The Business of Happy

This past week I was speaking with an individual who explained to me that as a minister I had no knowledge of how to deal with disgruntle people. He informed me, as a minister, I was in the business of “happy” dealing only with happy people. As a pastor, I have found that pastors are in a dangerous occupation! We are perhaps the single most stressful and frustrating working profession, more than medical doctors, lawyers, politicians or teachers. Over 70% of pastors are so stressed out and burned out that they regularly consider leaving the ministry. Thirty-five to forty percent of pastors actually do leave the ministry, most after only five years. So we deal with happy people? Sounds good, but the reality for many ministers is:

Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout or contention in their churches. (In my 42 years of ministry that is 756,000 who have left the ministry while I have been a minister)

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. ( I entered the ministry with a skilled trade that supported my family.)

Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years. Ninety percent of pastors said their seminary or Bible school training did only a fair to poor job preparing them for ministry. (The training of ministers offers little place for reality. The constant pressure for "flexibility," "sensitivity," "inclusion of all," and "collaborative ministry" is creating frustration with the job of being a pastor. There is nothing wrong with these concepts in themselves, but as they are taught and insisted upon, they bear no relation to a prophet that is able to say, “Thus saith the Lord.” The reality is we are called by God but employed by man.)

Eighty-five percent of pastors said their greatest problem is they are sick and tired of dealing with problem people, such as disgruntled elders, deacons, worship leaders, worship teams, board members, and associate pastors. Ninety percent said the hardest thing about ministry is dealing with uncooperative people. (I learned from experience not to fight with pigs, they enjoy a good wallow in the mud and don't mind the stink.)

Ninety percent said the ministry was completely different than what they thought it would be before they entered the ministry. ( I knew what to expect, my father and father-in-law were ministers.)

Seventy percent felt God called them to pastoral ministry before their ministry began, but after three years of ministry, only fifty percent still felt called. ( I heard the call and realized it was for life. It is not a profession it is a ministry.)
Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression. (I fight it only on the first and twentieth of the month --pay days.)
Today pastors face more conflict, more anger, and more expectations than ever before. At the same time, they have little pay, little reward, and produce their own dysfunctional families because of their absence. But, I am among the few who deals in the ministry of “happy” and minister to only happy parishioners. Truly I am blessed.