Top 10 Reasons Why Ministers Quit: #9

Here is the 9th reason why preachers and other ministers give up:

Church Hoppers

Every time someone leaves the preacher’s church to join another church is a moment of crisis for the preacher.

It’s like when a company has spent money and resources to train a good employee, only for that employee to leave the company for greener grass somewhere else. In the same way, ministers pour their hearts, time, efforts and expertise into members only to watch them hop over to the next (better) church.

It was the little preacher who took the time to teach that person just everything the person now knows about the Bible, about prayer, about the Lord’s work, about finding his/her calling. Then the person feels too important to be in this little church and hops over to the big preacher’s church, the more prestigious church, the church with bigger and better facilities. And the church hopper doesn’t even realize the emotional damage that little preacher is left to sort out.

In the process of accepting this reality of being abandoned and left to dry, the preacher begins to soul-search and self-examine: “What did I do wrong? What’s wrong with me? What could I have done differently? What do I need to change? Why do I keep losing people?”

The minister begins to feel that the other minister who got his member must somehow be better than he. The preacher who loses the member feels inferior, and it will take a while before he recovers and gets his confidence back.

Of course, the typical church hopper may be blind to all this, or the church hopper may have secretly hoped that the hopped over minister would suffer this emotional pain.

Replay the church hopping drama several times, and a minister could become the casualty.

Church hoppers are often minister choppers.