The Shepherd Also Needs a Shepherd: What Your Church Can Do for Its Pastor This October

By Daniel G. Loverde, M.Div. · Kingdom Vanguard News · Restore

Executive summary

In October many churches will honor their pastor with a card, a gift, and a round of applause. The 2026 evidence says the pastor needs something else more. One American pastor in four has seriously considered quitting in the last year. Two in three say they feel lonely at least sometimes, and the share with a peer or mentor they lean on has fallen by almost half in a decade. In England, four in ten clergy report feeling isolated in ministry, and in 2026, for the first time, more Church of England clergy resigned than retired. The consistent finding across studies is that the weight on a pastor comes less from the hours than from how the role is built: isolation, unclear boundaries, and being reachable around the clock. Scripture's answer to an exhausted servant of God is not applause but care: God met Elijah under the broom tree with sleep, bread, and a touch before he met him with a word (1 Kgs. 19:4–8). This article reads the evidence, draws on The Blueprint's account of the shepherd's calling and of a wilderness season in which "the body cannot rest," and gives a church board a free twelve-statement Shepherd Care Audit to use before October 11, so that appreciation becomes restoration.

1. The leadership challenge

Pastor Appreciation Month began in 1992, and Focus on the Family named the second Sunday of October as Pastor Appreciation Day two years later. [9] In 2026 that Sunday falls on October 11. Across the United States, and increasingly in Europe where the idea has traveled, churches will mark it. Most will do it kindly and most will do it quickly: a card signed by the congregation, a gift voucher, a bouquet on the platform, a minute of standing applause.

None of that is wrong. But consider what the pastor does with the applause on Monday morning. The phone is still on. The hospital visit is still due. The elder who has not spoken to him since the budget meeting has still not spoken to him. The sermon for Sunday is still unwritten, and there is still no one in the building he can tell that he is tired in a way that sleep does not fix.

A church that wants to care for its shepherd in October has to decide what kind of care it means. There is a kind that costs a gift card. There is another kind that costs the board a hard look at how the pastor's role is built, who he can be honest with, and whether anyone has asked. This article is about the second kind. What you will get from it is plain: what the current evidence says pastors actually need, what Scripture asks of a congregation toward the one who shepherds it, and a twelve-question audit your board can complete in one meeting before October 11.

2. What the current evidence shows

The pastor who has thought about leaving

Barna Group has asked American Protestant senior pastors the same question since the pandemic: have you seriously considered leaving full-time ministry in the past year? The share saying yes rose from 29 percent in January 2021 to 42 percent in March 2022, then fell to 33 percent in late 2023 and to 24 percent in December 2025. [2] That is real improvement, and it still means one pastor in four. The widely repeated line that "42 percent of pastors have considered quitting" is the 2022 peak, not the present; a church that quotes it in 2026 is three years out of date.

The improvement in the quitting question has not been matched by improvement in the loneliness question. In 2015, 42 percent of pastors told Barna they felt lonely frequently or sometimes; in 2022 it was 65 percent. Over the same years the share saying they received regular spiritual support from peers or a mentor fell from 37 percent to 22 percent. [3] The pastor is less likely to be planning to leave. He is not less alone.

How the weight is carried

Lifeway Research, in a 2025 study of more than 1,500 evangelical and Black Protestant pastors, found that 57 percent say the role often feels overwhelming, that two-thirds feel they must be reachable around the clock, and that 34 percent feel isolated. Among pastors who had left the pastorate, the reasons most often named were a change in calling, church conflict, and burnout. Yet the annual rate at which pastors actually leave ministry was 1.2 percent, almost unchanged from 2015. [4] Read those numbers together and the picture is not of a profession emptying out. It is of a profession in which most people stay, carrying a load that many describe as overwhelming, with fewer people to carry it alongside them than a decade ago.

The same pattern appears on the other side of the Atlantic. The Church of England's Living Ministry study followed more than a thousand clergy from 2017 to 2025. Its final panel survey, published in December 2025, found that 72 percent find their vocation fulfilling, and at the same time that 40 percent feel isolated in ministry and 16 percent show indications of probable depression. [5] The study's own summary is that ministry is "demanding yet vocational fulfilment is high." Fulfilled and isolated are not opposites; the evidence says many clergy are both at once. And in the year to May 2026 the Church of England reported, for the first time, that more clergy resigned (379) than retired (278). [6]

Two cautions belong here. First, "burnout" is measured differently by different instruments; a 2026 Spanish study of priests found that the burnout rate "varied depending on the assessment scale," which is a good reason for churches not to diagnose their pastor with a number. [7] Second, none of these surveys can see your pastor. They describe a population. Only your board can see the person.

