Barna Group's research on pastoral well-being found that 38% of U.S. pastors have considered quitting full-time ministry within the past year — a number that jumped nine points in a single year during a season of unusual strain. Even more sobering: only 35% of pastors qualify as fully "healthy," meaning they score well across all six categories Barna measures — spiritual, physical, emotional, and vocational health among them.
That's not a story about weak leaders. It's a story about leaders who were sent to pour out before anyone made sure they had anything left to pour.
The Pattern Isn't Limited to Pulpits
We work with pastors, but we also work with marketplace leaders, nonprofit founders, and volunteers carrying more than their title suggests — and the pattern is identical. The people everyone else brings their needs to rarely have anyone bringing that same care back to them.
Barna's data even breaks down who's most at risk: pastors under 45 are considering quitting at a higher rate (46%) than those over 45 (34%), and pastors who've been in ministry roughly 20 years but at their current church for closer to 7 show up disproportionately in the "considering resignation" group. In other words — this isn't a young-and-inexperienced problem. It's a depleted problem, and depletion doesn't check your résumé first.
You Cannot Pour From an Empty Well
"I've been the well everyone came to draw from, and I've been the well that ran dry. The difference was never how much I was pouring out. It was whether anyone was pouring back into me."
— Omar J. Fandino, Founder of Living Water Network · echoes Psalm 23:2-3
That's not just a line on our coaching page — it's the conviction underneath everything Living Water Network does. Formation always comes before activation, in our language. Before you're sent to lead, you have to actually be formed, and formation has to keep happening while you lead, not just before you started.
Two of our programs exist specifically for leaders living inside this statistic right now:
Personal Coaching with founder Omar Fandino works through the same six-sphere formation model behind Groundwork — spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, relational, and stewardship health — one-on-one, at whatever pace your season actually allows. Explore coaching.
Personalized Counseling goes further into the parts of leadership that don't show up on a resume: burnout, grief, the wounds performance has been quietly covering up. Learn about counseling.
An Honest Word
If you recognize yourself in that 38% — if you've thought about walking away, not because you stopped believing in the work but because you're running on fumes — that thought isn't disqualifying. It's data. It's telling you something true: the well is low, and it's time to let someone pour into you for once.
Source: 38% of U.S. Pastors Have Thought About Quitting Full-Time Ministry in the Past Year, Barna Group