Clergy Burnout and the Cure of Souls

Overworked, Under-supported, and Close to Collapse

A few weeks ago, I wrote this piece on Deep Formation, which was generally well-received. But I did get some push-back about what I identified as a cause of clergy burnout. In this post, I try to address those concerns.

When I began ministry in the Church of England sixteen years ago, after serving in the United States, one of my first observations was how stretched our clergy were. This strain showed itself in two significant ways. The more obvious was the relentless cycle of leading worship across multiple parishes while also meeting demands for baptisms, weddings and funerals — what we affectionately call “hatch, match and dispatch”. For many communities, this remains their primary engagement with the Church, expecting their vicar to be available for life's milestones while otherwise remaining disconnected from parish life. That alone is exhausting work.

But there is a quieter, more insidious weariness. It’s the slow erosion of hope that comes from ministering in a landscape of long-term decline. Many clergy spend their entire careers performing the same sacred routines — Sunday services, occasional offices, pastoral visits, civic duties — while the pews grow emptier, the buildings wear down, and the finances dry up. Some serve multiple churches, where the few remaining worshippers barely fill the choir stalls, let alone the sanctuary. The work still holds profound meaning, but the emotional cost is steep.

In my time serving both the Church of England and the Church in Wales, I’ve seen these pressures mount, particularly after the pandemic. Depression, frustration, low morale, and burnout are no longer the exception; they’re quietly becoming the norm. Stories of discouraged, exhausted, even broken clergy are multiplying, yet the deeper, systemic causes often go unaddressed. In our desperate desire to keep churches open, we’ve created structures that ask the impossible of our clergy. They’re left to carry overwhelming burdens alone.

If you dig beneath the surface, you find that the roots of this crisis go deeper than declining attendance or administrative overload. What we’re really seeing is the gradual loss of something profound — the traditional understanding of the cure of souls. Clergy are ordained to be shepherds, not bureaucrats; pastors, not managers. Yet increasingly, the modern Church has siphoned their energy towards tasks that pull them away from their true calling: the healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling of souls. They’ve become like doctors so consumed with keeping their clinics open that they’ve no time to practise medicine.

If we’re serious about confronting this crisis, we need to rethink our priorities. The Church needs structures that free clergy to be what they were called to be: pastors and spiritual guides, not institutional caretakers. We must reclaim the rhythms of prayer, sacramental life, and deep engagement with Scripture as central to ministry. Above all, we must remember that clergy aren’t mere functionaries but human beings entrusted with sacred work — work that requires nourishment and renewal just as much as sacrifice and service.

The Impact of Long-Term Decline

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with ministering in a church where decline has become the norm. Many clergy serve in parishes that have been shrinking for decades, where the culture quietly assumes that dwindling numbers are inevitable. I remember attending a clergy gathering some years ago and asking the group if anyone had ever been part of a growing church. The silence that followed was striking. The psychological toll of working under that shadow is profound.

Decline is more than empty pews; it creates a kind of emotional gravity, pulling congregations inward. People become protective of what little remains, and change — even the kind aimed at renewal — can feel like a threat. Clergy often arrive in these parishes with enthusiasm and vision, only to meet a quiet but persistent resistance. It’s not obstinacy; it’s fatigue. Many congregants have seen bold initiatives come and go, each one promising renewal, each one fading quietly into the background. The pressure to "reverse decline" is often imposed from above, but without the necessary resources or shared sense of mission, that pressure becomes a slow squeeze on the spirit.

And then there are the buildings. Walk into many churches today, and you feel the weight of history pressing down. The high ceilings and weathered stones speak of another era when these places were full, vibrant, alive. Today, those same spaces can feel almost haunted, not by ghosts but by memories of faded glory. It evokes the feeling of wandering through the ruins of a once-great city — a place that hints at former grandeur while quietly suggesting that the best days are behind it.

That quiet resignation takes its toll. Clergy in these contexts often feel as though they’re trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teaspoon. The work remains meaningful, but over time, the slow erosion of hope can wear a person down. Some begin to wonder if they’re really called to this work after all. Others simply grow weary, their energy fading like the congregations they serve.

The Burden of Multi-Parish Ministry

One of the greatest challenges facing clergy today is the sheer weight of responsibility placed upon them, particularly in rural areas. Having ministered in both the U.S. and the U.K., I’ve been struck by how much more demanding ministry is here relative to the size of the congregations. The numbers don’t add up. The workload feels relentless.

Imagine being a priest responsible for five, ten, or even fifteen churches. Sundays become logistical feats — a carefully choreographed sprint between parishes for multiple services. Layer on top of that PCC meetings, funerals, school visits, pastoral emergencies, and the myriad unseen responsibilities that clergy are still expected to perform in contexts often entirely unrelated to each other. I once served in a benefice where two villages, though geographically close, were separated by a range of hills and no public transport links. The best will in the world was never going to combine their ministry into one.

The historic parish system — built for a time when each village had its own vicar — is showing its age. Today, shrinking congregations, ageing communities, and diminishing finances have stretched that model to its limits. Each church has its own personality, its own traditions, its own pastoral needs. Clergy crisscross between these communities, never having quite enough time to know any one flock as deeply as they’d like. And because most churchgoers now don’t attend worship on a weekly basis, it can take clergy months just to recognise them, never mind get to know them.

The pressure only intensifies during vacancies. Clergy retire or move on, and those left behind absorb their responsibilities without reinforcements. In some places, one or two priests now conduct the ministry that once required four or five. As a result, urgent needs take precedence, while longer-term spiritual care gets pushed further down the list.

