PastorHacks

the Co-Dependent Pastor...

Two basic types of pastoral disfunction- the narcissist and the co-dependent. We all lean one way or the other on that continuum- some so little it's not really an issue, others, well...

The need to succeed or the need to please and avoid conflict. 

The narcissist, with his or her need to succeed really doesn't care what others think. When these people leave ministry, it's because they are driven out. Their self-centeredness and inability to empathize/think of others often looks for all the world like a person with vision and leadership charisma- someone who knows what needs to be done and does it. Unfortunately, when the truth becomes known, it's usually after people begin to see the long, long trail of metaphorical bodies that get left in the wake of these people- years of stepping on and over people may get you up the ladder, but sooner or later the toll becomes obvious and either the narcissist leaves or everyone else begins to. 

On the other side is the co-dependent. Helping professions are ripe soil for people who need others to help them establish a sense of identity... and the pastorate is no exception. It's a job where I can be fully and completely co-dependent and get rewarded for it. In fact, the more sold out the pastor is to you and your needs, the more he or she is (often) praised. The narcissist doesn't mind conflict- in fact, they kind of enjoy it. Another chance to focus attention on them and their leadership skills, but the co-dependent is motivated by the need for others' approval and will avoid even necessary conflict whenever possible. 

The narcissist needs empathy and what they do must begin to be motivated more and more by the needs of others, not just their own. In other words, they need to care more about what other people think.  

So, is the corollary true? Does that mean the co-dependent needs to care less about what other people think?

Continue reading "the Co-Dependent Pastor..." »

Friday, August 15, 2008 in attitude hacks, general, health, leadership, people, the art of pastoring | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, June 12, 2008

PastorHack: The Power Nap

About a year ago, I was constantly complaining about how tired I was. I was falling asleep on the couch in the evening, just in time for the kids' bedtime which, suffice it to say, left my wife less than thrilled.

Part of the problem was rising early- I have to get up between 5 and 5:30 if I want to have any quiet time to myself at all in the morning. Part of the problem was also that in an effort to fight the tiredness during the say, I was consuming too much caffeine, making for fitful sleep at best, and often, waking up at 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep.

Ultimately, I haven't beat this yet... but two things that have helped greatly have been this:
1. Getting off the coffee- I'm drinking mostly green tea and ZippFizz. Both have caffeine, but significantly less than the drip coffee from Starbucks that my office (uh... Starbucks) serves.
and
2. A 20 minute nap every day I can get it.

Here's what I do- sometime between 11 and 1, depending on my appointment schedule, I head out to my Mazda Tribute with the back seats folded down and lay myself out in the back. I set the timer on the iPhone for 20 minutes and give myself mental permission to be about nothing but resting for that time. I usually drift off to sleep pretty quickly and am surprised when the timer goes off.

It hasn't completely cured me of ever feeling tired (I'm dragging pretty badly this morning), but, man- I have much more energy to make it through the afternoon, dinner and time with the kids in the evening.

You can do this. If you have an office, even better- close the door, turn off the phone and lay on the floor for 20 minutes. You won't believe the difference it makes.

The only trick is to avoid the temptation to sleep longer- any longer than 20 minutes, and you'll be groggy.

Here's an article on exactly this. If you can- choose the nap over the java... better for you in so many ways.

Thursday, June 12, 2008 in health, productivity, the art of pastoring, time | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Boundaries

One of the hardest parts about the pastoral gig is that we now find ourselves living at an almost unlivable tension point: We do work that has eternal significance, and via the magic of technology, we can now do that work (study, sermon prep, people contacting, etc) any time, any place.

That my friends, is a recipe for burnout.

So- how do we avoid that?

Here, from Tim Ferris' blog is a guest-post from Anne Zelenka...

If you are so passionate about your work that you border on obsessed, you might find it near impossible to turn work off.

This is especially so in the web age, when you can stay connected no matter where you are, who you’re with, or what you’re doing. What do you do when suggestions like “work only during certain hours” and “don’t check email on evenings and weekends” just don’t seem to be enough?

