Anglican Missives: Understanding the Clergy (and Lay Minister) Shortage

Clipped from https://marshalljolly.substack.com/p/anglican-missives-understanding-the?triedRedirect=true
by [[Marshall Jolly]]

TL:DR: It's bad, and it's only going to get worse in the short-term. The medium and long-term is up to us.

For those who have been on Vestries and search committees at any point in the last decade, you will not be surprised to learn that there is a shortage of both clergy and lay ministers in the Church. We tend to focus on clergy, but I believe it’s endemic among lay ministers as well, we just don’t do as good of a job tracking it with data.

When I was ordained in 2012, seminarians joked that it would be a “buyer’s market” for clergy in search of a new call. That didn’t quite pan out, as many clergy who were coming eligible to retire held onto their positions/didn’t fill assistant/associate/curate positions due to the 2008-2009 economic downturn. In 2012, clergy calling a full-time Rector with a budget of $175k-$350k could easily expect a dozen or more applications. Now, similarly-situated parishes can reasonably expect 3-5.^[1] In 2023, one metric cited 622 parishes searching for clergy, and 87 clergy self-identifying as looking for a position.^[2] During a speech at the recent Episcopal Parish Network Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Presiding Bishop said that we are currently retiring 500 priests per year and ordaining somewhere around 200. It doesn’t take an expert to spot the problem!

The Episcopal Church is hovering somewhere near 6,000 parishes across the denomination. But roughly half of that number can only afford a part-time priest—if that. When I was in my most recent season of discernment and transition, I filtered out any parish not looking for a full-time Rector because of the needs of my family, not least of which is the likelihood that my wife would be unemployed for some period of time as she got her license transferred and looked for work herself.

Now, you might say, “Well, we need to pivot to bi-vocational clergy.” It’s not that simple. First, I’ll say the quiet part out loud: Robust data collection over decades in The Episcopal Church consistently shows that of the small percentage of congregations that are growing (year-to-year ASA increase of at least 5%), nearly all of them have full-time clergy or are subsidized by the diocese or denomination. Second, anyone who’s ever been in ministry knows: there’s no such thing as ‘part time ministry.’ What people mean when they say that is ‘part-time pay.’ And third, there are underlying questions of justice, equity, and fairness that need to be addressed here, not least of which are: is it fair to expect someone to amass debt to acquire a three-year master’s degree for a part-time job; women are more likely to be ‘bi-vocational’ than men, which makes the ongoing $10k+ pay gap between men and women in the denomination worse; and this one will step on some toes, but oh well: are churches looking for part-time clergy because that’s what they need, or are churches looking for part-time clergy because they refuse to have hard conversations about viability and stewardship?

Another angle on this problem, which I’ve written about here, is that by and large, most dioceses continue to have a “one-size-fits-all,” centralized process for parishes searching for new clergy. The process is generally cumbersome, costly, and obscures direct and clear communication—and that’s when the process works well! As I noted in my earlier article, the process also almost always gives the Bishop and the Diocese more authority than is theirs by either Churchwide or Diocesan canon. I’ll state it again here plainly: It is the duty of the Vestry and the Vestry alone, in consultation with the Bishop (consultation is not the same thing as permission) to elect and call a Rector. The Bishop may not prevent a parish from calling their desired candidate unless the candidate is not a priest in Good Standing in this Church, is currently under discipline, or a matter arises during the background screening process that triggers a Title IV investigation. “Not a good fit” is not a valid reason for a Bishop to intervene in a search process.

Search processes need to be flexible enough to be tailored to the unique needs of a parish. Diocesan staff should be equipped to help Vestries discern the best course for their parish, and ensure that, to a reasonable degree of certainty, the parish is healthy and stable enough to call a Rector versus an interim or Priest-in-Charge. Dear reader, I could tell you horror stories of vital information being withheld from candidates during the search process, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the Parish, and in some cases the Bishop, that had disastrous results. This is the kind of outcome proper training and equipping by the Diocese should prevent. Train Vestries on how to tell their stories fairly and accurately, train on how to interview clergy, train on how to create a reasonable, fair, and sustainable compensation package, and train on how to prepare for site visits to clergy and site visits from clergy.

