Check out this excerpt from an April 2007 article in the Chicago Tribune:
According to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, clergy ranked by far the most satisfied and the most generally happy of 198 occupations.
The worker satisfaction study, set for release Tuesday, is based on data collected since 1988 on more than 27,500 randomly selected people.
Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all workers. Sixty-seven percent reported being "very happy," compared with an average 33 percent for all workers.
Jackson Carroll, Williams professor emeritus of religion and society at Duke Divinity School, found similarly high satisfaction when he studied Protestant and Catholic clergy, despite relatively modest salaries and long hours.
"They look at their occupation as a calling," Carroll said. "A pastor does get called on to enter into some of the deepest moments of a person’s life, celebrating a birth and sitting with people at times of illness or death. There’s a lot of fulfillment."
Source:
By Barbara Rose
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 17, 2007
Chicago Tribune
But it would be naive and misguided to think that pastors are having an easy time out there. For a more complete picture, check out some of the resources below that have looked at why clergy leave the profession. Loneliness, conflict with denominational officials, difficulty managing change, burnout, lack of mobility in rural settings . . . these are significant issues. The authors conclude that seminaries need to do a better job preparing students for practical issues, clergy need to continue to monitor self-care issues, and real issues that plague clergy need to be addressed in the open as opposed to being hidden.
See some good clear research that has been sponsored by Duke Divinity School’s Pulpit & Pew: Research on Pastoral Leadership.
Reports. Summaries and full reports available at links below.
Factors Shaping Clergy Careers: A Wakeup Call for Protestant Denominations and Pastors
By Patricia M.Y. Chang
Assessing the Clergy Supply in the 21st Century
By Patricia M. Y. Chang
Book. Reviews available at link below:
Pastors in Transition: Why Clergy Leave Local Church Ministry
By Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger
For another article on the job satisfaction survey see:
Service to others not just a job
Clergy happiest in U.S. work force, survey indicates
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
2 replies on “Clergy are the most satisfied in their jobs”
The Chicago study was researching job happiness in general. Clergy tend to feel like they ‘have to act that way’ These masks drop when they go for help from those who care for clergy.
The NORC statistics don’t hold up either to surveys of clergy wives.
Want to know how satisfied someone really is in work and life then ask their doctor and their spouse.
Furthermore, one of the Duke Pulpit and Pew dissertations found that clergy are not consistent in their answers when being researched. When given the chance to write they are far more negative than when given questions to rank or just say yes and no to.
Also, any job with a satisfaction level of 87% would have long waiting lines seeking to get in. Do we have that? No. Seminary enrollments are declining. Denominations are facing or about to face clergy shortages. Some studies tell us that we are loosing more clergy across North American each month than we are loosing soldiers in Iraq.
I could say more, but then it would be an article not a post.
The study seems at odds with other ones that emphasize serious mental health issues, burnpout, and overall frustration. And that a large majority of seminary grads fail to stay in ministry beyond five years also says a lot.