What’s lost in all this busyness is the heart of the vocation. Many priests find themselves reduced to "sacramental dispensers" — rushing from one church to another to perform the rituals of baptism, marriage, and burial, without the time to nurture genuine discipleship or provide sustained pastoral care. Many end up functioning more like overworked administrators than shepherds of souls.

When Bureaucracy Overshadows Ministry

As if the demands of multi-parish ministry weren’t enough, clergy today are also contending with a rising tide of administrative tasks — many of which feel profoundly disconnected from the heart of their vocation. Safeguarding compliance, property maintenance, financial reporting, risk assessments in multi-church contexts— the to-do list grows ever longer even as the volunteers to help with them grows shorter, transforming priests into reluctant managers rather than spiritual guides.

Digital communication, once hailed as a tool for efficiency, has only added to the deluge. Unanswered emails and texts pile up. WhatsApp groups buzz at all hours. Social media requires constant tending. Online services, born of necessity during the pandemic, now demand ongoing attention. The lines between work and personal life blur until they disappear altogether. Priests increasingly find themselves tethered to screens rather than walking alongside their parishioners.

In theory, administration should support ministry. In practice, it often feels like the opposite. Hours once spent visiting the sick or preparing sermons are now consumed by paperwork and meetings. The inbox becomes the pulpit; the spreadsheet, the gospel text.

The result is a growing sense of dissonance — a quiet erosion of purpose. Many clergy entered ministry to serve, to shepherd, to embody God’s presence in their communities. Instead, they find themselves drowning in bureaucracy. The burnout that follows isn’t merely about being overworked; it’s about being pulled away from the very thing that called them to this life in the first place.

The Isolation of Ministry

Ministry, for all its communal nature, can be an achingly lonely vocation. Unlike most professions, clergy often live and work in the same space — the vicarage — which can be a draughty old house or a soulless affair built in the 70s: in either case, ill-suited to modern living. There are no office watercoolers, no regular team meetings, no easy camaraderie with colleagues. For many priests, the daily work of ministry unfolds in solitude.

Even when priests do have neighbouring clergy, the relentless demands of the job leave little time for meaningful fellowship. Each day is a delicate balancing act between pastoral care, liturgical preparation, community obligations, and the ever-growing pile of administrative work. The weight of expectation is constant, and the lack of peer support leaves many feeling like they’re carrying it alone.

This quiet isolation doesn’t only affect the clergy. Their families, too, are drawn into the rhythms and burdens of ministry. Diocesan structures often overlook these households, offering little in the way of support. The reality is that many priests are living right on the edge — one personal crisis away from breaking point, stretched so thin that even life’s ordinary challenges can feel overwhelming.

In a culture that values resilience, there’s little space for vulnerability. But the truth is, no one can pour from an empty cup. Without deeper connection and support, the isolation of ministry risks becoming more than a personal burden; it becomes a quiet unravelling, hidden behind the closed doors of the vicarage.

A Shared Responsibility

It’s tempting to see clergy burnout as a personal failing — a matter of grit and resilience. But the truth is more complicated. Responsibility doesn’t rest solely with individual priests; diocesan structures play a decisive role in shaping the conditions of ministry, either easing the burdens or compounding them.

Too often, clergy are placed in situations where expectations far exceed available resources. They’re asked to inspire growth without meaningful support, manage multiple parishes without adequate staffing, and wade through administrative demands that leave little time for pastoral care. The words of Luke 11:46 feel uncomfortably apt: “You load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.”

What emerges is a quiet but troubling message: that the problem lies not in the structures clergy are asked to navigate but in their inability to endure them. The Church’s emphasis on resilience, while well-meaning, risks becoming a kind of institutional gaslighting. In the absence of real structural change, it can sound less like encouragement and more like a subtle suggestion that those who falter simply weren’t strong or dedicated enough.

If we’re serious about sustaining those called to serve, we must recognize that burnout isn’t just about individual priests struggling to keep up. It’s about a system that has normalized impossible expectations. Change doesn’t begin with asking clergy to dig deeper. It begins with lifting some of the weight.

A Way Forward

If we’re serious about addressing clergy burnout, we must start by acknowledging a hard truth: sustainable ministry demands more than heroic endurance from individual priests — it requires systemic change. For too long, the Church has functioned in a state of quiet desperation, grasping at whatever structures might keep the doors open and the liturgies running, often at the expense of those entrusted with the cure of souls. The desire to ensure worship continues is understandable, even noble. But when that impulse leads to placing clergy in impossible positions, burdened with expectations they cannot hope to meet, it ceases to be an act of faith and becomes a form of institutional self-preservation.

We need to rethink how we allocate our resources. No priest should be expected to shepherd a dozen parishes singlehandedly, nor should they be buried under a mountain of administrative tasks that pull them away from the very people they’re called to serve. We must streamline these processes and create structures that allow clergy to focus on pastoral and sacramental ministry. Equally, we need to cultivate a culture where support for clergy is not just a sentiment but a lived reality — through genuine opportunities for rest, ongoing formation, and meaningful community.

Most of all, we need to remember why the Church exists. It is not for the mere survival of its institutions but for the proclamation of the Gospel. If we truly believe that, then we cannot allow those called to serve to be left carrying the weight alone, quietly burning out while the rest of us watch. The words of Christ remain as urgent as ever: “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) May we, as a Church, learn to embody that invitation — not only for the sake of our clergy but for the sake of the Gospel itself.