The average pastor in Illinois Baptist churches is 58 years old. That age has crept up steadily over the past two decades. The result is when they retire, churches that once had a plethora of fresh candidates to succeed them are struggling to find qualified applicants. Younger people aren’t looking for ministry positions as they once did, on any rung of the pastoral ladder. So the search process gets more difficult, and lasts longer.
Here are a few numbers: About 30% of SBC churches in Mississippi are without a pastor, church planter and blogger Brandon Langley recently noted, as are 17% of churches in Louisiana. Those numbers are surprising in the Southern seed bed where the majority of Baptist pastors are sprouted. In Illinois, that number is 85 IBSA churches searching for a pastor right now, about 10%.
In Illinois, pastors stay 9.2 years, much longer than the national average, IBSA Associate Executive Director Mark Emerson said. That’s a good thing, but the shortage of candidates still has its impact. Drawing pastors to Illinois, which doesn’t produce enough of its own, is a growing challenge, especially as other states have their own supply chain problems. And as the wave of pastors nearing retirement here grows, replacing many of them simultaneously could be tsunamic.
In 2021 Barna Research reported more pastors were over 65 than under 40. The dearth of up-and-coming pastors extends across all denominations.
Jim Allen pastored Grace Baptist Church in Palmyra for 15 years. Six months ahead of his retirement, Allen let the church know and “we put out feelers,” he said. They felt nothing. The church of 40 had seasons of effective ministry among children and teens in the remote town where the local school was their only other activity.
“I really thought God would lead some young man to come and get experience. He might not have stayed a long time, but it would have been a good start,” Allen said. “We talked with some young ones, but they were looking for something else.”
The search continued 22 months after Allen retired, with a string of supply preachers. “Some were Southern Baptist, but not many,” he said. “Some were on the fringe.”
Finally, one of the occasional substitutes said he felt called to serve the church despite its location 50 miles from his home. At 78, Douglas Peirce is not the typical pastor Grace Church might have looked for, but with experience helping rebuild several congregations, Allen says the congregation is hopeful.
Even larger churches, once considered plum opportunities, report receiving fewer resumes when the notice goes out—a lot fewer, said Emerson, who studied the pastoral search process in Illinois for his doctoral degree. “Churches that used to get many resumés, hundreds, now tell us they’re receiving twenty. And the candidates are often not experienced pastors from other churches.”
More are willing to stay put than to “move up,” even after the pandemic that has left more than three-fourths of pastors coping with smaller numbers. “We recommend that churches use a variety of resume searches,” Emerson said, including IBSA and SBC boards, “and other online boards such as churchstaffing.com.”
Even though some respondents may be from outside the denomination, everyone has to cast a wider net these days.
The shortage extends to youth ministry. First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, Tennessee, has searched for a youth pastor more than two years—unsuccessfully. Senior Associate Pastor Bruce Raley says ministry has gotten more demanding. “Struggles with gender identity, same sex attraction and issues like these were never discussed just a few years ago,” he told The Baptist Paper. Ministry in this environment may require a pastor “with more life under their belt” than many candidates in their early twenties have.
The proliferation of other positions, including family ministry, campus, and executive leadership, may lead them in other directions. Some are skipping the few years in youth ministry as a training ground, responding instead to the cry for senior pastors.
And there’s the need for church planters. Many young men are hearing the call to ministry as a call to start a new congregation, while avoiding the baggage of the existing or traditional church. Even so, the pipeline for church planters is also dribbling these days, as the North American Mission Board often points out.
Many are called, but few are answering.
New problem, old solutions
Through much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as Protestant Christianity spread westward across the continental United States, there was a shortage of trained ministers. With most of the seminaries in the East, attracting their graduates to the rough and tumble frontier wasn’t easy. Evangelical denominations, Baptists and Methodists in particular, came up with two distinct, but practical solutions. Both of them could work today.
The Methodists pioneered the circuit rider concept. One trained pastor served several congregations, traveling on horseback from one to another, usually spending a week with each church before moving to the next one.
