Three in ten leaders choose what gets taught with no other voice in the process. It is the single strongest signal of strain in this entire survey.
We asked who has input on teaching topics and offered six options: lead pastor, ministry team, volunteers, kids or teenagers, parents, or just me. Three in ten picked the last one.
This finding moves in every direction at once. Of the nine outcomes we tested, all nine went the same way — more strain, less okay, less experimentation. Nothing else in this survey is that consistent.
| Outcome | Decides teaching alone vs Has input | Raw | Adjusted | Signif. | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burnout | 44.8%vs 34.1% | +10.7% | +10.1% | z = +4.6 | higher |
| Feeling discouraged | 40.4%vs 30.1% | +10.3% | +10.0% | z = +4.7 | higher |
| Feeling under-resourced | 45.9%vs 37.7% | +8.1% | +7.7% | z = +3.5 | higher |
| Mental or emotional exhaustion | 37.8%vs 30.7% | +7.1% | +6.6% | z = +3.1 | higher |
| Lack of support from leadership | 25.8%vs 20.7% | +5.1% | +5.0% | z = +2.6 | higher |
| Pressure to grow numbers | 24%vs 19.1% | +4.9% | +4.0% | z = +2.2 | higher |
| Experiencing doubt or questions in my own faith | 16%vs 12.4% | +3.6% | +3.7% | z = +2.4 | higher |
| I've been doing okay | 5.6%vs 14.4% | −8.8% | −7.1% | z = -5.1 | lower |
| Tried nothing new all year | 23.3%vs 15.6% | +7.6% | +5.8% | z = +3.4 | higher |
Adjusted pools the difference inside strata of church size and volunteer status, because both drive many answers at once. A claim only appears on this site if the adjusted figure keeps its direction and clears two standard errors (|z| ≥ 2). Group sizes: 730 and 1,669.
It overlaps with planning alone, but only partly: 65% of the people deciding teaching alone still have company for annual planning. Isolation isn't one condition. It comes in kinds, and this is the costliest one we found.
Based on 2,399 survey responses. This page compares decides teaching alone (730 respondents, 30.4% of the sample) against has input (1,669).
Church size, tenure and paid-versus-volunteer status jointly drive a general tendency toward more structured ministry, which touches most practice questions in this survey. Raw comparisons therefore overstate almost everything. Each claim here is re-tested inside strata of church size (q2) x volunteer status (q1) and only published if it survives — see what didn't survive.
Percentages are shares of each group who selected that answer. Every figure on this page is generated from the dataset at build time, and a verification script re-derives each claim independently. Check our work in the explorer →