Tribal Church

So the Wall Street Journal has proclaimed that Emerging Church has fizzled out. Brett McCracken has declared it a hipster trend and we’re moving on, because the hipsters were never about Jesus.

I don’t really want to talk about whether it’s dead or not. I don’t know. I know a lot of intelligent people who are still involved, and I think that it will have a huge impact on American religion for many years to come. My sense is that what died was “emerging” as an evangelical re-branding effort. The evangelical movement could not control the Gen Xers, so they will declare them dead. But the people who were writing interesting things are still writing. Those reeling from the after-effects of evangelicalism have not gone away. People who struggle to respond faithfully to postmodernism have not gone away. Whatever is happening, it’s clear that a transition is occurring and there are things that we can learn right now.

I say “we” with discomfort. I have felt shut out of the “Emergent” movement. I am a pastor in a historic, intergenerational congregation with traditional liturgy. A few years ago, when I asked an Emergent writer and leader if there was room for me, if the conversation could be about both/and (both innovation and tradition), he told me clearly and emphatically, “No.” Denominations were going to die at any moment, and I was holding onto a lumbering dinosaur. I was not part of a denominational church so that I could live out the fullness of my calling in a community of faith, but in order to gain power for myself.

As someone who grew up in a church that systematically oppressed women, who was constantly told that my calling into ministry was a sin and the only reason I felt a longing to minister was because I could not accept my God-given role of submission, and I was all about power, the soundtrack sounded the same…even though the intent was different. I feared that people in the movement did not understand the difference between abusive power and spiritual empowerment. I bolted.

(And, yes, for anyone who doesn’t believe me, I’ll be happy to give anyone the name, place, date and precise time of the conversation. I will email it to you though. I won’t do it publicly. But, remember, if you keep questioning the validity of people who complain because your experience has been different, then you just might be contributing to the problem.)

Many people wonder why I often make a distinction that I am not a part of the capital “E” “Emergent” movement, even though I write about being faithful in the midst of postmodernism and cultural shifts. Not to mention the fact that I dearly love many who are in the heart of the movement. It’s because that was one of many conversations that I’ve had. In spite of this, I have found friends among the loyal radicals—those who are in the midst of denominations, understand the shifts in culture, and are working to respond faithfully to them.

The Emergent movement might be dead. Denominations might die. But God’s not dead. I guess the question is, what we can learn in all this? How can we retool? How can we keep being the hands and feet of Christ in the midst of the shifts and changes? What is God calling us to become? Here are a couple of things that I have learned from this larger conversation.

First, we need each other. We need the tradition and wisdom of the generations who have come before us. We need the Boomers and the Builders. And we need the church movements of the past. We need the wisdom that comes from church structures and we need the passion that breeds in the postevangelical movement. There is no way that we can shut out all evangelicals and all denominational Christians and expect that a movement will survive.

Second, we will need to be kind with each other when it comes to financial security. Often times, in our new church movements, we can heap shame on each other for not starting new churches, or guilt one another for not giving everything up and living with the poor. If a person receives a pension then she’s a sell-out. If he receives book royalties then he’s a sell-out. Shoot… if a person runs ads on her blog and gets a monthly check for $1.27, she’s a sell-out. If he blogs for Beliefnet, he’s a sell-out.

If we continue this sort of hardcore attitude, it may be difficult for us to sustain in the long run. Many of us have families. We have student loans and mortgage payments. We love Jesus, but our kids need backpacks to go back to school. Many of us hope that we will not be eating dog food when we retire. We will keep having difficulty planting churches and working for social justice if we don’t have some realization that sometimes we need money. Our ministries need money. That doesn’t make us greedy capitalists. That doesn’t make us all about power. It’s just reality.

Third (and I have been clumsy as I’ve talked about this in the past, but I still think there’s more to say), when people complain that they are being left out (women, LGBTs, different ethnicities), there has been an assumption in the Emergent movement that there is no power structure, so there is no way that people can be left out.

It’s important to understand when we have power. And it’s vital that we use it to empower others in their ministries. If we want a diverse conversation, we will need to make sure that it happens. There are many people who have been historically left out of church leadership. Some have been ill-treated blatantly or discreetly. As a result, they just don’t have sharp elbows. They will not push themselves up to the table and make a place with ease. Those of us who are people of privilege will need to understand this. We will need to keep making spaces and extending invitations.

