The Clergy Project Reaches 1,000 Members

It started about 2011 by clergy who had lost their faith but remained preachers and priests. The dilemma was losing one's faith but being trained only to be a clergy member. Leaving his/her profession might takes down a family's only bread winner or lead to divorce. Having someone else to commensurate with is imperative. That's why the Clergy Project was founded.

It's easy for both believers and non believers to criticize these pastors/priests. To me it is not a terrible thing. Clergy are there to perform a service. People in their congregations expect them to preach, listen to personnel concerns, perform rituals and weddings and funerals and run the church's affairs. If they are doing all these things well and both the buyer of the services, the congregation, and the seller, the preacher, are satisfied with the deal what is the problem?

According to what I have read, there are many reasons why clergy stay with the profession even though they no longer believe there is a God or a heaven or hell. Some, of course, feel trapped and have decided to ride it out.

Others enjoy the praise they get and feel they are a positive impact on many lives. Even if they, themselves, have doubts this is unimportant in the lives of those they serve. The pastor continues to enjoy the work and the congregation continues to enjoy his/her leadership.

A preacher/priest basically is a sales person. People in sales know the faults of what they sell. But, their job is to emphasize its qualities. If the Ford corporation says Sport Car A gets 40 miles per gallon but customers have told the sales person they can only get 36 a sales person likely will use the company's number. If the company says Jesus was resurrected and dead people are in heaven the sales person will simply not mention there is not third party way to verify such tales.

That said, we would all like to know exactly who these non believing pastors/priests are. Many, no doubt, will go to their graves with that secret.

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