedly refused to meet with her. Congregants had rallied behind her, raised awareness of the issue and helped bring in a diverse group of new members.
“There was a beautiful culture in that church,” she said.
But then her conference relocated her to a “critical mission site” (i.e., not financially self-supporting) in inner-city Milwaukee, where the stressors were many and the supports few.
Half the congregation of 60 quit the church upon her arrival, unwilling to have a woman in the pulpit. Grant funding was promised but fell through, she said. And when regional United Methodist decision makers called during pandemic hard times, it wasn’t to show support.
“They said, ‘What’s the reason why your church is not financially solvent right now?’” she recalled. “‘Why is it that you guys aren’t on your feet?’ It felt like a punitive conversation. They started cutting the money back.”
What does rallying to support a pastor look like in your congregation?
When a second congregation was added to her Milwaukee charge, her pay remained the same: about $43,000 plus benefits. She informed her district superintendent that she needed to earn at least $60,000 plus benefits, she said, but was told that wouldn’t happen in Milwaukee or anywhere else.
“I started looking into other options, because I didn’t really see a viable pathway to grow in my career after that conversation,” Dobbins-Mays said. “I didn’t feel supported in ministry.”
She worked briefly for a food bank before accepting a three-year position as assistant to the bishop for authentic diversity and leadership in the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She finds satisfaction now leading workshops on racism and oppression. And in a cause close to her heart, she’s helping launch a new ELCA camp next summer for children with an incarcerated parent.
Dobbins-Mays is one of a number of clergy who have left their jobs in parish ministry because of factors including managing institutional decline. And though there might not be a real “great resignation” of pastors, those like Dobbins-Mays can offer insights into the stressors affecting pastors in the U.S.
Expanding discontent among clergy surfaced in January when the Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) study reported findings from a fall 2023 survey of 1,700 religious leaders. More than half (53%) said they’d seriously considered leaving pastoral ministry at least once since 2020. That’s up from 37% surveyed in 2021.
A closer look reveals that mainline clergy are the group most likely to consider leaving. Those particularly at risk include pastors serving congregations of 51 to 250 worship attendees with no ministry colleagues on staff; those in congregations that foresee struggling to survive — or closing — in the near future; those mired in congregational conflict; and those who say their congregations are unwilling to change to meet new challenges.
“The pandemic was a collective trauma both for the clergy and for the church,” said Scott Thumma, the director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research (HIRR) and the principal researcher for the study. “Both of them suffered. And both of them, our research is showing, are collectively responsible for overcoming some of these challenges that lead to pastors thinking about changing congregations or leaving the ministry.”
The report is quick to add context to the percentage of pastors who have seriously considered leaving. Congregations are not seeing a collared exodus. Considering leaving and actually leaving are not the same thing. Numerous factors keep pastors in parish ministry, even if they’re not thrilled about it.
What are the stresses in your congregation? Who feels that stress most acutely?
“There’s not a spike in clergy retiring early or in their departure, at least through 2022, in the data from some of the denominations,” Thumma said in a webinar on the report. “I don’t think we’re going to see the ‘great resignation’ that many people have talked about.”
Nonetheless, those who have left in search of greener professional pastures might shed light on what needs fixing. That’s the expertise of Todd Ferguson, a Rice University sociologist of religion and co-author of “Stuck: Why Clergy Are Alienated From Their Calling, Congregation and Career … and What to Do About It.”
Ferguson names four factors that have led to a number of pastors leaving parish ministry: managing institutional decline; navigating conflict or division along political lines; feeling they couldn’t be their authentic selves in the congregational leader role; and facing disillusionment with a drifting mission.
A lack of resources
Demoralization doesn’t afflict just those who become burned out in ministry, as Dobbins-Mays did. Fallout from mainline decline is taking a toll also on people who still feel called but can’t make it work in today’s resource-constrained local settings.
Take the Rev. Loren Richmond Jr., a 41-year-old ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Richmond reluctantly began transitioning out of parish ministry in 2021 when he took a full-time job in local government. He now works for the Aurora Housing Authority, where he coordinates services for elders and veterans.
