“Where are all the pastoral candidates?”
I have been getting this question a lot in the two-and-a-half years since being called as your Regional Pastor. To be clear, it was on the minds of congregations in the Capital Area Region where I previously served pre-pandemic as well, but it was not vocalized as much as it is today. It has become even more pronounced since our world changed in profound ways in recent years: when COVID-19 swept the globe, as racial-justice uprisings emerged (again) this time following the deaths of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, following the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and in the context of the stark reminder of climate change which has made the last few years the hottest in recorded human history.
Church leaders who sat on Search Committees in years past were used to a different model, where “batches” of ministerial profiles were provided by the Regional Minister and each time the committee met the members could chart and compare gifts and skills, and if no one from this week’s selection felt “just right,” they would send their “thank you, but no thank you” email and wait for next week’s group of profiles. They became used to search processes that lasted 8-12 months and a new minister could be installed in about a year.
In the new world of the Search & Call process, Search Committees are sent perhaps a profile or two every few weeks – even for the larger congregations and full-time positions! It is also taking one to two years easily to find the right clergy leadership. Personally, I am finding this new model hopeful and refreshing, even as committees might think it to be frustrating and frightening. For me, the beauty is that rather than comparing and contrasting candidates against each other, looking at only a few quick profile boxes, now each candidate can be understood more fully for who they are as an individual. I invite Search Committee’s to take time to ponder each candidate’s gifts and graces, priorities and goals, and how they might fit with the congregation’s gifts and graces, priorities and goals. There is the opportunity now to watch each candidate’s sermons online, to read through the answers on the profile questions more thoughtfully and review the references more carefully. There is more time for prayer and listening for the Spirit’s leading these days.
With the growing comfort of using videoconferencing (perhaps a gift of the pandemic shutdown?) there is also a greater opportunity to interview every single candidate, and perhaps allow that spark of connection that oftentimes happens when humans talk to other humans that isn’t found on a written document. And since every single candidate name and Ministerial Profile I send to a Search Committee is from a willing candidate, that is a clergy person who has read the Congregational Profile and agreed to be considered for the position, the Search Committee is one step ahead in the process, and interviewing each candidate makes sense.
Of course, I can’t make a committee see this new possibility for deeper reflections on individual candidates, even though that is how each of us would want to be treated. The Search Committees that are often the most frustrated (with me, usually) are the ones who still use the old “check box” mindset, one that quickly scans pastor profiles for two or three items they feel they absolutely need to see in a pastor and, if those aren’t present, the profile is set aside. If they are present, they may or may not move to an interview. The most anxious committees are the ones that receive a profile or two and then just wait until they get more, believing that the *only* way to choose a pastor is through comparison and ranking.
But whatever process the Search Committee chooses, there is still the legitimate question, “Why are there significantly fewer candidates for pastoral positions now than there were before?” I am not a scholar on the topic (although I am reading a great deal of thoughtful theological and sociological work on it) but I have been doing this Regional Ministry Search and Call work for enough years to have some educated guesses.
The first observation comes directly from the Rev. Charisse Gillett, President of Lexington Theological Seminary in Lexington, Kentucky when she was meeting with the College of Regional Ministers. As a body that represents the entire Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada, we asked her why there were so few candidates graduating from our seminaries. She put the question back on us, “Why are there so few people coming from our congregations into the seminaries who feel called to ministry?”
She is right. If the image of a pipeline is appropriate, then you can’t have an abundance of candidates come *out* of our seminaries if there are so very few going *into* our seminaries. Congregations are growing smaller and older in membership, and fewer of our congregations have youth groups, typically a place where young people get practice in leadership skills and discern a call to ministry. The same is for our summer camp and conference programs, where traditionally (and most especially here in the Christian Church in Ohio at Camp Christian) children, youth, and young adults get leadership training and are even asked the question, “do you feel called to serving God as a minister of the gospel?”
But there are other factors in addition to fewer candidates entering and graduating from seminary that result in fewer candidates for our church search committees. Another one is that many of our candidates are expressing is that there is a newfound sense of life/work balance and healthy boundaries. This is very difficult for lay leaders to get their minds wrapped around, especially since most of those who remain in our churches have given of themselves in sacrificial ways to the church for their entire lives. So many of the clergy who are retiring from ministry, for good or for ill, gave of themselves in equally sacrificial ways, sometimes to the detriment of their health and well-being. I don’t say this lightly, but the new emphasis on healthy balance in ministry (which we see in the larger culture with conversations around “quiet quitting” and "the great resignation") may be the “course correction” needed for our churches, not just for clergy but for lay leaders as well. The church should never have been built on working anyone to exhaustion, often to the detriment of family life, physical, spiritual, and mental health, or preventing deepening community beyond the church walls. Many candidates, of all ages, are reading Congregational Profiles with an eye towards whether or not the church has a healthy sense of honoring the pastor’s time, family, and health. (Read this “Letter To A Search Committee” to understand this better.)
Related to this is the matter of compensation. We are also on a course correction for clergy salaries. I advise search committees to think very carefully about filling in the compensation section on the Congregational Profile and to fill in every single benefit, from Sabbatical and Continuing Education time off and resources, to the Health Care stipend and Family Medical Leave. I steadfastly refuse to post a congregational profile that has all the benefits lumped into one sum with the easy out, “Negotiable.” A congregation that understands the value of a good minister also understands the clarity a minister will need on knowing a possible future call will value the minister’s time, energy, and gifts well.
So many of the congregations I have been working with have a particular vision of who their next minister should be that is, unfortunately, out-of-sync with the compensation package offered. Younger pastors, which are too-often seen as the saving grace of our congregations, need salaries that will help them pay off student loan debt. Pastor’s with families, especially young children (also seen as the gold-standard) require larger salaries to pay the growing costs of raising a family, as well as ample personal time off and family-sick leave policies. If a candidate has a spouse or partner, is the church in a community where they can be gainfully employed? Many of our churches are moving to part-time salaries but are looking for full-time work, or they are not prepared for what it means for their part-time pastor to have another job/other jobs that are less flexible in schedule or exhaust the pastor. (Read my resource “What It Means To Call A Part-Time Pastor” here.)
All this sounds daunting, except that if a congregation and it’s Search Committee is patient, willing to work with each candidate as a genuine possibility for their congregation, can be honest and grace-filled with their compensation package, and seek to be in prayerful communion with God, the right pastor can be found and called. It has happened more often than not. I believe with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength that God is not done with the local congregation as a fundamental place for the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ to be made real. If you believe this as much as I do, it will require of us deep patience, with each other and with me, more prayer than we’ve ever lifted to God before, and a willingness to innovate and adapt in how we search for a new minister. If we are willing to do these things, the right pastor can be found.
Faithfully Yours,
Allen