Survey Uncovers What Pastors Can’t Stand About Their Churches

When I was a pastor, I learned to dread Monday mornings. Not because of the exhaustion or the emotional hangover, but because invariably there would be a message from some disgruntled congregant who was ticked off by something from the services the day before.

There was always a message.

Someone thought the music was too loud. Someone else didn’t like the Bible translation I quoted. Someone thought the sermon went too long. Someone else thought it didn’t go long enough.

And occasionally, someone just wanted to let me know I’d disappointed them… again.

I still remember one Monday in particular. I opened my inbox to find a long email from a church member who had taken issue with my sermon illustration. I referenced a scene from a Pixar movie to make a point about grief and hope. She told me movies were “a distraction from the Word” and that quoting from secular media was “a slippery slope toward heresy.” She copied in two elders for good measure.

I sat there, staring at the screen, trying to decide whether to defend myself, apologize, or just close the laptop and walk away from ministry altogether.

A good Sunday was one where no one complained. A rare Sunday.

And after a while, you begin to wonder if the reason pastors are burning out has less to do with the demands of preaching the gospel, and more to do with fielding the endless feedback of the perpetually unimpressed.

That’s the life of many a pastor.

What pastors hate about people in the church

A fascinating recent survey conducted by Lifeway Research gathered input from 1,000 Protestant ministers in the United States. They were asked to share their personal perspectives on the most challenging dynamics they face among the people they need. In other words, what ticks pastors off about their congregations.

It revealed that people with strong opinions about non-essential things (like the version of the Bible the pastor uses, the volume of the music, or the length of the sermon) absolutely drive pastors nuts. 48% of the pastors surveyed said this was a significant challenge for them in their ministry.

But, believe it or not, that’s not the most challenging people dynamic that pastors face.

Not even close.

The most challenging people dynamic that pastors face, according to pastors themselves, is people’s apathy or lack of commitment. 75% of pastors said this was one of their greatest challenges.

Scott McConnell, the executive director of Lifeway Research, astutely observed, “While many individuals may hold membership within a church, active participation in the church’s work is not always a given.” Pastors, despite occasionally encountering churchgoers with assertive opinions, express deeper concern for those within their congregations who display an apparent lack of enthusiasm or engagement.

And there seems to be plenty of them.

Some of the other challenges that pastors listed as most significant were peoples’ resistance to change, people’s political views, and people with unrealistic expectations of the pastor.

Source: Lifeway Research

But while pastors deal with a range of frustrations, it’s the quiet, creeping presence of apathy that seems to cut the deepest , not because it’s loud or disruptive, but because it signals something far more difficult to fix.

Apathy and church

Walk into your average church service on a Sunday and take a look around. Go on! I dare you. What you will notice is that most people look bored.

Pastors seem to be able to identify it as an issue, but no one seems to be asking why. Why are people apathetic about church?

In fact, the church seems far more concerned with apostasy than apathy. If you want to get some attention in church, say something blasphemous, or do something sinful. But, if you dutifully turn up each week, sit in your pew, and put your offering in the plate, no one will have a problem with you even if you snore all the way through the sermon.

It doesn’t seem to matter that you’re feeling spiritually dead inside.

Sometimes I wonder if the safest place during a zombie apocalypse might be the church because it’s already full of the living dead. When I run the question, “Why are people so bored in church?” through a Google search, I am presented with a whole lot of articles that point an accusing finger firmly at the Christian sitting in the pew. If only your average born-again Joe was more committed or more “on fire” for Jesus.

No one seems to be questioning the system.

However, I want to humbly suggest that there might be a few systemic issues that might contribute to Christian apathy about the church.

It’s irrelevant

Here’s a basic truth about communication: if people believe something is genuinely relevant to their lives, they pay attention. Whether it’s a TED Talk, a documentary, or a conversation with a friend — if it connects with their lived experience, they lean in.

The church claims to offer the most important message the world will ever hear, a message of eternal significance, hope, and transformation. So why do so few people seem to care?

There are really only two possibilities. Either the message is flawed. Or the message is being delivered in a way that strips it of its power. That is, it’s been flattened, dulled, and domesticated until it no longer feels like it touches real life.

And that brings us to the next problem.

It’s bland

Let’s pretend for a moment that the message is right. Most churches still choose to deliver their message using some of the scientifically proven least effective ways of communicating — namely, a lecture-style oration delivered by a so-called expert from behind a lectern.

And research supports that view. In fact, within hours of hearing the sermon, you’re likely to remember around 5% of what you were taught — about the same rate as for university lectures.

Christian Blogger, Thom Schulz, did an experiment where he interviewed church-goers on Wednesdays to ask them what they remembered from the previous weekend’s sermons. It’s an older video now, but it displays — in quite a comical way — how most people simply don’t remember the last sermon they heard.

Sermon Memory

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videopress.com

This speaks for itself.

It’s not good news

So much of the church’s messaging centers around the idea that you are a miserable, wretched sinner, and the only way you can be saved is through putting your trust in Jesus, who was brutally tortured and killed by God the Father instead of you.

Personally, I think a big reason why many people have disengaged from the Christian faith is that the Christian faith has become so enmeshed with the doctrines of sin, punishment, and hell, that it’s simply hard to speak about it as “Good News.” In fact, to hold to the idea that it is “Good News” that anyone who does not receive Christ is destined for an eternal future in firey torment requires a certain level of denial of what would appear to be common sense.

I’ve wrestled with this theology. Hard. Especially the idea that a God who is supposedly love itself would create human beings, knowing most of them would end up in eternal torment, and then call it justice.

And I’m not the only one. Many Christians, if you press them, will admit they have serious questions about Hell, about penal substitution, about the dissonance between Jesus’ compassion and the violence baked into the theology that bears his name. But most don’t feel safe enough to voice those doubts. They’re told questioning these things is dangerous. That it’s the start of a slippery slope.

But what if the slope leads somewhere better?

What if people are walking away from church not because they don’t care, but because they care too much to keep pretending this version of the gospel makes moral sense?

I think we need to stop asking why people are leaving and start asking why the gospel we’re preaching stopped sounding like good news in the first place.

It’s repetitive

There are only so many times a person can be told that they are a miserable sinner in need of saving before they start to switch off. Fear and shame are powerful short-term motivators. But, they do not produce fruit that lasts in the long term. Love works much better.

It’s exhausting

Despite the fact that Christians say they believe that we are saved by grace through faith through no work of our own, many churches still push a performance-based version of Christianity.

Their sermons reflect this. They start by explaining how we do life wrong and then present three points on how to do life better. By better, I mean in a way that is supposedly more pleasing to God. As for me, I have decided that God is already pleased, and I don’t have to waste energy trying to please him some more.

It’s exhausting trying to constantly manage my behavior and thoughts through the lens of whether or not they are “pleasing to God.” I prefer to treat my mind as a safe haven for me to think about whatever I want, and I try to run my actions through one simple criterion: Is this a loving thing to do?

I’ve never met anyone who got excited about behavior management.

No surprises here

It’s not easy being a pastor. I have enormous respect for those still showing up and doing the work.

But I’m not surprised that so many report a disengaged, apathetic congregation.

They’ve inherited a model of church that doesn’t work for this moment. A communication style that doesn’t connect. A theology that creates dissonance. And a culture that talks about grace but often operates through guilt.

So when people disconnect — not just from church, but from the whole system — maybe we shouldn’t be asking, “What’s wrong with them?”

Maybe we should be asking, “What have we built that so many people no longer want to be part of?”

And if the inbox is empty on Monday morning, maybe that’s not a sign things went well.

Maybe it’s a sign they’ve already tuned out.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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