*NOTE more info can be found here: original article

1,500 hundred pastors leave the ministry every month… that is an unsustainable depletion of the population.

Lets face it your pastor has an incredibly tough job. On a daily basis he must overcome the normal stresses of life, manage the affairs of a major organization, counsel the hurting, visit the sick and shut-ins, (among other ministerial and, usually, custodial duties) and fight through the onslaught of the devil. I can not think of a more stressful profession. Pastors are the least ministered to people in our churches, and for some of them it is their fault. The great majority of pastors would accept help, if it was forthcoming. That’s where we come in. We, the members of the Church!

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Here is research that we distilled from Barna, Focus on the Family, and Fuller Seminary, all of which backed up our findings, and additional information from reviewing others’ research:

+Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.

+Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.
Eighty percent of pastors feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastor.

+Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

+Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.

+Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.

+Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.

+Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons (This is Key).

Most statistics say that 60% to 80% of those who enter the ministry will not still be in it 10 years later, and only a fraction will stay in it as a lifetime career. Many pastors-I believe over 90 percent-start off right with a true call and the enthusiasm and the endurance of faith to make it, but something happens to derail their train of passion and love for the call.

The bottom line is that no one is caring for and ministering to the pastor.  He doesnt have a support structure.  If he falls from the trapeze, there is no net to catch him.  He doesn’t have a minister, whose sole concern is to provide soul care to him.  This is just not sustainable, and it is not biblical, either.

Jesus had 12 disciples, who became his Apostles.  They regularly met together, prayed together, sat in silence with each other, and shared God’s word between themselves.  They had a built in support structure.  They loved one another.  They ministered to each other.  They shared all that they had, as peers.

It wasn’t top down CEO style church leadership.  It was a communion of mutually submissive leaders, washing each other’s feet in humble reverence for their common Master.  This is why our pastors stop growing, because they stop stooping.  The can’t grow, because they don’t bow.  They hold no common master, and meet with no mutually submissive peer set, to whom they are accountable.

According to the research, most pastors report having no close friends, let alone a best friend.  Can you imagine having to trudge through this life with the weight of an entire congregation on your shoulders, and have to do it with no friends, all on your own.  Yes, God’s spirit will refresh you, but it is written, “It is not good for man to be alone”.  Your pastor may often remind you that a “threefold cord is not easily broken,” but does he really have those threads embedded into the very fabric of his life?

Pastors, please believe me.  It is okay to ask for help.  You need it.  You have the same hurts, habits, and hangups as the rest of us.  The difference is we don’t get fired or burned by our christian brothers, if we admit it.  Please don’t let fear or pride stand between you and getting access to the tools, training, and refreshment that you need.  Remember, you can only give what you have.  So, when you are at your best and brightest, you can be give the congregation your best and brightest.  Otherwise, you are limping along at half capacity, and the church you lead will eventually suffer.

We can help!  We are a resource for you.  We can provide access to the tools and training, that will transform you, refresh you, renew you, and reinvigorate your ministry.

