Anne Marie Miller (pen name Anne Jackson) grew up as the daughter of a pastor and later experienced serious stress as a church leader herself. She is the author of Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic (2009). Miller is based in Iowa.

Jon B. Eisenberg is an appellate lawyer who was part of the legal team of Schiavo’s husband, Michael Schiavo. He also teaches appellate procedure at University of California Hastings College of the Law. Eisenberg wrote Using Terri: The Religious Right’s Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).

Wayne Cordeiro is the founding pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship, a fast-growing Honolulu megachurch. He served three decades in ministry before burnout caused him to take a break. That period of rest and reflection re-energized him, and he shared his experience in a 2009 book, Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion. Cordeiro’s […]

Carl H. Coleman is director of the Health Law and Policy Program at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, N.J. Professor Coleman served as Bioethics and Law Adviser at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland from 2006-2007. He has written on assisted suicide and was a member of the New York State Attorney General’s […]

Bill Colby was the attorney for the Nancy Cruzan family in the first right-to-die case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the author of Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America (AMACON, 2006) and Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan (Hay House, 2002).

Read a Jan. 8, 2005, Resources for American Christianity interview about the state of pastoral leadership.

A national shortage of Protestant clergy is taking its toll on rural congregations, according to a Kansas City Star article published June 11, 2005, by The Washington Post.

Is there a clergy shortage? Yes and no, according to an article by Patricia Chang posted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Because most churches are small but most people go to larger churches, there are fewer opportunities for upward mobility and more jobs that remain vacant because of isolated location and low pay. The institute […]

Read a transcript of a June 30, 2006, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly episode about a shortage of younger people interested in pastoral leadership.