Here are five more powerful tricks for keeping work in its place:

1. Choose flow-inducing hobbies that really engage you and pull your mind away from work.

Flow is a sense of effortless engagement in what you’re doing. You’ll find it in activities that have clear objectives and challenge you just a bit beyond your current level of skill. What kind of hobbies can produce flow? Sports like skiing or martial arts, art like painting or pottery, games like poker or bridge, and puzzles like crosswords or sudoku are a few examples. Such activities will lure you away from work because, unlike passive activities like watching TV, they can provide the same sense of engagement and challenge that your work life offers.

2. Set goals in your personal life just like you do in your professional life.

Working towards goals is a sure way of getting yourself excited enough about non-work activities that you can pull yourself away work. This tip works in tandem with the first, because goal-oriented activities are more likely to provide a sense of flow than activities taken on for simple recreation and relaxation. Tim Ferriss describes a process he calls “dreamlining” [sample worksheets and excel tools here] for applying timelines to your life goals and dreams — that’s a great way to make your personal goals just as actionable as your work projects.

3. Schedule dates with other people for non-work activities.

For example, schedule a workout session with a personal trainer, arrange to meet a friend for happy hour after work, or make weekend plans with your friends or family to go hiking. Solo plans are easier to break in favor of work; if you have a commitment to another person you’ll be more likely to shut the laptop and mobile phone off.

4. Use tech boundaries to separate your work and your life.

Read the rest here

Wednesday, February 06, 2008 in attitude hacks, busyness, days off, health, the art of pastoring | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Zip-Fizz

Day two without coffee and I'm feeling great.
Sleeping better, less jumpy...

I did get off the freeway at the wrong exit yesterday and do a couple of other duh kinds of things... so maybe my brain is missing the Joe, but basically feeling great.

And the no coffee thing has happened by accident. I just haven't felt the need.

I picked up at Costco (who so generously feed my kids lunch in bite-sized samples every Saturday) a box of Zip Fizz. Little tubes of powder you add to water. Lots of vitamins, about 100mg of caffeine (a tall coffee at SBux has 260 mg, for comparison). But somehow, whereas with coffee I needed the morning cup (and by "cup" I mean giant-sized travel mug), another when I got to wherever I going to work that day or from 7-11 along the way... with this, I don't.

Maybe it's the 41,667% of your RDA of vitamin B12? Yeah, you read that right- not a typo.

That's a lot of B12.

You don't metabolize it very well, and probably end up peeing most of it away, but I gotta tell you- one tube in the morning (10 calories, 0 Sugar- just mix with water) has kept me going all day long and without that edgy feeling that too much caffeine gives. No headaches, I've been sleeping better, felt calmer... Is this what it feels like to be in a healthy rhythm? Whoa.

You should check this stuff out:

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 in health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, August 27, 2007

9 things- pt 2

I'm PastorHack blogging through Tim Ferriss' excellent post: The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now. Many of these are things that have been percolating in my brain and some have already reached the level of implementing...

Second up... I think this one (I think) has spiritual implications for we pastor-types...

2. Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night
The former scrambles your priorities and plans for the day, and the latter just gives you insomnia. E-mail can wait until 10am, after you’ve completed at least one of your critical to-do items…

This has been a hard thing for me to get ahold of... and honestly, I've been trying for over a year. I blogged on this hack in the early days of PastorHacks and have had intermittent success with it. The Treo/iPhone hasn't helped either, let me tell you...

It's a constant struggle for me to avoid looking at the computer- in general, but especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Two different reasons why this is hard/should be avoided...

Morning- I need centering. I need God's Word. I need to spend time in prayer, praying through my day, praying to have the character to face what's coming that day. Busting out the email first thing in the morning subverts all of that. It starts my day before my day has started. It prematurely puts my brain into problem solving mode. And worst of all, opening that computer often means that God gets leftovers, if anything at all.
I'm not going to be legalistic about the whole "Quiet time in the morning" thing. I just know what I <i>need</i>. And the fact is, the computer just gets in the way. Save it till later...

