‘Exhausted’ Pastors Suffering Decline in Overall Healthy, Respect, Friendship: Study

The overall health of pastors in the U.S. has declined markedly since 2015, with increasing numbers who say that they face declining respect from their community and a lack of true friends, according to a recent study.

Data collected by faith-based organization Barna Group as part of its Resilient Pastor research showed a significant decrease in pastors’ spiritual, mental and emotional well-being, as well as their overall quality of life, between 2015 and 2022, the group announced last week.

The study conducted 901 online interviews with Protestant senior pastors in 2015 and compared the results with those they compiled based on 585 interviews with pastors from Sept. 6 to Sept. 16, 2022. The interviews asked pastors to rate aspects of their lives on a scale of excellent, good, average, below average, poor or don’t know.

Pastors who reported that their mental and emotional health was below average spiked from 3% in 2015 to 10% in 2022, and those who said they were in excellent mental and emotional health cratered from 39% in 2015 to 11% last year.

Pastors also noted that recent years have taken a toll on their physical health, with 22% describing their physical well-being as poor or below average in 2022, compared to only 7% in 2015. While 24% said their physical health was excellent eight years ago, only 9% said the same last year. (Read more from “‘Exhausted’ Pastors Suffering Decline in Overall Healthy, Respect, Friendship: Study” HERE)

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