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For Roland Stringfellow, the pandemic is a burden that hasn't been entirely lifted: The 2020 lockdowns upended his suburban Detroit church community, and the social unrest and political polarization that followed the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have only compounded the emotional stress.
“A lot of churches still haven't recovered from that period,” said Stringfellow, senior pastor of Detroit Metropolitan Community Church in Ferndale, Michigan.
The situation was unbearable for some. Stringfellow saw fellow pastors turn to alcohol and drug abuse. He says he wouldn't have been able to weather the pressures of leading an LGBTQ-friendly church amid divorce, the uncertainty of a pandemic, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric without the supportive staff he rallied around him.
“How do you handle that and take care of your congregation,” said Stringfellow, who is gay. “How do you be there when everyone is afraid and you're feeling the same way?”
Clergy are among the most overworked professions in the United States, often juggling multiple roles while raising their own families, according to the Clergy Health Initiative, a project of Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. But tensions in recent years have increased the burden, sparked mental-health issues and caused many to rethink their calling.
A survey of 1,700 clergy members conducted last fall by the Hartford Institute for Religion revealed high levels of dissatisfaction among the nation's Christian clergy: Nearly half said they had considered leaving their church, and more than half said they had considered leaving the ministry altogether.
For many church leaders, the pandemic has been a wake-up call to structural problems within the church, including the excessive burden placed on pastors.
“Pastors had more work and limited resources,” said Adrienne Crawford, senior pastor of Engage Church in Tallahassee, Fla. “There were people who were really suffering, and many pastors didn't realize what was going on inside. Their wives and children were experiencing the same pain, so while they were shepherding people, they were also trying to provide for their families. Those feelings had to go somewhere.”
For Russell Meyer, executive director of the Florida Council of Churches, the situation is reminiscent of disaster relief efforts he has worked on as a pastor, including after Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
“We know that five years after a disaster, a significant number of clergy leave the ministry because it's too stressful,” Meyer said. “COVID-19 has taken this phenomenon from the local level to the national level.”
Despite their own stress, clergy often feel unable to seek help. According to Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, clergy say they face many barriers to receiving mental health services, including cost, embarrassment, difficulty taking time off work and a lack of support from their denominations.
That can have a ripple effect on congregations as embattled pastors quit or become frustrated. Mark Dance, who spent 28 years as a Baptist pastor in Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee, says that before he was diagnosed with clinical depression, he didn't experience any moral breakdowns or catastrophes. He just found himself avoiding people he'd previously enjoyed conversations with and had trouble making decisions.
“If the pastor is healthy, the church will be healthy,” said Dance, now director of pastor health at the faith-based investment firm Guidestone, “but if the pastor is not healthy, the church will decline over time, and it will be very gradual and subtle.”
Instead, many people keep their suffering to themselves.
Crawford said, “Superman can't show his weakness. The Reverend wants to be the hero of everyone's story.”
Pastor's Burden Causes Mental Health Problems
Growing up as a pastor's daughter, Jennifer Oh saw that dynamic play out firsthand.
“My father was always wondering, 'Is this the right thing for me?'” said Oh, who is now the coordinator of a restoration center for a church community in Los Angeles. “It can be very isolating. … But there's this idea of, 'I have to do what Jesus did. I have to make sacrifices. I have to be an example.'”
Of the nation's roughly 244,000 clergy, the majority work 40-60 hours a week, with 25 percent working more than 60 hours, according to Columbia Theological Seminary. “This has a negative impact on clergy and the entire environment in which they find themselves,” the school said in a blog post. “Clergy are being asked to wear the hats of administrators, teachers, preachers, counselors, staff supervisors, facilities managers and fundraisers, all at the same time.”
At the same time, public perception of the clergy has been steadily declining, contributing to a decline in trust in professionals overall in the U.S. In Gallup's 2023 Integrity and Ethics Poll, only 32% of Americans rated clergy as trustworthy, down from 64% in 2001 and the lowest figure in 47 years of polling.
The strain can be overwhelming: A 2008 study by Duke Divinity School found that United Methodist clergy in North Carolina experience higher rates of depression than the general North Carolina population. Late last year, a quarter of American Methodist members left the United Methodist Church, largely over issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, in the largest denominational split in U.S. history.
