My church gives me many reasons to quit. I don’t want to list them; it will just make me depressed and sound whiny. Just trust me; it does.
I have thought about quitting many times. Ask my wife, and she’s only heard a tiny fraction of them.
Many times the quitting-feeling is just self-pity. Things didn’t go as well as I wanted them too, that one person is doing “their thing” again, no one showed up again, another board member is acting weird again, and stuff like that. I get over these fairly quickly.
But there have been some dark times, times where all point and motivation were completely gone. I phoned it in for a while. No one noticed because no one was there, which didn’t help.
I once asked a pastor who makes a partial living telling other pastors how to be a pastor, when a pastor should admit defeat and move on.
“After five years is the standard principle,” was his answer. My mouth dropped.
“Five years? Wow, I could have quit my church four times!”