Why are Fewer Younger Men Going Into Pastoral Ministry?

  • We need to get back to true Biblical Eldership. [explains my comment above]
  • We need to break down the barrier between bishops and deacons and acknowledge that both offices are “in the ministry” NOT “the bishop is the vocational (paid) office and the deacon is the lay office”!
  • While I acknowledge this:
    • There is a place for a vocational (full-time & fully paid) eldership
    • There is a place for an unpaid eldership
      • This could be the so-called bi-vocational / tentmaker elder OR
      • An elder who self-supports another way (personal-wealth or retirement)
  • The hardships (the soldier, the athlete, the farmer) are not just for the paid-elder (the vocational-minister)!
  • It’s not sinful to provide for oneself. There is no need to be an ascetic! Two verses:
    • 1 Corinthians 7:31-34 AND
    • 1 Timothy 5:8
  • We have made much about distinguishing between those “in the ministry” and those not (the lessor ones) “in the ministry”. The Scriptures teach all are in the ministry ( Ephesians 4:12 )
  • There is a whole “industry” that promotes the specialness of the “called” “minister”. Just as Eisenhower warned of the military–industrial complex , there is a ministry-educational complex today that elevates the called ones for its own self-interests!
  • Teachings on eldership should be revisited and retaught. Here’s one of the classics: Biblical Eldership and then this by 9Marks
  • Churches today treat eldership like the NFL Draft. A guy goes away (Bible college and seminary) and then is “called” with a resume and a try-out (candidating). Elders should be developed from within the church
  • What’s missing in elders today (the traditional system of) is the the hoary head!

If you turn that into a sermon, I’ll download and listen to it!

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

  • “too few men who are preparing to accept the call” (the idea of a special ministry call is indefensible!)
  • “many other churches have pastors nearing retirement” (there is NO retirement from ministry! (see Piper book!)
  • “more than a decade ago denominations began to warn of a clergy shortage”
  • ” a rapid decline in the number of young men entering the seminary to prepare for pastoral roles” (comment: I volunteer at Central Seminary and I do not want to be misquoted / misunderstood or interpreted out of context of my above comments or my doctrinal position! I graduated from seminary and profited from it and value it! There’s a place for the seminaries and admittedly skills like the languages are difficult to develop w/o the seminaries! But the route to eldership should not be through the seminary!)
  • “the numbers of those entering the ministry” (see my comments on “the ministry” above!)
  • “many retiring missionaries have been leaving the field ” (three wrongful views in one sentence! There’s a place for a vocational-fully/paid-fully-supported person to be sent and go, but it’s every Christian’s mission and the field is right out our front door! Yesterday I witnessed to a Jew whom God brought to repair a dining room chair!)
  • “that ministry is, frankly, very hard work” (again “the ministry”! Want to know what “hard work” is … try to witness to one person a week. Amp that up (I haven’t been able to) to one a day!
  • “The soldier, the athlete, and the farmer” - every Christian is called to this type of hardship! The deacon too! (as in Paul’s previous epistle!)

I could go on! The author is part of (nothing wrong with that!) the ministry-educational complex! (not knocking BJ which is a good school!)

If what Jim is saying is true, there might actually be a biblical basis for making the method of pastoral training and determination of a pastoral calling as one of the fundamentals of the faith worth contending for.

This would be, of course, alongside dress standards, music, and scripture version.

John B. Lee

You wrote:

The author is part of (nothing wrong with that!) the ministry-educational complex! (not knocking BJ which is a good school!)

I coined a similar phrase a year or so ago on SI, when I referred to the “seminary-industrial complex.” I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I just meant that the prevailing vehicles for a young man to get to pastoral ministry (bible college + seminary + youth minister = senior solo pastor) has a vested interest in perpetuating a model that I don’t believe actually works well. Here’s something to ignite some controversy:

  • Local churches often don’t take ordination seriously. They often rubber-stamp the process. What proportion of local churches turn down a man for ordination because he can’t teach his way out of a wet paper bag? Not many, I’ll wager.
  • Seminary doesn’t equal fitness for ministry. Too many people assume a seminary degree is a stamp of approval. Wrong. The real stamp is supposed to be the local church, but see above.
  • Leaving your home church to attend seminary = loses the mentorship aspect and is crippling.

