3 Hidden Burdens Crushing Pastors in Nigeria and America
“Burnout is not racist.”
I blurted that statement during one of our first-ever Soul Care for Pastors training in Jos. It wasn’t planned; it was a response to a pastor who, only thirty minutes into the session, raised his hand and asked, with a mix of skepticism and self-protection:
“Reverend Segun, with all due respect, isn’t this ‘Soul Care’ talk more for American pastors? You people in the West don’t really face what we face here in Nigeria.”
I understood where he was coming from. He wasn’t being rude, he was just being real. Nigerian pastors, especially those in the North, carry burdens that can sometimes feel bone-crushing: bleak financial strains, surmounting spiritual warfare, and the looming possibility of persecution that can erupt without warning. To him, “Soul Care” sounded like a Western luxury, something American pastors might dabble in between counseling sessions and coffee appointments, but not a survival tool for men like him staring down threats that could come knocking any Sunday morning.
Yet the point I needed him, and the whole room, to hear was simple: exhaustion doesn’t check passports or nationality before it makes its way into your marriage, or your ministry. Discouragement doesn’t stop at customs before it slips into the quiet corners of your soul, and ministry pain does not discriminate before it shows up as betrayal by the very people you’’re caring for. So, I pressed the truth a little further:
“My brother, ministry discouragement doesn’t care whether you are Black, White, Nigerian, American, or Chinese. It is an equal opportunity employer.”
That broke the ice. By the next half hour, that same pastor who had earlier been crossing his arms in resistance was soon leaning forward, scribbling notes furiously, nodding at truths he hadn’t wanted to admit, and before long, sharing his own struggles with surprising vulnerability. The isolation that had built a fortress around him started to crack in real time. It was a live picture of how quickly pastors can move from dismissing Soul Care as “irrelevant” to realizing how desperately they need it.
And that’s been our story at The Gathering Faith Leadership Network. Since 2021, we’ve trained more than 12,000 pastors, pastors’ wives, pastors’ kids, and ministry leaders across Nigeria. If there’s one thing we’ve discovered, it’s that behind every pulpit lies a secret life of pastors, unseen battles, private questions, and unspoken wounds that shape leaders more than most realize.
Now, after months of prayer and planning with a newly formed U.S. board of trustees, we sense God calling us to bring this work to America. Interestingly, one question we’ve had to come to terms with is a variation of the one that Nigerian pastor asked me years ago in Jos. This time, it’s our American partners asking with equal sincerity:
“What are the different cultural factors and leadership pressures that shape Nigerian pastors compared to American pastors, and, given those differences, how can a ministry birthed in Nigeria meaningfully serve pastors in America?”
The truth is, while ministry discouragement and burnout are universal, it takes on different faces in different places. Some pressures overlap; others are uniquely cultural. In this article, I want to explore three key contrasts, along with the shared burdens both Nigerian and American pastors carry and how Soul Care offers a path forward in both contexts.
1. IDENTITY FORMATION: CALLING VS. CAREER TRAJECTORY
Nigerian Pastors: I recall when I first shared with certain family members that I sensed the Lord calling me into ministry. I could immediately read the uncertainty written across their faces. Their concern wasn’t about ministry itself but about how I described the call. My story didn’t include a voice from heaven. I hadn’t had a prophetic dream. There was no burning bush, no angelic visitation. Instead, what I described was a slow, quiet stirring that had unfolded over nearly two years as I studied God’s word, served faithfully in different ministries, and sought counsel from godly mentors. For them, the absence of supernatural displays felt underwhelming. For me, it was real.
That reaction captures something profound about the Nigerian pastoral imagination. In our context, a pastor’s calling is often perceived as a divine summons, sometimes confirmed through dramatic fireworks: visions, dreams, prophecies, or crisis encounters that prove God has chosen you. The upside is that it fuels passion, seriousness, and perseverance. The downside? When ministry becomes synonymous with your divine identity, the very thought of stepping away, or even pausing for a short retreat feels like betrayal of God Himself. To admit disillusionment or exhaustion can feel almost like sinning against God. And so, many Nigerian pastors quietly keep preaching while dying slowly on the inside, suffocating under the weight of a calling that has become a cage.
