Go visit around the churches in your area. If the article below is to be believed you would encounter more gray hair (and presumably experience and wisdom) in pulpits than the high and tight or undercut tonsorial looks (along with youth and inexperience). You would find more senior pastors who are on Medicare than Obamacare and more pastors who are seeing life’s sunset days rather than the bright days of life’s prime. The full time churches would have more senior pastors who are over 65 than under 40.
I’m feeling a little old myself. Here’s a link to a story on the research:
American pastors are older, and getting older, than ever
In the past quarter century American pastors:
- have moved from a median age of 44 to 54.
- have tripled in the over 65 age group, from 6 to almost 18 percent.
One can round up the usual suspects as the cause of this and the article suggests some causes. We baby boomers are getting older and our oversized population bubble, those born in the years 1946-1964, is steadily aging. We filled church nurseries in the 1950s. I recall First Baptist in my town swarming with babies, toddlers, and children in those years. Colleges experienced a boom in enrollment in the 1960s. Now, one cannot escape the marketing of retirement homes, medications, and things that appeal to seniors. There is not much new or unexpected relative to clergy aging but I appreciate any article that finds a riveting headline like the one above: more over 65 than under 40 is striking.
A few questions relative to Southern Baptists and our mix of clergy ages:
- Our seminaries enroll thousands. Exactly what are these people doing post seminary? We are investing tens of millions annually in them. Is it true that most have no interest in senior pastor positions? Is it worth the investment by our churches to churn out grads who dabble in ministry for a few years before moving on to something else? Just asking.
- Health insurance through Medicare is much more favorable than Obamacare or other alternatives the 64 and under folks. Is the differential in costs not sufficient for many pastors to retire? There are many smaller churches with unfilled pastorates in my area that would be well-served by a part-time retiree. I am told that economics is forcing many senior pastors to keep a full time church well beyond retirement age.
- What exactly is the mix of ages for Southern Baptist senior pastors? I don’t know. The survey above is for all Protestant pastors.
- We have yet to have a post-boomer as SBC president although J. D. Greear came very close last year.
- Several entity heads are post-boomers.
- Is our clergy age mix, particularly senior pastors, a healthy one? I’m thinking it’s not.
- If your aging church is looking for someone under 40 as your next pastor and you want someone with a senior pastor track record, good luck.
I was in an ordination council yesterday for two individuals under 30. Both were well qualified. One is likely to find a career as a senior pastor, one probably not. The observation made by the council, composed entirely of active or retired senior pastors, among which I was the oldest and the average age was about 55 was that these two guys will face a lot of different challenges in their ministerial future that we do or did.
Great article. Good observations. The market takes care of this, I think. When I helped plant a church with my pastor friend 24 years ago, we did so for several reasons. Calling, of course, was the main one. He was 29 and I was 31. He looked at the prospects of becoming a Senior Pastor in our area. He had the skills to do that, but the prospects were not attractive. The congregations would not have liked his emphasis in many ways, his style (particularly music), and he would have constantly been thought of as a guy who would be… Read more »
The pastor of our church is over 65 and has no plans to retire any time soon. I believe one reason for the high number of older pastors is low retirement savings. Three years ago I spoke with the Guidestone representative for Tennessee. He told me the average SBC pastor in Tennessee has $100,000 in his retirement account when he retires. At a 4% return that is $4,000 per year. Dr. Vaughn Walker, Professor of Black Church Studies at Southern Seminary, told me that many African-American pastors have no retirement plan. So, it seems many pastors are forced to continue… Read more »
Based on conversations I have had, many of the SBC churches in my area view the pastorate with a business mentality: you start as the music or youth guy somewhere and work your way into a senior pastor role. They expect candidates to have experience at smaller churches first, but sometimes that smaller church pays less for a senior pastor than the part-time youth role. The expectations are often that you are married with kids as well. Working your way up the career ladder does not look like a good prospect when you are trying to afford raising your family.… Read more »
” I’m not sure what the answers are, but it seems that we have a poor farm system in the SBC.”
I appreciate your observations. We have the components of a good farm system; an abundance of churches, various networking systems available, along with subsidized educational opportunities. Seems to me that autonomy works against us in this. No minister, prospective minister, or church is required to do anything.
