So You Wanna Be a Pastor? Think Again!

Just over the last few days, I’ve heard from four ex-pastor friends of mine I haven’t touched base with since I left Bible college back in the late 1990s. All of us either attended the same Bible college or seminary around that time, and back in those heady days, we were all excited to be training for full-time vocational ministry. Over the intervening years since leaving higher ministry education, all four of us served either in a pastoral capacity at a church, or taught Bible and theology at a Christian school.

And significantly, to a person — all of us experienced significant degrees of burnout and ill-treatment at the hands of those evangelical Christians whom we were attempting to lead or teach.

One told me that he’s since left the church and become an atheist; the second said he’s “barely involved” in his local church and only attends from time to time because his wife expects him to be a faithful member. He’s questioning everything in which he once believed, and carries a huge weight of anger and bitterness toward those who mistreated him during his ministry years.

The third is still involved in a church as a member, but is gravely troubled: his daughter is seriously deconstructing her Christian faith — and is angry and bitter at the horrible ways she witnessed the church treating her parents when her dad was a pastor…