Pastors Have Increasingly Complicated Relationship With Counseling
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.
Sponsored by Houston’s First Baptist Church and Richard Dockins, an occupational medicine physician concerned with 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.”
Counseling 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 is down to almost half (52%) in 2025.
The larger the church, the more likely the pastor is to have a list of counselors on hand. While 80% of pastors at churches with 250 or more in attendance maintain that type of list, that drops to 60% of those at churches with 100 to 249, 51% of pastors at churches with 50-99 and 38% of pastors at the smallest congregations, with fewer than 50 in attendance each week.
“It takes humility to recognize people you care about need the help of someone more equipped than you,” said McConnell. “A church without a list of counselors to refer people to is not ready to care for real needs that will arise. In most cases, that preparation is only a phone call away, asking a couple other pastors for their lists.”
Compared to 10 years ago, churches are also less likely to have a lay counseling ministry. In 2015, 34% of congregations had this. That dropped to 28% in 2021 and remains at 27% today.
African American pastors (47%) are the most likely to have such a ministry in their church. Female pastors are more likely than male pastors (40% vs. 25%).
Again, larger churches are more likely to have these types of resources. Around 2 in 5 pastors at congregations with 250 or more in attendance (41%) have a lay counseling ministry, while 20% of pastors at churches with 50 or fewer say the same.
Counseling preparation
Despite being less likely to send people to professional counselors beyond their church and have lay counselors within their church, evangelical and Black Protestant pastors have less counseling training than they did a decade ago.
Few pastors (9%) have a graduate degree in counseling, a percentage that has remained steady over the past decade. But fewer pastors are gaining counseling knowledge in other ways.
In 2015, most pastors (52%) had at least taken graduate school courses in counseling, but that has fallen to 46% in 2025. While few pastors with no college degree (19%) or only a bachelor’s degree (30%) have taken such classes, even many of those with additional formal education skipped counseling courses. Around 3 in 5 pastors with a master’s degree (61%) and 2 in 3 pastors with a doctoral degree (66%) say they’ve had those courses during their schooling.
Beyond formal educational training in counseling, fewer pastors are attending conferences or even reading books on the subject. In 2015, around two in three pastors (64%) attended a counseling conference. That fell to 58% in 2021 and is less than half (48%) in 2025. The percentage of pastors who have read several books or articles on counseling has dropped from 90% in 2015 to 87% in 2021 and 81% in 2025.
“It is unclear if the lower rates of professional development in the area of counseling among pastors have been an intentional retreat or the unintentional distraction of other priorities. While 9 in 10 pastors have still invested in some counseling knowledge and skills, the extent of that development has slipped a little in the last decade,” said McConnell.
Valuing counsel
Fewer evangelical and Black Protestant pastors say they feel isolated — 38% in 2021 and 34% in 2025 — but fewer are sharing their struggles with others.
A vast majority of pastors say they are meeting with someone else to share their struggles at least monthly. The most likely person that pastors share with are their spouses (74%), another pastor (60%) and a close friend (60%).
Fewer pastors regularly confide in lay leaders in their church (41%), a mentor (41%), another staff member (32%) or a Bible study group in their church (29%). Only 1 in 10 (9%) say they meet with a counselor once a month to share struggles.
However, pastors are less likely than they have ever been in the past decade to share with many of these individuals and groups. The percentage who regularly share their struggles with their spouse has steadily declined over the last 10 years (90% in 2015, 82% in 2021 and 74% in 2025).
The same type of decline has occurred concerning pastors sharing with a close friend (74%, 68% and 60%) and another pastor (71%, 66% and 60%). Compared to 2015, pastors are also less likely in 2025 to share with lay leaders in their church (50% vs. 41%) and another staff member (38% versus 32%).
“The Bible shares the importance of other believers helping us in our Christian walks, with images like a cord of three strands and iron sharpening iron,” said McConnell. “It is concerning to see fewer and fewer pastors engaging in relationships that help them with their struggles. Pastors need transparent conversations with trusted people who can help them professionally and personally process the everyday challenges of following Christ, leading a church and investing in their families.”
For more information, view the complete report.
Aaron Earls is the senior writer at Lifeway Research.