Evening. I need rest. I need to leave it all behind. I need my mind to wind down. So why, why, why, do I sabotage all of that by hitting the computer and checking email just before bed. It's practically begging for sleep difficulties as I lay in bed processing replies, thinking through how I'll fix whatever issue has come up next...

This is a common sense one, right? So why is it so hard?
Anyone else struggle with this?

Monday, August 27, 2007 in email, health, you and your computer | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Happy Pastors!

Okay- Since I published the "Pastors hate life and die early, ugly deaths" statistics awhile ago, I thought I needed to balance that with this post from Out of Ur today.

Apparently, we pastors are enjoying life a bit more than the common wisdom suggests:

"Last month the Chicago Tribune reported that pastors are the happiest people on earth—really. Research done by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that clergy ranked highest in job satisfaction and “general happiness.” They even out ranked highly paid professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

The article reports:

Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all workers. Sixty-seven percent reported being "very happy," compared with an average 33 percent for all workers.

"They look at their occupation as a calling," Carroll said. "A pastor does get called on to enter into some of the deepest moments of a person's life, celebrating a birth and sitting with people at times of illness or death. There's a lot of fulfillment."

Can this possibly be true?"

Read the rest here, (including the statistics on how bad off pastors are)

Thursday, May 24, 2007 in health | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Pastoral Burn Out

Mark Driscoll posts on pastoral burn out

Pastors:
Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.

Continue reading "Pastoral Burn Out" »

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 in health | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

About a year ago, I was constantly complaining about how tired I was. I was falling asleep on the couch in the evening, just in time for the kids' bedtime which, suffice it to say, left my wife less than thrilled.

Part of the problem was rising early- I have to get up between 5 and 5:30 if I want to have any quiet time to myself at all in the morning. Part of the problem was also that in an effort to fight the tiredness during the say, I was consuming too much caffeine, making for fitful sleep at best, and often, waking up at 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep.

Ultimately, I haven't beat this yet... but two things that have helped greatly have been this:
1. Getting off the coffee- I'm drinking mostly green tea and ZippFizz. Both have caffeine, but significantly less than the drip coffee from Starbucks that my office (uh... Starbucks) serves.
and
2. A 20 minute nap every day I can get it.

Here's what I do- sometime between 11 and 1, depending on my appointment schedule, I head out to my Mazda Tribute with the back seats folded down and lay myself out in the back. I set the timer on the iPhone for 20 minutes and give myself mental permission to be about nothing but resting for that time. I usually drift off to sleep pretty quickly and am surprised when the timer goes off.

It hasn't completely cured me of ever feeling tired (I'm dragging pretty badly this morning), but, man- I have much more energy to make it through the afternoon, dinner and time with the kids in the evening.

You can do this. If you have an office, even better- close the door, turn off the phone and lay on the floor for 20 minutes. You won't believe the difference it makes.

The only trick is to avoid the temptation to sleep longer- any longer than 20 minutes, and you'll be groggy.

Here's an article on exactly this. If you can- choose the nap over the java... better for you in so many ways.

One of the hardest parts about the pastoral gig is that we now find ourselves living at an almost unlivable tension point: We do work that has eternal significance, and via the magic of technology, we can now do that work (study, sermon prep, people contacting, etc) any time, any place.

That my friends, is a recipe for burnout.

So- how do we avoid that?

Here, from Tim Ferris' blog is a guest-post from Anne Zelenka...

If you are so passionate about your work that you border on obsessed, you might find it near impossible to turn work off.

This is especially so in the web age, when you can stay connected no matter where you are, who you’re with, or what you’re doing. What do you do when suggestions like “work only during certain hours” and “don’t check email on evenings and weekends” just don’t seem to be enough?

Here are five more powerful tricks for keeping work in its place:

1. Choose flow-inducing hobbies that really engage you and pull your mind away from work.

Flow is a sense of effortless engagement in what you’re doing. You’ll find it in activities that have clear objectives and challenge you just a bit beyond your current level of skill. What kind of hobbies can produce flow? Sports like skiing or martial arts, art like painting or pottery, games like poker or bridge, and puzzles like crosswords or sudoku are a few examples. Such activities will lure you away from work because, unlike passive activities like watching TV, they can provide the same sense of engagement and challenge that your work life offers.