I praise God for forward-thinking institutions like Maranatha Seminary which offers robust, rich virtual training for Seminary degrees, which allow young men to stay in their home churches, serve among the folks who know them best and can evaluate their calling, and stay with their home pastor who can best mentor them to use the tools they’re being given at Seminary. Go MBU. For those graduate institutions which don’t do virtual, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re closed within one generation. It makes me sad, but I think that’s the future.

I do wonder how often local Baptist churches are encouraging young men to consider pastoral ministry. Have things changed? I remember hearing that almost weekly from the pulpit.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

I would never attend, nor accept a call to a church that was not lead by elders, and appreciate greatly the elders at the church I currently attend. Committee lead churches (most SBC churches) give power to the least qualified. My SIL was 1 of 4 staff members at an SBC church, and over the course of a year, all of them left, because one individual managed to get themselves elected to many of the committees, and decided that the church would be run their way. After the senior pastor left, this individual gave my SIL the option of being fired or leaving with severance, just as their child was being born.

CanJAmerican - my blog
CanJAmerican - my twitter
whitejumaycan - my youtube

What I noticed as the “senior pastor” in two churches (in both cases I had a 2nd pastor - the “assistant or youth pastor”):

  • The “buck” stopped with me … all church “problems” were mine alone!
  • Lack of growth? My problem!
  • Disgruntled member? My problem!
  • Visitors come and go? My problem!
  • Financial issues? My problem! (My last church … previous pastors took on debt … enjoyed the benefits on the capital improvements … and my “administration” paid the debt

Being the “point person” is no fun and I don’t believe God’s design.

I like a lot of what Jim says (not just here but generally), but I cannot agree with this:

(the idea of a special ministry call is indefensible!)

This is not the place to argue the point, although I have tried to do so here and here. I only wish to point out that many very eminent men have held that the special call to the ministry is not only defensible biblically, but absolutely necessary for the health of the Church.

P.S. lest I be misunderstood, I should say that by “the ministry” I mean (as did Fuller, Newton, Spurgeon, Bridges, Alexander et al) the pastoral ministry. I agree fully that every believer has a ministry, but that is not the same thing.

Dr. Paul Henebury

I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.

[Paul Henebury] many very eminent men have held that the special call to the ministry is not only defensible biblically, but absolutely necessary for the health of the Church.

I’m not eminent! I’m a nobody!

I used to believe in a “special call” … no longer! (I believe God gifts and directs people so perhaps that is something we can both agree to!)

–- Update: I read your 1st link (your article). Didn’t look at the 2nd b/c dinner calls. I agree with much of what you have written.

I’m a young elder (that’s a thing, right?) who works a second job to be able to spend more time pastoring. I agree with Stiekes’ point. For many people my age “vocational ministry” isn’t worth the bother. It’s CEO-level stress without CEO-level pay. The cost of Bible college/seminary doesn’t help. Unlike investing in, say, med school that’s money the student will never see back.

I think, in general, the office of a pastor-elder has been undervalued. Young men don’t value it enough to pursue it and churches don’t value it enough to give their pastor(s) a decent (livable?) wage.

The answers are of course complex, but here’s some thoughts (a lot of this overlaps with what has already been said):

-Give value to the office of an elder while simultaneously encouraging every believer-priest to be active in ministry.

-Reclaim biblical eldership.

-Make training up church leadership a priority.

-Find a more cost-effective way to train pastor-elders.

Josh Stilwell, associate pastor, Alathea Baptist Church, Des Moines, Iowa.

Fun and Mental

[Jim]

On “The cost of Bible college … doesn’t help” - addressing the first part of your comment below:

Looking at Bible colleges … virtually everything that is taught there could be easily taught by a consortium of churches!

I completely agree and have written about it here and here.

Josh Stilwell, associate pastor, Alathea Baptist Church, Des Moines, Iowa.

Fun and Mental

Back in 1976, three men from my church went to Moody because we felt God calling us into the pastorate. Two were from Christian homes. I was the third.

The pastor preached on a future shortage of pastors, and asked us to come forward. Unknown to us, the pastor was soon to resign to be a prof at Philadelphia College of the Bible, and wanted to make the case that his calling to train pastors was desperately needed.

Like the coming Ice Age they predicted then, the shortage never came.

The Catholics, they have a shortage. The mainlines sort of do, but since most of them allow female pastors, they will soon be mostly female. But for evangelical churches, so many man say they think God is calling them to the pastorate.

Of the three of us mentioned above, I was the only one that ended up actually being a pastor, though the others graduated from Moody when I did.

We may have a shortage of students, but we don’t of pastors.

"The Midrash Detective"