AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Much of this post seems reflective of the practices of my little sect. Except the ordination part.

Can similar traits be found in a seminary's approach to theological education?

It is good to own up to the fact that the Spirit will move. I am not certain, however, that I should plan to fall short in order to allow for the movement of the Holy Spirit. The movement of the Spirit is not to be an institutional copout.

Padre, the flippant answer to your concern is that God calls those who like you are ordained to that estate. If God wants more ordained presbyters, he'll have to call a little louder!

Seriously: Of course all of us need to do our part to reduce the level of ambient spiritual noise, so that God's voice can be heard. But in my life as an Episcopalian (since I was a tot of four years old) I've seen many priests, and none of them were complete duds, though a few had problems. (Of course, you've known more priests than I have, so your experience will be more complex than mine.) I've also seen an increased appreciation of the diaconate and its work, a prayer book revision that, despite its quirks and flaws, for the most part improved the liturgy and increased the general level of liturgical awareness, and an ongoing (not always well-implemented) concern for education of both children and adults. If these are imperfect conditions for God's voice calling someone to the ordained presbyterate to be heard in, still I suspect that voice is possible to hear. But it is also an environment in which most of us will find that we are called, not to the ordained presbyterate, but to other functions and roles.

I have to say that my view of the ordained presbyterate is mostly negative. Of old one was not ordained to the presbyterate at all. One simply became an elder by a sort of osmosis. This purely informal system became impossible to maintain, so we switched to the formally ordained presbyterate. I'm willing to go along with this because I think it makes things less bad than they would otherwise be. (Occasionally I take a more positive view.) But anyhow, the old system hasn't been replaced altogether. It continues along with the newer system. It is now called by the silly name of "lay ministry". Most of these informal "elders" are not paid at all, and I have seen some of them experience severe burnout. Perhaps we need to do more to encourage vocations to the ordained presbyterate, but we must not neglect to address the difficulties faced by these "elders" of the older kind.

Is there more to your concern on this matter that you are saying ? Has there been a shortage of priest-track applicants to Seabury Western in recent years ?

"second, the church underpays its employees"

Can this possibly be true in ECUSA?
I think those of us in England will take some convincing....

One possibility, and I'm sure there are some cases where this is true, is that those who have the ability to do well in the labor market find it hard to resist the lure of money there. This is merely the other side of your point about churches not paying well. While I have in fact seen some give up lacrative careers to enter the ministry, I've seen others with gifts in that area who do not.

One does not even have to be "rich" for this effect to work. One could merely assume that going into ministry will cut off prospects for remuneration in the future. Greed is a powerful thing which affects nearly everyone (including, I hear, those in the ministry upon occasion).

Many (most?) Christian Churches are not really Christian at all. Regularly I see mainline churches where they primarily worship themselves and leave the Jesus of The Bible out in the cold. It is not enough to worship a jesus otherwise we could go hire one in Mexico. If you are not worshiping the Jesus of the Bible then you are just fooling yourself. Many churches place other sources as superior to the Bible in matters of faith.

I do not know what denomination you belong to but I suggest that you ask yourself just what Jesus you worship. If the Bible is not the Word of God then why bother to attend Church at all. I notice that you wrote a book on historical criticism, are you for it or against it?

So in my roundabout way I am trying to ask why should the Holy Spirit bring men to the ministry in a church that worships Baal?

Much of value here to respond to — I shan’ be able to do well enough, I’m sure, but I owe it to each of you to try.

Barry, idolatry of various sorts afflicts a number (I don’t know what proportion) of congregations and denominations who try to follow Christ. My concern here is that the churches find ways to articulate and embody a commitment to support (in some reliable sense of that word) those who exercise leadership in the community. I don’t know what that has to do with historical criticism, precisely, but for what it’s worth I do believe that reading Scripture in the context of other ancient literary works and of first-century culture and history helps us understand why evangelists and apostles would say what they did.