2. Set goals in your personal life just like you do in your professional life.

Working towards goals is a sure way of getting yourself excited enough about non-work activities that you can pull yourself away work. This tip works in tandem with the first, because goal-oriented activities are more likely to provide a sense of flow than activities taken on for simple recreation and relaxation. Tim Ferriss describes a process he calls “dreamlining” [sample worksheets and excel tools here] for applying timelines to your life goals and dreams — that’s a great way to make your personal goals just as actionable as your work projects.

3. Schedule dates with other people for non-work activities.

For example, schedule a workout session with a personal trainer, arrange to meet a friend for happy hour after work, or make weekend plans with your friends or family to go hiking. Solo plans are easier to break in favor of work; if you have a commitment to another person you’ll be more likely to shut the laptop and mobile phone off.

4. Use tech boundaries to separate your work and your life.

Read the rest here

Day two without coffee and I'm feeling great.
Sleeping better, less jumpy...

I did get off the freeway at the wrong exit yesterday and do a couple of other duh kinds of things... so maybe my brain is missing the Joe, but basically feeling great.

And the no coffee thing has happened by accident. I just haven't felt the need.

I picked up at Costco (who so generously feed my kids lunch in bite-sized samples every Saturday) a box of Zip Fizz. Little tubes of powder you add to water. Lots of vitamins, about 100mg of caffeine (a tall coffee at SBux has 260 mg, for comparison). But somehow, whereas with coffee I needed the morning cup (and by "cup" I mean giant-sized travel mug), another when I got to wherever I going to work that day or from 7-11 along the way... with this, I don't.

Maybe it's the 41,667% of your RDA of vitamin B12? Yeah, you read that right- not a typo.

That's a lot of B12.

You don't metabolize it very well, and probably end up peeing most of it away, but I gotta tell you- one tube in the morning (10 calories, 0 Sugar- just mix with water) has kept me going all day long and without that edgy feeling that too much caffeine gives. No headaches, I've been sleeping better, felt calmer... Is this what it feels like to be in a healthy rhythm? Whoa.

You should check this stuff out:

I'm PastorHack blogging through Tim Ferriss' excellent post: The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now. Many of these are things that have been percolating in my brain and some have already reached the level of implementing...

Second up... I think this one (I think) has spiritual implications for we pastor-types...

2. Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night
The former scrambles your priorities and plans for the day, and the latter just gives you insomnia. E-mail can wait until 10am, after you’ve completed at least one of your critical to-do items…

This has been a hard thing for me to get ahold of... and honestly, I've been trying for over a year. I blogged on this hack in the early days of PastorHacks and have had intermittent success with it. The Treo/iPhone hasn't helped either, let me tell you...

It's a constant struggle for me to avoid looking at the computer- in general, but especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Two different reasons why this is hard/should be avoided...

Morning- I need centering. I need God's Word. I need to spend time in prayer, praying through my day, praying to have the character to face what's coming that day. Busting out the email first thing in the morning subverts all of that. It starts my day before my day has started. It prematurely puts my brain into problem solving mode. And worst of all, opening that computer often means that God gets leftovers, if anything at all.
I'm not going to be legalistic about the whole "Quiet time in the morning" thing. I just know what I <i>need</i>. And the fact is, the computer just gets in the way. Save it till later...

Evening. I need rest. I need to leave it all behind. I need my mind to wind down. So why, why, why, do I sabotage all of that by hitting the computer and checking email just before bed. It's practically begging for sleep difficulties as I lay in bed processing replies, thinking through how I'll fix whatever issue has come up next...

This is a common sense one, right? So why is it so hard?
Anyone else struggle with this?

Okay- Since I published the "Pastors hate life and die early, ugly deaths" statistics awhile ago, I thought I needed to balance that with this post from Out of Ur today.