Do you see the four factors Ferguson describes in your congregation?
“I needed to make more money,” Richmond says flatly. “I don’t know if it’s feasible financially [to do parish ministry], at least at this stage of my life. And that’s really hard for me. I’ve committed 20 years of my life to this.”
The numbers just weren’t working. Having bought an average-priced house for his family of four in the Denver metro area in 2021, when interest rates were still low, he’s now paying down a $3,000 per month mortgage. Even with his wife’s income, they couldn’t swing it on his $45,000 salary for a three-quarters-time associate pastor and youth director position. He now earns $61,000 plus benefits in his government job.
Who is responsible for identifying and deploying resources in your congregation? Is the duty shared?
His departure from ministry came despite creative attempts to keep pastoring. After starting his government job, he continued working at Washington Park United Methodist Church in Denver on a reduced, quarter-time basis (10 hours a week). Yet even with his church duties scaled back, he was constantly thinking about the next sermon or next youth activity, until he couldn’t do it anymore. He gave his final sermon Jan. 14, 2024.
“After eight hours of work and two hours in the car, there was not a lot of stamina left, even to sit at the computer and do something church related,” Richmond said, holding back tears in a Zoom interview. “That’s really what it came down to. I found myself out of gas, mentally exhausted trying to manage it all.”
Growing divisions and threatened authenticity
When Ferguson says pastors leave ministry to escape feeling trapped in a political tinderbox, he could be talking about the Rev. Christi Tennyson of St. Louis. She left ministry in 2021 to become a fundraiser for Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services.
Now 48, she was first licensed to pastor in 2015 and has been ordained in the United Church of Christ since 2018. She says she became a progressive thinker while reading the Bible deeply for the first time at Eden Theological Seminary.
“I’m not going [to] preach politics, but what I would preach were Christian values,” Tennyson said. “I tell people, ‘The whole crux of every world religion is — I’m going to use a bad word — don’t be an a——.’”
Before the pandemic, her approach to politics and liberal theology wasn’t a problem at Pilgrim United Church of Christ, a purple, aging congregation of about 55 in rural Labadie, Missouri. They knew each other. Serving 19 hours a week in the parish, she’d joined them in mission projects, such as hosting bluegrass concerts and a huge Halloween festival every year.
“They were really good at mission in their tiny town,” she said. “I loved the people. I still love the people. I miss them.”
But the pandemic pushed them apart, literally and relationally. Worshipping solely on Zoom for a year created a chasm that never closed.
“I felt I had lost the connection to my people,” Tennyson said. “I’m a hugger, and when you’re just looking at people over a screen, you lose the conversations that tell you what’s happening in their lives.”
With relational ties weakened, political differences felt sharper as in-person activities resumed. She listened as parishioners expressed negative views of various types of people, including immigrants, high-profile rape victims and women who’d had abortions. She came to think her “love your neighbor” preaching wasn’t making a difference. Their values were too far apart.
“I just felt like, ‘What am I doing?’” she said. “They listen for an hour a week, and then they leave and they’re spewing hateful rhetoric. … It was soul crushing.”
Along the way, trying to be authentic and forthright without alienating conservatives was a never-ending concern. She felt she had to hide who she was: a self-described “foul-mouthed sorority girl” who’d once had an abortion that saved her life. Her flawed humanity was a strength in the pulpit, she said, but always having to walk the fine line of congregational diplomacy was “exhausting.”
“A lot of times, pastors are hamstrung, because if enough people don’t like what you say, you will lose your job,” she said. “There was always fear on some level that I would say the wrong thing and make the wrong person angry and I would lose the job.”
Feeling burned out, Tennyson didn’t consider moving to a new church, because by the time she left in 2021, parish ministry didn’t fit her life anymore. Her marriage was heading for divorce. She expected that another congregation would not accept the spiritual authority of a recently divorced woman. She also didn’t want to feel judged for dating. And then there was the matter of money. Becoming a single parent meant she needed to earn more, but most UCC parish ministry jobs in her area aren’t full-time with health benefits, she said.
