Thank you for the thoughtful and `kind words, especially the final paragraph. You are prescient, the three seminaries where I am applying are Eden, Chicago Theological and United. As you know they are each associated with the UCC, along with having established remote learning programs. I have spoken with each of their admissions departments, Eden even set me up for an zoom call with the current professor that teaches the UCC polity class. I was initially unsure about attending remotely, that it would be a much lesser experience. Having talked with several people who are pursuing their MDiv.'s online I started to feel better about the experience. The advantage of going to a UCC affiliated school is that coordinating with the local UCC committees to arrange internships and other experiences should be at least theoretically easier. Reality is that I will have to do more leg work to set up these positions, but I will at least know who to call and who can help. The turning point on attending remotely came when I was researching another school that offers a traditional full time, on campus program and a hybrid Friday night/Saturday set of classes with a remote option for students that need to continue working. They published their student numbers. The hybrid program has 33 students this year, the traditional program has 3. Each school emphasized that they work to create community even remotely. There are zoom meetings outside of classes, remote students in regions get together, and the professors work hard to regularly spend time even with their remote students. The reality is that seminaries and the students attending are changing. I kept asking, "Am I unusual to be in my late 50's and working yet still wanting to attend?" The answer over and over I was more typical than unusual.
Yale, Harvard and University of Chicago can demand full time attendance on campus, but for many of the other schools they are working with non-traditional students that need flexibility to able to attend. Their experiences after graduation will also be different, more students are working on MDiv's with a focus on chaplaincy, less are interested in pastoral positions. From even more recent grads, the comments are the seminaries are even smaller than a decade ago. The new term being used is co-vocational, pastors will need to have another job to supplement their church salaries. The churches can't afford full time pastors. So my need to work now, and even continue working (with four children there will continue to be many college bills, to which I will now add my own) as I work toward a call and ordination if I can make it through the whole process. To want a less than full time position as a pastor after I am done being an attorney turns out to fit well with the future realities of the church.
I’m going to pontificate like a windy old fart and end up saying “I told you so.”
But I did tell you so.
Shortly into my time in parish ministry I realized few churches could afford the expense of a full-time pastor. Re-reading correspondence I wrote during my first (of only two) churches, I remembered the first church had low-balled me on the package they offered (well below that advised by the Conference). I had remembered the member who, in the interview, advised me that whatever extra I could “bring in” by way of new (dues paying) members, I could keep. I was to work on commission, in other words, and pack the pews with a paying audience.
That place closed shortly after I left, and I only spent a year there. Some in the Conference actually held it against me that I didn’t do more for the congregation. You will always find plenty of people happy to blame you.
And plenty who don’t. I had a miserable time with the leadership of that church, but the same letter recorded a congregational meeting where I was supported against the wishes of the leadership. I had forgotten that, especially in the wake of the next church which drove me out in 3 years. After a congregational meeting, no less. You forget the good and never forget the bad.
There’s always something you need to work on.
But churches that can afford ministers are few and far between.
When I was at Eden, lo these 30 years and more gone by now, they were still adjusting to the idea that students were all second-career and came with families. There was a separate apartment building for families, and one of two dorms converted to family life. But you could tell the older professors were still adjusting to the idea of students older than them, or nearly as old, being a major part of the student body. I didn't expect that to 'snap back,' so I'm not surprised it's become the accepted norm now. (I mean no disrespect to my professors; one could just tell some of them were still coming to terms with so many married students/families on the campus; conceptually, not personally, is what I mean. Their history was grounded in a time of their youth (as are all of ours) that was long gone by their late middle-age. One sympathizes.)
I was there in my late '30's/early 40's (crossed the line over four years in attendance), and I was pretty much the median age. I'm not surprised if it's skewed even older now in any seminary you end up attending. It's a trend, as is the trend of pastors with second jobs. That's just an inevitability as the model of church we all grew up with slowly withers away. That model was always a middle-class one, anyway. My grandparents were working class folks, as were their children (Mom married a college graduate and a professional; her twin married an executive in an oil company. We were the outlier families.), and all the kids who stayed close to home all attended the same Primitive Baptist church, comprised of similiar working class people. Their pastor was sometimes my grandfather, and always someone paid a small stipend by the congregation, but who had a "real" job to pay the bills. It's actually a venerable model, as the garment of a pastor (not a scholar's robe. I wore that, but it was introduced by Luther), whose name escapes me now (as so many words do!), was wrapped not unlike a modern bathrobe, with an ornamental rope belt to tie it shut (I've seen it worn in Catholic services by attendants. It's driving me mad I can't think of the name.). We were told it was the garment of a laborer in early Roman (well, earlier, around the 4th century or so), and so worn to express humility and a connection to the son of a carpenter (don't get me started on the social status of carpenters in 1st century Palestine). The moden day equivalent would be work boots, blue jeans, and a plain work shirt. The point being pastors as laborers, rather than as "professionals," is a more historical model. And probably one the church needs, again.
But that won't come without disclocation and disruption and the turmoils of change. Change is a chance to do new things; it's also a chance to get everything wrong. But it's a constant of life, so...oh, well.
And, of course, we have to contend with the "Prosperity Gospel" preachers, and just middle-class worshippers who want Jesus to approve of what they approve of, and pastor to dress in a manner that reflects well on them. It's a constant struggle of perceptions v. reality, and generally everybody who wants the perception doesn't want to pay for the reality.
There is, I think, a strength in being a pastor in the margins of the days. I understood early on that pastors fill the gaps and spaces in life where nothing else fits anymore. Grief counselors are well and good for schools, and funeral directors are usually decent people. But who answers the grieving mother when she asks why her infant died? (Yeah, that was fun.) Or the wife confronted with the fact her husband, just brought in by ambulance, is dying and any life-support is probably useless and will she agree to pull it? (That was fun, too. She immediately turned to me, a perfect stranger to her, and asked "What do I do?") I could go on. The most important work of ministry is pastoral care; but it's the most ignored by the world, and the part that will matter least to your congregation, except to the people you help (and they don't want to stand up and tell their stories. Who would?). Full-time work brings the burden of full time administrator of what is, largely, a gang of cats rather than a pack of dogs (who are pack animals, after all. Cats? Not so much. And I love cats.) Part-time work would, I think, give you the freedom to say "Not my job today!" and leave the burdens and responsibilities (and complaints arising therefrom) to others. Or at least make them take it on with you, since none of you are there full-time, eh?
The world needs ministers, in other words. It just doesn't neccessarily need them to make a profession of it. Which sounds like it's making the job tougher; but it really isn't. The job is the job; the call is the call. You do your best to answer, and to do the job. But in these times when church is seen as primarily something for "ME!", it's good to be able to slip the harness and leave the cart, either for a few hours, or simply to move on. Jesus told his disciples, in Luke, to bless the house that received them, but shake the dust from their feet of the places that didn't. The latter is a bit harder to do when you need to feed and house your family from that place, no matter how they treat you. The treatment is, by and large, getting more and more worthy of leaving even their dust behind, so a model that let's you more easily do that when you must, is not really a bad one.
Does it make it harder? Trust me: nothing about this is easy. You can do it; but especially starting at your age, you can see the realities of it more clearly, and act accordingly.
After all: I told you so.
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