Consider the following statistics that define the face of today's ministry family, and give us here at Still Waters Restoration & Resource Ministries our focus for ministry:

• Church goers expect their pastor to juggle an average of 16 major tasks. A survey of lay people, when answering the question of how many hours per week a pastor should put into the church work/ministry averaged 82 hours as an answer.
  
  
• 1500-1700 pastors leave the ministry every month due to burnout, church conflict or moral failure.
  
  
• A shocking statistic of Jimmy Lee Draper, former President of Lifeways Ministries, is that for every 20 people who go into the pastorate only one retires from ministry (a 95% drop off rate).
  
  
• 50% (some surveys as high as 80%) of those graduating from seminaries and Bible colleges and entering the ministry will leave it in the first 5 years.
  
  
• 40% of pastors say they have considered leaving their pastorates in the last three months.
  
  
• The average ministry stay for a pastor is only 4-5 years; while the typical pastor has his/her greatest ministry impact at a church in years 5 through 14.
  
  
• Pastors have the second highest divorce rate among professionals.
  
  
• 80% of pastors say that ministry has a negative effect on their family. 52% of pastors and their spouses believe that being in ministry is outright hazardous to their family’s health and well-being. In fact the majority of pastor’s wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.
  
  
• 80% of adult children of pastors surveyed have had to seek professional help for depression.
  
  
• 75% of pastors report severe stress causing anguish, worry, bewilderment, anger, depression, fear and alienation.
  
  
• 70% of pastors and 56% of pastor’s wives do not have someone they consider a close friend.
  
  
• 90% of pastors feel they are inadequately trained to cope with ministry demands.
  
  
• 45.5% of pastors say they have experienced depression or burnout to the extent that they needed to take a leave of absence from ministry.
  
  
• 70% say they have a lower self-esteem now than when they started out.