The future of clergy (cont.)
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Note #43904 from Robert Campbell to UCCHRIST CHATTER:

Here are some statistics. They are a bit old, and so I am not surprised that there has been some work to reverse these trends.

According to a study by the Wisconsin Conference for their Forward in Faith Campaign:

• Fewer than 125 clergy in the entire UCC are currently under the age of 35 years.

• An average of 107 ordained UCC pastors will reach retirement age annually in the next ten years.

•  The average number of ordinations annually over the past ten years in the UCC has been 95, a number of whom have entered "specialized" (non-parish) ministries.

•  The median age of UCC clergy today is 52 years.

•  The wonderful pastors who have been ordained in the UCC in the past 20 years and more, have largely been "second career" pastors.
  

•  The average age of graduation from seminary during these years has been 43 years.

• By 2020, more than 80% of Mass. Conference clergy will have reached retirement age.

Part of the problem is the debt that students come out of school with.  Even with an average $28,072 debt, in order to pay such a student debt safely _ without jeopardizing quality of life and care of self and family _ the banking industry recommends a minimum annual salary of $41,700. But, the compensation guidelines for 2001 passed by Annual Meeting recommend starting pay for clergy at between $24,000 and $44,000 annually, with only clergy at the largest churches on the high end of that scale.

> > The Bishops and the Clergy Killers
> by Kristin D. Anderson
> This article appeared in July / August 1998 — Volume 14, Number 4
> In Wisconsin and Minnesota "63 percent of pastors know of a colleague who has been seriously abused by a congregation, colleague, or denominational executive. Approximately 25 percent of pastors have suffered such abuse themselves," according to G. Lloyd Rediger, in Clergy Killers.

> Rediger also notes, "The results of Leadership magazine's national survey of Protestant clergy indicated that 43 percent said a faction (typically less than 10 people) forced them out."

> "Lost in these statistics are good pastors who have been destroyed by their congregations, by parishioners that are selfish, want their own way, and are determined to get it at any cost to the congregation or the pastor. They leap over pastors, support committees, and lay leaders to put their complaint directly to the top.

> These complainers are not easy challenges and certainly circumstances vary. But how the bishop (or Conference Minister) responds to the "bad seed" or even the disenchanted member or colleague can destroy the health of a pastor and the viability of his/her ministry.
 

 > A personal handwritten note in my friend's upbeat yearly form letter concluded with, "The 'honeymoon' is over here and there is a small group wanting John to leave. Do you know why things are going like this? Just about all of the pastors in the area are really going through some rough stuff."

> She commented on a clergy spouse gathering that she had attended; "We figured out that 17 out of 18 of us were on anti-depressants."

> > Condition: Critical  Exploring the causes of poor clergy health
> By Janet Maykus
> Physical health of clergy? The phrase is oxymoronic.
> Today, the health and well being of clergy is awful. This was not always the case. The Pulpit and Pew research project at Duke Divinity School points to studies conducted with Protestant clergy in the 1950’s. At that time, Protestant clergy had the lowest rates of disease for every major diagnosis and lived longer and healthier lives than people in any other profession.

By 1983, another study found that Protestant clergy had the highest overall work-related stress of various religious professionals and the next to the lowest amount of personal resources to cope with the strain. A third study conducted in 1999 found that clergy have one of the highest death rates due to heart disease of any occupation.

> The statistics get grimmer and stranger. A 2003 Pulpit & Pew survey of 2, 500 pastors found that 76 percent rated their health as excellent or very good. About this same percentage said that neither their physical health nor emotional health had caused them to miss work. But, 10 percent reported feelings of depression all or most of the time and more than 40 percent reported feeling worn out or depressed most of the time.

> At the same time, 76 percent of the clergy surveyed were either overweight (46 percent) or obese (30 percent), a significantly higher percentage than the population as whole (61 percent). Weight was a bigger problem for men than for women in the Pulpit & Pew survey, with 79 percent of men being either overweight or obese, compared to 52 percent of women.

>  A judicatory official of one annual conference said that he had an extremely difficult time finding a carrier who would even talk about insuring his pastors because the risk is too high for Protestant clergy

> > So what happened? How did clergy go from a place of health and well being to this new place near the edge of an abyss? The emotional and physical ill health of today’s clergy is not the disease; they are symptoms of a much bigger issue.

> The church has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. Society has changed. A pastor who was interviewed in a focus group at Austin Seminary, for example, described his church as more of a train station than a fixed community. He said his congregation’s membership has a 33 percent turn-over rate every three years.

> The decision to affiliate with a religious community is deeply influenced by a culture of choice. John Mulder noted at the Symposium on the Future of Mainstream Protestant Churches that, “...a culture of choice contributes to the church shopping that bedevils pastors and congregations, and undermines a deep sense of belonging to a particular theological tradition. Pastors ask: ‘How can we win the allegiance of people in a competitive marketplace of ideas, beliefs, and values?’

‘How can we speak with integrity the claims of the gospel when ‘beliefs’ are reduced to the level of ‘personal opinion’ and ‘faith’ is equated with ‘ideology’?”

> Within this culture of choice comes a lack of shared values and commitment to purpose. This leaves many pastors to do all the work all the time all alone.

> Another cause of clergy health is conflict, a persistent problem in today’s congregations. David Roozen and Carl Dudley in a 2001 study entitled, Faith Communities Today: A Report on Religion in the United States Today reported, “Congregations suffer more when they experience conflict than (advanced) age or (poor) location. Lingering conflict is strongly associated with declining vitality and declining membership.”

In focus groups conducted at Austin Seminary, pastors say they are called in to mediate conflicts large and small in congregations. These pastors said that they did not want just more training in conflict management skills, but a breather from conflict, a place where they could vent, and people who understood what it is they talk about.

> Next is loneliness and isolation. Ministers are different. We are not business people, although we need some business skills. We need to know how to read a spread sheet, negotiate, persuade, and delegate. Pastors are not lawyers, although we need to be firmly rooted in our theological convictions; we must understand the polity of our own denominations. Following polity is one of the methods by which we can weather the conflict in our congregations.

> Ministry is a calling. Ministry is a craft. Ministry involves loving the church, its members (who often act in unlovable ways), all the while wrestling with one’s own doubts and inner conflicts.

> > 1991 Survey of Pastors (Fuller Institute of Church Growth)
>     90% work more than 46 hours a week
>     80% believed pastoral ministry affected their families negatively
>     33% believed ministry was a hazard to their family
>     75% reported a significant stress related crisis at least once in their ministry
>     50% felt themselves unable to meet the needs of the job
>     90% felt inadequately trained to cope with ministry demands
>     70% say they have a lower self esteem now compared to when they started in ministry
>     40% reported serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month
>     70% do not have someone they consider a close friend
 

 I am not making things up.  Maybe everything has been reversed in the last 7 to 10 years, but talking with ministers that are not afraid of talking, the problems are not magically going away.  And, yes, we can dismiss them because some of this research is old.  I would be interested in seeing some new ones when the research has been done.  Sure, some of the programs developed to address these issues may have helped.  I am looking forward to new numbers when those programs produce them.  But it won't be for another 5 years before we will really see the effects.  And, by the way, the problems are not just within the UCC.  The problems exist within every denomination.  Blessings, Ed aka:John of Patmos