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Fewer Pastors Are Quitting. That's Not the Good News It Looks Like.

Dr. Ian Mudge
10 minutes ago
5 min read

During COVID, I watched denominations panic. Pastors were resigning. Churches were left open with no one in line to replace them, and training new pastors in the middle of a pandemic was nearly impossible. Every denominational leader I talked with was asking the same question: what can we do to stem the tide?


That panic did something useful. It created urgency. As John Kotter argues in his work on organizational change, establishing a sense of urgency is the first step in any real change. Without it, nothing moves.


Today, the panic has passed and the resignations have fallen off. Barna reported in January 2026 that 24% of pastors had seriously considered quitting in the past year, down from 42% in 2022. Many leaders have looked at numbers like these and breathed a sigh of relief. People are staying. That's good enough.


As an organizational psychologist, I can tell you quite simply: it's not good enough. Even Barna describes the trend as "stabilization, not full recovery." Stabilization is not improvement.


Why did the resignations stop?


I think the more interesting question is why resignations have fallen off. Part of the answer is that many of the most dissatisfied pastors already left. Researchers have noted this same survivor effect in clergy burnout studies: the most burned-out pastors may already be gone from the data. The people who remain look healthier on paper partly because of who is no longer there.


The bigger answer, from what I hear talking directly with pastors, is that many of them feel stuck. They feel they are in too deep to resign now. They still believe this is what God called them to do. Some are close enough to retirement that they can see the finish line, and they are simply going to hold on.


None of that is the same as thriving. Across decades of workplace research, wanting to leave predicts actually leaving, but only moderately. Many people who want out stay for years. In the church, that means a pastor can disappear from your resignation numbers long before they stop struggling.


The narrative I hear again and again from pastors is this: COVID broke something, and it hasn't healed. The research points in the same direction. In a 2024 survey of Church of England clergy, 42% of parish clergy still reported feeling more exhausted, down from 73% in 2021. Better, yes. Healed, no.


What dissatisfaction looks like from the pew


Burnout is not just being tired. One of its core features is something psychologists call depersonalization. Depersonalization is when a person becomes calloused toward the very people they serve. Every small ask starts to feel like a burden. They start saying no to things they used to say yes to. They push back. Over time it hardens into cynicism. Christina Maslach, who pioneered burnout research, and her colleague Michael Leiter argue that this cynicism, more than exhaustion, may sit at the core of burnout.


Congregations can absolutely see it. A depersonalized pastor is less caring and less likely to engage you when you need help. They are less likely to visit the people who need to be visited. They push back against the very things that are central to the work, because ministry is fundamentally relational. And clergy already start from a vulnerable place here: on average, they score higher on depersonalization than social workers and counselors.


So when your resignations drop but your pastors are depersonalized, the problem hasn't gone away. It has gone underground.


Why quiet is dangerous for denominations


Here is where the organizational side comes in. When denominational leaders stopped seeing resignations, the sense of urgency fell away. Kotter names this as one of the main sources of complacency: the absence of a visible crisis. He also warns that declaring victory too soon invites an organization to slide back.


That is a short-sighted view, for three reasons.


First, dissatisfaction spreads. Pastors are often close friends with other pastors. In my experience with organizations, it takes only one deeply demotivated person to pull down the morale of the people around them, and pastors are no exception.


Second, I would argue that churches led by depersonalized pastors grow less. When the relational heart of ministry is withdrawn, the congregation feels it.


Third, and most serious for the long run, it hurts recruitment. When people in the pews watch their pastor be miserable, it shapes how they think about a calling. Even those who sense a call to full-time ministry start looking for paths that avoid seminary and ordination: worship ministry, lay ministry, anything but the pulpit. I think we are already seeing this. I've talked with bishops across several denominations who have open churches that simply cannot be filled and are being covered by lay ministers where possible. Barna, too, notes that younger pastors remain especially vulnerable to burnout.


A falling resignation count today can sit right alongside a shrinking pipeline tomorrow.


What to measure instead


Resignations were never a sensitive gauge to begin with. In a typical year, only about 1 to 2% of pastors leave ministry early. If you want to know how your pastors are doing, you have to measure what comes before a resignation.


A decrease in resignations is not the goal. Here is what I want denominational leaders to look for:


  • An increase in job satisfaction.

  • A decrease in depersonalization.

  • Greater engagement with congregations and communities.

  • Churches that are growing because their pastors are motivated, engaged and building relationships.


You can't see any of these without measuring them. That means checking in on pastor well-being regularly, before a crisis, with validated measures of exhaustion, satisfaction and cynicism, and putting the aggregate picture in front of leadership. It matters because these measures travel with the decision to leave: in one study of Church of Scotland ministers, 71% of those who were highly exhausted and dissatisfied had considered leaving, compared with 28% of those who were thriving.


This is why I created the Pastor Well-Being Checkup. It gives denominations and pastors a clear picture of what is actually going on, well before it shows up as a resignation. More than 1,000 pastors have completed the Checkup. It doesn't stop at whether pastors are struggling. It shows where the pressure is coming from, so leaders can address the root of the problem in the system instead of treating symptoms one pastor at a time.


Now is not the time to take your foot off the gas


The quiet season is exactly when real change is possible. You are no longer reacting to an emergency. You have room to build a guiding coalition, set a vision and change the systems your pastors live in. That only happens if you keep the urgency alive.


We need a much longer-term perspective, particularly from denominational leadership. Healthy pastors live in healthy systems, and the time to build those systems is now, while things are calm.


If you want to know where your pastors really are, book a 30-minute conversation with me.



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