Let your voice be heard. The 9th Statewide Clergy Health Survey launches Monday, August 25! All United Methodist clergy in North Carolina will receive a unique survey link in their Conference email; keep an eye out for yours.

As a thank you for completing the survey, you’ll receive a $50 digital gift card through Rybbon. You can choose to redeem it as a cash card, a gift card, or pay it forward with a charitable donation to organizations like the American Red Cross for Hurricane Helene Relief or the American Cancer Society.

In 2008, when I was invited to participate in designing and studying a health intervention for United Methodist clergy in North Carolina, I’ll admit, I was a bit skeptical. At the time, I didn’t know much about clergy life or the unique stressors and health challenges facing United Methodist clergy. My vocabulary didn’t include words like elder, SPRC, itinerancy, or Annual Conference. As a population, I didn’t yet know how committed and compelling clergy are.  

On a personal level, I could never have predicted the many ways that you would become part of my own story: how you would amaze me with your faithfulness, or how you would love my family. Now, when I lead SPRC meetings and sit in Council meetings in my local church, not only can I claim to know a lot about the United Methodist Church and its pastors, I claim to be a proud United Methodist.

Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, second from right, with other CityWell UMC congregants.

When the Duke Clergy Health Initiative sends out our biennial Statewide Clergy Health Survey, we don’t send it out simply because we want to know facts about the UM clergy population in North Carolina. We send out the survey because the data you provide allows us to resource you and your congregations for ministry and then advocate on your behalf with policy makers at the Conference and denominational levels. My experience has taught me that when clergy and congregations are well, ordinary people like me in communities across North Carolina are positively impacted.  

In one week, you will receive an email in your inbox with a unique link to complete the 2025 Statewide Clergy Health Survey. For some of you, this will be the ninth time you’ve received and completed this survey. For others, it’s your first time being invited to contribute to the longest-running longitudinal data set of holistic clergy health in the world. Whether this is your first or your ninth survey, our message to you is the same: Thank you. We could not do the work that we do for you and your colleagues without your continued contribution. 

As you can see from the video above, the Duke Clergy Health Initiative is using 2025 to celebrate the many ways that clergy and congregations are already flourishing in ministry. It is an honor to both witness and testify to the ways that your love for Christ and the Church is embodied in your care for your bodies and souls. Our blessing and prayer to you in this season is that you would, as the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy, “take hold of the life that is truly life” (6:19). We look forward to hearing from you via the survey this fall. If you don’t get a link in your inbox next week, be sure to reach out to us at: clergyhealth.panel@duke.edu. 

May you be safe. 
May you be happy. 
May you be healthy. 
May you be at peace. 

Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, PhD
Director, Duke Clergy Health Initiative

Explore our Resource Page, where you'll find offerings like Fully Alive: A Resource to Guide Clergy Towards Four Behaviors of Flourishing that are shaped by the data and insights you and other clergy have so generously shared over the years.

Since 2007, the Duke Clergy Health Initiative has been gathering valuable data on the physical, mental, and spiritual health of United Methodist clergy in North Carolina.

Our mission is simple but big: we serve those who serve God, so that they can do their work with renewed energy, creativity, and insight. Our research-based recommendations are designed to help pastors and other ministry leaders tend to their own health over the course of a complex and compelling calling.

Our work is made possible thanks to the generous time of our ministry partners and generous funding from The Duke Endowment. To stay informed of our latest research in ministry formation and flourishing, sign up for our monthly Serve Well newsletter below.