18 Comments »

A commissioner to the General Assembly (our denomination’s national meeting that happens every two years), came back to report on what he did. He was a bit disappointed that he was on the church growth committee. The first day they sat down and talked about how if the church continues to decline at the same rate, then there will be no members left in forty years. The second day, they studied Matthew 25. The third day, they studied Matthew 25. They went on a couple of field trips, and they studied Matthew 25 some more.

The people hearing the report were shocked. That was it? I mean Matthew 25 is super, but… that’s it?

Perhaps there was more to it than that, and that’s just what the commissioner reported, but wow. Why not come up with a strategic plan for growth? I realize that there is no denominational master plan that we can follow. We tend to be much more grassroots. But we had the best and the brightest minds of our denomination gathered in one place, why not dream a bit about what we could do? We have a lot of money, a lot of property, and some of the most gifted pastors… what could we do? Here’s what I would love to see happen:

1) Become determined to keep our recent grads. If anyone has met anyone who has recently graduated from seminary, you will know that we have a glut of qualified candidates, and no place for them to go. Actually. Let me rephrase that. We have some of the most brilliant people in our church who are unemployed. I have seen the most incredibly gifted minds walking around, wanting to be ordained, and we have no place for them. Some of them are finding jobs as interns, or working in seminaries, or non-profits, but they can’t get ordained without a traditional call. Can we begin to open up our idea of what a validated ministry is? Can we make sure that we track these graduates? Could Presbyteries support them and encourage them while they look for positions? Can we offer internships and educational opportunities for them? (I know you guys need jobs, not more education, but untill then….) We’re going to need them soon, and we don’t want to lose them.

2) Quit giving incentives to ministers who are past retirement to stay employed. I’m not sure what other denominations are doing, but in the Presbyterian Church (USA), pastors get incentives to stay in their jobs beyond the age of 65. This is going to take action from the General Assembly to change. I’ve written on this before, and here’s a comment from a Pension representative to explain exactly what they’re doing. With grads not able to get jobs, this seems like a bad idea.

3) Help churches to die well. There are many things that we do, as pastors, when we stand beside the bed of someone who is dying, and there are many things that we don’t do. It’s the same with our churches. We don’t tell churches that they are failures because they are dying. We don’t shame them for not living a few years longer. We celebrate their lives. And with churches, we can help them to imagine how they can use their resources and assets to plant new churches.

4) Support people who want to plant churches. While going to Bible School, I was told there was one way to “make disciples” and that was to plant churches. In our denomination, only a couple of New Church Developments were started nationally in the last couple of years, but I know at least twelve people who would start a church tomorrow, if they could. Many of them have been approved by the denomination. They are raring to go, but there’s no place for them to go. They have been told to just plant the church, and then look for denominational support. But they have children. They need insurance. They need some support.

I’m a part of a group of pastors who are starting to fundraise for NCDs outside of the denominational systems. They are DOC, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Post-evangelicals.

There will be some NCD failures, just like a percentage of new businesses fail. We can plan for those. And we can let the pastors decide what makes sense in their context—a traditional church, an emerging church, a monastic community, a coffeehouse church, a nesting church, or whatever…. There are a million ways to do it now.

Generation X is an entrepreneurial, innovative generation. We start businesses. We create new technology. And we are itching to start new churches. (The DOC is doing a great job of this.) And the Millenials are a very large generation. Can we begin to imagine congregations that make sense in their context?

Will we support our innovators? Will we allow people to retire? Will we give dignity to churches who are dying? Can we have a better vision for the next forty years? What would you like to see happen?

22 Comments »

Note to the women in the pews… it’s time to wake up.

Why do women suddenly change the rules of their lives when they walk into the church? I am, of course, talking about the fact that churches are female dominated organizations–women take up most of our pew space, a majority of our membership roles, and they do most of our volunteer work, and yet, the church persistently discriminates against women.

High-powered women walk into churches that do not ordain women as clergy every day. Young, professional, educated women, who work on Capitol Hill, attend PCA congregations that do not even allow for women elders. And even in our progressive churches, fair-minded women pat themselves on the back, because there is a female Associate Pastor who leads the children’s sermon, not realizing that the AP is receiving half the salary that the male is making.

Most of it is ignorance, I suppose. The women in the pews have never thought about what this discrimination does to female clergy. They are in church to commune with God, to get away from the frustrations of work, and so they do not notice the struggles of women in collars.

