With less than 2 weeks left on my Sabbatical this Article  from the NYT was a helpful reminder about why I took a break in the first place.  The focus in the first half of the article is largely on the demands people set on clergy.  At SaviorCC this has never really been an issue, though the demands of my time have become increasingly difficult to manage over the past year.  For me, what seemed to be an oncoming burnout developed from a combination of my church work and heavy teaching load.  Heavy for me anyway. 

One quote started to approach a significant frustration that I have been more and more aware of: 

Larger social trends, like the aging and shrinking of congregations, the dwindling availability of volunteers in the era of two-income households, and the likelihood that a male pastor’s wife has a career of her own, also spur some ministers to push themselves past their limits, she said. (Emphasis added.)

Not all apply for us, but it highlights a difficulty that I have been hearing from more and more pastors.  They simply cannot get people to meaningfully contribute time to the work.   If this is the result of social trends, it helps explain why less clergy are staying in the profession.

A 2005 survey of clergy by the Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church also took special note of a quadrupling in the number of people leaving the profession during the first five years of ministry, compared with the 1970s.

I am tempted to think that there is an increased pressure on pastors in the aftermath of the church growth movement.  Does the pressure to measure up to the relatively few “stars” in our field lead us to have a greater sense of failure and personal disappointment?  I think it is a valid question, but the article goes on to site common pressures among Muslim clerics, Catholic Priests, and even Rabbis.  I am not sure they have the same kind of cultural pressures to be super-successes as Evangelical pastors often do.  So it would seem to have more to do with the other broader social factors mentioned. 

Ultimately, I think we need to recognize the deeper spiritual realities underlying the issue. When a Pastor lives as if the success of God's plan depends on him, it is because somewhere deep within he believes that to be the case. I'm guilty of it. I'm in the process of repenting.