Christian Ministry

Church for the 21st Century: National Cathedral Event Helps Launch "New Reformation" by Topper Sherwood (Alban Institute)

At a time when fewer Americans, generally, are filling the pews of mainline denominations, more of the faithful are asking what is to be done: How do centuries-old institutions oriented around “the Word”—from gospel to doctrine, liturgy, sermon, and even music—respond to the needs of future generations of nonlinear, media-savvy, text-resistant Internet explorers? Can the church welcome and feed the spiritual hunger of this changing global society without sacrificing what is truly sacred? And, finally, could changes in worship and theology, however welcome, create entirely new theological meaning, new alignments, or even new denominations?

Creating the Conditions for New Pastors' Success by by Carol Pinkham Oak (Congregational Research Guide – Alban Institute)

Convinced that the first two years of full-time ministry are critical to the long-term success of pastors, Carol Pinkham Oaks describes the factors that promote a rewarding transition into ordained ministry—including a safe learning environment, a helpful mentor, solid peer relationships, and a life-giving faith community.

Weaving the Web with Conversation: A New Model for Effective Leadership by Margaret Wheatley

Consultant, writer, and Berkana Institute founder Margaret Wheatley speaks about new models for effective congregational leadership— models based on her view that people thrive in flexible, creative systems designed to evolve and adapt through cooperation and conversation. Here are some of her insights, as well as links to related books and articles.

The Ministry and the Message: What Americans See and Read About Their Leaders by Joyce Smith (Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership)

In "The Ministry and the Message," Joyce Smith examines factual and fictional portrayals of Christian leaders in feature films, television programs, and newspaper reporting. While ministers, priests and nuns appear in a surprising number of films and television programs, Smith finds, they generally play generic and anonymous roles, serving as stock background characters, presiding at weddings and funerals or performing other rituals or sacraments. In the second part of her report, Smith examines the increased news coverage of Christian leaders that occurred in the weeks following the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. The report includes commentaries from three experts on media and religion.

What do clergy do all week? by Becky R. McMillan (Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership)

Church members are often unaware of what their pastors do all week and how much time they spend doing it - often only seeing them for one hour a week. This misperception of how clergy use their time can have negative consequences. Pastors express concern that their members seem mystified over how they spend their time. Some tell of complaints from members whenever they do not see the pastors' car at the church. Pastors have expressed concern that this lack of understanding contributes to church members resisting the idea that the pastor should have a set day off or time away from ministry for renewal.

Clergy obviously work more than one hour a week, but what they do or should be doing during their week is often a mystery - and not just to church members. When we interviewed local church pastors for our national survey, a frequent request they made was, "Let me know how other pastors spend their time." Our survey of local church pastors, which includes only senior or solo pastors and no associate pastors, provides a unique opportunity to examine the way local church pastors spend their time.

How do Pastors Practice Leadership? by Jackson W. Carroll (Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership)

When we speak of pastoral leadership, we mean the work that pastors do in giving direction, equipping, and motivating members of a congregation to participate in the congregation’s mission in its local community and beyond. By this definition, almost everything that a pastor does, whether preaching a sermon, teaching, or engaging in what some call "vision casting," contributes to his or her exercise of leadership. But some tasks are ones in which pastors more directly exercise leadership—for example, administering the congregation’s affairs, including attending congregational meetings. Also, important is equipping members for their ministries. As we showed in the last report from our national survey of clergy, 15 percent of the average pastor’s week is spent in administering the congregation’s affairs and attending congregational meetings. Another 13 percent is spent in training or equipping people for ministry.

Pastors differ, however, in the way they lead. In this installment of findings from our survey, we look at pastors’ responses to several questions about leadership style and practice.

How Are We Doing? The Effectiveness of Theological Schools as Measured by the Vocations and Views of Graduates by Barbara G. Wheeler, Sharon L. Miller, Daniel O. Aleshire (Auburn Theological Seminary - Center for the Study of Theological Education)

This study reports the results of the first-ever survey of graduates of theological and rabbinical schools in North America. The survey was sent to graduates from Protestant, Catholic and Jewish institutions who earned M.Div., M.A., Rabbinical or comparable degrees in 1995 and 2000. In addition, the Association of Theological Schools, the accrediting body for schools in the U.S. and Canada, provided data from their Entering and Graduating Student Questionnaires (ESQ and GSQ). In combination, these data provide answers to two crucial questions: 1) What do graduates do in the years after they complete their education and 2) How well do they think their theological training prepared them for their work?

