Our editor suggests that we postpone our next Sightings until September, to give a busy staff a breather after the busiest summer-news of news-logging we can remember.

Our files and e-files bulge or pulse with folders called “Current.” Before we tuck them away, one file stands out for timely comment almost any week of any year. Making the rounds after its publication in July 2014 is an item forwarded by many: from The Atlantic, David Wheeler’s catchily-titled “Higher Calling, Lower Wages: The Vanishing of the Middle-Class Clergy.” 

Wheeler’s sub-title explains, “As full-time pastors become a thing of the past, more and more seminary grads are taking on secular jobs to supplement their incomes.” The copy I am using is a print out from an Atlantic section labeled “business.” 

Wheeler points to valid and vivid items of concern to congregations and denominations. Words like “vanishing” clergy and full-timers belonging to “the past” are somewhat overstated, but they do get our attention.

The Association of Theological Schools (Canada and U.S.)—see the link in Sources—or ATS as it is also known, can guide readers to many kinds of adaptation, innovation, enterprise, and energy on the theological school front, but stories of “decline” in worshipping communities is obvious and is pondered by many of the many millions who are involved with them, and who care.

The Atlantic story focuses on Justin Barringer, a Kentuckian who applied to “nearly a hundred jobs over the course of two years,” but landed no full-time, salaried church position. What to do?

As I read of him and his peers, an ornery recommendation leaped to mind: convert to Catholicism, study for and join its clergy, since Catholicism (including its middle-class) is often working “full-time” to find clergy to fill its depleted ranks or keep up with sudden growth in some sectors.

The “vanishing” and “thing of the past” terms are somewhat overstated also in Protestantism and Judaism, where processions of graduates enter the ranks of the “called” and “ordained” to more than what they would call “jobs” each year.

Admittedly, there is a shortage of positions for many in many denominations.

And without a doubt, many post-seminarians are saddled with debts, as are their counterparts in teaching, accounting, law, and many more. As one reads literature from the ATS, publications by denominational agencies, and the like, it is clear that many church bodies are working zealously to help seminarians enter the clergy unshadowed by mountains of debt.

But there is also much more to be said and to be gleaned from reports on the “vocation” front, such as: Not all bewail the decline in “full-time” jobs. Some hail “bi-vocational” callings, which are often chosen, and not seen as a sign of defeat.

The historically-minded like to point out that, for Christians, their precedents (e.g., the apostle Paul) were not salaried by agencies. They made tents, as did Paul, or pitched tents along the “missionary” trails. Their heirs include “worker-priests” in modern Europe.

“Bi-vocational” ministry offers some advantages. Clergy often seek it if, like many, they also feel called to fulfill another vocation—years in parenthood roles. Men and women in part-time “secular” employ have angles of vision and can do “sightings” close to the people they serve.

At the same time, the theological, organizational, technological and, yes! pastoral demands keep growing, and “full-time” offers opportunities, pleasures, and creative outlets that cannot be filled only by “part-time” clergy. Pastors, priests, and rabbis are on the front-line of ethical missions and are needed if Americans and Canadians are to “evangelize,” instruct, work in fronts of justice and mercy, and console.
 
Full-time and part-time leaders both have callings and need each other.

Sources:

Wheeler, David R. “Higher Calling, Lower Wages: The Vanishing of the Middle-Class Clergy.” The Atlantic, July 22, 2014, Business. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/higher-calling-lower-wages-the-collapse-of-the-middle-class-clergy/374786/.

The Association of Theological Schools. http://www.ats.edu.

Flesher, LeAnn Snow. “Low Wages, Student Debt, and ‘The Call:’ Financing Seminary Education.” Sojourners, July 28, 2014. https://sojo.net/articles/low-wages-student-debt-and-call-financing-seminary-education.
 

Image: George Fox Evangelical Seminary Graduation 2015. Credit: flickr via Compfight.
 

Author, Martin E. Marty, is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His biography, publications, and contact information can be found at  www.memarty.com.



 

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Comments:

07.27.15  Mary Scriver in Valier, MT:

Though I received an MA in Religious Studies from the U of C Div School in 1980, I left ministry (UUA) in 1988 for a variety of reasons that may be relevant to others in one combination or another:

1.  Ministers have reacted to the Sexual Revolution incautiously.

2.  Congregations will not let ministers explore new post-Christian theologies, maybe out of fear, and insist on old-fashioned apologetics — and yet are bored with them and can’t reconcile them with the far more exciting scientific breakthroughs or even pluralistic accommodations to comparative religions.

3.  Many denominations (esp in the mainstream) have pushed theology aside in favor of social activism and counseling.  Both require rather different educations than Div School.

4.  Many church contexts are over-influenced by corporation models, esp. those concerned with self-preservation through money.

5.  Levelers have pushed away the kind of prestige and respect ministers once had and instead gone to “you are our servant who must be obedient.”  I had that said to me explicitly in those words and I was in a liberal denomination, though it’s a right wing attitude.

6.  Other vocations use roughly the same skills once the theology is removed.  They pay much better.

7.  Going to visit people in their homes or in the hospital is now unwelcome.

8.  Only the big churches can employ married couples, both ordained.

There are probably more forces than that at work.  The most relevant one for me was simple:  I wanted to come home to the Blackfeet Reservation and not move all the time.  (I am not tribal but I am aging.)

07.27.15  Amy M. Johnson, former church professional:

Thank you for another fine and thought-provoking column. As a friend and former colleague of pastors that manage part-time calls, I feel the need to comment to this post. 

 

A part-time call is very tempting to congregations that cannot afford a full-time pastor. However, congregations and their members rarely have a complete picture of the time-consuming workload of pastors.  The office hours of clergy are anything but "9 to 5"; full-time positions are guaranteed to be more than 40 hours.  So although a pastor may be hired for 20 hours per week, the combination of expectations of the parishioners and the unusual work week schedule means that many part-time pastor work close to full-time hours for part-time pay.

 

Congregations with part-time clergy may acknowledge the heavy workload placed on the staff, and promise a lull in the workload later on. Part-time pastors  usually work additional hours during Advent and Christmas. Soon after those seasons close, it's time to plan for Lent, and part-time pastors again face expectations of longer work hours through Easter. The Resurrection is followed by evening planning meetings for VBS and summer mission trips. 

 

When part-time pastors are able to squeeze in shorter work weeks and even vacations, those spells are quickly cancelled or postponed by illnesses, deaths, and funerals of members.  There is no rest for the weary; only the false promise of part-time hours with a guarantee of part-time pay. 

07.27.15 Dennis Maher, retired clergy:

I think that clergy are vanishing. I am one, now retired and better related to the Clergy Project than to any congregation. The rise of the “nones” has affected clergy as well as people in the pews. This makes clergy vanish.

 

Also, I worked with the PCUSA call and referral system in the ‘90's and have seen great changes since then. In that denomination then, there were about 1,400 clergy seeking about 950 positions; sometimes 1,200 positions. There are now 1,735 clergy seeking 479 positions, of which only 165 are for pastor or associate pastor. How many are full time is unknown, but most congregations today are under 100 members, making it difficult to pay a living wage to a full time pastor. Many of them used to have full time pastors but are calling part time pastors now. Once upon a time, the pastor was the best educated person in a small town. Now there are many counties without any resident pastor. 

 

As the number of educated and connected clergy declines, much knowledge about churches as organizations and institutions has been and is being lost. Denominations are not in a position to care about this, and themselves have lost their corporate memory. I think all of that is fine if congregations would adopt the teachings of Jesus rather than the myths about him as their mission. There is a future for the aphorisms and parables of Jesus but probably not for the church structures that I served for 40 years.