Here are some possible solutions which I shared last week. I confess that I’m brainstorming here; I’m thinking out loud. I’m looking to spark your thinking and your prayers and I’d love to get your feedback. Last week – click here for the post – I said:
- We can pray like crazy.
- We can work and pray and see our churches become “Great Commission healthy.”
- We can encourage young people to offer up their lives to God for Christian ministry, as God leads.
- We can start wrestling with the fact that this shortage is “Biblically unthinkable” (it doesn’t make any sense in light of what Scripture says about God’s giving of leaders and our training of leaders).
- We can tell middle-aged pastors that they can’t retire until they find their own replacements – this one was slightly tongue-in-cheek.
- We can learn how to function more effectively with bi-vocational and co-vocational pastors.
- Mature, gifted and godly lay people, who have served and led n their churches in various capacities for years, can be trained for pastoral leadership by their own pastors, along with taking courses online from colleges and seminaries.
Before we move on, I’d like to add a few more thoughts to suggestions 5 and 7 above.
We know that God made things to reproduce after their own kind (Genesis 1). This truth has many applications. Among them is the observation that Bible colleges and seminaries – unless they are run by churches – “naturally” train their graduates to be excellent Bible college or seminary teachers. When I graduated from seminary, that’s what I could have done really well.
Instead, I tried to be a church planter, with very poor results.
The Apostle Paul was training others to do evangelism and church planting everywhere he went, all the time, by bringing younger men with him. He expected Timothy to do the same (II Timothy 2:2). Nobody was sent off to attend a seminary. I’m not picking on Bible colleges and seminaries; I’m saying that we’re expecting them to do what they can’t do: produce real-world leaders for real-world churches.
One of the reasons why gifted disciples in our churches don’t move away to attend Bible colleges and seminaries is that these institutions have become prohibitively expensive and their graduates, of course, cannot expect to land high-paying jobs after graduation with which they’ll be able to pay off their debts. When I went to college and seminary, the dorms were crude, the food was poor, I had to work in a factory full-time for four years, but I graduated with no debt. I’ve always felt that in the adventure which is Christian ministry, debt is bad but broke is fine. Unfortunately, no one seems to have this broke-but-not-in-debt experience anymore.
So while we talk and write about “leadership pipelines” in our larger churches, we should also be thinking about how to train future pastors in and for our smaller churches, with help from affordable, online college and seminary training (#7 above). This brings us to an eighth way we can solve this problem:
- We can stop despising smaller churches and their solo pastor leadership positions. A recent seminary graduate shocked me with this story. He graduated as one member of a class of eight. Of the eight, he said, most wanted to serve the Lord, but not in churches. Of those who did want to serve in churches, most wanted to work in urban or suburban, larger church settings. What they did not want to do was to serve as solo pastors in smaller, rural churches.
Since the majority of churches today average about 65 in their Sunday morning attendance, that means that many “new” pastoral positions are in these congregations. Here’s where I get to say that I’m thankful to God that an emerging movement is honoring and highly valuing the worth of small congregations. Yes, these positions are extremely challenging, for pastoring the small church is a big, big, job, but at least we are beginning to, once again, honor this high calling.
- We can match up every young pastor with an experienced coach so they’re not so likely to drop out in despair. Did I mention that pastoring a small church is a big job? Did I say that these positions are extremely challenging? What do you think would be easier, serving as an allergist in a nice big suburban clinic or serving as a general practitioner in a tiny, rural municipality? Or harder still: serving as the general practitioner and running your own clinic (which a few doctors still do).
In my opinion, this is one of the best things that a denomination can do: recruit older pastors or competent retired pastors to coach the newbies within their districts. It’s important to make sure that these pastor-coaches are or were competent pastors and to ensure that they’ve had at least a bit of training in coaching. But too many young pastors flame out quickly for want of a little guidance, wisdom and encouragement, and in my observation, there are many retired or veteran pastors who would love to take one or more younger pastors under their wings.
Next Week: More suggestions for you to think about.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
- Pastor: How did you get trained for your ministry? How do you feel about that training?
- Pastor: Have you ever had a coach? Have you ever been a coach for a rookie pastor?
- Is your church in the process of training anyone for pastoral ministry at this time?
- What can we all do to make the pastorates of smaller churches more attractive? (There will be more on this next week.)