Most women clergy are not in a position where they can complain about discrimination. It is frowned upon in our profession to talk about money. And if a woman is in a particularly difficult job situation, she is often powerless, so leaving is much easier than fighting.

In other words, if the very real discrimination is going to stop in our congregations, if our churches are going to become sources of hope, rather than models of discrimination, then the women in the pews are going to need to roll up their sleeves and become advocates.

What can the women and men who are advocates for gender justice do?

1) Become aware of salary ranges of other clergy professionals in your area. Salary information is very easy to get in most of our denominations, and if you take a good look at the salaries in your area, you might find how women are paid much less in our churches. How does your pastor compare to the men in the area?

2) Become aware of the salary ranges on the church staff. How well is the female clergy person paid on your staff? How does her salary compare with the organist, choir director, and secretary? Is there a male pastor who is getting more money, even if he doesn’t have more experience or education? If there is a discrepancy, how can you make the church aware of it and fix it?

3) Do not allow personal information to taint the personnel discussions. Information like, “Well, I’m sure that her husband makes a good salary,” or “But she doesn’t have any children and he does,” or “She is single, she lives in an apartment, she doesn’t really need the money” should not be part of the discussion. Young married women are the head of household 40% of the time, and single women should not be paid less. These discussions should not be taking place, and they certainly should not be factors in determining salaries.

People look to their churches for moral guidance. What are we telling the businessmen in our congregations when we allow these things to persist? And what can we communicate if we begin to ask the right questions?

28 Comments »

My apologies…

First, for going into denominationally specific topics. Those who are from other denominations, I would love to hear from you. And please let me know if there are studies in other denominations related to equal pay.

Second, for not making much sense. I have a cold, and I took some medicine that usually makes me feel better. At night. But, it’s daytime. I’ve slept a lot, and now I’m just kind of groggy and dizzy and awake and not making much sense….

But I did want to add a bit of an addendum to my last post, lifting up some of the pay equity facts in this report.

Full-time pastors, with 10 or less years of service, interesting facts:

•The wage gap is less with smaller churches (which makes sense, they are closer to the minimum), the gap gets larger with larger churches.

•There are more men at churches with 50 members or less (80% are men, 20% are women)

•Most women Solos and Heads of Staff serve congregations with 51 to 200 members.

•The worst gap is with women, who pastor churches with 501 to 1,000 members. Women make $50,038 and men make $71,128 (a whopping 21K difference).

Full-time pastors with 11 or more years of service, highlights:

•The most interesting thing is that there are not many women in this category. They make up 22% of the people serving churches of 50 or less, but that’s their strongest showing.

•Women make up less than 1% of pastors of churches of 1,500 members or more.

•Again, the pay gap is less with smaller churches, and it gets higher with larger ones. Men make about $7,000 more than women in churches from 201-1,000. Men make almost $14,000 more at churches from 1,001 to 1,500.

Full-time Associates:

•There are more male Associates than female Associates.

•Again, the worst gap is with the 1,500+ congregations. There is a $6,000 gap between the men and the women.

What can we learn? Well, I guess if you’re a woman who’s going to a larger church, then negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.

6 Comments »

I live in a beautiful house. I’m surrounded by beautiful art and furniture (most of it came from flea markets, charity shops, and thrift stores, but, seriously, I’m really blessed). I live comfortably and do not lack for anything. Except maybe a refrigerator. The freezer door opens every time we close the fridge door, and sometimes we find all of our ice cream full of crystals in the morning…. And an oven. All of the knobs are missing and it’s hard to tell what temperature we’re cooking at… but I digress. The point is that I’m satisfied.

And yet, I write about money.

I love my on-line buddies, many are deep in the wonderful world of free culture. The idea is that all information should be free and readily available for public use and modification. It runs parallel with a very Protestant idea that receiving the good news should not come at a cost, and should be creatively spread.

And yet, I write about money.

There’s a reaction against people who have spent years gouging the flock on a regular basis for prayer cloths and televised agape. And in the Emerging church discussion right now, there is a frustration that the leaders have “sold out.”

And yet, I write about money.

I know there must be a line somewhere, and I’m not sure how to point it out. Maybe… it’s right here… no. I can’t figure out exactly where it is….

But there is a line between getting paid for work–which is a very biblical concept–and fleecing the flock. And most of us, pastors and even the conference-leading writers, who publish with a company, are barely getting paid for our hours.