American Pastors: On the other side of the Atlantic, the story unfolds differently. While many American pastors also describe a deep sense of calling, ministry is increasingly treated more like a vocational career path. You can pivot from youth ministry to lead pastor, from the pulpit to nonprofit leadership, or from being an associate pastor at a mid-size church staff to senior pastor in a larger city congregation. That flexibility removes some of the guilt Nigerian pastors carry, but it introduces a different crisis for the American pastor. When ministry is one rung on a career ladder, your sense of worth rises and falls with opportunity. What happens when the ladder stalls? When a younger leader takes the platform? When your public influence shrinks? The question lurking in the background isn’t, “Am I disobeying God?” but, “Am I still relevant, or am I already replaceable?”
So, while Nigerian pastors often feel spiritually trapped in ministry, American pastors often feel existentially replaceable in ministry. One burns out because they cannot step away; the other burns out because they fear they could be stepped over.
This is precisely where Soul Care enters as good news in both contexts. In our training, we help pastors reorient their identity away from the pulpit and back to the Person of Jesus. We remind the Nigerian pastor that God’s love is not revoked if they rest, retreat, or even reconsider ministry. We remind the American pastor that their value is not measured by followers, platforms, or promotions, but by being rooted as a beloved child of God. Soul care teaches that calling is not about fireworks or ladders, it is about abiding in Christ, and that, more than anything, is what sustains a pastor on either side of the ocean.
2. THE HIDDEN WEIGHT OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY
Nigerian Pastors: A phrase that took me years to wrap my head around, and one I still balk at when I hear, is when supposedly-mature Nigerian believers say to me, “Pastor, I want to tap into your anointing.” On the surface, it sounds flattering, but underneath, what many are really expressing is an unhealthy belief that I, as a pastor, have exclusive access to God’s throne, access they’d like to borrow, or better yet, siphon. My response is usually half-humor, half-exasperation: “How about you tap into God’s Throne of Grace directly?”
That interaction reveals something deeper in the Nigerian church context. Pastors often bear the burden of being treated, and sometimes treating themselves, as spiritual middlemen between people and God. Members believe their breakthroughs depend on the pastor’s prayers, prophecies, or impartations, which creates intercessory fatigue and relentless pressure to always be “in the spirit.” Whereas the church reinforces it through language, traditions, and expectations; pastors reinforce it by over-functioning. The result? A subtle benching of God the Son, whom Scripture names as our true Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), and the Holy Spirit, who intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26). When pastors absorb roles that belong only to the Trinity, the outcome is inevitable: spiritual exhaustion, prayer-weariness, and eventual burnout as they find out the hard way that human shoulders were never built to carry divine weight.
American Pastors: Meanwhile, American pastors live under a different kind of pressure. Fewer people are asking them to serve as mediators, but many are demanding they serve as motivators. The expectation is to be endlessly inspirational, to preach in tweetable sound bites, and to package sermons so neatly that they double as TikTok reels or Instagram clips. In an ADD generation scrolling at light speed, pastors feel they must compete with a million-and-one other churches and content creators who seem to have sharper graphics, better production quality, and more polished edits. The treadmill never stops: produce content, stay relevant, keep people’s attention. In the process, many leaders quietly exhaust themselves, drained by the endless demand to stay visible, relevant, and ahead of the algorithm.
The irony here is sobering. Nigerian pastors carry priestly pressure to be the intercessor who channels God’s presence. American pastors carry performative pressure to be the communicator who inspires, entertains, and motivates. Both live with the suffocating sense that they must never have an “off day.”
