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Are Pastors Happy or Burned Out? The Answer Is …

I read an article recently that listed pastors as the happiest of all workers.

It appears being a pastor is the most fulfilling of all vocations. Second on the list were fire-fighters (now that I can understand).

Apparently we pastors are a happy mob; however, to tell you the truth I am surprised and a little skeptical.

Since the day I stepped into Bible College more than 15 years ago, I have been hearing about ministry burnout.

The stats are real too. According to a 2010 article published in The New York Times, “The findings have surfaced with ominous regularity over the last few years, and with little notice: Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could.

Therefore, I am surprised pastors have been named the happiest of all workers.

I am surprised and yet not surprised. What do I mean?

We pastors seem to have a very strange relationship with our calling. Pastors and ministry can be like a bickering couple who are at each other all of the time and yet proudly confess their undying love for each other. Try and get between the two of them and there will be trouble!

Being a pastor can be an up-at-dawn, soul-destroying vocation from which respite comes when our head hits the pillow at night (that is, if we can get to sleep).

And yet we are privileged to participate in the ongoing ministry of Christ in the world.

We are afforded the wonderful joy of praying, reading and studying the Scriptures and sharing in people’s lives, in good and bad times. We affirm the life of those saints who have passed on and comfort families as they grieve. We walk with those who have been trying for years to have a baby, and then we have the honor of dedicating that baby to the Lord.

And yet these very tasks can also be the things that bring us down. The constant demands of people (both healthy and unhealthy) if not balanced with things that give us life can lead to burnout or depression.

Despite those elements of my vocation that eat away at my soul, I am, as they say, job satisfied (although I don’t think of what I do as a job).

And herein lays the tension.