Do I write about money because I’m a greedy, materialistic jerk who could never be content? No. As I said in first paragraph above, I am very satisfied with what I have. But I just hate the judgment that can be dished out against people who are getting very meager payment for the hours and hours of work that we are doing.

I would claim, “I have a family that I need to provide for.” But, that would be hollow. I would fight for any single woman to be paid for her work as well. She deserves it too.

And that brings me to my point… I recently met Joseph Stewart-Sicking who is doing research on women clergy. He’s comparing his data to studies that were done ten years ago. I asked if women were doing any better with pay equity, and he said that we’re not. He explained that the only real difference is that women seem to be more resigned to their fate these days than in the studies of the first group of ordained women.

And that’s why I write about money.

Sisters, we’ve got to do it for ourselves, because no one is going to go out of their way to give us a raise, which means we could spend our entire careers at the minimum salary.

We, the generation who grew up with girl-power, we were told over and over again that we could become the President of the United States if we put our minds to it. Yet, we’re ending up on the bottom of the heap time and time again in our professions. We, women who graduated at the top of our seminary class, are finding it hard to compete against the men who only got through Greek because we spent so much time tutoring them.

Seminaries are still recommending less qualified men over experienced women for better paying jobs. Our denominational governing bodies are still giving shinier endorsements to men than to women.

Even though women far outnumber men in our pews, laywomen have not been fighting for equity; in fact, many women on church search committees would rather have a man in the pulpit. Many women on our personnel committees overlook the injustice between pay in our staffing models.

And so, I write about money, not just for me, but because I don’t want to read in ten years that men are still far out-pacing women with salaries and positions. I’m thinking about those girls in past youth groups who looked up to me and decided that they might go to seminary. I don’t want them to expect discrimination, because I didn’t fight for the wages of clergywomen.

There is serious injustice. And so we need to learn to balance our “I would do this even if they didn’t pay me” attitudes with a bit of fight.

(And now, if a certain woman on our personnel committee reads this, she will surely roll her eyes, since I turned down a raise last year…).

photo by owlsplace

17 Comments »

Here’s one for the disturbing news file.

A friend, who’s on the verge of retirement, just came back from a denominationally-sponsored retirement planning meeting, with two interesting pieces of information.

(1) There are incentives for putting off retirement. Big incentives. For every year that a minister puts off retirement, he or she gets a 5% increase in pension.

(2) It was communicated by those leading this meeting that it’s good for the denomination to do this, because older ministers are so much better than the young ones who are coming up.

The latter was conveyed, not over coffee, but in a seminar.

Now… far be it for me to cause intergenerational tension. I mean it. I try to build bridges. I appreciate the wisdom that can come from experience. I know that retiring pastors have seen a huge decrease in their portfolios, and many of them who would like to retire, simply cannot do it. I understand this. I know people who have been counting down for retirement for years, and now they’re stuck resetting the clock.

Yet, in light of the economic crisis, in light of the many people who have to keep working and do not have the luxury to retire and who are already filling the pulpits that our seminary grads would normally be moving into, do we really need to be giving incentives for people to hang on longer?

And, really. Are ministers who are past retirement age better than young pastors? We need to think long and hard about this one, because we are driving off our young pastors because we don’t have jobs for them. Conversely, we are hoping that our older ministers, who only have a few post-retirement years left, to hang on. How is that good for our denomination?

Let’s be clear. Post-retirement-age ministers are not better for our churches than young pastors. They are just much better for our pension funds. It’s much better for the board to have that big, fat, premium from the pastor who’s at the end of his or her career, and to cut down the pay-out by a couple of years, than to be collecting the measly percentage that young pastors can provide.

While the whole business world is dealing with job shortages by trying to give incentives for retirement-age employees to leave, we are giving incentives for them to stay.

Could we please stop with the ageism? Could we please begin to appreciate the innovation, energy, and vision that young clergy can bring to a congregation?

Research shows that the age of a congregation usually reflects the age of the pastor. It is the case in our denomination. So… is it the smartest thing to keep giving incentives to post-retirement ministers?

The photo is by burlap jacket

48 Comments »

Alright, we all know that this is not a good time to be raising money for anything. And… yet… people are still giving to the things that matter to them.

I’m not a fundraiser, per say. Except in the fact that I am a pastor, and ministers are often worrying about the budget, the income, and the expenses. As a pastor of a small church, I quickly realized that whether we were in the red or the black at the end of the year determined whether I was employed or not by the beginning of next year. So, I learned how to raise money. Now, I’m a Campus Minister, so I realize the ins and outs of raising funds through an institutional setting. I’m also involved with a lot of non-profits, so I see how they work, and I watch how some raise money effectively, and others flounder.

