A few statistics tell the story.
A majority of seminary students now carry educational debt, and they’re borrowing larger amounts than in the past. Graduates confirm that their debt affects their career choices, holds them back from purchasing homes, prevents them from saving for their children’s education, limits their retirement savings, delays health care and creates distress.
Christian Century magazine recently reported that “churches are paying their clergy proportionately lower salaries today then they did a generation ago, making it more difficult for ministerial candidates to justify the high cost of a graduate degree.”
Fewer than 7 percent of clergy in most Protestant and Catholic denominations today are under age 35.
One of the interesting paradoxes is that we require among the most hours of credit and our ordinands to discern in community whether their perceived call is real, and then we tell them to mortgage their future for us (or come back when they can better afford it). And we wonder why there are so few under the age of 50, let alone 35 . . .
Doesn’t it work the other way? There should be some incentive to train as a young person because it should give you the most working years to pay off your seminary debt and you should, in general, achieve higher paying posts at a younger age (should you be called to do so). That the average age at ordination is rising (and has been so for a long time, as far as I know) is a perhaps more a function not of the cost of seminary but of the rising average age of our congregations. My first question here would be not how can we help the 40s afford seminary. Rather it would be – why are so very few younger people offering themselves to serve?
[blockquote]That the average age at ordination is rising (and has been so for a long time, as far as I know) is a perhaps more a function not of the cost of seminary but of the rising average age of our congregations. [/blockquote]
I would suggest the rising age of ordinands is influenced by both factors. Most diocese and seminaries depend on a candidate’s ability to finance his/her own education through funds raised by selling homes, or through savings built up in a prior career. Seminarians coming straight out of college have to face up to that substantial debt, and then add as much as a mid to high five figure number (say 50,000 or more) to that already burdensome debt.
And then they graduate, get ordained, and (if lucky) find a position that pays around 40,000 a year. Remember that a priest’s package includes health and pension, which add around 20-25k to that number. So a small parish must be able to pay 60k or more for a new priest. Fewer and fewer churches can afford that, period, and even fewer are willing to put that cost into a young, green around the gills priest. Most prefer to go with retired clergy whose costs are substantially less and who can work for part time and provide for most of their own costs through their pensions.
Now if the hours of theology are greater and requirement to *believe* any of it lesser, can’t anyone see the wisdom of lower pay? ECUSA has yet to answer the question: If it’s OK to believe anything at all, why exactly am I paying someone to tell me about it Sunday morning? Can’t I do all this in my living room without any “permission”? That’s one even a PhD oceanographer might have a tough time answering. It relates quite directly to the article. It should be obvious why people don’t decide at once to attend a seminary right out of college. What exactly do you learn there in 3 years of grad school; just to deny what Sunday School (maybe) taught you? I can do that for nothing.
Building off of #4 —
You don’t need formal training or education to teach Sunday school. You don’t need formal training or education to administer the chalice in many jurisdictions, or even to administer the host as a lay eucharistic minister. You don’t need formal training or education to deliver communion to shut-ins in several jurisdictions. You don’t need formal education or training to preach or read the lessons.
To the average person, the only things the training lets you do that you couldn’t do otherwise are: read the Gospel, consecrate the sacrament, confirm, preside at weddings, and offer absolution for confession. If you’re Protestant and squishy on sacraments, that list gets even smaller.
Why take a hit to the paycheck, spend three years or more in school, and take vows which possibly include celibacy, when most of the visible things the church does in this country are now done by untrained, unpaid laity?
#2, you may want to take a look at the discernment process in your diocese. In my diocese, the process requires an enormous time commitment as well as considerable financial sacrifice. Few young people have that kind of resources, especially considering that seminary in the Episcopal Church is post-graduate, so the prospective candidates likely have educational debt from college.
I understand it requires financial sacrifice – so does going to any grad school and yet grad school populations contain, I guess, a larger proportion of people in their 20s and 30s than the population at large. Why are Episcopal seminaries not more reflective of that? It can’t simply be because of debt – there may be complex social reasons such as the declining status of clergy, aging congregations, a growing differential between clergy pay and other professions, and complex spiritual reasons – a church that can no longer makes spiritual sense of sacrifice. I’m not saying that vocations should not be supported by parishes and dioceses. I am saying that just focusing on debt may misdirect us as to where the deeper questions are.
Indeed I think the whole process of selection and training for ordination needs overhaul and I am loathe to give to support a system that I see as terribly broken.
[blockquote] I am saying that just focusing on debt may misdirect us as to where the deeper questions are.[/blockquote]
I see your point and I think you are right. The debt-issues are more concrete and easily demonstrated. The problems caused by the lack of a commonly held Faith and generations of poor catechism are much easier to debate and ignore.
Reply to #s &. and 8.
You both make a lot of sense.
#7, I agree, it isn’t just about debt. I strongly believe that the process is broken. The problem is not only the cost in time and money of seminary, but that, in many dioceses, to even begin the process, the candidate has to put his or her career on hold. And I emphasize, that is before the candidate even begins seminary. The risk of so doing is great as many who begin the process do not finish, possibly a majority. The reward for so doing is becoming less and less attractive. Starting clergy salaries are low, and unlike in the past, there is the spectre of debt. Also the denomination is shrinking, meaning that career prospects are not wonderful. Episcopal clergy also enjoy a lesser status in comparison to the recent past.
To round it all out, the theological and educational experience in the Episcopal church for just about everyone is deadening. So the odds are whatever religious fervor the candidate may possess at the beginning of the process, it is almost a certainty that the candidate will have a great deal less passion at the end of the process.
Young people do not present themselves in great numbers because the Episcopal Church by and large does not give them good reasons to. If a genuine passion for God existed, then debt, lack of money or prestige or the length of the process would count for little.