Let’s switch things up a bit. I’ve talked at length about the clergy shortage from a few angles—and I’ll have more to say on that in a moment. For now, however, I want to mention something that is less frequently discussed, but is also an incredibly important and urgent problem that The Episcopal Church in particular faces and must address: the shortage of qualified lay ministers.

In 2024, in consultation with the Vestry, I created a full-time staff position for a children & youth minister with a competitive salary, generous benefits, and even an option for housing on campus. We live in a relatively low cost-of-living area that is thriving. The parish is healthy and stable. I put the profile out to every seminary I could think of, through Diocesan publications in my own Diocese and in neighboring Dioceses, in Churchwide publications, and on Indeed. I got one application. Not one qualified application, dear reader, one application. Period. I’ve heard similar stories from other parish leaders looking to hire someone with training in children & youth ministries who can develop, lead, and manage a program. We’ve long been in a habit in the Church of hearing the word “minister” and thinking “ordained,” followed shortly by the words “seminary” and “priest.” Those days are over, and they have been for a while.

When I was preparing to go to seminary, most Episcopal seminaries at the time required evidence that you were in an ordination process, or at least “under the care of your bishop” in order to enter a Master of Divinity program. Thankfully, those days are behind us. Seminaries, partly for the sake of their own viability, have created new programs and pathways aimed specifically at lay people who are interested in professional, but not ordained, ministry.

Honestly, we shouldn’t be surprised by this downturn. I’ve written several times on the bitter fruit we’re harvesting after generations of terrible/non-existent Christian formation. How can we expect people to discern a call to minister when they haven’t been formed well in even the basics? This is true both for lay and ordained vocations.

So what do we do? Here are a few ideas:

1. Keep the main thing the main thing! We have rock-solid data to show what parishes that are growing have in common and it’s amazingly simple: 1) Jesus-centered strong preaching; 2) Robust newcomer ministry getting people connected; 3) Accessible worship that is dignified and meaningful and connects people to God; and 4) Strong focus on Christian formation. Parishes may not know it now, but the next generation of clergy and lay ministers are in their pews right now.
2. Dioceses should prioritize equipping parishes for transition, not getting them to conform to a single one-size-fits-all process. I’ve written about this enough already, both here and in other places. You get the idea.
3. The Churchwide database for transitions is a joke. Seriously. I think it’s still using MS-DOS. It’s embarrassing and needs to be fixed yesterday. (Nota benne: as of this writing at end of February, word has recently come that the Churchwide database is being replaced with something new. Now, let the reader understand, “new” does not mean “better,” so time will tell!)
4. Bishops and COMs need to stop telling young aspirants to “get some real world experience first.” Do we say that to prospective practitioners in any other discipline? Do we say to 22-year-old medical students, “you need some real world experience” before letting them enroll? How about prospective attorneys or accountants? “Young” doesn’t necessarily mean “immature.” More can be said here about placing a blockade in discernment and short-circuiting potential clergy and other lay ministers, but you get the idea.
5. Parishes need to discern their needs rather than their wants. If you need full-time clergy, what would it take to make that happen? If you need to consider yoking with a sister parish, what does that need to look like?
6. Lay vocations should be empowered and lifted up. I am persuaded that every parish has at least one layperson who, with proper training and mentorship, would be an excellent lay preacher. There are some excellent Diocesan training programs out there, and The Episcopal Church is developing compelling resources. The same is true for pastoral care, children & youth, etc.
7. Episcopal seminaries should be offering a standard foundation across the board. I am on the Diocesan Board of Examining Chaplains in my Diocese, which our Diocese utilizes instead of the General Ordination Exam. (Frankly, I wish my sending Diocese had something like what my current Diocese has when I was in seminary because I think it’s a fantastic way to accomplish the task.) I am amazed at the enormous variety Episcopal seminaries are employing to accomplish the same thing: a master of divinity. If you were to look generally at most law schools and medical schools across the country, the coursework in the first year is pretty standardized across the board. Why is that not the case for master of divinity programs?

What would you add to this list? What other considerations do we need to make in order to have a different future from the present?

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