The online Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a growing number of students are responding to a perceived call to ministry, reversing a two-decade trend. The shift seems to reflect changing cultural values as well as the fruit of a major financial investment by the Lilly Endowment.
The trends certainly needed reversing, if churches are to have qualified leadership. In the years after World War II, about the same number of college students went into ministry as into medicine, according to the Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary, in New York. By the mid 1980s, however, while 15 percent of college graduates went into medicine, just one percent entered a seminary or divinity school.
Concerned with that bleak picture, the Lilly Endowment put up some major money in grants for colleges "to help students explore the relationship between faith and work, to encourage talented students to consider entering Christian ministry, and to prepare the faculty and staff members to help students think about work in new ways," according to the Chronicle.
Between 2000 and 2007, Lilly shelled out $176.2 million to 88 church-related colleges.
One of the main challenges has been to get ministry on the radar screen of prospective students when other professions are so much more lucrative, mainline churches are less influential, and fewer pastors are seen as important leaders or intellectual heavyweights.
A major part of the effort has been to help students recognize that ministry is meaningful work. Grant participants have taken various paths toward that end, and appear to be having some success. Anecdotal evidence presented in the article suggests that more recent college graduates are choosing to pursue theological education, which could bring down the average age at many seminaries, where less than one in three students are in their twenties.
Lilly's effort is boosted by a contemporary trend in which younger adults seem more likely to be involved in volunteer work and more attracted to service-oriented professions whose rewards are more than financial.
As a former pastor (26 years), it's sad to think that so much effort is required to convince potential pastors that ministry is "meaningful work." The happy thing is that the program appears to be getting traction.
Now, perhaps, the Lilly Endowment can help seminaries and divinity schools keep pace by developing programs for students who want to do meaningful and ministry-related work, but not in traditional church settings.
Otherwise, many of those fresh-faces may not stick around.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
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4 comments:
Great news and an excellent point at the end about developing programs for seminary and divinity school students who sense a calling to ministry in non-traditional settings. Do you have any thoughts that you would like to share about what those programs would look like?
I haven't given it a lot of thought yet, but it's a concern I hear from students who observe that typical seminary/divinity school programs focus mainly on preparing students for traditional church positions, while many of them want to serve in other capacities.
From the schools' standpoint, they understand that there are more traditional church positions out there than they can prepare students for, so the strongest felt need is in that area.
Most schools already have chaplaincy programs, but even those include little training for worship or pastoral care that would be different than in a traditional church setting: liturgy, music, sermon.
I think Campbell's new urban ministries track and other specialty tracks that schools offer (like combination law, business, or nursing degrees) are helpful in offering options.
What I think students are looking for, however, is at least one course looking at alternate ways of doing/being church. I think a course that explores postmodernity and its implications for future-church would be helpful, along with opportunities to visit non-traditional churches, modern day monastics, etc. Such an option, I think, would be very popular.
My own direction is certainly not to "church work," but I appreciate the fact that the vast majority of church ministry positions are in traditional settings(even "contemporary" settings are only repackaged modernity and a far cry from truly postmodern Christianity) and that there is a necessity for traditional church training.
One area that seems to be lacking is the area of well-trained bivocational ministers. It seems like many times (obviously not all situations) men and women serving in this capacity are trained in other areas and often not very broadly prepared in areas pertaining specifically to ministry.
As a corollary to bivocational ministry, I've joked about my goal in seminary to become an overeducated lay person, but I don't know that that's really that far off base for people my age...I think we want to do ministry, but in ways that appeal to our passions, interests and gifts.
My own introduction to the Lilly Endowment came when I was a rising senior in high school. I attended the first annual Youth Theology Institute (now Youth Theology Initiative) at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. It has been 15 years; and although the funding of that program has changed, I know that many of our group of 59 were profoundly affected by our experience. Several are ministers; others have went into the service professions (teaching at inner city schools, counseling, etc.).
As for me, that summer was the first time I ever heard a woman preach. It set me on the path to divinity school. It even led me to my husband as he was a high school friend who wrote me letters (in the days before email) while I was away.
I am thankful for what the Lilly Endowment funded that summer. It certainly set the course for my life.
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