Survey: Protestant Pastors Pressured to Maintain Healthy Family Life

A survey recently released on in the July/August edition of Facts & Trends magazine shows that many Protestant pastors in the US experience pressure to maintain a healthy family life in their pastoral ministry.

The study has successfully interviewed a representative sample of 870 Protestant church ministers across denominational lines in the US. Ellison Research, based in Phoenix, asked pastors about the health of their family and the pressures associated with being the family of a minister.

The vast majority - Ninety-four percent - of Protestant clergy agree with the statement "There is extra pressure being married to a minister", including 54 percent who strongly believe this. In addition, Ninety-one percent also agree that "There is extra pressure being the child of a minister", including 46 percent who feel this way strongly.

Probably the reason behind this will be attributed to the "role model" image of pastors they want to keep in front of the congregation. Eighty-eight percent agreed with the statement "Churchgoers often expect pastors' families to be 'better than' other people's families", including 34% who feel strongly about it. Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, particularly, feel this kind of pressure on their families.

Through the statistics, it can be observed that Protestant pastors are very concerned about keeping a healthy family life in face of busy pastoral ministry. Six out of ten pastors agree "Your role as a pastor leaves you with insufficient time for your family".

When asked to rate the health of their family relationships, using a scale of 1 (extremely unhealthy) to 5 (extremely healthy), the average rating pastors give to their relationship with their spouse recorded 4.3, with 47 percent saying this relationship is extremely healthy. Evangelical ministers are found to be more likely than mainline Protestant ministers to call this relationship extremely healthy, with 49 percent versus 37 percent.

It also appeared that pastors who have no children under age 18 are particularly likely to report a healthy spousal relationship.

The rate given by the pastors for the relationship with their children is very close to that for their spouse; with the average of 4.2 and 44 percent commented extremely healthy. Relationships with grown children tend to be healthier than relationships with adolescent children.

Interestingly, evangelicals are again more likely than mainline ministers to rate their relationships with their children as extremely healthy.

Most of the Protestant pastors have the worry of spending not enough time with their spouse and children. Only 18 percent of ministers feel they spend an extremely healthy amount of time with their spouse and just 10 percent feel they spend an extremely healthy amount of time for their children. Evangelicals are comparatively more confident than mainline church leaders that they have done well on this aspect.

Protestant pastors tend to have significant worries about the health of other ministers' families while they are fairly satisfied with their own family life. Statistics shows the average rating they give to their own family health is a 4, the average they give to the health of pastors' families throughout their denomination is just a 3.2. This trend is clearer among the Methodists and Southern Baptists.

Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, has particularly pointed out this interesting phenomenon, "One of these perspectives probably is wrong - either things are not as bad with other ministers' families as the typical pastor believes, or things are not as healthy with their own family as the typical pastor believes."

He warned that Protestant clergy in the US need to take a careful look at whether they have too much optimism about their own family situation, or too much pessimism about the situations of others.

"Even though only five percent of pastors report a very unhealthy relationship with their spouse, that means there are over ten thousand individual pastors with serious marital problems right now. In fact, the study projects that around 20,000 senior pastors nationwide ...recognise that they have serious family problems right now," he said.

Almost nine out of ten evangelical ministers involved in this study are on their first marriage, with 3 percent widowed, 8 percent divorced, and only 1 percent never married. However, among mainline Protestant ministers interviewed, 69 percent are on their first marriage but as many as 23 percent have gone through a divorce.