Paul, greed is quite pertinent here (maybe that’s what Barry meant about worshipping Baal). I don’t want to buy out greedy capitalists in order more profitably to promulgate a Christian product line; I introduced money into the \picture because it’s inescapably a part of figuring out why people go into various vocations. Stan Hauerwas used to say that clergy are underpaid as a way of keeping them dependent and docile (if I remember correctly), so that clergy should expect to be paid more both as a sign of respect and as a signal that a congregation had a basis for expecting a lot of their leaders. I’m not sure he’s convinced me, but I do see his line of reasoning.

But of course, Simon, everyone in the US Episcopal Church is better-paid than their equivalent nuber in the Church of England. And we live and work in buildings most of which were constructed fewer than 150 years ago, too.

Timothy, I’m trying to look not at individual clergy (among whom I think that one has to say that most are quite admirable souls well able to help sustain a community’s life of prayer and service). I’m pondering an aggregate picture in which the curve flattens out prematurely. Moreover, here I think I’m echoing a plaint I hear from others as well — where are the heroes? Domyou know the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta “The Gondoliers,” wherein Marco and Giuseppe found a state in which everyone is so equal that nothing gets done. It is, as one would expect, an apologetic exercise in nostalgia for reinforced social classes, but there’s a glimmer of soundness for all that. Toward whom should I point my students as exemplary figures?

Tripp, we’ve talked about this before. You point out to me that the seminaries in the Chicagoland area evaluate students on the basis of differing local standards; that may indeed be part of what bothers me. I think, though, that I’m looking beyond seminary to a wider, more diffuse pattern in the church. “Wide and diffuse,” so we can all find exceptions, but still, I think, pertinent. It washes back into the educational phase of ministry, but I don’t think seminary is unique in this respect.

Frank, thanks for the affirmation from the Friends. I, in turn, want to affirm your posting puppy pictures. Not as momentous, perhaps, as problems in ministry, but a lot more interesting.

Wow. Interesting and timely (for me) post. I see people I know who are considering or have considered the ordained ministry, myself included, as sort of having the opposite problem. The overwork and underpay issues are there in a lot of vocations (teaching, non-profit work, etc). My problem is more, how do we know we're called to the clerical vocation? How do we know it's not our own egos, the need for approval?

A lot of denominations not only have difficulties finding gifted people for the ordained ministry, they have difficulty retaining them. The number of people who leave the ordained ministry altogether after several years is staggering.

Some of it is burnout. Some of it is failure to have properly discerned a vocation prior to ordination. And a lot of it is, I suspect, loneliness and a lack of support (spiritual, personal, financial, or otherwise).

I imagine some studies must have been done on all of this, or at least some kind of data collection (even if from Gallup). I'd be curious to see it.

Your musing during Sunday service reminds me of what a call a "Wadena moment." Margaret may remember what that means. Since retirement 12 years ago we have visited many churches and I continue to experience wonderment similar to yours concerning vocations to ordained ministry. What balances things for me is the emphasis we have here in this diocese (Maine)on vocations to the Diaconate. I do not mean the transitional diaconate leading to priesthood. Our bishop wants to have at least one Deacon in every parish. We have an excellent year long program of discernment and another year (or more) of Deacon Formation. Clinical Pastoral Education is required, EFM or something like it is urged, internship in a parish is the norm and then assignment to a parish by the bishop after ordination. All these Deacons are self-supporting and unpaid by the church!!! I have come to know many and am incredibly impressed by their quality, commitment, humility, and effectiveness in the parishes they serve. They are serving as models not only to the laity but to also to the priests who are reminded that they too are still deacons.

I read a letter to the editor... somewhere (Presbyterian Outlook?) that the day of the ordained, full-time pastor was over, and that the future was part-time lay pastors.

I have known some very good lay pastors, but I think it will harm our churches in the long run to have folks who have not received decent and sufficient theological education for the care and nurture of souls. Yes, I know Paul was a tent-maker and all that, but this is not the first century. The decision to move towards lay pastors seems to be a trend based on economics rather than theology, which is always a troubling way to make decisions.

A pastor closer to retirement age told me that she remembers a pastor several decades ago discouraging her from encouraging people to go into the ministry because there weren't going to be enough jobs for them in the future. Oops.

