Are You Ready
to Quit?
• Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to
moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
• 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.
• 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.
10 For
some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in
person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.”
2 Corinthians 10:10 (NIV84)
7 Was
it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by
preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge?
2 Corinthians 11:7 (NIV84)
13 How
were you inferior to the other churches, except that I was
never a burden to you? Forgive me this wrong!
2 Corinthians 12:13 (NIV84)
6I
may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We
have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.
2 Corinthians 11:6–7 (NIV84)
17 Now
the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect
the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with everincreasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:17–4:18 (NIV84)
God’s spirit in the pastor produces freedom.
We are becoming great leaders and lousy men and women of God.
We all face the temptation to join the fellowship of the successful
and lose the fellowship of the called.
6 So when
they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at
this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to
them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has
set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit comes on you;
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and
Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1:6–8 (NIV84)
He was doing the work of the ministry at a pace that was
destroying the work of the Lord in him.
God’s mercy for the pastor lies in his or her calling.
Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we
do not lose heart.
The minister of the gospel is frightened by the magnitude of his
assignment until he discovers the Presence at his side.
Milo Arnold
7 But we
have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this allsurpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard
pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in
despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not
destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of
Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11
For we who are alive are always being given over to death for
Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. 12
So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.