What the evidence points to

Across these studies the load correlates less with hours than with structure: isolation, being always reachable, unclear decision rights, and the absence of anyone to be honest with. That is why Kingdom Vanguard's pastoral health work starts with how the role is built rather than how hard the person is carrying it; as our consulting page puts it, isolation and role design appear to bear on exhaustion more reliably than hours worked. [8] It is also why the fix cannot be one Sunday in October. A role is rebuilt by the people who designed it, and that is usually the board.

3. What Scripture calls the Church to recover

The shepherd is a person, not a function

The Blueprint traces the five gifts of Ephesians 4:11 to Christ's own ministry, and describes the fourth of them, the poimēn, as "the pastor who tends the flock, nurtures, protects, and heals those already within the community." [10] Jesus grounded that office in himself. He called himself the Good Shepherd, and after the resurrection he restored Peter with a question asked three times and a commission given three times: "Tend My lambs … Shepherd My sheep" (John 21:15–17). [11] The pastoral office, in other words, is not an administrative arrangement a congregation invented. It is a share in the heart of Christ for the vulnerable, delegated to a person.

That is exactly why the person matters. A function can be replaced when it wears out. A person who has been given a share in the Shepherd's heart is not a function, and Scripture never treats him as one. Peter, writing to elders as "your fellow elder," told them to "shepherd the flock of God among you," exercising oversight "not under compulsion, but voluntarily," and "not … as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock" (1 Pet. 5:1–3). The Blueprint notes that the contrast in that verse, between katakyrieuein and typos, "defines the New Testament's vision of authority: not domination but exemplarity." [12] An example is a life that can be seen. A life that can be seen can be seen to be exhausted, and a congregation that watches its shepherd carefully will notice before he says anything.

God's order of care: touch, bread, sleep, and then a word

The Bible's clearest picture of a burned-out servant of God is Elijah after Carmel. He had just seen fire fall from heaven, and a day later he "went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that he might die" (1 Kgs. 19:4). Note what God did not do first. He did not correct him, commission him, or explain the plan. "He lay down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, 'Arise, eat'" (1 Kgs. 19:5). Bread and water were at his head. He ate and slept again. The angel came a second time with the only diagnosis in the passage: "Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you" (1 Kgs. 19:7). Only after that, at Horeb, came "a sound of a gentle blowing" and the voice (1 Kgs. 19:12).

The literary context is a prophet at the end of himself after his greatest public victory, which is where many pastors quietly are after a large event, a building project, or a hard season handled well. The theological principle is that God treats the exhaustion of his servant as real and bodily before he treats it as spiritual, and that his first response is care, not instruction. The application is not complicated. A church that wants to imitate God's care for its pastor begins with rest, food, and human touch, in that order, and only then with words.

Jesus did the same with his own disciples. When they returned from their first mission full of reports, "He said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while'" (Mark 6:31), and the Gospel adds the reason: there were so many people coming and going that they did not even have time to eat. The Lord who sends also withdraws the sent. He builds rest into the rhythm of ministry as a command, not a reward.

A word from the wilderness

I write this as someone who was, for a season, the exhausted one. The Blueprint records a winter in Sweden in which "everything I had built collapsed at once," and a back injury that "compounded everything," because "when the body cannot rest, neither can the mind, and the enemy's whispering voice finds more purchase in exhausted, pain-clouded consciousness than it does in a person who is rested and whole." [13] What I learned there was that the real battle for a worn-out minister is rarely about obvious sin. It is "the daily, unglamorous, costly work of holding the ground of your identity in Christ when every pressure in your circumstances is pushing you toward a different identity — the identity of the one who failed, the one who was abandoned." [13] A congregation cannot fight that battle for its pastor. It can make sure he is not fighting it alone, unfed, and awake at three in the morning.

4. Pastoral interpretation

For a church board in the last week of September, three things follow.

First, ask before you honor. The kindest thing a board can do this October is to sit with the pastor before the appreciation Sunday and ask, without an agenda, three questions: What in this role is heavier than it should be? Who do you talk to honestly? What would rest look like for you this year? Most boards have never asked. Most pastors will not volunteer the answers.

Second, look at the design of the role, not the effort of the person. If the pastor is reachable around the clock, that is a policy the board can change. If he has no day that is reliably his, that is a calendar the board can protect. If every decision passes through him, that is a governance question, and the site's own rule applies: a church whose leadership is unwell should not be restructured, but a leadership role can be rebuilt so that the person in it becomes well.

