Twenty Ways (15 wasn’t enough) To Solve Our Pastor Shortage, Part Three

For the past two weeks (see 15 Ways To Solve Our Pastor Shortage, Part One and 15 Ways To Solve Our Pastor Shortage, Part Two) I’ve been bemoaning our evangelical pastor shortage.  Like most of my readers, I didn’t much care about theologically liberal churches suffering their pastor shortage, but now that it’s closer to home, I’m concerned.

The good news is that many of you are praying, thinking and talking about this.  I’m hearing some great things from some of you about internships, residencies, college students recruited to re-start a dying congregation as a school project and the identification of core competencies (as an alternative to academic credentials) for pastors.  Wonderful!

Here are the possible solutions which I shared over the last two weeks with a few new notes added in green italics. Again, I’m looking to inspire your thinking and your prayers and I’d love to get your feedback.

1. We can pray like crazy (Matthew 9:36-38).
2. We can work and pray and see our churches become “Great Commission healthy.” Healthy churches produce an overflow of equipped believers.
3. We can encourage people to offer up their lives to God for Christian ministry.
4. 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.)
5. We can tell middle-aged pastors that they can’t retire until they find their own replacements. This one was slightly tongue-in-cheek.
6. We can learn how to function more effectively with bi-vocational and co-vocational pastors.
7. Mature, gifted and godly lay people, who have served and led in their churches in various capacities for years, can be trained for pastoral leadership by their own pastors, along with taking courses online from colleges or seminaries. Here are two additional notes: (1) It’s possible that your church has one or more “2^nd career” future pastors sitting in the pews (2) Perhaps Bible colleges and seminaries could also provide training materials and/or coaching to church leaders in how to effectively train their members for pastoral ministry.
8. We can stop despising smaller churches and their solo pastor leadership positions.
9. We can match up every young pastor with an experienced coach so they’re not so likely to drop out in despair. We have too many good men in other occupations because of their pastoral train-wrecks.

Here are a few more suggestions:

10. We can train pastors better so there are fewer pastoral failures. When I graduated from seminary – way back in the last millennium – I discovered that I was unprepared to actually serve as a pastor.  I’m finding that young men graduating today feel the same way; it seems that we haven’t made much progress. At one point I wrote about the need for flight simulators for pastors-in-training  so they can face a variety of real-life situations without anyone getting hurt.

You are welcome to laugh at me, but I thought that since I did so well in school (I knew how to give teachers what they wanted) that I would do equally well in ministry.  I eventually realized that the skills it took to do well in school had very little to do with the skills it took to do well as a pastor. It’s funny now. It wasn’t funny when I was 28, having my midlife crisis early.

Here’s a step in the right direction: In my introduction I mentioned the identification of core competencies instead of the dangerous practice of assuming that the guy with the right initials behind his name was “good to go.”  I’m also encouraged to hear people talking about denominations and ordination councils concluding that the pastor needs the right theology in his head, the right character in his heart and the right ministry skills in his hands. For far too long we’ve trained, ordained and hired as if the pastor’s head is all that matters.  How can we test the heart and hands?  See #11

11. We can start new pastors in residencies and internships instead of throwing them right into the lion’s den of solo or senior pastorates. The unfortunate alternative to one or two year no-fault, no-long-term obligation internships/residencies is our current practice of one or two year associate or solo pastorates which end badly for everyone: disappointed or angry old churches, disappointed or angry young pastors and heartbroken pastor’s wives.   Read more about this in the post I called Internships: An Old Practice Getting A New Look

12. We can lure rested pastors out of retirement. I’m serious.  How much golf are you actually going to enjoy? Do you really think you need to fulfill your “bucket list” when we’re going to have a thousand years (or more!) to see the world? Many sixty-five year old pastors need a year or two of rest and they’re “good to go” again, a little slower perhaps, but ready to be more powerful and wise and fruitful (John 15) than they’ve ever been.

13. We can be more open to multiple parishes. Serving more than one church (usually rural, but not necessarily) is tough.  My mentor confessed to me how fast he drove on Sunday mornings between church #1 and church #2.  But serving a church part-time while working at Home Depot part-time isn’t easy either. It’s better for a church to have a half-time pastor than to have none at all.

14. We can be more open to cross-denominational pastorates. I’m not suggesting that our second-tier theological beliefs don’t matter. They do.  What I am suggesting is that some of us might be mature, secure, careful and gracious enough to – at least temporarily – serve as pastors of churches which are a bit different from our own chosen theological/denominational framework. My impression is that this was a common practice in 19^th century Great Britain and I know that many interim pastors do this successfully today.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

1. Has your church ever considered hiring interns or residents instead of associate pastors? Is it time to seriously consider this?
2. If your church has a rookie pastor, what is it doing to help him grow in his ministry skills? Does he have, or could he have, a veteran pastoral coach?
3. If you haven’t worked on the core competencies you want to see in your next associate, solo or senior pastor, this would be a great time to start thinking, praying and working towards a consensus on this.
4. Share any stories you can about multiple parishes, cross-denominational pastorates or pastors coming out of retirement.