By Dr Hannah Vaughan-Spruce
Fr David Boyd, a parish priest of two parishes in Erskine in west Scotland, describes the moment when he reached breaking point in his priesthood. Newly arrived at two merged parishes, Fr David had been ‘run ragged’ for months, trying to meet the expectations of parishioners who wanted the same level of service from one priest they had previously received from two. He felt increasingly like a ‘sacrament machine’. Then on one fateful weekend, he celebrated two Baptisms where both families made it clear they would not be coming back to church. This was the moment where Fr David describes feeling ‘destroyed’. Leaving for a holiday in Spain, he says he was close to emotionally ‘checking out’ of his priestly vocation.
Today, parish priests with single parishes are a rare species. Few Catholic lay people in Britain are untouched by the decline that has been building for decades and is now being experienced in the closure and amalgamation of parishes. Fr David’s story is by no means unique: priests find themselves at the sharp end of this upheaval. A 2023 survey of pastors in the USA revealed that more than half had thought seriously of leaving ministry at least once since 2020. The reasons given sound depressingly familiar: congregations are smaller, those who remain are elderly, numbers of volunteers are dwindling and increasingly overwhelmed. This is not affecting priests only: lay leaders in Catholic parishes find themselves spread increasingly thin and describe being exhausted.
Unsurprisingly, the words “burnout”, “fatigue” and even “collective trauma” are heard among Catholic parish priests. Joe Jensen, Barna’s Vice President of Church Engagement, told Christianity Today that extensive cultural change is certainly one of the causes of these experiences. “All the chaos, all the pressure, the magnifying glass of social media, the pandemic, the politics, the hyper-digital context, it makes sense that you have a lot of pastors saying, ‘Is this really what I signed up for? Is this what I was called into?’”
In Fr David’s story, we see ingredients for two types of burnout that are commonly referenced. The first is exhaustion from sheer volume of work. Declining numbers mean that those still active and with any capacity for leadership – a shrinking number – find themselves overburdened not only with multiple parishes but also with multiple diocesan roles.
The second type comes from a loss of purpose. When a priest’s daily experience is one of ‘parish palliative care’ – closing buildings, canonically dissolving parishes, merging bank accounts, and acting as chaplain to remaining parishioners – his sense of meaning centres around a dying Church.
Happily, God had new hope in store for Fr David. On holiday in Spain, he was bewildered on opening his Kindle to find at the top of his downloaded books, Divine Renovation, by Fr James Mallon. To this day, he cannot explain how it ended up there: his plan had been to read only fiction. Curiously beginning to read, he grew in astonishment at Fr James’ own parallel experiences in a parish hundreds of miles away in Nova Scotia, and his diagnosis of how parishes needed to change to meet the needs of the 21st century. Returning to Scotland with new hope and energy, he distributed the book to his closest lay collaborators, and together they began a journey of leading the parish into new life.
When we consider the never-ending task-list of an overburdened parish priest, it might be tempting to strike off leading missional outreach as a non-essential item. However, Fr David’s story demonstrates how new vision and healthy ways of leading offer purpose and hope: they are precisely the cure for the second type of burnout. This is Fr David’s experience who, while still having a high volume of work, now wakes each day with passion and energy.
On 28th February, I will host a live, online conversation – free and open to all – about how we as a Church avoid a crisis of clergy and leader burnout. To give a taster, here are three suggestions to help priests and parish lay leaders to flourish, for the sake of the mission and vitality of the local church.
- Don’t let essential maintenance to the ‘sundowning’ Church be the main thing
There will always be ‘essential maintenance’ in any parish, however missional and vibrant. However, if that is the ‘main thing’ of what consumes our daily tasks it is the fastest way to disillusionment and the surest way to lose lay volunteers. We can rationalise and streamline all essential maintenance: amalgamating parishes (rather than clustering them) so there is only one administrative burden (bank account, finance committee, etc); centralising administration among parishes and delegating as much as possible to competent laity; ruthlessly decluttering the apparatus of age-old systems that greedily consume the little time, energy, and money the Church has left. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
2. Lead out of a team
We know that the isolation of the pandemic was crippling for many priests. In the slimmed-down Church of the 21st century, we should say “never again”: isolated leadership is a relic of Christendom, an age that no longer exists. When Fr David embraced new principles of parish renewal, he drew a team of five lay people around him to share responsibility for the day-to-day leadership of the parishes. He does not make decisions without them, and he says that this group of people ‘saved his priesthood.’
3. Approach mission from an emotionally and spiritually healthy place
Even in a parish focussed on mission, there is risk of the first type of burnout. But leading out of a team can help ward against this too. Within a team, you start learning very rapidly about yourself. You discover where your strengths and your blind spots are, where you need other people to balance you out or speak into areas you want to grow. A team led in a healthy way (developing trust, vulnerability, and with healthy conflict) becomes a place for emotional and spiritual growth only possible in relationship with others. It allows you to discern what needs to be pruned in the parish to create space and margin.
Join in with the live discussion on 28th February, 7 – 8:15pm (Health or Burnout: Where are Your Leaders Going?). Speakers will be Sr. Miriam James Heidland (author, podcast host, and speaker for the John Paul II Healing Center), Will van der Hart (author, communicator and pastoral specialist. He is an ordained Anglican priest, director of mental health charity Mind and Soul Foundation and executive coach), and Pete Smallwood (human formation co-ordinator and tutor at Oscott College Catholic seminary in Birmingham and is a co-founder of the JP2 Network & Directory).