Now a successful fundraiser, Tennyson feels called to her new vocation. She’s grateful that she can pray daily with colleagues and do something to make the world better. In her new role, she’s a frequent guest speaker in local churches but no longer bears the weight of churchgoers’ expectations. She appreciates not having to manage what she calls “the church nonsense.”
Disillusionment with mission drift
On paper, the senior pastor position that the Rev. Alexander Lang accepted in 2013 was a plum. He preached to more than 500 in weekly worship attendance, worked alongside 15 staff colleagues and oversaw a budget over $1 million at one of greater Chicago’s most prominent mainline churches, First Presbyterian Church of Arlington Heights.
When a pastor does leave your congregation, do leaders ask about the forces that contributed to the decision?
“I don’t think that I could have found anything better in terms of a church,” Lang said.
But Lang wasn’t getting to do what he entered ministry to do, which was to “build community and create the kingdom of God on earth,” he said. Instead, he was devoting half his time to fundraising, committee meetings and other institution-supporting endeavors. After 10 years, he left the position this past August.
“The church is not really a church anymore; you have to treat it like a business,” Lang said. “Which is unfortunate, because if I’d wanted to run a business, I would have gone to business school.”
Signs of decline, such as a 50% drop in worship attendance over his decade in Arlington Heights, only increased the pressure he felt to keep the institution afloat. Along with that came pressure to assuage demanding parishioners and sometimes endure what he regarded as emotional abuse.
“There were people who felt like, ‘Because I helped to pay your salary, I can treat you any way I want,’” Lang said. “They felt like they could berate me without any real thought to what that means to me as a person.”
Lang became convinced that he’d need to leave ministry in order to live out his vocation as a change agent. He’d tried on several fronts, from delivering provocative sermons to laying groundwork for new social enterprises. But the large-scale change that he believes is necessary was a tough sell.
Lang is now an aspiring tech entrepreneur, seeking angel funding for a product he isn’t discussing publicly. All he learned about business in the church might be transferable to his new venture. At least that’s the hope.
Thumma, drawing on his research, has some advice for congregations hoping to keep their pastors from leaving ministry. First, he says, churches and clergy need to recognize that the last four years have been traumatic and the effects are still being worked out. Second, churches should try to find ways to reduce levels of conflict and find ways to appreciate the relationship between the clergyperson and the congregation.
“It’s pretty clear what creates a hospitable environment and reality for a flourishing congregation and what doesn’t,” Thumma said. The challenge is that it requires working constructively together.
The recent HIRR report said it well: “What is positively associated with fewer thoughts of leaving is … being in a church with a bright outlook for the future, one that has less conflict, is more open to change and adaptation, and cultivates a good, healthy [relationship] between the members and pastor.”
Who are the hopeful people in your congregation and community? How can their voices and influence be strengthened?
Questions to consider
- What does rallying to support a pastor look like in your congregation?
- What are the stresses in your congregation? Who feels that stress most acutely?
- A Rice University sociologist has identified four factors that push pastors to leave parish ministry. Do you see these factors in your congregation?
- Who is responsible for identifying and deploying resources in your congregation? Is the duty shared?
- When a pastor does leave your congregation, do leaders ask about the forces that contributed to the decision?
- Who are the hopeful people in your congregation and community? How can their voices and influence be strengthened?
Recent research released by Barna Group reveals a demographic trend that may not bode well for the stability of congregations. As a significant percentage of pastors near retirement, the pipeline of younger successors appears insufficient to take over their leadership responsibilities.
According to the 2022 Barna Resilient Pastor research, one-quarter of pastors said they hoped to retire within the next seven years.
In addition, the age of pastors in America has been trending upward for decades. According to the 2020 Faith Communities Today (FACT) study, the average age of religious leaders has increased from 50 in 2000 to 57 in 2020. A 2017 Barna study found that the median age of a Protestant pastor was 54 at that time — up from 44 in 1992.
“As a generation of clergy ages and prepares to step down, it is not clear that churches are prepared for the transition,” Barna reported. “If this trend goes unaddressed, the Church in the U.S. will face a real succession crisis.”
