Here is what the latest research is telling us.
For several years, the conversation about pastoral wellbeing has been dominated by crisis. We have heard about exhausted leaders, resignations, loneliness and burnout. Much of that concern has been justified. Ministry can place sustained emotional, relational and spiritual demands on a person, often while leaving them highly visible and poorly supported.
Crisis language, however, can often mask a complicated reality. It can imply that every pastor is deteriorating, that wellbeing is mainly a matter of personal resilience, or that the answer is simply more rest and better self-care.
New research released during 2026 presents a more hopeful—and more demanding—picture. Some indicators of clergy burnout are improving. Pastors appear more confident in their calling than they were during the pandemic. Yet vocational satisfaction remains markedly lower than it was a decade ago, and the health of the church environment is affecting not only pastors but also their marriages, families and ministry teams.
The question, then, is no longer only, “Is the pastor coping?” It is also, “Does the way we have structured ministry enable the person to faithfully and fruitfully flourish?”
Duke University’s Clergy Health Collaborative has been tracking the wellbeing of United Methodist clergy in North Carolina since 2008. In its ninth statewide survey, conducted in late 2025 with responses from almost 72 per cent of eligible clergy, all three recognised dimensions of burnout improved simultaneously for the first time in the study’s history.
High emotional exhaustion declined from 24.2 per cent in 2023 to 20.7 per cent in 2025. High depersonalisation—becoming detached or cynical towards those one serves—fell from 13.3 per cent to 9.5 per cent. Low personal accomplishment, the persistent sense that one’s work has little value or effect, declined from 32.1 per cent to 26.2 per cent.1
These findings are genuinely good news. They show that burnout is not an inevitable, one-way trajectory. Pastoral wellbeing can improve.
However, we need to interpret the results carefully. This is one denomination in one American region, emerging from a particularly disruptive period of denominational turbulence. It is not evidence that the wellbeing challenge has been solved, nor can the figures simply be transferred to Aotearoa New Zealand.
What the longitudinal data offer is a credible signal: when acute pressures ease and resources, relationships and purpose are restored, meaningful recovery can occur. Emotional exhaustion can sometimes improve when workload decreases. Cynicism may soften when leaders reconnect with people and purpose. A diminished sense of accomplishment, however, is often rooted more deeply in identity, calling and purpose, and in the organisational environment that shapes them.2 Genuine improvement, therefore, suggests that flourishing is affected by more than what a pastor does on their day off.
Barna’s 2026 research adds another layer. Among American Protestant senior pastors, confidence in calling has recovered substantially. During the pandemic, only 35 per cent said they felt more confident in their calling than when they entered ministry. By 2026, that figure had risen to 58 per cent.
Yet vocational satisfaction has moved in the opposite direction. In 2015, 72 per cent of pastors described themselves as “very satisfied” with their vocation. In 2026, the proportion was 52 per cent. Satisfaction with a pastor’s ministry in their current church also declined: only 43 per cent were very satisfied, compared with 53 per cent in 2015.3
This is not a simple picture of pastors losing faith or abandoning their call. Many appear to retain—or recover—a strong conviction that God has called them to ministry while becoming less fulfilled by the work they are required to do each day.
That is why we need to distinguish identity, calling and role.
My identity is who I am in Christ. My calling is the Kingdom contribution to which God draws me. My role is a specific job title, with a specific set of responsibilities, within a specific context.
These need to be integrated, but they are not identical. A person can remain deeply called while being poorly fitted to their present role or caught in a ministry system that prevents them from exercising their best gifts.
All Christians are called to serve, but that general call does not, by itself, clarify whether a person is called and suited to the specific requirements of a particular role.
Barna identifies role structure as one plausible contributor: responsibilities that do not align with strengths, insufficient delegation and job expectations that no one person could sustainably fulfil.
The pastor may not be questioning the call. They may be questioning the job description.
Churches often respond to pastoral strain by encouraging the pastor to take better care of themselves: use their leave, establish boundaries, exercise, see a counsellor or find a spiritual director. Each of these is important.
The danger is that the church then treats wellbeing as the pastor’s private responsibility while leaving the conditions producing the strain untouched.
The effects of ministry do not stop at the pastor’s office door. Congregational hostility, blurred expectations, constant availability, financial pressure and repeated ministry relocations can spill into the home. Spouses and children may absorb costs generated by the church while having little voice in the system creating them.
A 2026 peer-reviewed study makes that problem especially clear. Drawing on seven waves of longitudinal data across fourteen years, Malik Muhammad Sohail, Bo-Hyeong Jane Lee and Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell examined 4,343 observations from United Methodist clergy. Higher occupational distress, a more hostile church environment, lower ministry satisfaction and weaker congregational support were all significantly associated with poorer marital satisfaction.4
This does not mean churches need to intrude into pastoral marriages or treat spouses as extensions of the employed minister. But it does mean churches and denominations need to be acutely aware that the family is often subsidising unsustainable ministry.