Third, do not diagnose. Loneliness, exhaustion, and discouragement are things a board can notice and respond to. Depression is something a physician or licensed counselor assesses. The evidence above says roughly one clergyperson in six in the English study showed indications of probable depression. If your pastor's answers, or his silence, suggest that kind of weight, the loving response is to make professional help easy and paid for, not to solve it in a board meeting. Only 9 percent of American pastors hold a graduate counseling degree, and barely half keep a referral list; [4] a board that finds and funds one good counselor has done more for its pastor than any appreciation Sunday.

5. The prophetic challenge

The Church in this decade has produced a great deal of language about honoring leaders and very little structure for keeping them whole. We celebrate pastors publicly and consume them privately. A prophet would put it more sharply: we have learned to applaud the shepherd on the way to using him up. Ezekiel's word against the shepherds who fed themselves and not the flock (Ezek. 34) has a mirror image in our day, which is a flock that feeds on its shepherd and calls it appreciation.

The Lord's word to Elijah was not "try harder," and it was not "you are finished." It was "the journey is too great for you," which is both a diagnosis and a mercy. It admits that the load is real. Then it provides bread. A church that will say that sentence honestly to its pastor this October, and then act on it, will have done something the Spirit can breathe on. The Blueprint's closing counsel for builders applies to those who care for them: build "more slowly, perhaps. With more attention to what cannot be seen. With less concern for the speed of expansion and more concern for the depth of foundation." [14] The foundation of a congregation's ministry includes the health of the person who carries it.

And to any pastor reading this in a season that feels hidden and silent: "the silence is not necessarily the absence of a plan." [15] Elijah's silence under the broom tree was the place God chose to feed him.

6. A Kingdom Vanguard diagnosis

Restore (primary) — Is our pastor isolated, always reachable, and without anyone to be honest with? Has anyone asked? — Ask the three questions in §4 before October 11; act on the answers within the quarter.

Recalibrate — Is the role built so that one person holds every decision, every crisis, and every Sunday? — Rewrite two things in the role this autumn: a protected day, and one class of decisions that no longer needs the pastor.

Revitalize — Has the congregation's care for its leaders gone quiet, replaced by an annual event? — Name one ongoing practice of care (a monthly meal, a peer group funded by the church, a sabbatical policy) and give it an owner.

Restore comes first here by the site's own rule: nothing else in the church is rebuilt on top of a fractured leader.

7. Practical ministry framework: Ask, Rebuild, Sustain

Ask. Complete the Shepherd Care Audit below as a board, without the pastor in the room, then meet the pastor and ask the three questions. Compare what the board assumed with what he said.

Rebuild. Choose two structural changes to the role before the end of October: one about time (a protected day, a real holiday, a sabbatical policy with a date) and one about load (a decision, a rota, or an on-call expectation that moves off the pastor). Put a name and a date on each.

Sustain. Make care ordinary rather than annual. A funded peer group or mentor, a counselor the church will pay for, and a standing conversation between one board member and the pastor every quarter that is about him and not about the church.

8. Free leadership tool: Shepherd Care Audit

Purpose. Twelve statements that let a church board see how its pastor's role is built and how he is supported, before Pastor Appreciation Sunday. It is about the role and the church's care, not a judgment on the pastor.

Intended user. The board, elders, or council of a single congregation, completed without the pastor present, then discussed with him.

Instructions. Each board member answers alone. Rate each statement 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Mark N if you do not know; an honest N is a finding. Do not sign. Average each item.

Statements.

1. Our pastor has one day each week that is reliably his, and the church protects it.
2. Our pastor took his full holiday last year, and no one called him during it.
3. Our pastor is not expected to be reachable around the clock; there is a named person who takes emergencies on his day off and holidays.
4. Our pastor has at least one peer, mentor, or spiritual director outside this congregation whom he meets regularly, and the church funds it.
5. Someone on this board has asked our pastor, in the last twelve months and without an agenda, how he is really doing.
6. We know what our pastor would say if asked what in the role is heavier than it should be.
7. Decisions that do not require the pastor are made without him.
8. The church has a written sabbatical policy with a date, not only a good intention.
9. The church would pay for professional counseling for the pastor and his family, and he knows it.
10. Conflict in the church reaches the pastor through a process, not through his front door on a Sunday.
11. Our pastor's family is cared for as a family, not as an extension of his job.
12. If our pastor left tomorrow, we could say honestly that it was not because we wore him out.

Scoring. Add the twelve averaged scores (ignore N when averaging; if more than a third of the board marked N on an item, the item is your first conversation). Maximum 60.

Interpretation.

