Charles Stone is a longtime pastor and the founder of StoneWell Ministries in Aurora, Ill. His award-winning book 5 Ministry Killers and How to Defeat Them (2010) examines the major causes of frustration and burnout for pastors and church leaders.

Steven Smith is dean of the college and professor of communication at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He also holds the seminary’s James T. Draper Chair of Pastoral Ministry. Smith is the author of Dying to Preach: Embracing the Cross in the Pulpit (2009), in which he discusses “why the preacher must die to self, […]

Robert Saler is director of the Lilly Endowment’s National Clergy Renewal Program, which provides grants to congregations offering their pastors breaks for rest and renewal. More than 700 congregations and their pastors have benefited.

Leadership Network in Dallas fosters church innovation by working with leaders in a variety of denominations. It  has support groups for pastors in different stages of their careers, and its website includes resources related to burnout.

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.

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 […]

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 […]