Apparently, we pastors are enjoying life a bit more than the common wisdom suggests:

"Last month the Chicago Tribune reported that pastors are the happiest people on earth—really. Research done by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that clergy ranked highest in job satisfaction and “general happiness.” They even out ranked highly paid professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

The article reports:

Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all workers. Sixty-seven percent reported being "very happy," compared with an average 33 percent for all workers.

"They look at their occupation as a calling," Carroll said. "A pastor does get called on to enter into some of the deepest moments of a person's life, celebrating a birth and sitting with people at times of illness or death. There's a lot of fulfillment."

Can this possibly be true?"

Read the rest here, (including the statistics on how bad off pastors are)

Mark Driscoll posts on pastoral burn out

Pastors:
Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.

PastorHack: The Power Nap

About a year ago, I was constantly complaining about how tired I was. I was falling asleep on the couch in the evening, just in time for the kids' bedtime which, suffice it to say, left my wife less than thrilled.

Part of the problem was rising early- I have to get up between 5 and 5:30 if I want to have any quiet time to myself at all in the morning. Part of the problem was also that in an effort to fight the tiredness during the say, I was consuming too much caffeine, making for fitful sleep at best, and often, waking up at 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep.

Ultimately, I haven't beat this yet... but two things that have helped greatly have been this:
1. Getting off the coffee- I'm drinking mostly green tea and ZippFizz. Both have caffeine, but significantly less than the drip coffee from Starbucks that my office (uh... Starbucks) serves.
and
2. A 20 minute nap every day I can get it.

Here's what I do- sometime between 11 and 1, depending on my appointment schedule, I head out to my Mazda Tribute with the back seats folded down and lay myself out in the back. I set the timer on the iPhone for 20 minutes and give myself mental permission to be about nothing but resting for that time. I usually drift off to sleep pretty quickly and am surprised when the timer goes off.

It hasn't completely cured me of ever feeling tired (I'm dragging pretty badly this morning), but, man- I have much more energy to make it through the afternoon, dinner and time with the kids in the evening.

You can do this. If you have an office, even better- close the door, turn off the phone and lay on the floor for 20 minutes. You won't believe the difference it makes.

The only trick is to avoid the temptation to sleep longer- any longer than 20 minutes, and you'll be groggy.

Here's an article on exactly this. If you can- choose the nap over the java... better for you in so many ways.

Boundaries

One of the hardest parts about the pastoral gig is that we now find ourselves living at an almost unlivable tension point: We do work that has eternal significance, and via the magic of technology, we can now do that work (study, sermon prep, people contacting, etc) any time, any place.

That my friends, is a recipe for burnout.

So- how do we avoid that?

Here, from Tim Ferris' blog is a guest-post from Anne Zelenka...

If you are so passionate about your work that you border on obsessed, you might find it near impossible to turn work off.

This is especially so in the web age, when you can stay connected no matter where you are, who you’re with, or what you’re doing. What do you do when suggestions like “work only during certain hours” and “don’t check email on evenings and weekends” just don’t seem to be enough?

Here are five more powerful tricks for keeping work in its place:

1. Choose flow-inducing hobbies that really engage you and pull your mind away from work.

Flow is a sense of effortless engagement in what you’re doing. You’ll find it in activities that have clear objectives and challenge you just a bit beyond your current level of skill. What kind of hobbies can produce flow? Sports like skiing or martial arts, art like painting or pottery, games like poker or bridge, and puzzles like crosswords or sudoku are a few examples. Such activities will lure you away from work because, unlike passive activities like watching TV, they can provide the same sense of engagement and challenge that your work life offers.

2. Set goals in your personal life just like you do in your professional life.

Working towards goals is a sure way of getting yourself excited enough about non-work activities that you can pull yourself away work. This tip works in tandem with the first, because goal-oriented activities are more likely to provide a sense of flow than activities taken on for simple recreation and relaxation. Tim Ferriss describes a process he calls “dreamlining” [sample worksheets and excel tools here] for applying timelines to your life goals and dreams — that’s a great way to make your personal goals just as actionable as your work projects.