Here are the bits and pieces of wisdom that I have learned throughout the years, whether people are raising money for non-profits or churches, there are certain things that work, and certain things that do not work. As I’m writing this, I realize that a lot of words in here (like “success” and “investment”) are going to make church leaders cringe. So be it. If you are cringing, you are free to complain in the comment section.

First, and most importantly, people like to donate to organizations and ministries that are successful. They may call it “charity” but they still want to see a good return on their investments. Which means that we cannot raise fund by telling people how poor we are, or how badly we are doing, or by how much we need the money. No one wants to throw their money down a toilet that is in mid-flush. If you want to raise sympathy, you can communicate how terrible things are; but if you want to raise money, you can communicate your success.

Along with that, we can remember that money always follows vision, and not the other way around. So often, we think, if only I had some money, then I would do…. And yet, very few people, foundations, or organizations are willing to give to an unproven start-up. If you want to start something, you cannot wait until you have a big pot of money before you start planning on how you are going to spend it. The pot of money will never come, until you step out, with a vision, and a plan.

In a context of success, we communicate our needs. Better yet, explain the needs of the community that you are reaching. I learned this at my last church, when we were trying to figure out how to raise money, one of our members said, “Just tell us what you need.” And so we did, in clear and concise terms, we made up a list of everything that needed to be replaced, mended, and repaired. Within a year or two, the church had come up with the money to fix them all.

If your salary needs to be raised, there is a way to communicate this as well. An HR person told me an easy calculation. To hold on to an employee, organizations need to pay at least 10% above the medium salary for a position in the area. It is often pretty easy to get those numbers. Just chart the salaries, see where you fit, and show the personnel committee the chart. Often this is an insightful exercise to do, especially for women. We need to be aware of how our salaries compare with our colleagues. Ignoring our inequities will not get us on the path of justice.

Find ways to communicate. I often work with people who get frustrated with the fact that the larger denominational body does not give them any time during meetings for them to raise money. We often think that standing in front of our churches for a minute is the only (or the most effective) way to raise awareness about what we are doing. But, in reality, most people tune out those three minutes of canned speeches, and we can find more effective ways to tell people what we are up to.

In this day and age, there are a thousand ways to communicate all the good things that we are doing. Literally, a thousand. Websites, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Email, Vimeo, YouTube, Magazines, Internet Radio, Webinars, MP3 downloads. Just experiment with one, every three months, and keep evaluating what is most effective.

And… when it comes to gaining an audience, we might need to get out of our little niches, to let the world know what we’re up to. For instance, if you’re a campus minister, trying to raise awareness and money among local pastors in order to raise support for the good work that you’re doing at the college, then it probably won’t do much good to hang out with other campus ministers, complaining about how the other pastors don’t give you any respect.

Instead, hang out with some local pastors. Get involved with ministry opportunities that have nothing to do with higher education. Slowly but surely, churches will begin to notice your leadership skills. They will want to support you.

What else have you noticed? What works? What doesn’t?

11 Comments »

CC Pastor (which, I’m assuming from the context stands for Calvary Chapel) wrote a good comment, which I replied to, but there was so much there, that I thought we could discuss it more in depth. If you’re not into reading 38 comments, you can get the general context here.

Mark let me suggest this connection.  Ms. Merritt attended a large Calvary Chapel.  She considered herself smarter than the pastor there.  Assuming this is true and she is not just proud [author aside: this is a very generous assumption!] why then are Calvary Chapels growing and the PCUSA shrinking?  Is there something wrong or missing in the training and education that Presbyterian(USA) pastors are receiving?  I think the problem is you can not replace passion with education, training or technique. There is something about conservative theology that changes the hearts of people.  We may not like the fact that the PCA is opening churches where we are closing churches.  Or that the Bible is not always politically correct.  Or that most large and growing churches are conservative churches. Or that conservative church inspire people to give more enabling them to support their pastors.

There is in this comment the presumption that many people make: conservative churches are passionate, large, growing, and inspiring, and conservative theology changes the hearts of people.