According to Ashley Ekmay, a lead researcher for Barna, one of the most significant questions arising from the study is whether pastors are exhibiting to younger people that entering the ministry is worth it. “The data seems to indicate that the answer to that question is no,” she said.
Much of that sentiment can be attributed to the fact that a rising number of pastors are considering quitting themselves — and not just to retire. “As of March 2022, 42% of pastors said that they had considered quitting full-time ministry in the last year,” Ekmay said. “That is a very jarring thing to state.”
Numerous factors seem to be contributing to pastors’ current state of mind about leaving the ministry, Ekmay said.
“There’s this collective ache among pastors,” she said. “When we asked them about burnout and whether they were considering quitting in 2022, they pointed to numerous things that were making them feel that way. Divisions in the church were a huge factor, especially from increasing polarization in America coming off George Floyd’s death, masking during COVID and Trump’s presidency.
“The pastors felt like they had to take a side, but no matter what side they picked, they were on the wrong side,” Ekmay said.
When addressing succession planning for the church, Barna found that 38% of 584 pastors surveyed personally made it a top priority to equip, nurture and identify leaders to take over their role upon retirement. However, nearly an equal number of pastors — 40% — indicated they had “thought about the need but have too many other ministry concerns.”
Whether or not they had invested in succession planning, a significant number of pastors responding to the Barna study said they anticipated difficulties in finding younger successors. As of 2022, only 16% of Protestant senior pastors were 40 or younger.
According to the survey, which was conducted in September 2022, 75% of pastors said they “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement “It is becoming harder to find mature young Christians who want to become pastors.” Nearly 35% of the respondents strongly agreed with that statement — up from 24% in 2015. More than 70% of the pastors also said they strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement “I am concerned about the quality of future Christian leaders.”
More recent pastor interviews related to Barna’s research series seem to indicate that the succession challenge may not be going away anytime soon. An additional factor seems to be emerging, suggested by the early findings of the 2023 study, which is scheduled to be released in spring 2024, Ekmay said.
“We’ve noticed that there seems to be a contagion effect,” Ekmay said. “When we asked, ‘Do you know anyone else who has quit the ministry?’ we found that those who knew someone who had left were giving more thought to leaving themselves.”
Interested in more research relevant to Christian leaders?
Learning to preach is a lifelong vocation with fresh challenges to face and new opportunities for growth. Beginning to learn the preaching art is a big job, with many skills to develop in sharing God’s word with God’s people: exegeting biblical texts, discerning and framing theological themes, addressing cultural issues, acknowledging congregational dynamics, grounding contemporary relevance in Christian history, offering authentic personal witness without becoming the center of sermon attention. Each of these dimensions in sermon crafting is learned only in incremental steps and over time. Integrating them all requires effective orchestration — a skill of its own.
In introductory homiletics courses or in early attempts on their own, beginning preachers may inevitably focus on generating one sermon at a time. This practice tends to produce a series of “one-offs” — each independent of, or even in isolation from, each other. The preaching that results does justice neither to the organic evolution of parish community life nor to rich elements in the unfolding trajectory of salvation history.
What can preachers do in sermon crafting to foster in listeners a tangible sense of communal spiritual continuity? How might they develop a “Spirited” conversation that enables members, on returning to church each week, to pick up where they left off (even if they miss Sundays here and there)?
Here are some strategies we’ve sought to employ in service of that objective:
- Rather than taking the lectionary readings assigned as disparate texts, we try to think about what precedes and follows each text and how, on a given day, they may be in intertextual interplay. We look for themes we can focus on for a month, a liturgical season, even a year.
- We seek to be open to the Holy Spirit in the lives of our church communities, making connections with the sacred texts. This is different from eisegesis or reading something into the text.
We don’t decide, for example, “Well, it’s the pledge campaign season, so we need to throw stewardship in somehow,” or try to tie in how to raise money for a new air conditioning unit when the Old Testament reading is Nathan confronting David about Bathsheba. Instead, as we prayerfully consider the collection of the day’s readings and seek themes, we pray about what’s going on in the life of our church — individual instances and broader patterns.
