Category: Theological Rant
The Latest “Sightings”
Sightings 5/24/10
Supply and Demand of Professional Ministers
— Martin E. Marty
Public prayer, the kind Americans fight over a good deal, was not on the favorite “to-do” list of the Jesus of the Gospels. Just the opposite. He is heard saying: Don’t call attention to your praying in public. Go home and shut the door. Public action and teaching were a different matter. The King James Version of the Bible on which we teethed when young ran italicized summary capsules atop the pages. I was always stirred by one: “Here Jesus beginneth his public ministry.” He did not desert temple or synagogue or congregating, but ministry was for him a public affair, in marketplace, field, or wedding party.
It still is. I am not sure that “the public” is always aware of the public roles of the hundreds of thousands of men and women called to and being professionals in exercises of ministry. Most are in congregational service, but chaplaincies and agencies, attractive to so many, would not thrive or even exist were it not for the sustaining role of parishes and congregations. In all cases, the graduating seminarians of this season could merit the caption: “Here beginneth the public ministry of…” When ministry goes well, much else goes well, and when it suffers or causes suffering, much else goes ill.
This year national and local papers alike have been discussing the supply and demand of professional ministers. The general word is that – some sectors of evangelicalism aside – most graduates have to scramble and hope and wait for positions in church and synagogue alike. (The exception is Roman Catholicism, which experiences an almost catastrophic shortage of priests, but that is a different story.) As I write, I head off to speak at a Lutheran synodical assembly in downstate Illinois and a commencement at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. There I will get close-up and personal impressions of how things are going with placement of long-term ministers and newcomers.
Don’t envy seminary leaders and placement people who have to calibrate and calculate and monitor supply and demand. The subtle word gets out that there’s a shortage, as there sometimes is, and by the time the fresh candidates graduate, there is an oversupply. And vice versa. To anticipate this month and this column, I have kept on file last Fall’s Colloquy, published by The Association of Theological Schools. It leads off with frank language which almost summarizes the current situation:
“Current prospects for theological school graduates are defined by several trends. * The job openings available to graduates have been steadily declining in number for the past four years. * Increasing numbers of MDiv graduates are undecided about full-time positions expected after graduation. * Those expecting parish ministry positions have declined. * In response to the economic depression, many retirement age pastors are choosing to postpone retirement. * The annual income required for servicing educational debt may limit job options for new graduates. * Placement and vocational counseling services consistently rank low among measures of student satisfaction.” There it is.
Many factors play their part. Plenty of young and mid-career people who seek meaning and are ready to serve are out there, finding their own way this side of professional ministry. Demography, geography, dual careers of married clergy, graduate school debt, declining rural and often inner-city churches, scandal that hits and hurts religious institutions, are all part of the mixture. Such institutions, such communities, are going through “a period of adjustment,” whose outcome is still uncertain. Seminary leaders and placement people, needless to say, are themselves scrambling and hoping.
Reference:
Colloquy and other ATS resources are online at http://www.ats.edu/Resources/Publications/Pages/Colloquy.aspx
Martin E. Marty’s biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
The Latest from “Sightings”
I received this “Sightings” from the Marty Institute this morning. I’m a subscriber and recommend it if you wish to be nudged or sometimes challenged by a weekly email.
Martydom
by Martin E. Marty | Sightings | 17 May 2010Almost always Sightings takes off from a current text or image lifted from news and opinion sources. This week our “current” text is 1900 years old. It happened that Sunday I was to engage in a moonlighting vocation, namely preaching a sermon, something I’ve enjoyed doing for sixty-two years. To some, this activity in a sanctuary may seem to occur in a polar-opposite locale from the “Public Religion” sites that we ordinarily visit. However, sanctuary acts are to relate to the public, and public acts have or can have anchors in community and personal life. Those of us who are called to preach on Lectionary – ecumenically-chosen biblical – texts often have to take their chances. This week the seasonal text was from John 15:20-27, read as farewell words of Jesus to disciples. Preachers everywhere are in trouble almost right off. Jesus: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” While I have preached among the poor and suffering, few were persecuted. More often the words fall on the ears of comfortable, middle-class persons, or in the academies, people with pensions, good names, often tenure, honorary degrees, “Good Citizen” awards. Now what? “They” did persecute Jesus back then, and he promised like treatment for his followers. Here the contortions begin.
Contemporaries in comfortable worlds go hunting for persecutees, and often even place themselves in the mirrors, as being the hunted. These days the whole concept of being persecuted gets trivialized. Forbid “National Day of Prayer” people from receiving demanded public space and time, and you will hear moans and whines: “They are persecuting us!” Tell that to the people who are tortured and condemned for their religious, in this case Christian, commitments and witness. Maybe some who cry “Persecution!” do so not for political reasons, as they seek to be empowered in their weakness and humility. Better to punt and scoot past the verse I quoted to other really rich and promising words in the “Farewell Discourse.” But, then, is there something to the point for moderns as they hear these words from a gospel?
Here is where contemporary relevance does come in. Monitoring newspapers, newsletters, magazines, print-outs, and media stories and images, as we are called to do, has us finding horror stories each week from around the world. How many? It is hard to know, given the dispersal of two billion Christians in two hundred lands, many of them suffering in silence, unnoticed, as embarrassments to their enemies, or too insignificant to be counted up. Yet we get clues, however they are gained and however widely they vary. My favorite guess, or reckoning, appears in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Volume 34, No. 1 of which appeared in January.
The count? “Average Christian Martyrs Per Year,” 178,000 right now, 210,000 projected for 2025. Of course, as I read such figures annually and occasionally ponder explanations about how computers help bring up such figures – how can anyone know? – I indulge in the hermeneutics of suspicion. What are the motives of the calculators, friends of martyrs, and statisticians? Just as quickly as such questions come to mind, one does well to postpone dealing with them and instead to think about what even one such death means, what one harassed and stalked community suffers, what motivation it should develop for people of good will in statecraft, non-governmental organizations, and religious communities of all sorts, to change circumstances, to bring the number down. 210,000 in 2025? That text from John 17 still haunts.
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.