UK Evangelical Survey Reveals Stress as Biggest Problem for Pastors

Evangelicals Now, the only printed evangelical newspaper in the UK, has conducted a survey recently about the situation in the pastoral ministry in the country. Interviewing a sample of 300 pastors from major Protestant Christian denominations through questionnaires, the results suggest that stress is the most pressing problem for UK pastors.

Evangelicals Now, received 145 replies by post, among which 61 pastors were from the Church of England, 41 from the Independent Evangelical sector, 13 were Presbyterians and there were 30 others including Grace Baptists, Baptist Union, Methodists and Church of Scotland.

Ministers were asked to comment on their experience on seven common areas of ministerial difficulty. These were general stress, ‘writer’s block’ for sermons, feeling depressed, anger, tension in the minister’s family, sexual temptation, and loneliness. There were four different choices to indicate the frequency of these problems for them to choose from- "never", "sometimes", "often", and "always".

The age, denomination or church grouping, time spent in the ministry, the approximate size of the congregation, marital status, and whether or not an assistant pastor exists, were also requested from those who answered the questionnaires.

The statistics shows that 98% of pastors suffer from stress; feeling depressed 86%, feeling angry 83%, suffering from family tension 82%, sexual temptation 82%; from writer’s block 70%; and loneliness 63%, for "sometimes".

The figures for "often or always", however, drops dramatically, 47% pastors say that they feel stressed often or always. Then 26% feel lonely often or always, followed by sexual temptation 15%; family tension 14%; feeling depressed 14%; mental blocks 11%; and anger right down at 6%.

In conclusion, stress appears to be the greatest problem for the pastors in the UK. It is also interesting to look at the figures on loneliness. While loneliness jumps from last place to second place when moving from the "at least sometimes" category of frequency to the "often or more" category, that means even though loneliness is not likely to happen in the ministry, it would be quite serious if it happens to pastors.

Evangelical Now further analysed the correlation of certain problems. It is found out that the level of stress and loneliness are closely related to the size of the congregation. Pastors feeling depressed reduced dramatically as the regular numbers in the congregation exceeded 250 people. In the UK, this problem may be more significant in independent evangelical churches.

Last year, the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) reported around half of its churches with 35 members or less, so there are many pastors shepherding little flocks.

Concerning sexual temptation, it is not a very big problem for most of the pastors interviewed. It is perhaps worth adding here that by far the majority of those who responded were married men. Despite the overwhelming child sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Christian churches appear to be able to manage this better.

Another observation suggests that anger is particularly associated with tension in the pastor’s family and with loneliness. In addition, feeling depressed is associated with mental blocks in sermon preparation, family tension and loneliness.