Where is the next generation of pastors going to come from? Part Two.

This is the second in a series of posts looking at some of the factors that are hindering the next generation from embracing the call to pastoral ministry. (See part one here.)

The changing demands of pastoral ministry: where have the volunteers gone?

More than a decade ago, futurist Paul Saffo[1] said that the most important invention in the future would be robots that can make other robots that that make solar panels in the desert. Why? Because the best place for solar panels is where there’s the most sun. But it’s inhospitable for humans to work there. We could make the panels elsewhere, but the transportation cost to get them to the desert would be high. So robot-labour would solve that. But still, who makes the robots—and transports them to the desert? So we need another layer: robots out in the desert making more solar-panel-building robots. It would be the cheapest way to roll out renewable energy at scale.

After generations of clergy being paid to “do the work of ministry,” this same idea took hold in the church during the last century.[2] Both pragmatism and a reinterpretation of Ephesians 4:12 encouraged clergy to see their role as “equipping the saints to do the work of ministry.” Rather than trying to build all the solar panels themselves, they fitted out the robots and put them to work. (Remember, this is merely a metaphor: humans aren’t robots. Most can still recognise traffic lights.) The amount of kingdom-panel-building therefore increased—up to the capacity of the minister to build, repair, and program the robots. Pretty soon, however, growing churches figured out that many of the robots had the time and capacity to build and organise other robots, further expanding the effectiveness of the ministry. Volunteer co-ordinators abounded: Sunday School superintendents; youth co-ordinators; men’s and women’s ministry leaders. The ministry capacity seemed endless.

Until the robots who built other robots started to reach the end of their lifecycle.

Churches (and other volunteer organisations) around the world are reporting a decline in volunteering in recent years. But I think the particular decline that has had the most impact is in the number of volunteers who co-ordinate other volunteers. The robots who make other robots. Throughout churches, we’ve seen roles that used to be filled by volunteers start to be part-time paid roles: children’s and youth ministry co-ordinators, worship pastors, production and tech oversight, along with executive pastors who do much of what volunteer church secretaries and treasurers have done in the past. What’s caused this?

Part of it is due to the increasing complexity of running an kind of organisation, in terms of compliance and record-keeping. But another part of it is due to demographic change. In blunt terms, the generation that baked for the wakes at funerals is in danger of having no one left to bake for their own. What I mean is: with dual-income families becoming standard (and to some extent necessary to afford to live in major cities),[3] the amount of spare time each household has to give to volunteering has shrunk. The last generation for which it was normal for one parent not to work outside the home is disappearing. (There’s no way my mother, a generation ago, could have overseen a Sunday School ministry of more than 100 children as she did, while working full-time.)

What it means is that the role of a pastor is again changing, as they are less able to rely on volunteers to organise other volunteers. Especially since the pandemic, more of their time is spent once again making the solar panel-building robots, or even building the solar panels themselves. This takes its toll, entangling them in “busy work” to keep the established programmes and services of the church going, without the volunteer layer to help. It distracts them from their calling of prayer and preaching (Acts 6:1-7); of pastoral care and teaching.

This not only fatigues those who are currently in pastoral ministry; it sends the message to prospective pastors that this management of programmes and people is what the job is all about. It’s neither the panel-building of previous eras (ministering directly to people), nor is it the task of the overseer, ensuring that the whole array is pointing in the direction of the true source of light and energy (teaching and visioning). It’s merely an underpaid and underappreciated middle management position.

How do we respond to this?

Firstly, as many churches are doing, we need to be prepared to pay people to co-ordinate volunteers, acknowledging the societal changes that we can’t turn around even if we wanted to. Pastoral ministry needs to be again seen in light of the shepherding and overseeing metaphors, calling spiritual leaders rather than competent managers.

And secondly, we need to reduce the expectations we built for ourselves over the past generation that churches would be slick enterprises—spiritual service providers that need to focus on customer satisfaction. In a world where every little transaction is given a star rating—from food service to deliveries—we need to be firmly counter-cultural in how we think and talk about our church communities. They are bodies (1 Cor 12:12-31), not corporations; they are households (Eph 2:19-22), not warehouses; they are families gathered around a table to eat a meal they prepared together, not a loose gathering of individuals ordering Uber Eats and complaining when the driver seems to be taking their sweet time.

What else can we do to rescue pastoral ministry from the “church concierge” model that has so often become the reality?

(In the next post, I’ll look a third factor: the workplace culture of many churches.)

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[1] My source is the 2007 blog of a now-disgraced cartoonist. You can Google it if you like. Whether it’s an accurate source or not, the analogy holds.

[2] Lay ministry wasn’t something new; but the scale of it was.

[3] I’m not suggesting that this is either good or bad, just pointing out that it’s happening.