A Looming Crisis in Pastoral Ministry

What’s Happening to The Work of Pastors? 

They say if you throw a frog in boiling water, sensing the danger, he'll immediately jump out. But if you put the same frog in tepid water, slowly increasing the temperature, he'll allow himself to be cooked to death because he does not sense the slowly increasing danger. 

If we could somehow bring back some of the pastoral shepherds from Church history — men like JC Ryle, Richard Sibbs, or WH Burns — and if we dropped them into some of our modern churches, these men, like frogs thrown into boiling water, would immediately sense the danger and leave. 

And yet, we Christians in the West are living in a time when the nature and work of the pastor is transforming before our eyes, all the while we act as if we are unaware. The temperature is slowly increasing while many have no idea. 

It is a curious thing for those of us on the inside of pastoral ministry, if there even is an “inside” anymore. And I often wonder just how many Christians see what's occurring around them. The nature and work of the pastor is changing, and not for the better. In fact, in my humble opinion, the word “pastor,” according to its modern usage, no longer means what it used to, nor what the Bible intends it to mean.

In today's Western world, “pastor” can refer to any number of pragmatic and curated organizational positions that have little to do with the biblical work of shepherding souls. 

The State of American Congregations

In 2021, Duke University’s Sociology Department conducted its 4th study of American religious congregations. Some of its findings are humdrum, and some are stunning. You can read the full study here, but here are some highlights … 

• Most congregations are small, but most people are in large congregations. 

• 11% of churchgoers attend a multisite congregation. 

• American worship services are losing their formality. 

• American pastoral leaders are older, with an increasing number of females. 

  • 14% of American religious congregations are led by females. 

• 1 in 5 pastors serve multiple congregations. 

• 54% of congregations now accept gay and lesbian, not only as members, but as leaders within their congregations. 

• 25% of congregations openly teach the prosperity gospel. 

These are breathtaking stats about the state of Western Churches. We should all sit down, read over these stats slowly, lament, pray, and get to true gospel work. 

But the statistic that most caught my eye was the size of our churches and the concentration of members.

Here’s an explanation from the Report: 

"To get a feel for just how concentrated people are in the largest congregations, imagine that we have lined up all congregations in the United States from the smallest to the largest. Imagine that you are walking along this line, starting on the end with the smallest congregations. When you get to a congregation with 360 people, you would have walked past about half of all churchgoers, but more than 90% (91%, to be exact) of all congregations. Or imagine walking along this line of congregations from the other direction, starting with the very largest. When you get to that same 360-person congregation, you would have walked past only about 9% of all congregations, but half of all churchgoers. In a nutshell, the largest 9% of congregations contain about half of all churchgoers. Most denominations, even the largest ones, could comfortably gather the pastors of congregations representing more than half of their people in a medium-to-large hotel ballroom. And it is not just people who are concentrated in this way. Money and staff also are concentrated in the largest congregations."

That is mind-boggling. 

The largest 9% of churches contain half of all churchgoers. And that trend will continue.

Couple that with another stat revealed in the report, that the pastor-to-member ratio goes up significantly in large church settings, and you get a situation that demands a redefinition of the pastoral office and its work. 

The larger a church grows, the more attention the structure of the organization receives. It’s inevitable. The larger the organization, the more structured/ program-focused the staff becomes.

In large church settings, pastors are not free to shepherd souls in an unhurried manner. In fact, the larger the church, the more difficult it is for a pastor to know the souls of his people.

In large church settings, “pastors” are usually the ones maintaining the structures of the organizations. The weeks are filled with staff meetings, team meetings, planning meetings, etc. There are reports to file, services and events to plan, volunteers to recruit, train, and manage, records to keep, and workflow charts to maintain. I know these things from first-hand experience. 

I recall a period in my own pastoral career when I would have four multi-hour staff meetings each week that demanded prep time on the front end, and response work on the back end. These meetings easily occupied 20+ hours of my work week. And all of it was for the structure of the large organization. I have come to lament that I did not spend more time shepherding lives.