48–60: The role is well built. Ask which item was lowest; that is October's work.
36–47: Some things are protected and some are not. Look at items 3, 4, and 5 first.
24–35: The role is probably carrying the person rather than the person carrying the role. Start with items 1, 3, and 5 this month.
Below 24: Do not wait for October 11. Meet the pastor this week, ask the three questions, and make one change before the month ends.

Recommended actions. Whatever the total, act on items 4 and 5 (someone outside and someone inside) before anything else. Any item where board members' answers spread by more than two points should be discussed before it is scored.

Limitations. This is a board's reading of a role, not a measure of a person's health, and it has no norms or established reliability. It cannot detect depression, burnout, or crisis, and it does not measure faithfulness or calling.

Pastoral cautions. If anything in the conversation suggests your pastor is in danger, contact local emergency services and your denomination's safeguarding officer today. Matters of conduct belong with your safeguarding process, not this audit. Do not use this tool in a review or personnel file; it is for care.

Next step. If the board wants a fuller reading of leadership health, the free Leadership Health Assessment at kingdomvanguard.com is answered three ways (the leader on himself, the team on the leader, the congregation on the leadership as a body) and prints four refusals on its face: not an appraisal, not a safeguarding process, not a diagnosis, not a verdict on a person.

9. Common mistakes

Treating appreciation Sunday as the care plan. Diagnosing the pastor with a statistic. Asking the pastor to design his own rest. Restructuring a tired leadership team instead of rebuilding the role. Making the pastor's family part of the job description. Quoting "42 percent" in 2026.

10. Measures of progress

By the end of January: the three questions asked and the answers written down; two structural changes made with names and dates; a funded peer relationship or counselor in place; items 3, 4, and 5 re-scored by the same board. Not measured: how grateful the pastor seemed on October 11.

11. Questions for your leadership team

When did a board member last ask our pastor how he is, with no other item on the agenda?
Which of the twelve audit statements did we score lowest, and who on the board is responsible for it?
What would we change in the role if we believed the evidence that isolation and constant availability weigh more than hours?
Who takes the emergency call on our pastor's day off? If the answer is "the pastor," why?
Has our congregation been feeding on its shepherd? How would we know?
What did Elijah need first, and what would that be for our pastor?
What will we do in November that we did not do in September?

12. Your next thirty days

Week 1 (before September 30): The board completes the Shepherd Care Audit alone and averages the sheets.

Week 2: Two board members meet the pastor and ask the three questions; nothing else on the agenda.

Week 3: The board chooses one time change and one load change, with an owner and a date, and decides how the church will pay for a peer group or counselor.

Week 4 (by October 11): The changes are told to the pastor before the appreciation Sunday, so that the applause comes after the care rather than instead of it.

13. How Kingdom Vanguard can help

You do not have to navigate this alone. If your board's audit shows a role that has been carrying the person, our Pastoral Health and Leadership Consulting is confidential work on the parts of the role that are organizational rather than spiritual: load, delegation, isolation, boundaries, and decision rights. It is consulting and coaching, not licensed mental-health treatment, and we refer rather than improvise. The first conversation is free. If the board wants a fuller reading first, the Leadership Health Assessment costs nothing and publishes its method before anyone answers. Request a conversation; we reply within two working days. We will not promise that your pastor will stay. We will help you build a role a person can carry.

14. Prayer for church leaders

Lord Jesus, Good Shepherd, you know the weight of the people you have given us to lead, because you carried it first. We bring you our pastor. Where he is tired in a way that sleep does not fix, send the touch, the bread, and the rest you sent Elijah. Where he is alone, give him a brother or sister he can be honest with. Where we have built his role so that it cannot be carried, forgive us, and give us the courage to rebuild it. Guard his family. Guard his identity in you against every voice that says he has failed. And teach this congregation to feed its shepherd as you feed us. Amen.

Notes

1. Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), unless otherwise indicated.

2. Barna Group, "Are Pastors Still Quitting? What the Data Says in 2026," 2026, https://www.barna.com/trends/pastors-quitting-ministry-barna-data/; sample sizes and dates for the 2021–2023 waves are given in Barna Group, "Hopeful Increases in Pastors' Confidence," 2024, https://www.barna.com/research/hopeful-increases-pastors/.

3. Barna Group, "Pastors' Support Systems Are Weakening," https://www.barna.com/research/pastor-support-systems/. The 2015 wave surveyed 901 pastors; the 2022 wave 585.

