Your little church on the prairie is energetic and successful, inventive in worship, engaged in mission. Several generations of families have grown up in its sanctuary. Although it has only 40 members, it attracts more than 50 to worship on a typical Sunday. And the congregation is generous, by the standards of small rural churches; the average of members' annual contributions matches the average for the whole Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)--$726.

Now your longtime pastor has died, and you need to find a replacement.

Do the math: Your church has an annual income of $29,460. From that, you have to pay a pastor's salary, maintain a 100-year-old building with a 70-year-old boiler, support the congregation's mission projects, and pay for community outreach. Chances are you'll be without a full-time pastor for a while.

The number of ordained ministers serving PCUSA churches
has declined by 14.5 percent in the past 10 years

You won't be alone. At the end of 1999, 3,798 PCUSA congregations--34 percent-- did not have installed pastors. The figure 10 years ago was 28 percent. Among congregations with fewer than 100 members, in 1999 62 percent were without installed pastors.

These numbers are affected not only by some congregations' inability to afford to pay a pastor a living salary, but also by the denomination's shrinking supply of pastors--especially young men and women just out of seminary, people who have small or no families and few other encumbrances, who are usually willing (and able) to work for less than they would receive in other situations. (Sometimes this is much less-- there are PCUSA churches that pay full-time pastors less than $15,000 a year.)

For some time now PCUSA officials have been talking about a shortage of pastors, but it is not crystal-clear whether there really is a shortage. John Mulder, president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, points out that 82 percent of the PCUSA pastors are over 40 years of age, and therefore likely to have retired by the year 2025. "There's no way seminaries of the Presbyterian Church or even the non-Presbyterian seminaries educating Presbyterians are going to produce enough candidates to meet that dramatic bulge." (see footnote*) But Evelyn Hwang, associate for resourcing committees on preparation for ministry, has estimated that the PCUSA will ordain about 9,125 ministerial candidates between now and the year 2025, an average of 365 per year. Marcia Myers, associate director for Churchwide Personnel Services, cites those figures in challenging the "gloom and doom" scenarios some have painted.

Racial Ethnic "Dearth"
There is no question but that the denomination is experiencing one important shortage--of African-American and other racial ethnic ministers and candidates. All the factors that negatively affect pastoral staffing in the entire denomination are magnified in the case of racial ethnic churches, which tend to be small and resource-poor.

Shortly after the 1998 General Assembly approved a plan to increase racial ethnic membership in the PCUSA by the year 2010, research determined that "the leadership pool would be insufficient to meet those goals." A task force was asked to develop a strategic plan for recruiting racial ethnic pastors. Among other things the task force called for action to address a current "dearth of racial ethnic faculty and staff at some of the theological institutions."

The task force also reported a "perception that racial ethnic students had more difficulty with financing their educational preparation and often relied more on loans," which it said was "perilous in light of the relatively low compensation packages offered by some of the racial ethnic congregations."

The Long Search
Sometimes even large churches are without pastors for extended periods. Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey, which has almost 1,500 members, recently called a pastor after a three-and-a- half-year search.

Freda Gardner, moderator of the 1999 General Assembly and a member of the Nassau Church's Pastor Nominating Committee, says one thing that impressed her during her year as moderator was the number of churches that were without leadership and had little hope of being able to call a pastor. "I was particularly moved by the plight of smaller congregations, and those in rural areas," she says. "They are like the frail elderly, who are beset by so many problems they really have need of a pastor."

Sometimes, when a church is without a pastor for an extended period, says Helen Locklear, PCUSA associate for social welfare ministries, the church begins to drift away from Presbyterianism. Joanne Michel, a member of the PNC of First Presbyterian Church of Fort Branch, Indiana, a church that has been seeking a pastor for three years, says more colorfully that a church without an installed pastor "just gradually goes fizzle, fizzle, fizzle."

Mitchell Presbyterian Church in southern Indiana has been without an installed pastor since August 1998. George James, chair of its search committee, says he can see the effects of more than two years without a pastor at the helm: "We're seeing a lot of programs not being held together very well."

The PCUSA has shortened the pastoral search process from 18 months to just 8 months-- for a more or less desirable church--by using computer systems to track data. "What we have now, however," Myers says, "is a high-tech fishing pond with not enough fish in it."

And James and Michel say the denomination's new computerized matching system gives a place to start--but it also brings a major frustration: Candidates who take positions often do not go to the trouble of having their names taken off the candidates list. Consequently search committees waste time considering pastors who have already settled into new jobs.