This is where Soul Care offers a path forward for pastors in both contexts. Soul Care reminds the Nigerian pastor that Christ has already secured our access to the throne of grace, and the Spirit himself groans on behalf of God’s people. More importantly, we remind pastors that they were never called to be anyone’s savior in the first place. At the same time, our training will remind the American pastor that ministry is not a performance to maintain relevance but an overflow of life with God. The deepest calling is not to produce but to abide. In both Nigeria and America, Soul Care frees pastors to step out of false roles and back into their true one: beloved children, rooted in Christ, carrying only the weight God has assigned.
3. MINISTRY EDUCATION GAPS & THEOLOGICAL FORMATION
Nigerian Pastors: In many parts of Nigeria, pastors enter ministry without formal seminary training. Their “formation” often comes through informal mentorship, prophetic schools, or impartation-based ministry networks rather than deep theological education. Incidentally, that has not always a liability. What many pastors lack in exegetical technique they often compensate for in raw faith, bold prayer, and spiritual hunger. There’s a reason why certain Nigerian ministries built around deliverance, declarations, and prophetic intercession draw millions of followers in person and online.
Yet, here’s the challenge: wherever ministry isn’t deeply rooted in God’s Word, it creates a huge vacuum that theological errors quickly rush in to fill. In some churches, the pulpit becomes a marketplace for “anointing oils,” “seed faith packages,” or extravagant promises of financial or health miracles, rituals that flirt with transaction over transformation. Pastors, under pressure to keep the crowd believing, may drift into theological shortcuts, oversell miracles, or bypass biblical depth in favor of spectacle.
American Pastors: With American pastors, the pendulum swings in the other direction. Many American pastors are seminary trained, steeped in biblical languages, systematic theology, hermeneutics, and pastoral care theory. Yet, that formation sometimes becomes its own burden. Their preaching can lean toward lectures rather than prophetic life-giving words and prayer can sound rote, recited more than wrestled with. Because so much is parsed out in head knowledge, there is a risk that the pastor’s soul remains undernourished.
In effect, some American pastors carry form without Holy Spirit filled power, liturgical precision without heart, theological clarity without passion. The danger is that while they might be able to interpret a complex Greek text, they might struggle to interpret their own inner wounds.
At the end of the day, the imbalance is striking. In Nigeria, pastors may carry great passion and visible “power,” but without deep theological rootedness, that power is often untethered, raising sober questions about its true source. In America, pastors may carry impressive theological training and polished preaching, but without Spirit-shaped vitality, that precision can become lifeless.
Both contexts reveal the same danger in opposite directions: a ministry running on fumes. Nigerian pastors risk mistaking charisma for substance; American pastors risk mistaking scholarship for strength. One may leave the people shouting without being grounded; the other may leave them informed without being transformed.
This is why what our team is prayerfully planning to bring to the United State matters. Soul Care matters to pastors. Soul care insists that power must be married to truth, and truth must be breathed upon by the Spirit. It reclaims ministry as something that flows not from borrowed charisma or borrowed commentary, but from a life hidden with Christ in God.
In the end, what sustains pastors on both continents is not more passion without roots or more roots without passion, but the living Christ, forming head, heart, and hands together for the long haul.
AN INVITATION TO JOIN US
This is why we believe the moment is now. The same Christ who has met pastors in Nigeria in their exhaustion and restored them through Soul Care is calling us to extend this work in America. The needs may look different, but the pastors’ heart issues are the same: longing for rest, identity, and renewal in Christ. And so, after years of prayer, thousands of stories, and countless lessons learned, we are ready to bring this ministry to American soil.
In 2026, we will begin pastoral trainings in Chattanooga, Tennessee, our U.S. headquarters. If you are a senior pastor leading a team, or a network leader who longs to see your pastors strengthened from the inside out, we would love to walk with you. Our desire is not to add another program to your calendar, but to help create space where pastors can breathe again, where their souls can be restored, and where ministry can flow from life with God. Our U.S team would be honored to schedule a call, share the vision, and explore how we can come alongside your leaders. You can reach us at thegatheringfln@gmail.com