1. There once was a noble country of people who were called Coggs. They had a practice of sending out an exploratory expedition composed of very promising colonists. At some point they met a Native, hailing from parts unknown. He was of a friendly sort, utterly disarming, and he offered to show them to a good and verdant land, which they could not hope to find without his assistance. Unfortunately, having been warned not to travel so far away that their supply line could no longer serve them, their curiosity and wander lust compelled them to accompany the Native.  It was folly.
2. they knew better than to venture too far, but one thing lead to another, and they did it anyway. The farther they traveled away, the fiercer and stronger their desire to keep moving onward became. The Native lead them just beyond the reach of their mother empire. It really was a pity.
3. The Native stole away in the night leaving the weary colonists lost and alone in a waste; and they were running out of supplies. It began to look quite hopeless. In their ignorance and desperation some of them began to doubt the wisdom of the expedition, while others out right questioned the Emperor’s goodness. Many of them loudly proclaimed that “A good Emperor would never have sent us out here to get lost in these wilds, and why hasn’t he sent out a rescue party for us?”
4. And, so they became the Noncoggs, and turned to eating dead things, poisonous vegetation, toadstools, and muck just to survive. The toadstools affected swirling delusions and colorful visions, which made even the most iron-constitutioned among them squeamish.
5. But,as often happens with the passing of time, after a while they began to quite like their new foods
6. some of them gave themselves so fully to the “new gastronomy” that they retained no taste at all for the wholesome foods of their mother empire
7. Over the years they grew stupider and more suspicious of one another. After all, it had been such an awfully long time since they’d shared the comforts of Civilization. During this time, the Emperor had been sending Rescuers to them, bearing good and wholesome things to eat. Most of them received the Rescuers with contempt and suspicion, but some Noncoggs, becoming increasingly more Quasi-Coggish all the time, gladly took what aid they could from the Rescuers. These were those who regretted leaving the empire, and wanted to retain allegiance to the Emperor. Although they had violated the Empire’s laws, the Emperor extended clemency to all who would once again pledge their allegiance to him. The Rescuers did all to aid them in re-patrioting, and to assure them of the Emperor’s pardon.
8. many of the people could not even bear the sight of these Rescuers, because they had grown frail, ugly, and decayed by their noisome diets. It offended them to see creatures of such nobility and grace, of which they had once been.
9.  those who were farthest removed from normal Cogg thought, practice and physicality, were the most suspicious of the rescuers, having grown quite fond of their new life, and the freedoms to eat what they liked. The colorful, euphoric, geometry fueled visions, which had at first sickened them, now became something of a fashion among their so called intelligentsia.
11. “Back in the empire, we were slaves, plebeians, no-bodies!” some were known to say, “They wouldn’t even let us eat muck, nor toadstools! Can you imagine? That Emperor thinks he knows what’s best, but I begin to think he just wanted to keep all the good toadies for his self. Bah! I eats what I likes.”
12. And that was the attitude of them all, to one degree or another. Even those who wanted to remain loyal to the Emperor nursed darksome thoughts towards him, try as they might not to. He was hard to stay truly loyal to, because he wouldn’t let his people eat muck or dead things, and, to them, he seemed to have a wholly unreasonable objection to consuming toadstools. It didn’t really make sense to even the most Coggish of the Quasi-Coggs.
13. Some of them sent letters of beseechment to the Emperor, asking to be allowed to eat only so many toadstools. They didn’t mind cutting back, but going completely without was, to their minds, a certain overly fanatical. After all, what could the Empire really have against toadstools?
14. What made matters worse is that, here and there, the Native or one of his Tribe would pop up and extol the virtues of toadstools. He even came up with some absolutely delicious recipes for how to cook muck and dead things. It was all the rage among the Noncoggs, though the Quasi-Coggs paid lip service to its deceptive vileness.
15. No matter how Coggish the Quasi-Coggs became, none of them ever completely shook the taste for toadstools. See their natures had been changed. They were no longer true Coggs in body or mind. Travelling too far from the empire and then tasting the unwholesome fungi had produced an utterly new race, the Noncoggs. In physicality, practice, and disposition of thought they had more in common with the Natives, than their former countrymen. The transition had so taken every aspect of their lives, that even their young inherited the change.

God sent his new race of beings into the world, and commanded them to go out and subdue it.  They were filled with wisdom to stay within his parameters, and the warning to only go so far and abstain from eating that which was forbidden.  But, instead they were coaxed into disobeying God.  That seed of disobedience germinated and became the fruit of death.  It is that seed which every human now carries.  It changed us from wise, gentle, loving creatures meant only for blessing and God’s presence, to our current degenerated state.  The sin of our first parents now echoes in every thought, motive, and intention of our hearts.

We are not the Coggs or cognitives, but rather the Non-Coggs or non-cognitives.  We don’t even have to think about sin, its just something we naturally do.  We don’t have to cognitively plan on sinning, because now it is our natural and default coping mechanism.  I was born with a taste for sin, just like Non-Coggs hunger for toadstools.  I am easily swayed and overcome by temptations, just as the Non-Coggs were by the Native.  But, by God’s grace I have been rescued by his Love.  My Emperor sent his Rescuer into the wastelands, in search of my wayward and hatefilled self.  That Rescuer laid down his rights, privileges, wealth, titles, vassals, courtiers, fine clothes, and power in order to convince me of the Emperor’s love.  The Emperor gave his only begotten heir to the throne, and the Rescuer made my redemption more important than his own rights.  In so doing the Rescuer proved to all the Non-coggs, and all the Native’s Tribe, and all the other citizens of the Empire that he truly deserved the throne of Kingship.

All hail the lion of Judah, and blessed be he who comes in the name of the LORD!