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Friday, March 17, 2006

Why Aren't We Going to Seminary??

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!! You should all already be well-versed in this famous Irish drinking and carousing holiday, since I blogged about its history last year. But I did discover recently in an in-flight magazine that there is only one other nation outside of Ireland that has declared St. Patrick’s Day a national holiday… any guesses?

The island of Montserrat, in the Caribbean, which used to be a haven for 17th century Irish Catholics after they finished indentured servitude in the British West Indies. The little nation celebrates for an entire week, with feasts, parades, and outdoor theater productions that commemorate a slave uprising on this date in 1768. So if you want a sunnier alternative to Ireland in your St. Patrick’s Day festivities, Montserrat may be the place for you.

No, today I’m going to talk about yet another New York Times article (I can’t tell if they’re really that good, or if they’re just the only thing all my friends read and pass on). It says that the number of students attending Protestant seminaries and divinity schools in this country is on the rise, even as the numbers of mainline Protestants themselves are shrinking. What it points out, too, is that increasing numbers of women and men seeking Master of Divinity degrees are not at all interested in being ordained to serve in parish ministry. Apparently only half of all MDiv students today plan on entering the parish after completing their degrees. This number has decreased by 10 to 15 percentage points in the last five years alone.

As a person planning on pursing theological education but passing up ordination myself, this article did affirm my own decision. Students were speaking about the same things I am—wanting to pursue meaningful work in the work, bringing the morals and ethics of our faith life into all segments of the society, but not feeling called to do that as a clergyperson.

Yet the article never attempted to address a pragmatic, less cited reason that many young people may not be interested in serving as clergy—hard work, high expectations, and low pay.

In our Presbyterian tradition, let’s look at what we’re asking of a young person interested in Ministry of Word and Sacrament. First, we require that you be very well-educated—those without an MDiv need not apply. So we require you to go off to pursue a three-year professional degree, akin to law school or journalism school. Now, if you’re like most people in these days of rising tuition costs and shrinking federal funding, you’re probably coming out of your undergrad with significant debt. And even if your church and presbytery are financially supporting you through grad school, you’re probably going to rack up more debt somewhere in those three years.

Now you’re searching for a congregation. The churches you’re most likely to get a call from, particularly if you’re a young woman and/or person of color, will be small and rural or small and inner city. Nothing against small churches—they need the love of God just as much as anyone else. When you’re staring down $30,000+ of educational debt, though, and your church is only offering you $25,000 per year for your graduate level education… are you starting to see why being a parish minister becomes less and less appealing?

Granted, ministers are like teachers—they don’t do it for the money. But like parents expect the world out of teachers, we laypeople expect a lot from our pastors. They’re never tired, always available, all-knowing and wise. We want them at every church potluck, every Presbyterian Women’s fundraiser, every youth group mission trip. If they look at us cross-eyed in the grocery store, we leave the church.

Oh, and did I mention that, if you’re a woman, your ministry will be peppered with comments like these?: “Well, Pastor Suzy does pretty well for a woman,” “We were a little nervous about calling a woman pastor,” “Oh, gosh, Rev. Julie is going to preach today… I just prefer hearing men preach—their style is so much stronger and more direct.”

Have I painted enough of a picture for you?

Small churches in particular don’t have the resources to pay for a student’s seminary education, and there are scholarships out there to help people along as they go through grad school. But a start would be for our denominations to begin addressing the overall debt load, undergraduate and graduate, of students coming out of seminary, and offer denominational debt forgiveness for women and men serving small congregations. The government does the same thing to recruit teachers, and it helps. We’ve got good people coming through school who want to do something meaningful with their lives. Let’s stop losing them to jobs that actually compensate them for their level of education, or stop requiring so much education.

As for the congregations themselves, there are no easy answers to that one. But as fewer young adults take the path to ordination, one thing is for sure—we will have to start seeing clergy not as one-way lines to God, but as real people with real needs.

“Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching, for the scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and ‘The laborer deserves to be paid.’” --1 Timothy 5:17-18

Kelsey
posted by Noelle at 11:14 AM

1 Comments:

Actually, Kelsey, there is denominational debt forgiveness (to some extent) for those serving congregations. In your first three years in the pulpit, if you are in a church of less than 125? members, the denomination will cover up to $10,000 in loans occurred during seminary. Of course, it doesn't cover expenses related to your undergraduate coursework, and there's no guarantee that the program will continue, especially considering the cutbacks/ rearrangements that are already happening re: grants for current students. We do need to show more financial support for our ministers; but we also need to recognize the good things we are already doing...
Blogger Amy, at 9:40 PM  

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