As cars replaced horses and drive times grew shorter, the “yoked parish” emerged. One pastor served two or sometimes three churches, often able to preach in multiple pulpits on a single Sunday. In rural Illinois, some churches still follow this model, with an early service in one town and a late service in another, and the preacher driving between them during the Sunday School hour.
In some ways, the multi-site church is a kind of yoked parish, sharing staff among two or more campuses. Sermons delivered by internet have changed the dynamic somewhat, but the net result is fewer preachers serving more churches. Craig Groschel of Life Church in Oklahoma City preaches to 45 video venues in 12 states every Sunday. After we all attended virtual church during Covid closures, it doesn’t seem so strange.
Baptists were not as keen on sharing their pastor among churches. The autonomous nature of Baptist life made sharing staff and calendars and accommodations with other churches less attractive, so Baptists pioneered a different approach to the growing need for clergy: the “preacher-farmer” model.
Baptist theology with its focus on the priesthood of all believers says that anyone can study Scripture—no degree required. And with ordination resident in the local church instead of the denominational hierarchy, anyone with a sense of calling and some speaking ability could fill the pulpit.
In rural America, that was often one of the deacons who also farmed. Plowing the fields gave ample time to contemplate Sunday’s sermon, it seems. For the churches, there was the advantage of having one of their own as a pastor they didn’t have to share with anyone else. What may have been lost in education was compensated by incarnation.
The current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bart Barber, may be considered an example of the pastor-farmer. He has served First Baptist Church of Farmersville, Texas for 24 years. He is unlike previous generations of agrarian pulpiteers in that he has a Ph.D. in Church History and 21,000 Twitter followers.
A better example of the pastor-farmer is the bivocational pastor. Illinois is full of them.
With the average IBSA congregation at 65 in Sunday worship, and hundreds of churches in two- and three-dozen attender range, the pastor who works two jobs is a necessity—and a lifesaver. Of nearly 900 IBSA churches, 300 are served by part-time pastors who are also bankers and teachers and bus drivers and maintenance workers or partly retired. As evidenced by the 2022 Bivocational Pastor of the Year, Ron Mulvaney of Farina First Baptist Church, pastors working somewhere else on weekdays can serve the local church effectively.
With the rising cost of health insurance and housing, more churches are turning to the bivocational pastorate. It may not be an easy decision, giving up their full-time pastorate, but it keeps a preacher in the pulpit. And it’s a workable alternative when full-time candidates—and the salaries to support them—are short.
Another alternative is raising up pastors from within the congregation.
Opportunity calling
Southern Baptists identified the urgent need to raise up a new generation of pastors in 2021. As part of the multi-point Vision 2025 plan for the convention, SBC Executive Committee CEO Ronnie Floyd urged passage of a measure to “call out the called.” Pastors and churches simply are not urging their young people to follow God’s call to ministry, missions, and church planting as they once did.
Floyd’s call may have been obscured by the sex abuse scandal and Floyd’s own resignation soon after SBC messengers approved his plan in Nashville, Tennessee. But others, even ahead of Floyd, were pouring more effort into young leaders.
A few megachurches, including Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, led by recent SBC President J. D. Greear, are raising up vocational ministers and planters from within their own congregation, and training them themselves. Many don’t head off to seminary, but they learn their church’s methods for leadership and church planting. Even so, the numbers produced by these “teaching” churches aren’t making up the deficit.
The importance of mentoring and developing church volunteers as part of the solution to the pastoral leadership shortage shouldn’t be missed. As volunteer leaders grow in godly character and abilities while they serve in church ministries, some will recognize that God has called them to vocational ministry.
In their book Calling out the Called, authors Scott Pace and Shane Pruitt point to this reality. “A primary element in discerning a call to ministry involves discovering spiritual passions and gifts through service opportunities. As people explore, exercise, and employ their spiritual gifts, they may also discern God’s calling on their lives to serve in a similar vocational capacity.”
Simply put, investing in current servants will lead to more pastors and ministry staff being called out. Intentional, practical mentoring works. But it takes time and personal investment by current leaders before their time runs out.