The New Pastor: Rob Bell or Your Mother?

Posted on Dec 16, 2011 in Featured Articles, The Church | 4 comments

Last March we moved our Embrace Richmond corporate offices onto the campus of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (BTSR).   I love being at BTSR.  It has allowed me to have greater contact with the seminary community.  In the past two weeks, I have participated in several classes and have witnessed several trends which I suspect are occurring across the nation.

1. A growing number of older, second career students.  According to CNN Belief Blog post titled “Baby Boomers heading back to seminary”, “The fastest-growing group of seminarians include those older than 50.”
2. A growing number of younger students who do not see themselves in the institutional church. This quote was taken from a post written by a young seminarian, Mary Beth Foust, who visited Embrace recently.  Mary Beth shares in the post that she has been struggling with her call to ministry and goes on to write:

This past Tuesday, one of my classes visited with Embrace Richmond. We spent the morning learning about how they have simply come alongside this neighborhood allowing its members to dream about a future that could be and focusing on the positive things that they bring to their community (This is also known as Asset Based Community Development). It was simply amazing to see that they weren’t concerned with how many, but how much. What quality of care and dignity could they offer by allowing the people in this community to say this is what we need, can you come alongside of us and help us to do it?

 

As I sat in that room I couldn’t shake the fact that I felt at home among the people there. As we talked about poverty and transformation I felt like I could have talked for hours. This is it. This is the kind of work I am supposed to be doing.

3. A growing number of female students who are pursuing new and creative ways of exercising their pastoral call outside the institutional church.

BTSR was formed out of the Southern Baptist Church split with the goal of providing theological education for moderate Baptists, specifically in it’s affirmation of women in ministry. Erin Spengeman and I were students at BTSR together.  Like me Erin likes to do things kind of out of the box.  She tried going to work within the institutional setting of the church, but she always felt a bit out of place.  Several years ago Erin started a group called “Beer and Theology” in her home.  Erin found that her real passion was engaging those who would never step foot in a church in spiritual conversations.  This past year, Erin has taken on a new venture, a home based “fresh expression” of church called “Synago Church” which she co-pastors with another BTSR graduate, Nelson Taylor.

While both Erin and I see ourselves as somewhat of an anomaly, I think there is a reason for our weirdness.  We are both women who pursued our theological training in a Baptist setting.  Female Baptist seminarians have a far greater challenge than most seminarians in finding positions within local church settings.  Both Erin and I are leaders, both are apostolic in our call, both of us are very creative and we are both willing to take risks.

The institutional structures in most Baptist expressions of the church are none of the above.  Thus, to be who God created us to be, we had to go outside the traditional church walls.  The funny thing is that we are both being called back into “the church” to help change the structures so that others who are shaped like us, do not have such a hard time living their call while staying connected to the institutional church.

For years, the image of a “church planter” was a hipster type male in his late 20’s with a goatee.   The idea being that young people will connect with young pastors and that young hip pastors will make the church “cool” to the more postmodern generations and “attract” that generation.  However, the hip, cool expressions with their multi-staff structure, full worship band and large group gatherings are expensive and few have proven to be successful. This is one area David Fitch and I totally agree on.  The church of the future will likely be smaller and lighter weight.  It will have a very low overhead and is likely to have no full-time paid pastor.  It will spend less of its energy and resources on itself and invest more in building the Kingdom and going on mission in the world.

This idea of creating church structures that are lighter weight will require that we prepare pastors to be bi-vocational or better yet, that we engage pastors who are already financially stable.  There will be fewer and fewer full-time ministerial positions which means that it will be less and less feasible for the 20 something male to move into full-time vocational ministry.  Think about it.  Most males in their late 20’s are recently married, have few assets of their own to sustain them, and will likely be moving into childrearing years.  The stress of starting a family, added to the financial stress inherent in any ministry position, plus the stress of starting something from the ground up is taking a toll on these young pastors and their families.

Some look at the rise in older students and the decline in younger ones as a handicap to the church, I see it as God’s provision for a new way of being church.

I have a friend named Cathy who is in her mid 50’s.  Cathy is thinking about going to seminary.  She and her husband have raised their kids, they have financial security, they can take risks and they can endure through financial hardship.  She has tremendous wisdom because of the years she spent in corporate America.  She knows the real world and can reach people where they are because she has been there.

So as we explore what “fresh expressions” of the church will look like, I think we also need to explore “fresh images” of what a “pastor” looks like.  Instead of searching for the next “Rob Bell”, we need to open our eyes to the grandmothers and neighborhood matriarchs sitting right under our noses.

Our institutional churches also need to find a way to insure young pastors who see themselves in “fresh expressions” of the church do not have to leave the church to follow their call.  We have to create ways of releasing people to go on mission and maintain connection to the “mother” church.  We have to free people to be creative and a little weird in the name of Jesus.  This willingness to release without abandoning will add a level of support, maturity and sustainability that these young ministers need to be successful.   If we do not make these changes, my young creative seminary friends will leave the church and live out their call as nurses or a social worker and in the long-run the church will suffer.

Recently Scot McKnight posted a great article about Phoebe, the letter bearer of Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Phoebe is a great archetype for the next generation of pastor’s.  She is self-sufficient, apostolic and she has been commissioned by the mother church to carry the teachings of the faith into new territory.  If you are a female looking for affirmation of your call, I strongly encourage you to read this post.

What other trends are you seeing in the role and shape of the pastor?

How can the church better support those of us who are a little out of the box?