3. Schedule dates with other people for non-work activities.

For example, schedule a workout session with a personal trainer, arrange to meet a friend for happy hour after work, or make weekend plans with your friends or family to go hiking. Solo plans are easier to break in favor of work; if you have a commitment to another person you’ll be more likely to shut the laptop and mobile phone off.

4. Use tech boundaries to separate your work and your life.

Read the rest here

Zip-Fizz

Day two without coffee and I'm feeling great.
Sleeping better, less jumpy...

I did get off the freeway at the wrong exit yesterday and do a couple of other duh kinds of things... so maybe my brain is missing the Joe, but basically feeling great.

And the no coffee thing has happened by accident. I just haven't felt the need.

I picked up at Costco (who so generously feed my kids lunch in bite-sized samples every Saturday) a box of Zip Fizz. Little tubes of powder you add to water. Lots of vitamins, about 100mg of caffeine (a tall coffee at SBux has 260 mg, for comparison). But somehow, whereas with coffee I needed the morning cup (and by "cup" I mean giant-sized travel mug), another when I got to wherever I going to work that day or from 7-11 along the way... with this, I don't.

Maybe it's the 41,667% of your RDA of vitamin B12? Yeah, you read that right- not a typo.

That's a lot of B12.

You don't metabolize it very well, and probably end up peeing most of it away, but I gotta tell you- one tube in the morning (10 calories, 0 Sugar- just mix with water) has kept me going all day long and without that edgy feeling that too much caffeine gives. No headaches, I've been sleeping better, felt calmer... Is this what it feels like to be in a healthy rhythm? Whoa.

You should check this stuff out:

9 things- pt 2

I'm PastorHack blogging through Tim Ferriss' excellent post: The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now. Many of these are things that have been percolating in my brain and some have already reached the level of implementing...

Second up... I think this one (I think) has spiritual implications for we pastor-types...

2. Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night
The former scrambles your priorities and plans for the day, and the latter just gives you insomnia. E-mail can wait until 10am, after you’ve completed at least one of your critical to-do items…

This has been a hard thing for me to get ahold of... and honestly, I've been trying for over a year. I blogged on this hack in the early days of PastorHacks and have had intermittent success with it. The Treo/iPhone hasn't helped either, let me tell you...

It's a constant struggle for me to avoid looking at the computer- in general, but especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Two different reasons why this is hard/should be avoided...

Morning- I need centering. I need God's Word. I need to spend time in prayer, praying through my day, praying to have the character to face what's coming that day. Busting out the email first thing in the morning subverts all of that. It starts my day before my day has started. It prematurely puts my brain into problem solving mode. And worst of all, opening that computer often means that God gets leftovers, if anything at all.
I'm not going to be legalistic about the whole "Quiet time in the morning" thing. I just know what I <i>need</i>. And the fact is, the computer just gets in the way. Save it till later...

Evening. I need rest. I need to leave it all behind. I need my mind to wind down. So why, why, why, do I sabotage all of that by hitting the computer and checking email just before bed. It's practically begging for sleep difficulties as I lay in bed processing replies, thinking through how I'll fix whatever issue has come up next...

This is a common sense one, right? So why is it so hard?
Anyone else struggle with this?

Happy Pastors!

Okay- Since I published the "Pastors hate life and die early, ugly deaths" statistics awhile ago, I thought I needed to balance that with this post from Out of Ur today.

Apparently, we pastors are enjoying life a bit more than the common wisdom suggests:

"Last month the Chicago Tribune reported that pastors are the happiest people on earth—really. Research done by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that clergy ranked highest in job satisfaction and “general happiness.” They even out ranked highly paid professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

The article reports:

Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all workers. Sixty-seven percent reported being "very happy," compared with an average 33 percent for all workers.

"They look at their occupation as a calling," Carroll said. "A pastor does get called on to enter into some of the deepest moments of a person's life, celebrating a birth and sitting with people at times of illness or death. There's a lot of fulfillment."

Can this possibly be true?"

Read the rest here, (including the statistics on how bad off pastors are)

Pastoral Burn Out

Mark Driscoll posts on pastoral burn out

Pastors:
Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.