Generally, the news from this study is good. Large percentages of graduates assume the primary professional role for which their education prepares: leadership in a congregation or other religious organization. Attrition is fairly low. There are, however, causes for concern. Women graduates do not fare as well as men, and interest in congregational ministry is decreasing among recent graduates, especially among the growing population of younger students. Other positive findings include high ratings by graduates of their theological education, though practical training is not as highly rated as academic preparation.

The Emerging Church, Part One (PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly)

Now, the first of a special, two-part series on a growing movement that is rethinking what Christianity and the church should look like in a contemporary culture. Some call it "the emerging church." Some say it's "emergent." Whatever it's called, it is developing among both evangelical and mainline Protestants, especially young ones. For some, it's confusing. It's also controversial, as Kim Lawton reports.

The Emerging Church, Part Two (PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly)

Are we on the verge of the Great Emergence? By TERRY MATTINGLY (Scripps Howard News Service)

"Emerging or emergent Christianity is the new form of Christianity that will serve the whole of the Great Emergence in the same way that Protestantism served the Great Reformation," she said, in a speech that mixed doses of academic content with the wit of a proud Episcopalian from the deeply Southern culture of Western Tennessee.

However, anyone who studies history knows that the birth of something new doesn't mean the death of older forms of faith. The Vatican didn't disappear after the Protestant Reformation.

This kind of revolution, said Tickle, doesn't mean "any one of those forms of earlier Christianity ever ceases to be. It simply means that every time we have one of these great upheavals ... whatever was the dominant form of Christianity loses its pride of place and gives way to something new. What's giving way, right now, is Protestantism as you and I have always known it."

"How Much Should We Pay the Pastor?" A Fresh Look at Clergy Salaries in the 21st Century by Becky R. McMillan and Matthew J. Price (Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership)

Competitive, free-market approaches to determining clergy compensation are harming the church and distorting its mission, according to Becky McMillan and Matthew J. Price, Such approaches, they conclude, leave most pastors financially vulnerable, change ministry from a "calling" to a "career," encourage congregations to grow for purely economic reasons, and make it more difficult for pastors to offer "prophetic" leadership that challenges and transforms congregations.

Rather than relying upon the free market for guidance, Protestant churches should instead narrow the salary gap between pastors at small and large churches and provide all pastors with sufficient compensation to enable them and their families to live a decent life-in essence, providing them with a "living wage."

The associate director of Pulpit & Pew, McMillan is a labor economist with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and an M.Div. from Duke. The former associate director of Pulpit & Pew, Price is director of analytical research at the Episcopal Church Pension Group in New York City and has a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.

The Gathering Storm - A study of the alarming levels of educational debt among theological students by Anthony Ruger, Sharon L. Miller and Kim Maphis Early (Auburn Theological Seminary - Center for the Study of Theological Education)

This issue on the educational debt of theological students revisits a topic first studied ten years ago by the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education. The 1995 report found that debt was indeed becoming a problem for a significant, although small, proportion of students. A majority of students now carry educational debt, and they are borrowing larger amounts than in the past. As a result, many theological school graduates report that their level of debt is affecting their career choices, holding them back from purchasing homes, preventing them from saving for their children’s education, limiting their retirement savings, causing them to delay health care needs, and creating stress in their personal and professional lives. Some students, schools, denominations and congregations have, in response to the signs of impending trouble, found ways to keep debt under control. All resources of the church—educational, institutional, theological, financial—need to be brought to bear to avoid the gathering storm of debt that threatens the next generation of clergy and lay church professionals.