I certainly don’t deny that. There was an emotional intensity in the congregations of my youth that I don’t experience now. But, I have to say that I’m relieved. I had to leave my conservative congregation, after witnessing a great deal of abuse (and I don’t use that term lightly) to my friends and family. I needed a congregation that recognized my call into ministry, even as a woman. And I needed a place where the church did not center around a man who was a charismatic performer, yet very aloof pastor.

I am thankful for my conservative colleagues. They are reaching out to a group that I do not have the ability to minister to. And that’s okay. We are welcoming people into our growing, vital congregation who would never feel comfortable in a CC church.

The thing I do want to think about here is that underlying this assumption that often goes with the thought that conservative churches are passionate, large, growing, and inspiring. And that is that all mainline churches are shrinking, closing, unable to support their pastors. That education ruins good ministers.

All congregations have a life-cycle. Even mega-churches. In the laid-back beach culture of the 70s and 80s, I saw them spring up quickly, and I saw them wither and die at the same rate. About half of new congregations either grow or they don’t.

Most of our mainline denominational churches were founded during the post-World War II boom. It was a very exciting time for our denominations, one of great expansion. The Builders of that generation worked hard, constructing beautiful church buildings in our downtowns.

But we did not fare well in the seventies. Many of the Boomers did not want to go to their parents’ church. They wanted something radically different—a personal faith. Things were changing, and so the wonderful evangelical tradition in our country began to meet their needs in a way that mainlines could not. Conservative evangelicals began to plant churches at a rapid pace, and the congregations, which were not formed with the cultural expectations of the fifties, were much better at meeting the needs of a new generation.

Childcare was never questioned, youth and campus ministries were supported, and mothers were not expected to take on a load of volunteer work for an older generation. There was a shift in emphasis from being baptized into a household of faith to an intensely personal decision, to accept Jesus in your heart as your personal Lord and Savior. There were in many cases, no committees, and (I’m sure CC Pastor is right, although no one every knew exactly what our pastor made) it was never questioned that pastors would make a lot of money.

The PCUSA has a couple million members and we came to this country along with the first settlers. We, like all mainline denominations, realize the cultural changes that are happening within and around us. As a tradition that has been around for almost 500 years, we are well-acquainted with the cycles of life of any body. We know that, just as new companies grow faster, new churches grow faster. We also know that the most stable and profitable companies have been around for a long, long time, and we pray that it is the same for our denominations. 

And so, we are closing congregations and planting new ones. Some of those older churches, which were situated downtown, are finding new vitality with people a new generation. Another shift is occurring as some of the men and women who grew up in the folding metal chairs, in rock-concert churches, with charismatic pastors are slipping out the back door and finding an (often uncomfortable) spot in the pews of our sanctuaries. They’re looking for a church that they can be a part of, even if they didn’t vote for McCain/Palin. They are longing progressive theology that affirms women, cares for creation, feeds the hungry, and honestly wrestles with the fact that the Bible is not always politically correct.

I am not sure how this will play out. Will our congregations welcome them? Will we be too arrogant about their own educations, financial security, and denominational pedigree to open our doors to their energy, ideas and leadership? We’ll see…

Different religious movements spring up, and others die. It doesn’t depend on how much education or passion that a pastor has. It depends on how the Holy Spirit is moving, how different demographics are playing out, and what our philosophical milieu is as a culture. And, whether our tradition is on the growing trend or the shrinking one, I do hope that we can all the humility to appreciate what God is doing in each time and place.

photo by dragonballyee

42 Comments »

It’s Holy Week–Holy Saturday, in fact. As we sit, in longing expectation for Easter, I feel like I ought to be writing something meaningful, and… um… Holy.

But I’m not. I guess I’ve been in the midst of writing a whole lot of sacred things during Lent, and for some reason, while we remember Jesus in that cool, dark tomb, my mind is moving to practicalities.

Maybe that’s because something that my friend, Ruth Everhart, mentioned in an artice has stuck with me for many weeks. She wrote about the practicalities of many of our decisions as churches—mainly, whether we can afford them any longer. Among the many things she questioned was our model for ministry.

In the Presbyterian Church, we have an educated clergy. That’s among the main reasons why I joined the PC(USA). I wanted a pastor who was smarter than I was, and I wasn’t finding that in the Calvary Chapel megachurch that I was attending.

We love that our pastors know Greek and Hebrew. We take great pride in our seminary and ordination requirements. In fact, we have so much pride in them that we have been fighting over ordination standards for decades….