- We try to be aware of, and open to, the Spirit in the lives of individual parishioners. We try to avoid finding a story to “plug in” to a sermon for that Sunday. Rather, we pay attention to how an encounter with a community member or an event in our own lives or the life of a parishioner might beautifully illuminate a text. Of course, when telling someone else’s story, especially if recognizable to others in the congregation, we need to have received their consent.
- Some teachers of preaching advise against reading old sermons because it could constrict fresh vision. We find, however, that such rereading can have the opposite effect — sending us in a different direction entirely or deepening a dimension that was implicit in the sermon preached before. With multiple lectionary texts, every Sunday offers many thematic variations and angles of approach.
Reading old sermons can be especially helpful when difficult pericopes arise. Some of us were taught that if one of the readings is difficult (such as Jesus talking about divorce), we “must” preach on that, because it is what people will hear and wonder about. When preaching to the same people for a decade or more, however, that would mean never preaching from other readings for that Sunday or other themes present in the collection.
When we are with people long term, we can be open to what the Spirit nudges us toward, acknowledging when that does not engage the difficult text and perhaps letting people know that a previous sermon on that text is available for those who want or need it. Copies or recordings of such sermons can be made available for later reference.
- Weaving in the developing story of the parish — especially when viewed in light of an unfolding issue in the ministry of Jesus, an Old Testament drama, or an early church issue wrestled with in Acts or the Letters of Paul — can bring together broad connections rather than simply making a point.
It can convey the sense of spiritual growth as a process both extended and communal, whether it’s the struggle with a building program, the investment in a local food bank or tutoring ministry, the progress of a Christian education program, or a socially/politically challenging local issue in which the parish has a stake.
- We find it often appropriate and helpful to briefly reference previous sermons and to point ahead to what forthcoming sermons will be addressing — all aspects of a story in process.
- Being candid about our own vulnerabilities and challenges as well as pressing but unresolved issues in parish life can serve as an invitation to reflect on the physical and emotional layers of experiential problems and theological principles. When done with care, such preaching can reframe what may feel insurmountable when faced alone as occasions for mutual insight, support and resolutions, however partial or temporary those may be.
While most preachers know that it is inappropriate and ineffective to preach at their congregations, not all preachers know that they are not so much to preach to but rather with and for their congregations.
Professor Fred Craddock often reminded his fellow preachers that good preaching does not tell listeners what they want to hear; it enables people to say what they most deeply need to say. When strategies like those listed above are regularly worked into the sermon preparation process, listeners will experience preaching they hear as a window on their shared world, as a voice that resonates with and validates their own individual and communal voices.
Preaching becomes not so much a series of points to ponder as a set of reference points for shared spiritual journey — an invitation to participate in continuing Spirited conversation.
Preaching during a war can be a difficult task. Should every sermon mention an ongoing conflict? What does a preacher do about the inevitable backlash?
The dean of Duke Chapel and preaching professor Luke Powery reminds preachers that the sermon is only one aspect of formation in the context of a church.
Preachers don’t have to be the authority on a tense political situation and ongoing war. Instead, their sermons can be one part of their congregants’ formation. They might bring in outside experts or enlist other church members with expertise to help guide and form a congregation in responding to political events.
Above all, Powery says, preachers should seek to humanize the conflict, reminding congregants through preaching of the impact of the incarnation on how we empathize and understand a destructive war and suffering.
Powery spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Chris Karnadi after preaching a sermon in Duke Chapel in early November. The following is an edited transcript.
Faith & Leadership: What are some things that you’re thinking through when planning to preach in the context of this conflict?
Luke A. Powery: First, I would say there are many different approaches to what one is preaching in relation to world events. Also, the second thing I want to say is that the sermon is just one piece of the larger liturgical event.
Everything does not reside in a sermon. There are other, let’s say, symbols and signs and messages and prayers, other words that function.
I think both of those items are important. Because as it relates to the current crisis in the Middle East, or any other crisis, I think when we’re planning, as those who are preparing a service and music and all of that, we’re also keeping in mind, “Well, how might we at least acknowledge this in prayers of the people?”
For me, if I’m thinking specifically about a sermon, I don’t feel pressure, per se, to mention the current crisis in every single sermon, though some people may want to hear every week about it.
