Rev. Mark Brown on Twitter muses that we are.
This chart intrigues me when I think of it in comparison to LCMS seminary grads. Back when I was in sem and we were ordaining a little over 200 a year, which at that time everyone important thought was too little, and I said it was still too many (1/xhttps://t.co/8EJjnPRmjX pic.twitter.com/aX0PazmZj9
— Mark Brown (@brownmp) February 12, 2022
I had this debate with a few pastors several years back myself. I had posted an article from one of the sems kvetching about low enrollment rates and how it meant we wouldn’t have enough pastors to meet demands and expressed disagreement. The ensuing discussion was lively.
Rev. Brown’s approach to the numbers in the above Tweet thread reveals something real. My approach went more at the demographics of the question of pastoral financial support, which he alluded to. My frustration was with the sems encouraging incredible financial debt with a visible collapse in the “industry” so to speak. At the time this was exacerbated by my then-recent experience of having toured one sem with my family, after having been accepted (I ultimately declined). During the campus visit, my wife subject to multiple sales pitches for the deaconess program. My son was 3. How they thought it was a good idea to graduate a family with two loads of school debt and a young child into the pastorate I have no idea.
At any rate, I saved my closing argument from the above-mentioned debate, which I post below. I hope Rev. Brown’s musings gain some traction — we need to look seriously at what position we are graduating pastors into and course-correct accordingly, or we’re dooming a non-zero percentage to fail.
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Keep in mind this is circa 2019. The situation has materially worsened since then given inflation and other COVID inspired trends.
I think Pastor X’s back-of-the-napkin math makes sense on paper as a snapshot [of how abundant financial support for our pastors can be achieved even in small congregations of ~70 people], but it got me thinking. In the long run I don’t think it works to perpetuate a need for a roster of pastors at the current size.
Let’s extend the argument this way by looking more closely at the ostensible demographics of those numbers. I’ll run a scenario using the numbers provided with the variables in a very optimistic set up.
70 people. 28 households.
20% elderly married
14 people across 7 households of 2 adults
20% never married or widowed/divorced (old and young alike)
14 people across 14 households of 1 adult
60% married with children
42 people across 7 households of 2 parents and avg 4 children
That’s 4 x 7 = 28 children in the next generation.
Let’s assume they all stay in this congregation, AND get all get married via missionary dating.
That’s 28 married (ostensibly with children) households in the next generation. A 4x increase – a strong growth trend. They’ll need more pastors if they each have 4 children as well.
More conservatively, what if they each stay in the congregation but marry amongst one another? That’s still 14 married (ostensibly with children) households in the next generation. A 2x increase. Very, very healthy demographics.
But what if we start tweaking the above variables to match what we actually observe?
Firstly, the % elderly households will have to increase (decreasing married with children households proportionally). America’s demographics are heavily slanted toward the aged baby boomers, and in the church this seems to be even more exaggerated – at least according to my anecdotal experience. In rural congregations (as this scenario likely represents) that’s even more true.
And, as the proportion of seniors goes up, the proportion of households on a fixed income goes up. I’m not familiar with the giving habits of seniors, but even if they are tithing 10% monthly they are almost certainly below the median income. This weights the average tithe lower. Maybe they make up for it when they die by leaving something to the church. Maybe not.
Meanwhile, the marriage rate in the US is way down, especially in peak-fertility years. Divorces are up. This increases the non-married household %, and again decreases married with children households proportionally.
Among married households, the fertility rate is down.
The total fertility rate was 1.73 births per lifetime of a given woman in 2018. Unless you have a few Preus’s in this congregation, 4 kids per married household avg is untenable. Maybe 2 avg at best. Enough to replace the parents as they age, but not a growth trajectory like above.
But it gets worse, because out of those kids there will regrettably be some who leave the faith completely. There will be some who stay in the faith, but (seeing as this is, again, likely a rural congregation scenario) move to greener pastures for education and employment opportunities. They will boost attendance at some city church, but not this one.
Some of them will not get married. Out of the ones that get married, their fertility rate will likely remain close to the national average, give or take.
And so on.
Taken altogether, this congregation can dig deep to keep a full time pastor employed right now – but it can’t last based on the demographics. Not unless there are enough unchurched people in the community to be missionaries to and bring more in that way.
One last note: the 10% tithe is becoming harder and harder. As of 2017 69% of Americans have less than $5000 in savings. The majority of that have less than $1000. Several reasons exist for this, but we should remember that the people who earn above the median tend to be more educated/credentialed, which means that they also have student debts eating into their budgets. Counting on them to pull the average donation up (from the retirees ostensibly weighting it down) seems dubious.
Also, increasing healthcare premiums are increasing budgetary strain across the board. I remember a Lutheran Witness article a few Novembers back whinging about the decrease in giving. The graph that accompanied the article had a downward trendline that matched the implementation of Obamacare and subsequent annual premium increases. The article did not even mention this fact, and (if I recall correctly) just concluded that we don’t know why giving is down, but people need to realize how important the mission of the Church is and up their tithes accordingly.
The overall point is that we live in a post-Christian, fragmented (even collapsing) society. The answer is not “spend our way out of it” – be it spending on seminary education or what have you. I believe that there is a cost/benefit calculation being run in the heads of all would-be seminarians (of which there are not just a few), concluding that the market cannot bear the number of graduates that the sem(s) think we should have. They see (for instance – and this is not exhaustive) that it is currently a congregation’s market, not a pastor’s market (with the exception of pastors with large media platforms), which allows the congregations more power to set the terms. This means that pastors who want to use their credential (and might not have other trades to fall back on) are too easy to take advantage of. Other reasons could also be expounded on.
Thus, I see the decrease in sem entrance as a welcome market correction. The sem does not like this because it cuts into their business model, which involves pushing as many (qualified?) people through as the infrastructure can withstand. That’s not to say that we don’t need more pastors coming into service as others retire and die, but it is to say that the market dynamics cannot be isolated to sem admissions and calling congregations. Not at all.
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The pastor in question’s conclusion after seeing the above?
“Well, we might have to get comfortable with bringing back circuit riding.”
I agree.
Update: As of 2023, he is now pastoring 4 congregations which cannot individually afford a full time pastor.
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