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 […]

Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor in the department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is an expert on Haitian Voodoo and on religion, gender and class issues in the African Diaspora. He edited Fragments of Bone: Neo-African Religions in a New World (University of Illinois, 2005) and co-edited (with Claudine Michel) two volumes on Vodou, Haitian Vodou: Spirit, […]

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 […]

The National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus is based in New York City.

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

St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart (The Josephites) is a Baltimore-based, interracial society of priests and brothers who work in 45 parishes in African-American communities.

Read a Jan. 23, 2009, interview with Anne Jackson, author of Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic.