Crunching the numbers

At times, it seems like the United Methodist Church has a 'numbers obsession.' The statistics are familiar: when the church was formed in 1968, it had well over 10 million members in the U.S.. Today, just 40 years later, the numbers have dropped to below 8 million - all in a time when the population of the United States itself has risen from 200 million to over 300 million people.

That's right. While the population of the country has risen by 50%, the membership of the church has dropped by 20%. By any measure, that is a failure.

But what does it mean?

In the past, I have written disparagingly about the church's obsession with numbers. I've never had a problem with focusing on thriving, growing churches. I've just worried that an obsession with numbers would lead us to offering cheap grace, with an over-attention to adding warm bodies to the pews while watering down the gospel in order to get them there.

The Igniting Ministry campaign has always seemed to confirm that fear to me; its intent is to market the church - to 'raise awareness' and hopefully increase numbers - but it does so by offering a message so nebulous that it is essentially meaningless: "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." (I know and have read about the work Igniting Ministry does with target congregations and the training they have received, but that is a relatively small part of the way the campaign has affected the whole church. It is bad theology, and - I can't say this strongly enough - it is a crying shame that we have spent so much money on advertising that does not mention the name of Jesus Christ, all in the name of being sensitive to "spiritual seekers." I have no doubt that John Wesley does somersaults in his grave over this.)

Today I want to offer a mea culpa. I believe numbers are important, and I believe we need to focus on them. Two things have caused me to change my tune and openly embrace a focus on numerical growth in the church.

The first is that I've come to believe we have nothing to fear from the watered down message of marketing programs like Igniting Ministry. They don't work. Igniting Ministry has been around for years, and its results are as hollow as its message. UM Communications can offer press releases every time a new Barna study says that Igniting Ministry has increased the 'favorability' of the United Methodist 'brand' in the public at large, but that has done nothing to arrest our precipitous decline in numbers. Thus, I can only conclude that my fears about cheap grace were wrong. In our cultural climate, apparently even cheap grace doesn't draw a crowd.

The second point is really more important, and it's the subject of my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. In December, I was with Wesley Seminary's Lovett Weems at a conference in Washington D.C., and he presented on the importance of pastors and congregations that are serious about their numerical growth. The core of Lovett's message to us that day can be found in this article. It really boils down to this: Jesus called us to make disciples, and the church in Acts exhibited remarkable growth by boldly proclaiming the gospel of Christ. As the inheritors of that apostolic ministry, we are called to do the same.

I've got to admit that this has really shaped my thinking about my own ministry. The testimony of the Scripture is that, when the true gospel is proclaimed, people will respond.

Might this be a litmus test for faithful ministry?

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.]

Reflections on the ordination process

On the second night of my Annual Conference session this year, the young clergy of the conference had their annual Gen X/Y Clergy Dinner. This is a practice that began a few years ago under the leadership of Eric Van Meter, and it has grown in size each year. In fact, this year the bishop ate supper with us! The dinner gives a great opportunity for Gen-X and Millennial-aged clergy to get to know one another, have fellowship, and engage in conversation about issues that are relevant to our lives in ministry.

This year, Eric asked me to lead a conversation about Lovett Weems and Ann Michel's new book, The Crisis of Younger Clergy. (I've written a review of this book, which you can read here.) Their book looks at the declining numbers of young adult elders in the United Methodist Church and attempts to offer some solutions. It is, by the way, a great resource for Boards of Ordained Ministry, District Committees on Ministry, and local churches. They could all benefit by using it to seek out ways the church could better nurture a "culture of call" for its young people.

As the conversation began, we asked each person to speak - sharing information about placement in ministry and about the greatest challenge each has faced in the ordination candidacy process. The results were fascinating. I think it would be best for me to just list the examples we were given of greatest challenges encountered:

- Loneliness/Isolation
- Difficulties in itineracy/family issues
- "Good ol' boy" system
- A feeling of invisibility
- Not recognizing the value of people serving in extension ministries
- Being sensitive to clergy couples
- Mechanics of the process (and let-downs in BOM record keeping)
- Seeing the attrition of others leaving the ministry
- Not taken seriously and the church no responsive to concerns
- BOM politics [editorial note: presumably among members of the BOM itself and how that impacts candidates]
- Being sensitive to the particularities of calling
- Others' expectations of my calling in ministry
- The BOM's difficulty in really nurturing candidates

Following this time of sharing experiences, we asked the young adults present to offer possible ways that the candidacy and ordination process could be improved. Here are their responses:

- Need for great financial support (MEF Funds, support for Exploration and other events focused on calling, etc)
- Need for programs run throughout the conference - "centers of hospitality" - possibly on college campuses. Also, a greater, more personal role for mentors. Conference funds could support these types of initiatives.
- Accountability/Peer Groups amongst probationary/provisional clergy
- Networking & support structures within the Annual Conference [editorial note: the work of Eric Van Meter and others over the past several years has sought to directly meet this need]
- The character of the relationships between young clergy [editorial note: this point was much-discussed, and a lot was shared about what relationships can accomplish that programs cannot]
- A "call event" for high school or college students held locally within the annual conference possibly in the off-year that the Exploration event does not occur

Overall, I thought it was a very productive conversation - at times funny and at times poignant. There were 26 people present for the conversation, and several more than that at the dinner just before. All of them were either currently in the ordination process or recently ordained elders and deacons. For me, the fact that so many were present and engaged in the conversation was a great sign of hope. The point that came up at the end of the evening about the importance of person-to-person relationships was key. The more we nurture those, the less impersonal the ordination process will seem. And that would be an important step in helping young clergy enter their ministries with the right attitude and the right relationships.

What's happening to the preachers?

Lovett Weems and Ann Michel think they know.

They have a new book out from Abingdon, entitled, The Crisis of Younger Clergy, that analyzes the results of the 2006 survey conducted by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary on clergy demographics in the United Methodist Church.

In 1985, there were over 3,200 ordained elders in the UMC under the age of 35. Today there are around 850. The book tries to get a handle on this troubling trend and, even more importantly, suggest ways that the church can provide the kind of culture where youth and young adults are able to really hear the Holy Spirit's call to ministry.

I write about Weems and Michel's new book in my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. In addition to that, Robin Russell has a good Q&A article with Weems where he answers questions about the importance of young clergy in the church.

I endorsed this book before it came out, and I have a review of it that will appear in the Reporter in the coming weeks. I think it is timely and important, and it is a great book for anyone who cares about the future of leadership in our church. I could easily see how a Sunday school class or small group might use this book as a way to start a conversation about how to nurture the kind of church environment where calling is affirmed and supported. Check it out!

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.