We Are Not Alone
The PCUSA is not the only denomination struggling with these issues.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) recently concluded that its problem is not a clergy shortage, but a problem of their distribution. The church had ordered a major study because some governing bodies were having a problem filling vacancies. The research blamed the problems on several factors: small churches having to stretch to pay a pastor's salary and not being able to afford to pay what would be expected by a veteran pastor; seminary graduates being restricted geographically by such things as spouses' careers and children's schooling; many graduates having so much educational debt that they cannot afford to take lower-paying positions.

The PCUSA recently undertook a similar study. The question of a clergy shortage was also on the agenda of a meeting last November of presbytery executives and stated clerks.

Gary Torrens, middle governing bodies coordinator for the General Assembly Council and the Office of the General Assembly, is optimistic that solutions will be found. "I'm hopeful because we're beginning to talk about it in new ways. And I sense a willingness to put more resources into it."

Torrens would like to see such things as a closer relationship between the presbyteries and the seminaries; a program of one-year internships in which seminary graduates could learn the ropes of pastoral ministry; and a long-range effort to strengthen youth-group activities and turn some of that interest into vocational conversation.

Among congregations with fewer than 100 members, 62 percent
were without installed pastors in 1999.

A Seller's Market
For would-be pastors, the situation in the denomination is a classic seller's market. Up until 1994, there were more ministers looking for jobs than churches looking for a pastor. Now it is the reverse, and the gap has been widening.

Michel says with seeming disbelief: "There are so many choices for these young seminarians coming out of school! When they enter the job market, they are deluged with offers."

Seminary graduates today also do not necessarily think in terms of a call to pastoral ministry. "There are a lot of meaningful ways to serve the church," Myers notes. "Graduates have a whole smorgasbord of ways you can serve outside of the pastoral context."

Myers observes that the clergy shortage works well for ministers in another way. "Apparently some presbyteries have been paying 'signing bonuses.'" She and others are dismayed at this; they object that this might be a solution for the presbyteries that can afford it, but it actually worsens the problems of smaller, poorer congregations.

Changes in the job market for pastors have provoked a lot of conversation about the nature of a pastoral call. Some say there has been a blurring of the line between a call and a good job opportunity. God's call seems to come through loud and clear when the job in question comes with a big salary.

But sometimes God speaks to people through the challenge of a new situation. Presbyterian author and minister Frederick Buechner has said the call is "where the world's needs and your great passion meet," Myers says. "Once you experience a call," she adds, "you never take a job again."

To many it seems contradictory to evaluate a call to ministry by the compensation package that comes with it. Others point out that many ministers have chosen lives that involve a great deal of sacrifice, and few, if any, are working just for the money. Garnet Foster, director of vocational placement at Louisville Seminary, explains that two-thirds of the older students at the seminary are second-career students, most of whom have children, and money is an issue when you are responsible for educating a child.

A "Crazy" Calling?
A pastoral position does not seem to carry the status and prestige it had 20 or 30 years ago. "I think it's partly because the church has focused on public scandals involving ministers, all the sexual issues, and failed to lift up pastors who are doing wonderful things in ministry," Myers says. "People are asked about misconduct; they are asked such questions as 'Are you gay?' 'Are you single?'"

The children of PCUSA ministers, Myers says, are less likely today to follow their parents into the ministry. She was shocked when she heard a story about a pastor who, learning that one of his children was interested in being a minister, called a friend and said, "You've got to come over and talk him out of this crazy idea."

Officials of the Synod of Mid-America said in an open letter to the church last June, "A crisis in pastoral leadership is sweeping across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)." The letter said the crisis involves not just a shortage of clergy, but also a decline in the quality of those being ordained for PCUSA ministry.

Douglas Oldenburg, former General Assembly moderator and retired president of Columbia Theological Seminary, plans to devote as much as four years of his retirement to helping to solve these problems. He is applying for a Lilly Endowment (see footnote **) grant to pay the expenses of five or six retired pastors--"people who have had good experiences in pastoral ministry"--to travel around the country visiting college campuses and talking to students about taking a trial year at the seminary to consider God's call to the ministry.

"I'm concerned that we're no longer getting our share of the top leadership coming out of the schools," he says. "Every seminary has some wonderful students. But I want to see what we can do to improve the quality of persons going into theological institutions and into the ministry. A lot of pastors tell war stories about their ministry, but for me being a pastor has been a wonderful part of my life."

Creative Solutions
Some PCUSA churches and agencies have come up with creative ways of addressing the shortage-of-leadership problem.

The Board of Pensions, for example, intends to create a program in which qualified seminary graduates could obtain $10,000 grants to help pay down their educational loans. (Graduates' indebtedness often amounts to $20,000.) Paul Stavrakos, the Board's vice president for church relations and assistance, says they hope to be able to provide 50 such grants per year for five years, and then hand off the program to other church agencies.

