John Benton writes that “there is an elephant in the room” and that it is that
“far fewer men are coming forward to train for the ministry than there are pastors coming up to retirement. This is a big matter for the future of evangelical churches, but I am not hearing many conversations about it or plans to try to deal with it.”
Now, I write not as someone who thinks that all is rosy in the garden. I think that there are significant challenges around the identification, recruitment and training of potential pastors, especially into urban and deprived contexts. However, I’m not convinced that John identifies the issues correctly. So, in this article I’m going to engage with his arguments.
First, John states that “theological seminaries are far from over subscribed.” This is actually a difficult proposition to verify. What does John mean by “over-subscribed”? I’m not sure that our seminaries have set fixed capacities, I don’t think there have ever been waiting lists. Furthermore, I’d be cautious about judging things on whether on campus numbers are up or down at the prominent theological colleges such as Oak Hill, Union, LS and LST. I know that going back only 15 years ago and Oak Hill were experiencing record numbers of students coming through. There will be peaks and troughs for various reasons.
Even if numbers are down on campus, we have to remember that there has been an expansion in the number of ways in which people can train, this includes off campus learning community options with Union as well as flexi-learning options such as Crosslands. Then there are people focusing more on in house vocational training such as 20 Schemes and Medhurst Ministries. There are question-marks about whether seminary is the best training route for everyone. I’m personally encouraging people to consider vocational training with us here in the West Midlands.
This takes us to another point that John doesn’t mention. Historically there was a scepticism about the helpfulness of formal theological training and many of the pastors from previous generations, no doubt including some retiring over the next few years did not go through that route.
John’s second argument is that one of the reasons why ministry training schemes were set up was to provide a stepping stone into ministry. He then gives the example of a recent conference for trainees where out of a 100 attendees only 12 attended the option on preaching. Yet, the crucial words are “one of” the training schemes were not just about providing a route into ministry and I don’t think churches that run them expect all or even the majority of those going through to go on to seminary or into pastoral work, at least immediately. Furthermore, if the scheme is doing its job then surely te trainees will be learning to preach in their churches, perhaps a conference gives them the opportunity to tackle topics not so easily covered in the local church?
Some of the concerns John suggests that potential pastors may have are I think valid. However, I’m not sure what he means when he says:
“The idea of a clear call from the Holy Spirit to pastoral ministry has been so denigrated and attacked in recent decades that maybe men now have great difficulty in even recognising God’s call. “
There has been an absolutely correct challenge to a tendency to emphasise a subjective “inner call” when in fact the clarity of a call is when a church specifically calls someone to serve as an elder. It has always seemed strange to me that those within traditions most sceptical about prophecy, words of knowledge and visions suddenly change tune when it comes to the pastor’s call and at the same time ignore the crucial step in charismatic understanding that the Holy Spirit’s prompting is not merely subjective and internal but must be discerned corporately.
As for the competitive marketplace. My perception is that most churches will have multiple applicants for roles. There may be other questions about the fit of applicants to churches but that is a different matter.
Yes, I know of churches that have struggled to fill vacancies but that wasn’t because there was a lack of people showing interest, more the ability often to agree on a preferred candidate. However, whether advertising positions on network jobs pages or in the Christian media is the best way to identify and call pastors is perhaps something worth revisiting. There are certainly challenges to how we identify, call, train and send workers. I’ve talked frequently about this in relation to urban contexts. However, I don’t think the issues are the ones John is identifying and I’m not convinced his article offers solutions.
Faithroots 