Tag: pastors

Study finds many Americans are unimpressed with clergy.

Only 8 percent of adults say they are interested in hearing pastors’ views on issues such as same-sex marriage, LGBT rights, abortion, guns, tax policy, climate change, drug policy or religious freedom, according to the Barna Group’s State of Pastors study, released Thursday (Jan. 26).

Many evangelical pastors who quit before retirement age found “another calling” either off the pulpit or out of ministry altogether. But many also say they were driven away by conflict and burnout.

The reasons are simple and really, for me, pretty everyday: To try to find a way in which we may, as modern thinkers, express our religious sentiments without doing violence to the intellectual understandings of our recent cosmological and scientific discoveries — the enlightenment and post modern critiques — and to find God. Again.

The Whitworth Institute of Ministry will present its 38th annual program for pastors and their families July 8-12.

This year’s theme, “For Such a Time as This: Ancient Christian Wisdom for Postmodern Times,” will focus on current transitions in the life of the church, according to a press release.