Grant recipients would agree to serve for a certain number of years in small churches designated by presbyteries. They also would be required to attend budgeting and debt-management classes. The Board hopes to have the program up and running in time to help 2001 graduates.

Twenty church-related colleges and universities, including three affiliated with the PCUSA, have been awarded grants of up to $2 million each from the Lilly Endowment to encourage students, faculty members and administrators to examine how faith commitments can affect the decisions young people make about their future. The goal of the program is to attract more bright young people into the ministry.

Lilly's first 20 planning grants, awarded in May 1999, total $39.7 million. The Endowment's board of directors also approved a $50 million commitment to a second round of grants in the competitive program. The colleges will develop a variety of programs, such as enabling students to take internships in congregations or spend a semester at a theological school, revamping student orientation and academic advising, setting up seminars of faculty members and local pastors, and establishing honors programs in religious leadership.

At Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia, a $773,000 grant from the Lilly Endowment is financing the "Burning Bush" program. The purpose is to identify and nurture high school students who may have gifts for ministry. The seminary is also experimenting with the use of student internships in small parishes; special incentives to attract racial ethnic candidates; scholarships to deserving students; invitations for students to enter seminary for a trial year; programs of clinical pastoral education in small-church ministry; and redoubled efforts to reach out to congregations and students in the Charlotte, North Carolina, metropolitan area, which is home to more than 134,000 Presbyterians.

"I'm optimistic," says president Louis Weeks, "because I consider our responses to the challenges very promising, and because I know of good things happening at other seminaries and governing bodies. I think we're quite capable of solving this problem."

Individual congregations around the country also have been experimenting with non-traditional ways of doing ministry: having a cluster of PCUSA and other Protestant churches share a pastor; collaborating in programs such as vacation Bible school and work projects; making better use of commissioned lay pastors; and having two or more congregations share the expense of finding candidates, reviewing resumes and matching applicants to pulpits.

Foster is intrigued by radically new models of ministry, such as one in which two or three pastors with complementary gifts serve 8 or 10 churches in a geographical area.

Myers says she would be happy if the denomination could signal to congregations that they are not somehow a bad church if they don't have a full-time pastor.

By far the most common survival tactic among churches without leadership is having retired pastors serve in part-time positions. Lorna Kuyk, executive of the Ohio Valley Presbytery, says frankly, "If it weren't for our retired pastors, we would be in an almost hopeless situation."

Footnotes:

* The Presbyterian Outlook, September 18, 2000.

**The Lilly Endowment, founded in 1937, is an Indianapolis-based private-family foundation that supports causes of religion, education and community development.

Pastoring, by the numbers
Part of the shortage problem has to do with changing expectations that congregations have of pastors. In a survey of Church Information Forms filed by congregations looking for pastors the denomination's Research Services office tabulated the 55 skills congregations consider most important. Traditional activities of a pastor ranked high:

• preaching (which ranked first at 68 percent)
• spiritual development (59 percent)
• leading worship (54 percent)
• evangelism (25 percent)
• But pastoral care was down in ninth place (15 percent).

Many churches also expect:

• strategic planning (which ranked fourth at 41 percent)
• teaching (19 percent)
• administrative leadership (18 percent)

A 1998 National Council of Churches study of how ministers use their time noted a sharp drop between 1955 and 1994 in the time devoted to social interaction with members and potential members--from 28.9 hours to 12.9 hours a week. Time devoted to meetings, denominational/ecumenical activities, and civic organizations was down by nearly 21 hours. The length of the work week declined from 68 hours to 48 hours.

"Turnaround specialists"
Because so many churches are looking for pastors, the number of clergy serving in interim pastorates has increased in the past decade more than fivefold. Special training programs for interims are flourishing. The General Assembly's office of certification and accreditation has worked with the Association of Presbyterian Interim Ministry Specialists to develop a program for certifying intentional interim pastors.

Interims have been compared to counterparts in the business world--"turnaround specialists" who are called in to serve for a relatively short time, change a company's direction, and move on. In 1999 PCUSA clergy included more than 600 interims.

Richard Fouse, an interim specialist from Cincinnati, says he is perfectly suited to the job because he is by nature open-minded, spontaneous, inclined to play it moment by moment, and because he never wanted to climb the hierarchical ladder. "I go to churches that are in conflict of some kind," he says. "The issues generally have to do with pastoral-congregational conflicts and pastors who get in trouble."

John Filiatreau is assistant editor of Presbyterians Today and a reporter for the Presbyterian News Service.