As of May 9, there were 2,131 people seeking a call within the PC (U.S.A.) and 557 positions listed with the Church Leadership Connection (CLC), the agency that helps churches seeking pastors and pastors looking for churches to find each other. The CLC has also been described as our denomination’s version of Match.com.

If you’re a church that needs to find a pastor or at least a full-time pastor, those odds seem pretty good. It looks like there are almost 4 pastors for every available position. The reality is a little different. Some pastors can’t leave the area where they now live because of a spouse’s employment or other family considerations. Others are seeking more specific types of calls. They want to be an interim pastor, associate pastor or Christian Educator. Some are looking for a position in a specific part of the country, perhaps to be closer to aging parents or their grandchildren. Or, as Marcia Myers, former PWV staffer who also worked at our national offices once put it, “God calls a lot of people to Ft. Lauderdale.” There are lots of pastors who want to live at the beach. And if indeed there is a Presbyterian church in Vail, Colorado, I’m sure a number of pastors feel they are being called there as well.

I suppose there are also a few pastors hoping to hit the jackpot. The First Presbyterian Church of Salina, Kansas, once made a small mistake when entering their Church Information Form into the system. Instead of offering a salary of $80,000, because they accidentally added an additional 0, it looked like they were offering a salary of $800,000. I’m sure most of the pastors who came across that form before the mistake was corrected felt that God was calling them to Salina, Kansas, even though they probably had no idea where it is. 

I’m not quite ready to say there’s a pastor shortage. I’m getting the feeling, though, that there is a shortage of pastors willing to serve small churches located in small towns and rural areas that can only offer the presbytery’s minimum salary. That doesn’t mean there aren’t pastors out there who are willing to serve such churches. There are. There just aren’t a lot of them.

I’ve also mentioned before that I suspect something like 40% of the pastors serving our churches are going to retire in the next 5-10 years. I may be wrong on that. However, I don’t necessarily see that potential wave of retirements as a bad thing. A new cohort of pastors could bring us new perspectives, new ideas, and new energy. Our churches could be refreshed and our presbytery could be transformed, renewed from within when that happens. It’s exciting to think about these possibilities and what they could mean.  

It strikes me that there are at least two things we need to do in light of this. I will admit up front that these may seem contradictory. One, we need to be more intentional about encouraging people to enter the ministry. Sometimes, pastors can be whiny. (This is no surprise to anyone who has ever served on the Ministry Committee.) Yes, ministry is hard. Yes, there are long hours. Yes, people can be stubborn, shortsighted, and maybe even mean. Not that this is limited to the ministry. I would not be surprised if schoolteachers, as well as people working at Walmart, would say the same thing about the people they have to work with.   

But ministry is also fun. It is never boring. It is always challenging. It allows for creativity, if not artistry. It demands your best, and you get to see people at their best. (To be fair, you also get to see them at their worst.) It is a privilege to watch people grow in their faith, to be there with them as they celebrate a birth and to be with them as they watch a loved one take their last breath. We need good ministers, and we need to encourage people to go into the ministry. Primarily, I mean seminary, but I’d also include the Commissioned Ruling Elder (CRE) training that our presbytery offers. We need good CREs, too.

The second thing we need to do is to encourage people who are just holding on, who are simply counting the days until they get to retire, to just go ahead and do that. Some can’t afford to retire. I get that. However, there are other jobs out there. Maybe they don’t pay as well. But if you don’t love what you’re doing, if you don’t love the people you work with, if you don’t have the energy to come up with new ideas and new sermons and new ways to share the gospel, if you don’t wake up most mornings excited about the things you’re going to get to do that day, you need to leave. You’re not living the abundant life God wants you to live, and you’re probably not helping the church. In fact, you may be killing the church.

There’s nothing wrong with pastors in their 60s or 70s. I fall into that category. I often tell Pastor Nominating Committees, it’s not a person’s age; it’s their energy level. I’ve known pastors in their 30s and 40s whoare lethargic. There are some retired pastors who still have plenty of energy and are doing wonderful work. I often use the example of A.D. Ellison, who was doing interim ministry into his 80s and had the energy level of pastors 30-40 years younger. What matters is if you can still serve the people “with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.”

A final thought: we also need to encourage members to remember the church in their wills. People don’t have to leave the church their entire estate. Their primary concern will be to provide for their spouse, children, grandchildren and maybe their alma mater in their estate plans, but if the church is an important part of their life now, they may want to make provisions for their church after they’re gone. For example, if a church had 5 people a year leave $20,000 to the church in their wills, in 5 years that would amount to $500,000, not counting any dividends those funds would accrue.  Drawing 4% a year from those funds would mean you’d have an extra $20,000 for your ministry without touching the original gifts.

One thing I regret is that I didn’t ask people in the churches I served to remember those congregations in their wills. If I had done that, these churches would be in much better financial shape today, and I am sure they would feel much better about their future.

All in all, I feel good about the future of the church and the future of our presbytery. We’re experiencing some road bumps, but that has always been the case. Instead of being distracted by these concerns, we can do our part to encourage people to consider the ministry, to encourage those who have served the church to find new opportunities as their energy wains, and to encourage generosity so our churches can continue to be a blessing to those around them.