Are We Missing The Mark?

I literally would have become a pastor if they told me I'd never be paid a single penny. In fact for a little while I didn't get paid! I was sold out. But adding a few years and waist sizes has helped me recognize now what I didn't then: 18 year old kids suffer from what author Warren Bennis calls "Delusional confidence."

We didn't envision the day when we would have a mortgage payment, a car with 320,000 miles on it, and one too many smiles around the dinner table that need braces. Thank God for delusional confidence or we would have bolted to the local university mid-semester of our freshman year.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but you'd be surprised how many pulpits would be empty if someone offered ministers a job similar or better in pay than their current assignment. Why is that?

The following statistics, are gathered from such organizations as Barna, Maranatha Life and Focus on the Family.

Pastors

• Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
• 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.
• Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
• Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
• Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
• Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.

Pastors' Wives

• Eighty percent of pastors' spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
• Eighty percent of pastors' spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
• The majority of pastors' wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

Some might say these leaders have failed to nurture their souls sufficiently. We usually want to blame leaders for their own burn out, but when I see the pervasiveness of this problem I wonder if there isn’t also a systemic factor. Could contemporary church ministry itself be the problem?

When I peruse ministry books, websites, magazines, and attend conferences, I’m bombarded with one overwhelming message: great ministry results are the product of great ministry leadership. If a church is growing, if lives are changing, if budgets are burgeoning—it must be because the leader is doing something right. Conversely, if the church is shrinking, if lives are struggling, if budgets are busting—it must be because the leader is inept. As a result, a pastor’s success and self-worth is inexorably linked to his/her measurable performance. Stewing in this toxic brew is it any wonder why pastors’ souls are shriveling.

Something’s wrong.

Hamartia is one of the Greek words that has been translated as sin. It is literally "a missing of the mark," as in shooting a bow and arrow at a target. Are we missing the mark with some of the goals and missions of our local churches today?

What do you think?