4. Lifeway Research, 2025 pastor attrition study, reported in Kate Shellnutt, "Pastors Aren't Leaving Ministry in Droves," Christianity Today, June 2025, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/06/pastor-leave-church-rate-ministry-burnout-survey/; and Lifeway Research, Beyond the Pulpit insights report, February 19, 2026, reported in "Lifeway Research's 'Beyond the Pulpit' Insights Report Equips Church Leaders to Pursue Pastoral Wellness," Biblical Recorder, February 2026, https://www.brnow.org/news/lifeway-researchs-beyond-the-pulpit-insights-report-equips-church-leaders-to-pursue-pastoral-wellness/. [Verification note: Lifeway's own pages blocked automated retrieval; a person must open them before publication.]

5. Fiona Tweedie and Liz Graveling Fox, with Charlotte Hobson and Elaine Farrow, Lord, for the Years: Living Ministry Wave 5 Panel Survey Report (London: Church of England, December 2025). Figures verified from the report PDF held in the Kingdom Vanguard references register; page numbers to be added at proof. Summary at Church of England, "Living Ministry Research," https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/diocesan-resources/ministry/formation/living-ministry/living-ministry-research.

6. Church of England, Ministry Statistics 2025 (May 2026), as reported in "Save the Parish Report Warns of 'Existential' Fall in Church of England Parish Clergy," Christian Daily International, September 2026, https://www.christiandaily.com/news/save-the-parish-report-warns-of-existential-fall-in-church-of-england-parish-clergy. [Verification note: the Ministry Statistics PDF itself has not been opened.]

7. Pedro Picornell-Gallar and Eva González-Fraile, "Burnout in Catholic Priests: A Cross-Sectional Study," Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling (April 2026), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15423050261438496. [Verification note: abstract only; full title and pagination to be confirmed at proof.]

8. Kingdom Vanguard, "Pastoral Health and Leadership Consulting," Consulting, kingdomvanguard.com, accessed September 22, 2026, https://kingdomvanguard.com/#/consulting.

9. Carolyn Tomlin, "Pastor Appreciation Month Has History," Baptist and Reflector, October 22, 2025, https://baptistandreflector.org/pastor-appreciation-month-has-history/.

10. Daniel G. Loverde, The Blueprint: Rediscovering the Kingdom of God and God's Original Design for Humanity, 3rd ed. (independently published, 2026), 189.

11. Loverde, The Blueprint, 195–96.

12. Loverde, The Blueprint, 245.

13. Loverde, The Blueprint, 297–98.

14. Loverde, The Blueprint, 330.

15. Loverde, The Blueprint, 22.

Bibliography

Barna Group. "Are Pastors Still Quitting? What the Data Says in 2026." 2026. https://www.barna.com/trends/pastors-quitting-ministry-barna-data/.

———. "Hopeful Increases in Pastors' Confidence." 2024. https://www.barna.com/research/hopeful-increases-pastors/.

———. "Pastors' Support Systems Are Weakening." https://www.barna.com/research/pastor-support-systems/.

Biblical Recorder. "Lifeway Research's 'Beyond the Pulpit' Insights Report Equips Church Leaders to Pursue Pastoral Wellness." February 2026. https://www.brnow.org/news/lifeway-researchs-beyond-the-pulpit-insights-report-equips-church-leaders-to-pursue-pastoral-wellness/.

Christian Daily International. "Save the Parish Report Warns of 'Existential' Fall in Church of England Parish Clergy." September 2026. https://www.christiandaily.com/news/save-the-parish-report-warns-of-existential-fall-in-church-of-england-parish-clergy.

Church of England. "Living Ministry Research." https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/diocesan-resources/ministry/formation/living-ministry/living-ministry-research.

Kingdom Vanguard. "Consulting." Accessed September 22, 2026. https://kingdomvanguard.com/#/consulting.

Loverde, Daniel G. The Blueprint: Rediscovering the Kingdom of God and God's Original Design for Humanity. 3rd ed. Independently published, 2026.

Picornell-Gallar, Pedro, and Eva González-Fraile. "Burnout in Catholic Priests: A Cross-Sectional Study." Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling (April 2026). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15423050261438496.

Shellnutt, Kate. "Pastors Aren't Leaving Ministry in Droves." Christianity Today, June 2025. https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/06/pastor-leave-church-rate-ministry-burnout-survey/.

Tomlin, Carolyn. "Pastor Appreciation Month Has History." Baptist and Reflector, October 22, 2025. https://baptistandreflector.org/pastor-appreciation-month-has-history/.

Tweedie, Fiona, and Liz Graveling Fox, with Charlotte Hobson and Elaine Farrow. Lord, for the Years: Living Ministry Wave 5 Panel Survey Report. London: Church of England, December 2025.