America's Unfaithful Faithful By David Van Biema (TIME Magazine - Monday, Feb. 25, 2008)

A major new survey presents perhaps the most detailed picture we've yet had of which religious groups Americans belong to. And its big message is: blink and they'll change. For the first time, a large-scale study has quantified what many experts suspect: there is a constant membership turnover among most American faiths. America's religious culture, which is best known for its high participation rates, may now be equally famous (or infamous) for what the new report dubs "churn."

The U.S. Congregational Life Survey is the largest and most representative profile of worshipers and their congregations ever developed in the United States.

The Survey:

-> examines congregational vitality to help congregations renew and enrich their mission, and
-> describes the American religious landscape in the new millennium based on input from over 300,000 worshipers in more than 2,000 congregations across the United States.
-> provides your congregation with the opportunity to learn about your unique strengths.

What Do Lay People Want in Pastors? Answers from Lay Search Committee Chairs and Regional Judicatory Leaders by Adair T. Lummis (Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership)

In What Do Lay People Want in Pastors?, Adair Lummis draws upon interviews with lay leaders and judicatory executives to examine the criteria churches use in selecting their pastors. In the first part of her report, she outlines specific pastoral qualities sought by search committees in congregations that are financially able to support a full-time pastor. In the second part, she looks at the growing difficulty of recruiting any trained pastor in small, primarily rural congregations. The report includes commentaries from two judicatory executives and a church lay leader. Lummis is a sociologist of religion at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary.

An excerpt from this article:

The following are the criteria Lummis found in her interviews and some of the implications of those findings:

Demonstrated competence and religious authenticity. Search committees want pastors who have the ability to do the work required and a genuine religious life that brings together both "head and heart."
Good preacher and leader of worship. Regional leaders and lay leaders differ regarding what constitutes good preaching. Lay leaders generally care less than judicatory officials whether the sermon reflects careful scholarship and organization and are concerned instead that it relates to their own life and engages them personally.
Strong spiritual leader. Lay leaders want a pastor with a deep commitment to religious beliefs and an ability to inspire spirituality in others. But many judicatory executives regard this as problematic because of the difficulty of determining who will be a good spiritual leader for a particular congregation.
Commitment to parish ministry and ability to maintain boundaries. Lay members and search committees generally expect their pastor to be primarily devoted to ministry and take minimal time for other pursuits. This criterion, Lummis suggests, is a key place where lay visions of ideal ministry run counter to current thinking among those who counsel clergy about the importance of maintaining boundaries and the need to find time for other interests.
Available, approachable, and warm pastor with good "people skills." Regional leaders across denominations cited the pastor’s ability to show church members he or she likes and will care for them as an essential quality search committees try to find. This quality, however, can be situationally specific to the culture of a particular church or region.
Gender, race, marriage, and sexual orientation of clergy. Lummis finds among other things that male gender still remains a criterion for most search committees, even in denominations that have ordained women for the past fifty years or more. Typically, search committees want pastors who are married men with children, under age 40, in good health, with more than a decade of experience in ministry. Such criteria are often not expressed to regional leaders but remain unspoken just beneath the surface, particular in liberal mainline Protestant denominations, where lay search committees know it is unacceptable to refuse to accept a candidate because of gender, race, or ethnicity.
Age, experience and job tenure of the pastor. Laity often want a young married pastor as a way to draw in young families, but also a pastor with experience. The dramatic increase in older, second-career seminarians, however, has changed the relationship between age and experience. Rather than having 20-years’ experience, many middle-aged pastors today may have just received their M.Div.
Consensus builder, lay ministry coach and responsive leader. Lay leaders want pastors who are responsive to their concerns, pastors who can initiate ideas to revitalize the church, while soliciting opinions of members and engaging them in putting ideas into operation.
Entrepreneurial evangelists, innovators and transformational reflexive leaders. This area often presents a disconnect between what churches say they want and what they really want. Many say they want a pastor to help grow the church but don’t want to undertake or think about the necessary changes that will be required.

In the second part of her paper, Lummis looks at the difficulty of recruiting pastors for small congregations. The issue, she says, is not a clergy shortage, but a salary shortage. Even with efforts to recruit more "good pastors" into seminary, fewer congregations are able to pay a full time salary sufficient to support a pastor and his or her family.

