Good news for young clergy

A few weeks ago, I posted about the new findings of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Seminary about recent trends in the numbers of under-35 year old clergy in the United Methodist Church.

As you may be aware, the Lewis Center's original report, covering the years 1985 to 2005, showed a distressing downward trend in the numbers of young clergy in the church. But the updated findings show that the trend may be reversing, as both the absolute numbers of young clergy and the numbers of young clergy as a percentage of all UM elders has risen.

I recently spent some more time reading the report, and I contacted the director of the Lewis Center, Dr. Lovett Weems, for his thoughts on the new findings. I discuss my thoughts in my new column in the UM Reporter, "New stats offer hope for young UM clergy."

Dr. Weems is cautiously optimistic about what the Center has found. But he notes that he thinks various levels of the church are really doing a lot in nurturing a 'culture of call' that facilitates the ability of youth and young adults to hear the Holy Spirit's calling on their lives to ministry. He cites the work of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, the advocacy of individual annual conferences, and the proactive attitude of young clergy themselves in helping their brothers and sisters respond to the call.

All of this is encouraging news. And it is a great reminder to each of us that we have a responsibility to help raise up a new generation of leaders in the church. God is good!

Young clergy age trends

The Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., has released an updated version of its Report on Clergy Age Trends in the UMC. This updated report is built upon the original report done by the Lewis Center, which was chronicled in the book, The Crisis of Younger Clergy by Lovett Weems and Ann Michel. (I wrote a book review of Crisis, which you can access here.)

There is information on all age groups (including elders, deacons, and local pastors). My own interest is largely in the "younger clergy" age group, and the good news is that there is actual good news to report.

The numbers of under-35 year old clergy elders and their percentage as a number of all elders bottomed out in 2005 (the year I was ordained), but it has climbed since then. The numbers for elders look like this:

Year - % - Total
2005 - 4.69 - 850
2006 - 4.89 - 881
2007 - 4.92 - 876
2008 - 5.21 - 910

Those changes aren't huge, but they are promising. There is also a nice statistic to report from my home conference - the Arkansas Conference. We have the highest percentage (9.29%) of under-35 clergy of any conference in the U.S.!

[Note: the report is helpful this year in the amount of information it contains on the trends in numbers of deacons and local pastors, which were missing from the report as it was presented in The Crisis of Younger Clergy.]

Crisis of Younger Clergy

Lovett Weems and Ann Michel have just written The Crisis of Younger Clergy, a book that analyzes the results of both the Lewis Center for Church Leadership's study of clergy age trends from 1985-2005 as well as its recent survey of young adult (under 35) clergy. This is all new stuff. The study of clergy age trends came out in 2006, and the survey of young adult clergy took place in March 2007.

I recently reviewed an advance copy of the book, and it is really well-done. Weems and Michel offer a detailed picture of the crisis the church faces in regards to its young clergy (who now number less than 5% of elders), as well as suggestions about actions that can be taken in areas as different as recruitment & response to call, theological education & debt, and emotional isolation & the appointment process. If you are a young clergyperson and you read this book, a whole lot of it will ring true. Abingdon Press will be publishing it in early 2008, and I highly recommend it.

On a related note, I have continued to get responses on the issue of the UMC's candidacy process for ordination. One of the most revealing was this one from Kyle Roberson, who is in his final year at Perkins School of Theology:

"As a young person going through the ordination process I cannot tell you how often I have truly felt like abandoning the process b/c of my frustration with some of the very issues you point out in your article. I have also spoken recently with three young people who are 'lifelong United Methodists' who are now seeking to serve as ministers with non-denominational congregations in our area b/c they feel they don't have the time to 'waste' on the ordination process ... I strongly agree with your observation regarding the UMC's apathy towards the seminaries, and I would add that the same sentiment exists towards campus ministry programs across the country who are doing the hard work of raising up leaders only to watch them become frustrated and bound by a process that is supposed to be, in the end, the focusing and enriching journey one takes to discern how to serve God's people in ministry. I pray that those in the United Methodist system who have ears may hear these words and take them to heart as we prepare to meet for General Conference and discuss this issue among the many we have before us."

That is just one anecdote, but I think it speaks for the experience of many.

Blogging about ordination

In the past week, there have been several blog posts about the issue of the candidacy and the ordination process in the UMC. If you are interested in what has been said elsewhere, check out:

-- This Methoblog post that I wrote on Friday, basically summarizing what I said a couple of days earlier on Gen-X Rising.

-- This impassioned and poignant post from Gavin Richardson (who, by the way, may be the hardest working blogger in show business). Gavin offers a few good examples of how bad candidacy can really be. It wasn't nearly this bad in my own experience, but I have certainly heard stories of the kind Gavin shares.

-- This post on the United Methodist Reporter's new blog, written by Amy Forbus. Amy mentions on the Reporter post that Rebekah Miles' op-ed piece is going to come out in the Aug. 31st edition of the Reporter. Keep an eye out for that. The Reporter's general website address is here.

I will link to Dr. Miles' Reporter article when it appears. In the mean time, you might be interested in seeing this report on clergy age trends, compiled by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary: youngumclergy.pdf. It is filled with fascinating and shocking statistics, most of which are related to the aging of United Methodist clergy. For instance, did you know that in 1985, over 15% of clergy were under the age of 35?

Want to take a guess what it is now? Try 4.69%.

Correlation does not prove causation, as psychologists like to tell us. And I have no doubt that there are many reasons why younger folks are not answering God's call to ordained ministry in nearly as high numbers as they once did. But I also do not doubt that the length and complexity of our candidacy process does not help.