William,
That is a good point regarding autonomy. If the system is to work, everyone has to work with the system. If graduates are not looking for churches, if DOMs aren’t helping churches find ministers, if churches refuse to higher younger or if ministers think part-time work is too small for them, we will see issues.
NAMB has been specific in saying that one of their goals is a “farm system” for church planters. Seems like it’s been successful.
Also, many churches have zero conversations about pastoral succession and are very poor at leadership development. I have found that Senior Pastors can be leery of being open handed with their leadership and teaching opportunities.
When their is a lack of intention to develop leaders from within the local church, the church suffers from DNA and vision whiplash every time they select a new pastor.
What if the church leadership could have open and honest conversations about the next 5 years without being scared of losing ones position or influence.
I began looking for a pastorate when I was in my mid- to late 20’s. I am currently 34 and pastoring in Missouri. What I quickly found out was that almost every church that could pay and support a family wanted you to already have had a position as a Senior Pastor in another church. Sometimes they would also say that you had to be a t least 30 to apply. As I interviewed at several churches a common question was how can I as a younger minster minster to the Seniors who are many years older to them. The… Read more »
Based on my (limited) experience it seems that supply far outweighs the demand in terms of pastoral candidates vs churches that can support a full-time pastor. It took me about three years to find my current church after coming home from the mission field.
I do believe that pastors who can’t afford to retire is a common thing unfortunately.
I’m a 37 year old pastor in Missouri, and it took me almost two years to find this church. Everyone wanted 5 years of experience or ten years of experience. It’s a wonder any of us young guys ever get any experience. I guarantee most young seminary graduates don’t want to have anything to do with the established church and who can blame them. Thing is, lots of young seminary graduates are planting churches which, in 30-40 years will become the established church. I’m thinking some of this is just cyclical.
This is interesting. I have more questions than I do answers. Certainly economics pays a significant role. For older pastors it may be that they are pastoring a church in their retirement. I know of more than one church in my area that benefits from paying a retired pastor less because he is drawing Social Security. That economic reason is beneficial for both church and retired pastor. But I wonder also how many of those pastors are second-career pastors. If a pastor entered into the ministry in his 50s, he may not be ready to retire from it in his… Read more »
I agree with earlier comments that many older pastors continue because they can’t afford retirement and that some churches are unwilling to hire younger pastors who have limited experience. There also seems to be a shrinking number of churches who can afford to hire a full-time pastor. The medium-sized churches are disappearing. This leaves the small and the big churches. The big churches usually hire in-house or from another big church; it’s unusual for the senior pastor of a small church to jump to being the senior pastor of a large one. It’s more common for an associate pastor or… Read more »
Why does a pastor need to retire even if he can well afford to do so? Why should he do that?
CB, I don’t think he necessarily should. I think older pastors are particularly valuable ministers because of their experience. My own church is enriched by the membership of several retired pastors because of their experiences and our younger pastors on staff benefit from their wisdom. My biggest concern would be if we are hanging on to older pastors at the expense of training up their eventual replacements so that there is a big hole in pastoral leadership when they all finally have to step down. We still have seminaries full of students, but if there isn’t any churches for them… Read more »
Let me throw another twist into this thread. is it possible that we are hiring seminary faculty too early in their journey? When I began to study for ministry, I was taught by seasoned veteran, churchmen. I learned things from those experienced scholars that I know for a fact seminarians are not getting today.
That’s a very good thought, CB. I don’t think all seminary professors need to be seasoned pastors, but I can see the value in having men who have the experience of the office training the next generation of pastors. In my own studies at Reformed Baptist Seminary, many of the professors are pastors who took a week or so away from their congregations to deliver lectures to a small group to be recorded for the online classes with the commitment that they will be available for direct contact from the students if they have any questions. Then the seminary requires… Read more »
Jim Pemberton,
I agree that not all seminary professor need to be veterans. You are right about that and the disciplines wherein veterans are not necessary are easily identified.
However, the obvious absence of veterans in certain disciplines is a legitimate concern. That has been my personal observation and it is my opinion that lacking in SBC life has been a contributing factor to many problems we now face as a cooperative body of churches.