At the same time, many seminary graduates find that their educational costs have made it financially impossible to consider such positions and are instead considering other forms or ministry or non-church careers. Even if pastors are willing to serve part time, it is still difficult to find a secular job that pays sufficiently, both for clergy and spouse, and clergy and their families may find such areas socially isolating. Consequently, regional executives are struggling to find clergy for small, poor congregations, especially in rural areas.

Churches are addressing the rural clergy shortage in several ways, including financial supports and incentives, retired clergy, clergy from other denominations, ordination to less than full clergy status, and the use of laity as pastoral leaders. Regional leaders’ ingenuity in filling pastoral vacancies in small congregations with non-seminary educated clergy may cause unintended results, Lummis warns, potentially reducing the amount of authority national church and seminary executives can wield over congregations.

Is religion losing the millennial generation? by Stephen Prothero (USA Today - Feb. 4, 2008)

If you asked college students in an introductory religion course to create their own faith, what might you get? Dessertism, which insists that the stomach is the way to the soul, and Zen Boozism, which seeks self-discovery through alcohol � for starters. But you'd also see a growing problem for the 'traditional' faiths that treat the young as an afterthought.

Some intriguing articles about ministry:

Factors Shaping Clergy Careers: A Wakeup Call for Protestant Denominations and Pastors - click here for more

Assessing the Clergy Supply in the 21st Century - click here for more

What Do Lay People Want in Pastors? Answers from Lay Search Committee Chairs and Regional Judicatory Leaders - click here for more

Church for the 21st Century: National Cathedral Event Helps Launch "New Reformation" - click here for more

Creating the Conditions for New Pastors' Success - click here for more

The Emerging Church, Part One and Two - click here for more

Are we on the verge of the Great Emergence? - click here for more

Weaving the Web with Conversation: A New Model for Effective Leadership - click here for more

"How Much Should We Pay the Pastor?" A Fresh Look at Clergy Salaries in the 21st Century - click here for more

The Ministry and the Message: What Americans See and Read About Their Leaders - click here for more

What do clergy do all week? - click here for more

How do Pastors Practice Leadership? - click here for more

The Gathering Storm - A study of the alarming levels of educational debt among theological students - click here for more

How Are We Doing? The Effectiveness of Theological Schools as Measured by the Vocations and Views of Graduates - click here for more

U.S. Congregational Life Survey - click here for more

Is religion losing the millennial generation? - click here for more

America's Unfaithful Faithful - click here for more

Factors Shaping Clergy Careers: A Wakeup Call for Protestant Denominations and Pastors by Patricia M.Y. Chang (Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership)

In Factors Shaping Clergy Careers, sociologist Patricia M. Y. Chang examines the careers of Protestant clergy in the United States, taking a look at the typical clergy career path, prospects for advancement and related issues. A companion piece to her earlier Pulpit & Pew report on clergy supply, Clergy Careers addresses the organizational constraints that shape clergy careers, pointing out how opportunities for clergy employment and promotion are influenced by such factors as supply and demand and organizational boundaries. While many clergy may think of ministry in terms of a career ladder that leads to ever larger congregations, most actually spend their working lives in mid-career positions with few opportunities to advance to senior pastor positions. The way clergy are educated, deployed, supported and rewarded limits their autonomy and control over their work life, Chang finds, making comparisons with other professions such as medicine or law very problematic. The report also includes commentaries from three observers of clergy careers.

Assessing the Clergy Supply in the 21st Century by Patricia M. Y. Chang (Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership)

In this Pulpit & Pew research report, sociologist Patricia M. Y. Chang examines the current state of supply and demand for clergy in U.S. churches. Despite such obstacles as conflicting data and a lack of reliable consistent information across denominations, Chang is able to present a broad look at clergy supply along with some helpful answers and policy recommendations. She finds that pastoral vacancies are primarily a problem of small or rural congregations, which lack the financial resources to attract and retain a full-time pastor. As a result, a growing number of congregations will rely upon lay or part-time clergy for pastoral leadership in the future. The report also includes commentaries from four observers of the clergy job market.