Ministry in the 21st century

 I have been reading recent studies that indicate that 4,000-5,000 pastors are leaving the ministry each year. That is an incredible amount! Years ago H. B. London, Jr. shared with me that 50 percent of seminary graduates leave the ministry within five years after graduation. The reasons are too many to go into in a blog post, but this has serious ramifications for our churches, and I think it speaks volumes about what is happening in the church world today.

I began my pastoral ministry in 1981 and served that church for 20 years. I left there to accept a ministry position in our judicatory where I served for another 14 years. In one staff meeting I shared that I felt the church and I enjoyed a good ministry for those 20 years, but I wasn't sure I could serve as a pastor now. The world had changed so much, and many churches have not responded well to that change. I knew that what I had done during my pastoral ministry would no longer be effective in the 21st century, and I wasn't sure I could reinvent myself to effectively serve in this changing environment.

One reason so many pastors are leaving the ministry is because they were never trained to serve in this new environment. Their seminary training prepared them to be managers of an institution, not leaders. They were trained to be research theologians and not pastors. Those who serve in traditional churches are expected to meet the same expectation from the congregation that it had of their pastors 50 years ago. The job description has not changed. Unfortunately, many of these pastors were trained to meet those expectations, but it doesn't take long before they realize that these expectations are no longer valid in today's culture. It become evident very quickly that to meet those expectations and to continue to do what the church has always done will reduce their role to that of a hospice chaplain. They will be tending to the death of that congregation. If they stay, they submit to that role. Many prefer to simply leave and find other employment and serve God in other ways.

In my role as judicatory minister serving 133 churches I saw so many stuck in a 1950s model of ministry. They were dying and refused to admit it. That model had long ago ceased to be effective in reaching people for Jesus Christ, but it was all the churches knew so it was the one they preferred. I will never forget reading The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren where he wrote, "We invite the unchurched to come and sit on seventeenth-century chairs (which we call pews, sing eighteenth-century songs (which we call hymns), and listen to a nineteenth-century instrument (a pipe organ), and then we wonder why they think we're out of date!" Many of us in ministry see the wisdom in what Warren wrote, but so many of our churches see all of this as normal. Attempts to change any of these things will be met with great resistance in many churches. Rather than fight an uphill battle, and probably losing, many of our pastors simply decide to walk away from their calling.