Healthy support protects the privacy, agency and wellbeing of the whole pastoral household.
There is also an emerging warning that wellbeing support may be too narrowly focused on senior leaders.
A 2026 North American survey of more than 3,300 worship leaders found that only 3.4 per cent described their mental health as excellent. This is striking and deeply concerning. Nearly four in five regularly experienced purpose in their role, but fewer than half regularly experienced joy or contentment. Eighty-seven per cent met regularly with neither a mental-health professional nor a spiritual director.5
These figures need to be treated as an early signal rather than a settled benchmark. The study used some measures that are not directly comparable with general-population datasets, and it cannot tell us why these patterns exist.
Even so, it draws attention to a group that churches can easily overlook: younger staff, worship leaders and other ministry-team members who carry public spiritual responsibility without the support structures sometimes available to senior pastors.
Pastoral wellbeing is therefore best understood as part of a leadership ecology. The health of the senior pastor matters profoundly, but so do the health of the team, the quality of governance, the expectations of the congregation, the distribution of authority and workload, and the availability of honest feedback and support.
The Australian National Church Life Survey is moving in this direction. Its 2026 survey programme explicitly includes sustainable leadership, thriving versus burnout, formation and mentoring. Its existing leader framework considers spiritual foundations, clarity of purpose, sense of self, integration, supportive relationships, balance and boundaries.6
Aotearoa still lacks frequent, nationally representative data focused specifically on pastoral wellbeing. The 2023 Church Life Survey New Zealand offers a valuable post-pandemic snapshot of church attendees, spiritual health and leadership across more than 500 churches, but it does not give us a current national picture of clergy flourishing comparable with the longitudinal Duke research.7
For denominational leaders, this means examining not only how pastors are personally supported, but also how appointments, role expectations, governance, conflict processes and ongoing leadership development contribute to, or diminish, their flourishing.
This is one of the reasons I am developing The Thriving Pastor Assessment—a holistic pastoral assessment tool. We need to assess more than whether a pastor is distressed; we need to understand how their identity, calling, role, relationships, competencies, conduct, character, theological grounding and wellbeing interact with the ministry environment surrounding them. The goal is not simply to identify what the pastor needs to change, but also what may need to change within the church system itself.
The latest research does not support either complacency or catastrophising. Some pastors are recovering. Confidence in calling is returning. We need to receive that as encouragement.
Lower exhaustion, however, is not the same as flourishing, and a pastor’s resilience must not become the means by which unhealthy church patterns are excused or minimised. It’s important to remember that:
A flourishing pastor is not simply one who can survive sustained pressure without collapsing. Flourishing includes a living relationship with God, an integrated sense of identity and calling, work that is appropriately aligned, mutual relationships, meaningful fruitfulness and enough margin to remain fully human.
The most useful questions for a church board or leadership team may therefore be these:
What are the Kingdom outcomes Jesus is calling our church to pursue, and how can we release our leaders to serve from their calling sweet spot? What are we doing that may be limiting either?
If we are willing to ask that honestly, the hopeful movement in the research need not remain someone else’s statistic. It can become part of the story of our churches too.
Barna Group. “New Research: Pastors’ Sense of Calling Is Up—Satisfaction Is Lagging.” May 5, 2026. https://www.barna.com/research/pastors-calling-satisfaction-research-2026/.
Black, Richard. “‘Houston, We Have a Problem’: Towards a Healthier and More Effective Model of Ministry.” BTh (Hons) research project, Laidlaw College Graduate School, 2023.
Duke Clergy Health Collaborative. “New State of Clergy Well-Being Report Reveals Historic First for Pastors’ Burnout.” June 17, 2026. https://clergyhealth.duke.edu/blog-post/new-state-clergy-well-being-report-reveals-historic-first-pastors-burnout/.
McDonald, B., P. Lineham, B. Mai, S. Owen, M. Scott, L. Taylor, M. Galt, and N. Brookes. Insights from the 2023 Church Life Survey New Zealand. Auckland: Church Life Survey NZ, 2023. https://clsnz.org/image/CLSNZ_Booklet.pdf.
NCLS Research. “Benefits for Church Leaders.” 2026 NCLS. Accessed August 31, 2026. https://2026ncls.org.au/for-denominations/benefits-for-church-leaders/.
NCLS Research. “Leader Surveys.” Accessed August 31, 2026. https://www.ncls.org.au/church-surveys/leader-surveys/.
Sohail, Malik Muhammad, Bo-Hyeong Jane Lee, and Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell. “Examining Marital Quality within the Clergy Profession: The Relationship between Occupational Stress, Positive Occupational Factors, and Marital Satisfaction.” Journal of Family Issues. Published online January 22, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X261418737.
Worship Leader Research. “Worship Leaders 8.5X Less Likely to Report Excellent Mental Health Than U.S. Adults.” March 24, 2026. https://worshipleaderresearch.com/worship-leaders-mental-health/.
