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For Roland Stringfellow, the pandemic remains a weight not completely lifted. As the 2020 lockdown disrupted his church community in suburban Detroit, the resulting emotional stress was compounded by the social unrest and political polarization that followed the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

“So many congregations have not recovered from that period of time,” said Stringfellow, senior pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Detroit, located in Ferndale, Michigan.

The situation was unbearable for some: Stringfellow saw fellow pastors seek relief in alcohol or substance abuse. If not for the supportive staff he’d assembled around him, he said, he doubts he would have made it through his divorce or the pressures of leading an LGBTQ-friendly church through the uncertainty of the pandemic and a climate of rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

“How do you deal with those and care for a congregation?” said Stringfellow, who is gay. “How can you be there when everyone is afraid – and you have those same emotions?”

According to the Clergy Health Initiative, a project of Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, clergy are among the nation’s most overworked individuals, juggling multiple roles while often raising their own families. But tensions triggered in recent years have added to the strain, creating mental health challenges and prompting many to reconsider their callings.

A survey of 1,700 clergy sponsored by The Hartford Institute for Religion Research last fall showed high levels of discontent among the nation’s Christian clergy. Nearly half said they’d thought about leaving their congregations, while more than half said they considered leaving the ministry altogether.

For many church leaders, the pandemic was a wake-up call regarding the structural issues within their institutions, including the oversized burdens placed on pastors.

“Pastors were left with more work and limited resources,” said Adrian Crawford, lead pastor at Engage Church in Tallahassee, Florida. “You had people really hurting, and a lot of pastors didn’t realize what was going on inside of themselves. Their wives and children were going through the same struggles, so the pastor was leading the people – but also trying to be there for his family. Those emotions have got to go somewhere.”

For Russell Meyer, executive director of the Florida Council of Churches, the situation is broadly reminiscent of the disaster-relief incidents he’s ministered through, including Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

“We learned then that a significant number of clergy will leave the ministry five years out from the disaster, because the stress was so overwhelming,” Meyer said. “COVID-19 pushes this phenomenon from a local to a national level.”

Despite their own stresses, clergy often don’t feel they can seek help. According to the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, ministers say they face numerous obstacles to accessing mental health services, including cost, feelings of shame, difficulty taking time off work or a lack of denominational support.

That can have trickle-down effects for congregations as struggling pastors withdraw or become irritable. Before he was diagnosed with clinical depression, Mark Dance, who spent 28 years as a pastor for Baptist churches in Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee, said he experienced no moral meltdowns or train wrecks; he simply avoided people he once enjoyed conversing with and found it hard to make decisions.

“When a pastor is healthy, the church is going to be healthy,” said Dance, now director of pastoral wellness for faith-based investment firm GuideStone. “But when a pastor is not, erosion happens, and it’s very gradual and subtle.”

Instead, many keep their struggles to themselves.

As Crawford put it: “Superman can’t show he has a weakness. Pastors want to be the hero in everybody’s story.”

Pastors’ burdens breed mental health challenges

Growing up as a pastor’s daughter, Jennifer Oh saw that dynamic play out firsthand.

“My father always had thoughts of, ‘Is this the right thing for me?’” said Oh, now restoration center coordinator for her church community in Los Angeles. “It becomes very lonely…. But there’s this idea of, ‘I have to do what Jesus does. I have to sacrifice. I have to be an example.’”

Most of the nation’s approximately 244,000 clergy members work 40 to 60 hours weekly, and 25% of them work 60 hours or more, according to the Columbia Theological Seminary. “This has detrimental implications for clergy and the entire ecologies in which they are situated,” the school said in a blog post. “He or she is expected to be the administrator, teacher, preacher, counselor, staff supervisor, facilities manager and fundraiser all at once.”

At the same time, clergy face a continued decline in public perception, part of a broader downturn of faith in U.S. professionals overall. Just 32% of Americans rated clergy as trustworthy in Gallup’s 2023 Honesty and Ethics Poll, down from 64% in 2001 and the lowest point in the poll’s 47 years.

The burdens can be oppressive. A 2008 study by Duke Divinity School found United Methodist clergy in North Carolina experienced depression at higher rates than the general state population. Late last year, a quarter of American Methodist congregations left the United Methodist Church, largely over issues of sexuality and gender identity, in the largest denominational schism in U.S. history.

“Clergy engage in many stressful activities, including grief counseling, navigating the competing demands of congregants and delivering a weekly sermon that opens them up to criticism,” the authors wrote. “The strain of these roles is further amplified by having to switch rapidly between them.”

Clergy who felt their efforts were inadequate were more prone to depression, the study found, while those doubting their call to ministry were more prone to anxiety.

Some clergy may be more at risk than others. Research published in 2002 found Protestant clergy reported higher levels of stress than Catholics: women rabbis reported the highest levels of work-related stress, while Catholic sisters reported the lowest.

In Los Angeles, Oh said many church leaders are still flummoxed by lower attendance numbers that never recovered post-COVID. That drop comes as greater numbers of Americans, particularly Gen Zers and millennials, have pulled away from Christian faith systems, instead describing themselves as agnostics, atheists or “nothing in particular.”

“There’s a sense of not doing enough, that you have to do more and more,” she said.

That strikes at the heart of the reward most pastors find in their work, Meyer said – the strong emotional ties they form within their congregations.

“The idea of church membership is dying away,” he said. “From a pastor’s point of view, they’re not able to make deep relationships with people…. The struggle to do the daily work of the congregation falls more on your shoulders and takes away from your family and the basic emotional ties that keep you healthy. Burnout, distress and loneliness are inevitable challenges.”