“Clergy are engaged in many stressful activities, including grief counseling, managing the competing demands of congregations, and delivering weekly sermons that expose them to criticism,” the authors write. “The stress is compounded by the need to quickly switch between these roles.”
Studies have found that clergy who feel they are not doing enough are more likely to suffer from depression, while clergy who are questioning their call to priesthood are more likely to suffer from anxiety.
Some clergy may be at higher risk than others: A study published in 2002 found that Protestant clergy reported higher stress levels than Catholic clergy, with female rabbis reporting the highest levels of work-related stress, while Catholic nuns reported the lowest.
In Los Angeles, Oh said many church leaders are still puzzled by a decline in worship attendance that hasn't recovered since the pandemic, which he attributes to an increasing number of Americans, especially Gen Z and millennials, moving away from Christian belief systems and describing themselves as agnostic, atheist or “nothing in particular.”
“There's a sense that it's not enough, that we need to do more,” she said.
This strikes at the heart of the reward most pastors get from their jobs: the strong emotional bonds they forge within their congregations, Meyer said.
“The concept of church membership is disappearing,” he says, “and from a pastor's perspective, pastors are unable to form deep relationships with people…. The struggle to manage the day-to-day work of their congregations weighs heavily on pastors' shoulders, depriving them of the basic emotional connections that keep them healthy and well. Burnout, distress and loneliness are inevitable challenges.”
For some pastors, unwanted surveillance and abuse
The volatile political climate has exacerbated the discontent: Pastors feel pressured to carefully avoid potential landmines, fearful of angering conservative congregations by expressing sympathy for immigrants or progressives by condemning abortion.
“A lot of people want their clergy to think the way they do, and they want Jesus to think the way they do, and sometimes that doesn't happen,” said Matthew Bode, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Ferndale, Mich. “That puts clergy in a tough spot.”
“Toxic and bigoted congregations are commonplace today, especially in rural areas,” says Tracy Karcher, a former Methodist pastor who owns a general store in Sand Springs, Montana. “New pastors and ministers need to be prepared to handle these challenges, and they need the support of their superiors and supervisors.”
Kercher said female pastors can face unique challenges that affect their mental health, including bullying, abuse and being placed in less prestigious or lower-paying positions. When they fall into anxiety or depression, female pastors receive less support than men, are belittled as weak or inadequate leaders or are accused of exaggerating situations, Kercher said.
Frank Schafer, the pastor of University UMC in Isla Vista, Calif., knows from experience that pastors can be targets for spiritual abuse. Ten years ago, Schafer was defrocked in a church court in his rural Pennsylvania Methodist church for officiating at his son's same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, but the denomination's judicial council later overturned the verdict on a technicality.
Schafer said the experience has been “emotionally taxing,” beginning with the fact that one of his own parishioners filed a lawsuit against him.
“As a pastor, you have to be strong all the time,” he says. “You have to always be prepared and ready to help others. You can't talk about your struggles in public.”
“Don't be afraid to make friends with your pastor.”
As the stigma around mental health fades, the conversation has also filtered down to church communities. According to Columbia Theological Seminary, when pastors were asked what they found beneficial for mental health, they cited sabbaticals, prayer and support groups, individual counseling, and retreats.
“Compared to when I started pastoring 24 years ago, clergy are much more open about talking about their mental health,” Bode said. “A few years ago, there were no limits on what you could ask of a pastor. Now there are clearer boundaries, like, 'Today is the day off.'”
Others, like Crawford of Engage Church in Tallahassee, find inspiration in accounts from the Bible.
“Take the example of Cain and Abel. The first murder happened because Cain had some emotion,” he says. “God asked Cain, 'Why are you depressed and angry?' God appeared as a counselor and gave Cain an opportunity for self-discovery.”
He and others say the solution starts with ourselves and learning to ask others for help.
“When I became a pastor in the late '80s, it was taboo to get close to members of my congregation,” Guidestones' Dance says, “But that kind of isolation is not our mission. It's not a sentence of solitary confinement. You lead a family, and sometimes your family needs you, and sometimes you need your family.”
Believers can also help by simply asking their pastor how things are going and listening carefully.
“Don't be afraid to be friends with your pastor,” he said.
Crawford said a church culture that appears healthy may actually reflect codependency.
“Pastors want to be needed,” he says, “but people have to understand that the pastor is responsible to you, but he's not responsible to you. He's a person just like you.”
