If you want to know why pastors are leaving ministry
There’s a lot of people to compassionately ask—but don’t do it the minute they are leaving maybe?
If the PCUSA wanted to do a study (which are are renowned for) we could, but a study is just the beginning of the work…
I personally asked around during Covid and 30-40 PCUSA pastors told me very personal, very heartfelt stories about why they were leaving ministry.
I carry them in my heart and pray for them a lot because I want them to be happy where they are 🙂 (I realize I should clarify this) and some of them need healing and some of them might come back but only a couple and only if it’s right. After almost every conversation I affirmed every person’s choice to leave, because of course they were doing the right thing for them.
And of course every SINGLE person had legitimate huge, really hard, personal reasons for leaving that made the choice really valid and really tough.
But maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.
Maybe it does. Maybe ministry is a dying profession no matter what.
However, if we wanted to change the way pastors are paid and supported we could. Pay and congregational support/treatment were the two most named reasons. (Status due to gender, race and sexuality were also huge).
I still am hoping we will. Because I bet it will help the church to change into the justice bearing entity the way it needs to be.
Either way, I’m glad we are starting the conversation.
Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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