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

This is a follow-up to a series of posts in 2023 looking at factors impacting the number of people answering the call to pastoral ministry.

Welcoming new people

I’m not smooth when introducing myself to new people, but I do it anyway.

My wife’s good at it: she knows what to say, what questions to ask, and how to keep the conversation going even if the other person’s a bit shy. The best I can hope for in that scenario is a few minutes of well-intentioned awkwardness without scaring the other person away with “too much, too soon” as I attempt to fill the silence with my words. But I do it anyway.

This wasn’t a great skill-gap to have in pastoral ministry, especially when combined with my inability to remember faces easily. Names and back-stories were not usually a problem, but if I met them the following Sunday, I’d often have no idea that face matched Steve the electrician who just moved down from the Central Coast that I’d chatted to for 10 minutes the week prior. Unless he was wearing the same clothes. (I once confessed that problem to a new couple in one of my awkward, “too much, too soon” rambles, so they helpfully promised they’d wear the same clothes for the first few Sundays until I learnt their faces. Not everyone is that obliging.)

As I said, welcoming new people isn’t anywhere near my sweet spot, but I do it anyway. As do many others in pastoral ministry, in customer service, and countless other roles where meeting new people is part of the job. Some of us may never get really good at it, but over time, we learn to do OK.

Last year, I wrote about the shortage of people answering the call to pastoral ministry and offered three factors we needed to consider. (The factors were: funding, the changing demands of pastoral ministry, and the sometimes toxic workplace churches can be.) Shortly afterwards, a campus ministry worker at a university suggested a fourth factor, which I think is worth thinking about.

Her observation—coming from someone in her late twenties with a number of years’ experience in leading campus ministry—was that fewer students were prepared to take any kind of leadership role. The number of attendees remained strong, but very few were keen to be apprenticed as group leaders when asked. And the main reason given for saying “no” was a lack of confidence—even an anxiety—about meeting and welcoming new people. That was the part of the role that made them not want to do it. And there was no, “but I’ll do it anyway.”

As we spoke about why this might be the case, the general rise in anxiety was an obvious starting point, flowing out social media’s facilitation of unrealistic comparisons, a culture of rating and critique, as well as 24/7 bullying and harassment. In that environment, who wants to put their head above the parapet, as it were, and become a target?

We also noted another impact technology has had, which has perhaps been given less attention than it should. This generation of young people is the first to enter adulthood without having to converse much with people they don’t know face-to-face, if they don’t want to. Many do, of course, but there are far more options to avoid it:

• You can text, rather than (gulp!) make a voice call.
• You can scan your own groceries, rather than make small talk with the cashier.
• You can order a meal using the QR code on your table, rather than talk to a human waiter.
• You can buy online, with contactless delivery.
• You can research everything you need to know about your university course online, with any questions answered in the online chat.
• You can get a job where you work from home.

The point is, if you want to avoid talking to people you don’t know, there are more ways than ever to do so. (And this is perhaps most acute for a narrow demographic “slice”—those who came of age during the pandemic lockdowns.) It means that for people who lack social confidence, they get less practice at saying, “but I’ll do it anyway,” from a young age.

I stress that this is not all young people! But it’s probably more than in previous generations. So if this is any way indicative of the broader leadership pipeline in our churches and youth groups, what might we do about it?

I’m keen to hear your suggestions!

One approach might be to include the intentional teaching of social skills—including meeting-new-people skills—in youth and young adult discipleship programmes, rather than assuming it happens “naturally” or in other settings. (If you’re already doing this, please let me know in the comments what you’re doing and the results you’ve seen!)

Another strategy might be to build on the safety-in-numbers tendency among young people, involving everyone in leadership training of some kind. I’ve often seen the opposite: where we wait to see who might show some leadership potential and single them out for training and responsibility, only to be rebuffed: “I’m not confident enough to do that.” But where it’s an expectation that each cohort will be taught to serve and lead as a “rite of passage” through the youth ministry ecosystem, young people can discover their leadership gifting within the safety of the group.

I’ve seen a number of excellent examples of this over the years, with two common principles: intentionality, where elementary leadership training is “baked in” to the programme; and expectation, where a culture has been created where everyone expects—and looks forward—to being part of these coming-of-age opportunities.

What else are we currently doing, that could be shared more widely, to instil social confidence and leadership skills among our young people? What else might we try?

If you’re interested in some specific examples I’ve seen, expand here.

A whole teaching term on gifts and service, which include set Sundays on which the whole group serves together in a particular area: beginning with less-threatening areas like serving refreshments or working with the tech team, through to participating up front in the service.

A youth band, comprised of youth and their leaders, playing for an occasional service; after a while, some of the older youth in the band are integrated into the “regular” music teams, with a shared interest in music being the social lubricant.

An annual, week-long holiday programme for primary-aged children, which many churches have. But what happens when those children finish year 6? Holiday club fun doesn’t have to stop! In this example, those same children can apply to be junior leaders once they enter high school, involving training and being paired with a mentor. By year 10, youth who are relatively junior leaders in the July holiday programme can apply to be the key leaders in September, where the same programme goes “on the road” to be run at a small, partner church in a rural area. (The best bit is where the youth from the partner church sometimes reciprocate!) It creates a longitudinal ecosystem in which young people learn to lead, serve, and interact with others because that’s just what everyone does. Admittedly, this one does need some kind of scale, but it doesn’t need to be huge.

---

Morling College offers a range of courses for anyone wanting to be equipped for a wide range of ministry roles, including pastoral, cross-cultural, counselling, chaplaincy, and school teaching. Enrolments are now open. You can check out our website, or talk to a very helpful stranger on +61 2 9878 0201.