Thanks for an interesting piece. It articulates some excellent points. Not long ago I heard that there were fewer white men going into the ministry because it was no longer a position of prestige in society. I can remember thinking that if they were going into it for prestige, then the church had really not lost all that much in their decision not to become ordained... but I wonder how many talented people have been discouraged because (as someone else described it), pastors generally have all the responsibility (for what goes well or fails) but no authority (i.e. the church boards "run" the church, but success or failure is left on the pastor's shoulders.

I don't know what the answer is, and some days I just really wish Jesus would hurry up and come back.

Point of Fact: Our new Deacon Formation Program in the Diocese of Maine (for vocational deacons) is a MINIMUM OF TWO YEARS (after the discernment process), sometimes more. This substantial program seems to be working well, in terms of study and training, and also develops a close relationship among the deacons which continues as a support group for them after their ordination.

This is quite interesting to me, because I've thought that the ECUSA does a miserable job dealing with the laity as leadership. We seem to think that anyone who has a God-inclination or leadership abilities in the church should pursue the vocational track to ordination. So anyone who appears a credible leader gets pushed to ordination.

But some of us are not called as ordained leaders. I believe I'm called to some form of work inthe church, but not as a priest or deacon. I'm a teacher by profession, and I think that my "ministry", as it were, is in that line of work, working with students and other teachers and pursuing the calling of God in the gaining of knowledge and wisdom. The priesthood and the diaconate seem neither necessary nor, perhaps, desireable in that case. But I don't know how many times I have been asked if I sense an ordained vocation. My sense is quite the opposite, actually. But the Church (and the ECUSA) just don't quite know what to do with the laity, it seems. Unless a person is a priest or a pastor or a minister of some sort, we just seem to ignore the person and whatever gifts he or she can offer.

What hasn't been touched on here, or at least I didn't see it, was the discernment process itself. Too often the process, in general terms, goes like this:

Priest: You know, you might want to think about becoming a priest.
Person: Okay.
Discernment Team: We think you have a calling to ordained ministry.
COM: What makes you think you should be a priest?

The canons state that COMs, priests and bishops actively recruit, encourage and assist people discerning a call to the priesthood. In my experience, I was recruited by a priest, but there was precious little encouragement and virtually no assistance. COMs, and others, have become gatekeepers for "their" church, rather than recruiters and helpers. We must be willing to risk getting less-than-perfect people into the ministry -- which is different than allowing dangerous people to be ordained.

"Why are there so few of them?" Because we aren't looking helping and assisting.

Thanks for the thoughtful first article and responses. As a recently retired woman priest I particularly resonate with the remark that parish clergy have all of the responsibility and no true power to make the wished for results happen -- but that is only in part because vestries too often see them as employees rather than leaders. We do need to be honest about what happens to any life track (I'm trying to avoid words like career or profession) when it is no longer valued in the society at large and the fact that when persons who are not themselves seen as valued enter it. "My son the doctor/school master/priest" sort of thinking just naturally disappears when "anyone" can enter the field. I've known a number of highly talented younger men who were discouraged by their parents from considering the ordained parish ministry. I'll leave the problems of clergy spouces to another responder.

I think churches, (meaning local bodies of people, not the church as it pertains to the bride) start out well and fine, and those of us who come into the flock post-conception (conception of the church-body) see it in a different light.

I serve as a youth director of a small church, and I don't see my calling there as divinely appointed, as so many of my friends in ministry would want me to believe. I'm there simply because a group of Christ-followers wanted someone to guide them. They wanted this so much that they decided to give me some money so that I don't have to worry about another job, I can just focus on leading them in better ways. Whether that means spending my time in scripture or being on my knees in prayer for our body, they want me to be a leader so much that they're willing to make sure I don't have to spend my days working for my money. I am allowed to spend my days pouring over God's word, and being a communicator to our people about the happenings of God's church in other places. It's not that other people can't do it, (believe you me, my big struggle is knowing that I could probably get by doing what I do part time, not full) it's just that these people have asked me to spend my life focused on leading them.

In my (admittedly not so vast) experience, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room in ECUSA's perception of ordained ministry for those who might be called, but not called to parish or chaplaincy work. If I have a call, where that call would take me if answered (and, yes, if I'm perceiving it correctly, which is a separate issue) isn't where my interests, my passions, my theology, or my heart lie.