Even on a Good Day, Being a Pastor is Hard

"The two hardest jobs in the world are President of the United States and Pastor of a church.” - Peter Drucker

A few years ago, I lost track of how many pastor friends have left the ministry.

Statistics show that since 2020, a staggering 53% of pastors have considered stepping down due to issues like burnout, financial strain, mental and emotional health struggles, constant criticism from congregants, and the overwhelming demands placed on their time, energy, mindshare, and emotional bandwidth.

Thom Rainer conducted a survey asking church members nationwide to list things they expect from their pastors. The results showed that the average church member expects their pastor to faithfully perform tasks that, if completed, would require a work week of 100+ hours on average.

Some of the pastors I know who have walked away from ministry were admired within as well as far beyond their local churches. From the outside, it seemed like they were at the height of their pastoral fruitfulness and fulfillment. They had bestselling books, numerous speaking engagements, and congregations that hung on their every word. With all that praise and recognition, it seemed impossible that they could be anything but fulfilled.

Yet, the one thing no one would expect them to be...

…was lonely.

The stage and the pulpit can be deceiving, often becoming the loneliest place in the room. Behind the scenes, many pastors are relationally isolated. Over time, genuine friendships are replaced with less anchored and faux versions of community, as seen in growing numbers of online likes, followers, and fans. However, thousands of admirers are no substitute for an intimate group of real, transparent, accountable, and loyal friends. In most cases, it was this isolation—more than any other factor—that made ministry unsustainable.

“It is not good,” the Lord God said, “for man to be alone.” If this was true in Paradise, it must also be true—even more so—in our current, fallen world.

Maybe this is why Spurgeon, the great Baptist “Prince of Preachers,” once told his students that if they could be happy doing something besides ministry, they ought to do it because…

Being a pastor, even on a very good day, is hard.

Once in my mid-twenties, while studying to become a pastor, I came across a suicide note published in the local newspaper…written by a pastor, which included this excerpt:

God forgive me for not being any stronger than I am. But when a minister becomes clinically depressed, there are very few places where he can turn to for help…it feels as if I’m sinking farther and farther into a downward spiral of depression. I feel like a drowning man, trying frantically to lift up my head to take just one more breath. But one way or another, I know I am going down.

The writer was a promising young pastor—still in his thirties—of a large, influential church in the midwest. Having secretly battled depression for a long time, and having sought help through Scripture, prayer, therapy, and medication, his will to claw through yet another day was gone. In his darkest hour, the young promising pastor decided he would rather join the angels than continue facing demons for years to come.

Some of those “demons,” it turned out, were members of his church who sought to undermine him with clandestine gossip and impossible expectations.

As the details unfolded, it became clear that this man was not only depressed, but isolated. This was especially true in his church.

He had plenty of adoring fans.

But he had few, if any, actual friends.

In his suicide note, he said that he felt trapped. He was depressed, but he couldn’t tell anyone because he thought that it would ruin his ministry. He had come to believe based on a steady flow of congregant criticism that pastors weren’t allowed to be weak. Nor were they allowed to be human, like everybody else.

I am one who, like this pastor, has experienced anxiety and depression. Impacted by his tragic story and also the transparency of Jesus and the Apostle Paul, I have over the years chosen to be more open with my congregants about my afflictions. And to my surprise, most of them embraced and identified with me more, not less, as a result.

“Today, Scott, when you told us about your affliction” one church member said after a sermon that included some transparent self-disclosure, “today is the day that you became my pastor.”

Sometimes I wonder if, in the end, it will be our weakness and not our preaching or writing or vision, that God ends up using most to advance his Kingdom. I also wonder if we pastors ought to become less concerned about building an image and accumulating followers, fans, and “likes” (I myself have been prone to this in various times and seasons) and instead focus our energy on nurturing a few healthy, transparent, accountable, loyal friendships. As C.S. Lewis hauntingly reminds us, the stakes are immeasurably high:

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” (The Four Loves)

Jesus had his twelve, and also his three. And they all denied him and fled in his hour of greatest need. And yet, if our Lord had it to do all over again, he would no doubt embrace these men as his inner ring and “band of brothers.”

If the Maker and Sustainer of all things needed this kind of community and considered it a risk worth taking, how could we ever think that we do not?

I know that many pastors say it’s impossible to let your guard down with church members. “It’s too risky,” is the common refrain. But after nearly three decades of the ebb, flow, rapture, and rupture of pastoring in local churches and beyond, the idealist in me—or perhaps more accurately, the realist—still refuses to give in to cynicism. Given the loneliness epidemic among pastors, I’d rather risk being transparent than face the alternative.

For the alternative of loneliness, as I see it, is a much greater burden to bear.