I think our primary goal as preachers is to preach the gospel. So how do you relate whatever the lectionary text is for that Sunday, whatever you choose, to the lives of the people there in light of the larger world context? Obviously, the crisis in Israel and Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, you name it, you can go down the list — it’s on people’s minds. They’re getting it through social media and TV.
There might be a time when I reference it more specifically, but it’s often in relation to human suffering, and also lament.
The expression of lament that is almost like, “Here we go again.” We’re in this human struggle that we’ve seen before, wars and rumors of wars. And so to me, every time you prepare to preach, you practice discernment. You’re discerning through prayer and engagement with people and the community, “What should I be saying?” or, “How should I say it?”
I think that’s the ongoing process. I don’t think there’s one way to come at it. Even the sermon I preached this past Sunday, from Amos, which says, “Let justice roll down like a river” — well, I didn’t mention specifics of the conflict.
Yet somebody could take away implications from Amos, in relation to the conflict, or in relation to anything else going on in the world, this call to a life — forget about your songs and your rituals and your festivals and all of that; what God wants is justice and righteousness. But you can develop that in many different ways.
The human suffering, God in the midst of human suffering, is key to me. Whether it’s children, mothers, fathers, the destruction of human life is what is lamentable in this. That’s where the question is — where do you find hope in all of this, or is there hope, really? But it’s one long lament. One long lament.
F&L: So trying to humanize it might cut across some of the politicization of the conflict to focus on the human loss?
LAP: It’s a long, long history, and then there are different dimensions, too — political history, social history, religious history and all of that. I think, really, you need scholars to bring their expertise to bear on the history and where we are today. But I think, as a preacher, it is key that we remember, out of the Christian tradition, God became human.
So it’s the turn to the human and humanizing the conflict, even before any categories of what your ethnic, religious or gender identity is. Any act of violence means saying another human being doesn’t matter.
Where’s the human in this? Because once you start thinking in categories — ethnic, political, whatever it might be — then people just become objects. Objects are a category to crush, control, curse. They’re not my brother or sister or sibling.
F&L: What about when preachers stand for what they believe is the human response to a conflict and then get pushback from congregants? What should they do?
LAP: Well, I’ve found it helpful to actually sit down with somebody, to create a space for listening and let people air what they need to air. Secondly, don’t take it personally. Not everything is personal. The third thing I would say is in preaching, there are going to be the cheers and the jeers — from the same sermon. Some people will love it, and others won’t.
I think that’s just par for the course. So it takes courage to stand up there to preach. It takes courage and wisdom and patience to pastor.
If somebody has an issue with something you said or did, create a space where you can sit down with them and have a conversation. Really listen, because maybe even as the leader, there’s something for you to learn when you hear from a different perspective. I think there’s an opportunity there for growth.
What I have often found is it creates a deeper connection with the person. Whether you agree with one another at the end or not, there is a coming together. Because you’ve actually slowed down and listened and allowed the other person to come to voice their concern or their perspective or whatever it is, and that goes a very long way.
F&L: How do you think a preacher can help congregants sift through all the information on the conflict?
LAP: I think it’s a whole ecology of a faith community that would have to be at play there. Not just a sermon, but the whole life of adult education. Yes, sermons, but everything that happens in a church could feed into that question.
The gospel is political now, meaning that it has to do with the world, but the church is also not a political think tank.
Yes, you want people of faith to be thoughtful, so maybe there are opportunities to bring in scholars or other experts, and that may not be the pastor. Everything’s not on the preacher or the pastor. Are there people in the congregation that are equipped? Maybe there can be panel discussions.
Where do you create the spaces for conversation, group conversations and learning opportunities? That’s really what I’m getting at. Are there educational opportunities? Small groups or a book group? A book that could illuminate, a well-researched book, etc., that could help people have a fuller understanding and then have a conversation around that? What are the learning or educational opportunities in a faith community, a church or whatever that might be?
I think that is a pathway to help further reflection. It’s not just the social media, whatever, a tweet or something on Facebook, or just what’s on TV, news media. I think there are pockets of conversation and learning that can happen.