This makes for disturbing reading. Jason Goroncy writes "Pastoral Ministry: Enter at Risk" The statistics are sobering.
For instance, of 338 Protestant clergy in Canada:
* 94 per cent said they read Scripture for sermon preparation, but it rarely spoke to them personally.
* 86 per cent prayed regularly with others but had little time for personal prayer.
* 71 per cent did not feel spiritually affected while leading worship.
* 89 per cent sometimes felt like they were simply going through a ritual when they led worship.
* 70 per cent felt unfulfilled in ministry.
Read the whole thing here.
Bottom line - there's a real spiritual / theological problem here. First there's a professional model of ministry invested in by all - clergy and lay. And it's not as though ministers signed up thinking ordination would be a spiritual trip and 'Hey, why's everyone pressing me to be CEO!' Typically selection for ordination involves selecting CEO-types in the first place (in evangelical settings anyway)!
Secondly let's realise that this is a 'job satisfaction' type psychological assessment which again buys into the professional model. I wonder how Paul would have filled out the survey:
8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Cor 4:8-12)
So however we assess it and according to whichever model (and especially when it's all-of-life, communal, missional, Pauline!) then one should enter pastoral ministry under no illusions! It feels like death. But then true life always does.
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