Twenty-five

years ago, the average U.S. pastor was under less pressure than today.

Today, every month, 1,300 U.S. pastors are fired or forced to resign.

Nearly 30 percent of ministers have been terminated at least once. In

a decade, 40 percent of today's pastors will be in another line of work.

Seventy percent say they have no close friends.

The numbers

don't improve at home. The divorce rate for U.S. pastors is up at least

65 percent in 25 years. More than a third admit to "inappropriate

sexual behavior" with church members. Eighty percent say their work

has a negative impact at home. One in three goes even further, saying

the pastorate has been a "hazard" to their families.

These are impressive

and tragic facts about the state of the person in charge of shepherding

the souls of America. What's more impressive and more tragic, hardly anything

is being done about it.

Although mainline

denominations have set up an office to deal with minister relations, only

a few cases ever present themselves. It's not something you want to take

to your peers and certainly not your superiors. Some individual churches

have set up special committees to handle pastor/parish relations. Usually,

however, they act as a committee to invite the pastor to leave. It's usually

accepted as appropriate practice to ask the minister to uproot his family

and cope with a load of rejection. It would be unthinkable that members

of the congregation adapt to a new style of leadership or, God forbid,

uproot their families and find another church. In the words of the chairman

of the committee that axed me once, "John, you are a scapegoat."

And that's it. Far too often the pastor is the scapegoat for the failures

of the congregation.

Today, ministers

deal with the scourge of comparative shopping. First, individuals see

different kinds of "big" church on television. It could be Rod

Parsley's weekly revivalistic services with thousands in attendance. It

could be Robert Schuller's Hour of Power with his famous Crystal Cathedral.

It could be Fred Price's well-dressed congregation numbering in the thousands

looking at their pastor on huge screens.

The average

church shopper enters the real world of an average church house thinking

the folks at Little Georgia First Methodist Church can put on a kicking

service like Fraser Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

He's disappointed because the choir is not as full and as powerful. There's

no high tech stuff in little church. The pastor's microphone is the most

advanced technical equipment and it doesn't work half the time. Bottom

line, small-church pastors face higher expectations as their flocks ask

to receive the same variety of services as mega churches. It's a buyer's

market.

The plain truth

is that the average minister just can't produce what T. D. Jakes and Charles

Stanley and Eddie Long can produce. The television has changed the standard

of what church should be like. Church shoppers are looking for a church

like they see on television.

Fifty years

ago, the U.S. pastor did not have to deal with such nonsense. But it's

the nonsense that makes sense to church shoppers. What would happen if

congregations decided that the New Testament would become their model

for church rather than the big church on television? Just because a church

is big doesn't make it right or right on with the Word of God.

If you receive

nothing more from this column, perhaps you will begin to appreciate the

pressures and expectations placed on all pastors, especially yours. Perhaps

you can begin to pray for your pastor unlike most church members. Perhaps

you can be a little more caring and sympathetic to your pastor and his

family. Take it from someone who knows, they could use it.

As a disclaimer.

are not under fire, under pressure, and under the gun. They have multi-million

dollar budgets that must be subscribed by volunteer givers. They have

multiple staff members who require intense supervision. They, too, have

a family and all too often it's a family in a glass house.

The Rev. Dr. John Hatcher is pastor

of River's Edge

Community Church in Fayetteville.

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