This study was intended to identify a minimum time period for a worthwhile stay by a minister in his first parish and to help clarify factors which affect a decision to remain or to move. The total population consisted of 122 Missouri Synod Lutheran seminary graduates assigned in 1963 and 1964 to town and country parishes, 57 of whom were movers and 65 stayers after an initial 3?2 year period. Questionnaires were sent to the ministers and to their respective district presidents. Both stayers and movers gained similar degrees of benefit during the minimum time period, but stayers seemed to provide more benefits for their people within the same period. Factors involved in the decision to stay or move were readily categorized into six areas (professional competence, personal development, personal interests, identification and fulfillment of the needs of the people, response of the people, and personal welfare). The customary practice in an individual career pattern has been to start on a lower rung of the ladder of experience and responsibility and then to advance to other levels of increased responsibility and higher status. This seems to have been the ordinary procedure in the ministry as well as in other professions. A seminary graduate may begin his service in a small congregation and, after having matured and become more experienced in the numerous professional skills and interpersonal relationships, he is likely to be called to a larger parish with its greater demands for professional and personal competence. What prompts a minister to leave one parish for nother, or, for that matter, to decide to remain where he is if given a choice to leave or remain? In investigating reasons given by ministers in connection with heir decision to leave a pastorate or, in some cases, the ministry itself, Mills (1969:13-15) identified ten themes: longange plan, attractive job, inability to relocate, church conflicts, restl ssness, a sense of hopelessness, acute marital crisis, acute family needs, health br akdown, and need for a moratorium. In his survey of a sampling of clergy of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in 1959, Scherer (1963:12) categorized