Think for a moment about some of the pastoral titles that float around our larger churches these days …

• Senior Pastor 

• Global Senior Pastor 

• Teaching Pastor 

• Campus Pastor 

• Executive Pastor 

• Pastor of Weekend Ministries 

• Groups Pastor 

• Curriculum Pastor 

• Finance Pastor 

• Assimilation Pastor

• Next-Gen Pastor 

• Outreach Pastor 

• Care Pastor 

• Recreation Pastor 

• Online Pastor 

• Virtual Pastor 

• Formation Pastor 

• Recovery Pastor 

• Creative Arts Pastor 

• Missions Pastor 

• Global Pastor 

• Local Pastor 

This list demonstrates just how fractured, niche, and pragmatic the Western Church has become in its understanding and practice of pastoral ministry. Not one of the titles listed above is found in the New Testament. There are but three titles used for the pastoral office in the Bible: Elder, Overseer, Pastor.

I would even be so bold as to argue that many of these “pastoral” roles do everything but pastoral ministry. I should also note that I have friends who hold some of these titles and who are faithful shepherds of souls; so it's not a one-size-fits-all critique. 

Even still, the list is silly and shameful. 

I asked OpenAI to show me an example of a modern mega-Church staff structure, and what it produced is pretty accurate: 

                           SENIOR PASTOR / LEAD PASTOR

                                      │

            ┌────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┐

            │                                                 │

     EXECUTIVE PASTOR (COO)                         TEACHING PASTOR

            │                                                 │

    (Oversees Staff + Ops)                           (Focus: Preaching, Theology)

            │

┌───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐

│           │                │                │               │                  │

OPERATIONS PASTOR   WORSHIP PASTOR   DISCIPLESHIP PASTOR     

NEXT GEN PASTOR        OUTREACH PASTOR          CARE PASTOR    /CREATIVE ARTS/PASTOR                                                                                                                          

————————— Sub-Departments (May Vary by Church) ─────────────

│

├─ Campus Pastors  

│   (One per physical location in a multi-site model)

│

├─ Online Campus Pastor  

│   (Leads streaming services, digital small groups, chat teams)

│

├─ Connections Pastor  

│   (Guest experience, membership, volunteer onboarding)

│

├─ Children’s Pastor  

│   (Oversees preschool to 5th grade ministries)

│

├─ Youth Pastor  

│   (Middle and high school ministries)

│

├─ Young Adults Pastor  

│   (Often college or 20s ministry)

│

├─ Prayer Pastor  

│   (Organizes prayer events, intercession teams)

│

├─ Recovery Pastor  

│   (Addiction support, grief recovery, etc.)

│

├─ Family Life Pastor  

│   (Coordinates across kids, teens, and parents)

│

├─ Generosity Pastor  

│   (Stewardship campaigns, major donors, giving strategy)

│

├─ Spiritual Formation Pastor  

│   (Retreats, spiritual direction, contemplative practices)

│

└─ Global Missions Pastor  

    (Coordinates international outreach efforts)

This chart, which is sadly representative of many large churches, is intensely corporate and organization-focused. Of the 22 pastoral positions in the chart, only 4 or 5 have a direct shepherding contact with people. Much of this seems to hold true in actual church settings.

Here’s another sad reality. The majority of current seminary students are now coming out of large/megachurch environments, while the vast majority of pastoral jobs are in small, 1-2 staff churches.

That is a recipe for a major disaster. A crisis is looming.

Future pastors are growing up in and learning a mega-style model of church, and then deploying into a field where much of what they’ve seen and learned is not applicable ... if they deploy into the field at all. Many have no desire to serve smaller churches.

The Congregations study found that “Most seminarians come from large churches, but most clergy jobs are in small churches. About 70% of full-time ministerial staff and 80% of part-time ministerial staff are employed by congregations with fewer than 360 people.”

Most pastors today are old. They're retiring. And there aren't very many young men coming to replace them. A crisis is looming.

Conclusion

I’ve written previously on the true work of pastoring, so I won’t take time to do it here. You can find those writings here. 

All of this should cause the Western Church to pause, take stock, ask hard questions, and reevaluate what exactly is going on … because the water temperature is steadily rising and no one seems to be noticing. A crisis in pastoral ministry looms heavy.

A crisis in pastoral ministry is nothing less than a crisis of the church itself.

What we need are courageous young pastors in every single generation who are called to the work of shepherding souls, not to maintaining organizations.

We need strong shepherds who smell like their sheep, who stand in the way of wolves, who bind up the broken, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and stand guard over Christ’s Church until He comes.

We need strong shepherds who will enter the fields of Christ's Church, wherever they are, spending their lives in the pastures with the sheep.

We need wise shepherds who watch souls, who aren't concerned with building and streamlining organizations.

The Church needs a pastoral exodus from the corporate office back into the sheep pastures. .

**Ben is a Pastor and a PhD student in Pastoral Theology.