Often when a person retires they go on to a ‘second career’ based on other interests. Pastors typically do not have those ‘other interests’. So they remain FT pastors if they can. Sure, they could retire and pastor as smaller church as a bivo for much less $$. But the headaches and work load are often not that much less. So why retire when you have nothing else you want to do and you can keep pastoring full-time? Retired pastors that do not preach regularly tend not to be a very happy bunch. When I graduated SWBTS in 1989 the… Read more »
Allen, I appreciate your thoughtful response but you have a boatload of broad generalizations and unsupported assertions. One that I would not dispute is your statement, “…we typically do not treat our ‘ministry failures’ with much redemptive grace.”
I have a question regarding seminary training. I have not taken any sampling so I don’t know the answer but here goes: “How many people in the six SBC seminaries (i.e. what percent of students) are going to seminary to learn the Bible in a serious way without any plans on being on the staff or a church or being in the ministry? Evidently there are many more in seminary than can ever realistically expect to find a job at a church. So doesn’t it make sense for seminaries to focus at least part of their training on people being… Read more »
The seminaries have always been grossly inefficient in being seed beds for vocational clergy. The subjective nature of calling may prevent much correction of this. No seminary requires any Bible undergrad degree to my knowledge. The measure for success for our seminaries is enrollment, not effective training of vocational ministers for our churches, the institutions being financially rewarded for the former, not the latter. My views on all this border on the cynical and I admit it. We waste tens of millions on theological education. Seminaries probably track grads as to longevity in church ministry. I d love to see… Read more »
“The measure for success for our seminaries is enrollment, not effective training of vocational ministers for our churches, the institutions being financially rewarded for the former, not the latter. My views on all this border on the cynical and I admit it. We waste tens of millions on theological education. Seminaries probably track grads as to longevity in church ministry.”
Amen!
SBC Plodder: Your comment hits the ball out of the park!! Seminaries [or any school] is only successful if it prepares graduates to actually earn a living upon graduation. What would a Rhodes Scholarship mean if after you complete your study you couldn’t get, and hold, a decent job? People go to top schools for various reasons. One of the major ones is that once you get your sheepskin you can actually get a job. People wouldn’t cough up the big bucks to go to Stanford if it was the case that only — lets say 30% — of the… Read more »
Roger, thanks but SBC theological education is a complicated business with quite a number of conundrums. Still, we do divvy up CP dollars on the basis of enrollment. Greater funding comes from tuition paying students who don’t get a refund if they can’t find a job or don’t stay in ministry.
We will have no less than six seminaries no matter what because there are strong constituencies for each.
William is correct. A student can enroll in the Master of Divinity program with any kind of bachelors degree, as long as it is from an accredited institution. In the Master of Divinity program the professors do not assume their students have prior knowledge. In fact, one New Testament professor told me, “I assume they know nothing about the New Testament.” This is one reason why the MDiv program is about 90 semester hours, while a masters degree at a university is about 36. A university requires an applicant for a masters degree in biology to have a bachelors degree… Read more »
A friend was “counseled out” of the Presbyterian ministry. The counselor told him that there were enough “older” people feeling the call to ministry to take care of the needs–and those people made better pastors than an “on time” graduate.
I’ve seen many opinions offered and agree with almost all of them, which tells me this is not an issue that can be nailed down. If a church set in its ways wants an older pastor to basically serve as a chaplain, they’re free to do so. If a seminary grad has no interest in serving a smaller church, which is still the primary training ground, don’t complain you can’t find a church. There’s a lot you could learn even if the church never changes. I’m 52 and one of those pastors with very little in retirement, as up until… Read more »
First, the question about our investment into seminaries when many grads are “dabbling” in ministry is a good question. I don’t think the answer is to stop supporting our seminaries. And I think it needs to be considered that there are many worthwhile pursuits, besides that of head pastor, that comes through seminary training: bible translation, missionaries, and those who study to one day teach, for instance. The kingdom of Christ is added to by those who serve faithfully in these ways too. Secondly, the comment about the ordination that you attended for two guys under 30 stating that “One… Read more »