Compared to a decade ago, pastors have less training in counseling but are more hesitant to refer church members to professionals.
A recent Lifeway Research study examining the rate at which evangelical and Black Protestant pastors leave the ministry also asked pastors about their experience with counseling, both in their ministry preparation and practice.
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Sponsored by Houston’s First Baptist Church and Richard Dockins, an occupational medicine physician concerned about pastoral attrition, the study found pastors are less engaged with counseling resources over the past decade and more isolated in their own struggles.
“We are seeing a simultaneous decline in pastors developing their counseling skills, having lay counseling ministries and being ready to refer people to counselors they trust,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “If only one of those were down, we would say pastors’ methods were changing, but counseling appears to be getting less attention in general.”
Practice
When counseling church members of the opposite sex, 75% of pastors have another staff member present, while 14% do not. Another 6% say they don’t counsel, and 3% don’t counsel members of the opposite sex. The percentage who counsel with another staff member present dropped slightly from 78% in both 2015 and 2021.
Male pastors (79%) are much more likely than female pastors (47%) to have another staff member present. Additionally, pastors ages 45-54 (82%) and those in the South (80%) are among the most likely to counsel with another staff member in the room.
Most pastors follow best practices and refer a member to a professional counselor if the situation requires more than two sessions. Almost 3 in 4 (72%) say they refer someone after a couple of visits, but that’s down from 2015 (76%) and 2021 (77%).
Pastors of large churches, those with 250 or more in attendance, are the most likely to refer after two sessions (81%). Denominationally, Holiness (85%) and Restorationist Movement pastors (82%) are more likely to refer than Lutherans (70%) or Baptists (66%).
Additionally, the number of pastors maintaining a list of counselors to whom they can refer people has steadily dropped over the past decade. In 2015, 2 in 3 pastors (67%) had such a list, but that fell to 60% in 2021 and down to almost half (52%) in 2025.
For more information, view the complete report and visit LifewayResearch.com.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Aaron Earls and originally published by Lifeway.