Oh, but, this post is not going to be about same-gender relationships, because there is another very perceptible shift in our ordination standards that has crept up on us, that affects far more people than we realized, but we’ve hardly noticed it. At least we’ve barely acknowledged it.

We can no longer afford an educated clergy.

The cost of undergraduate and seminary education has gone up too high, and our churches have gotten too small. And…let’s face it, my friends…in many, many cases, our congregations can be way too stingy when it comes to pastor’s salaries. Churches don’t realize the enormous debt that students take on in order to uphold those ordination standards. And with the crushing economic situation, shrinking budgets, and a sanctuary filled with parishioners who remind us regularly of their “fixed incomes,” even if they did realize it, many of them couldn’t afford to do anything about it.

I visited Texas a couple of weeks ago, where I was told that many pastors are on food stamps (I know we qualified for them in first 7 years of ministry—even with two salaries. I never used them because we were serving in small towns, and I didn’t want to embarrass my congregation. What was I thinking?). Though pastors’ job satisfaction rates are high, our burnout rate is also high, and much of the burnout is due to financial problems.

So what are we going to do? Does a congregation of less than 100 members, with 30 people in worship, really need a pastor with seminary training? If not, then we need to think about this, because about half of our churches look like that.

In rural areas, they have already made the shift. While the denomination continues to make the ordination process more and more difficult, the number of Commissioned Lay Pastor (CLP) ministries keeps growing.

Are we going to acknowledge what’s happening? Are we going to face the fact that our seminary graduates can’t get jobs, but we have more and more CLPs? Are we going to embrace the fact that we are no longer a denomination that values an educated clergy, because we don’t have the resources to pay an educated clergy? Are we going to admit where our current trajectory is leading us? That we will be a denomination that will be largely lay led? Will we admit it, and begin to be honest about who we really are? 

Or, will we begin to figure out ways to pay our seminary graduates? Will we begin to shift our resources, so that they are no longer feeding their families with food stamps? Will we stop shaming the clergy for being greedy, and calling on them to make more and more sacrifices, when they already made an incredibly huge sacrifice to Sallie Mae?

When will we acknowledge that we can no longer afford an educated clergy, and do something about it?

Photo by Sebatl 

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I’m in Jackson, Mississippi, for a UMC Clergy Leadership Conference. Last night, I went out with a group of wonderful clergy, and we had an animated discussion over dinner about young adults and debt. At the heart of the conversation was this:

I would say that many young adults have to go into debt because of low wages, increased housing costs, and student loans.

But, some of the young clergy were talking about the Dave Ramsey programs that they are taking part in, and they were saying that the reason why young adults are in debt is because they want to live like their parents right out of college. They don’t realize that it took years and years for their parents to build the wealth. (I’m pretty that this was the same thing my grandmother told my mother….)

I said this was a myth. I mean of course it’s true in many, many cases. People often go through the reality check of finding out how little they can actually afford, and that their expectations were too high.

But, when my parents were my age, they owned a home on the beach of Florida and they were adding on to it to double its size. They went to really nice interior decorating stores for all of the new furniture, and they had a decorator consulting them. My dad had a 40-hour per week government job and mom was a writer. They were very comfortable.

Compare that to my husband and me. We live in a fabulous house, but we could not dream of owning it—even with 2 full-time professional salaries and a small income from writing. We only own two-thirds of it, and our church owns the other third. We rarely ever have more than one car.

Our furniture is a strange array of things that we have picked up at thrift stores and flea markets. Ikea and auctions. I waited seven years before buying a dining room table. And that I got because of an insurance settlement.

Am I whining or saying that I have it terrible? Of course not. I have health insurance and a pension. I am very, very blessed. But…when I look at my friends who cannot imagine owning their own homes, who started out with 35K in student loan debt, who are picking up their furniture at Goodwill, it’s hard for me to say that the only reason they aren’t making it is because they want to start out where their parents ended up.

That may be the case for some. That may be the case when a person’s first starting out. But, I’m not sure that it’s generally the case for an entire generation. We know we are going to be much worse off than our parents. Most of us figured that out pretty quickly.

I just remember starting out, being extremely frugal and not being able to make it. Buying groceries on the credit card, freaking out every time the car broke down. Then I would hear things like, “You just want everything your parents have, and you don’t want to work for it.” I believed the line and berated myself for a long time. Too long, really. Then I finally looked at the economic realities of my generation, and figured out that it wasn’t so simple as that.

But, of course, I get defensive, and the truth is probably somewhere in between. What do you think?

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