Why I don’t let students take pastoral ministry in a congregation off the table

The school I serve, Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, educates future faith community leaders. One of the challenges we face is that fewer and fewer entering students can conceive of themselves as pastors of congregations. I’m sometimes tempted to say, “Not all faith community leaders are pastors; heck, look at me! I’ve served churches for the equivalent of a coffee break in the past 30 years, and I very much understand myself to be a minister, first and foremost.”

But I don’t say that, at least not right away. Why? Because it’s not about me. Why else? Because I don’t want to let them off the hook. Consider these good reasons a person who’s already decided to enroll in a Master of Divinity program ought not to dismiss the possibility of serving a congregation as its pastor:

1. Entering graduate students aren’t in a position to take any options off the table, especially in a quickly changing time. For a season, or two, or three, all of us need to submit to the expectations of our chosen fields. Fields have locations: scholars in universities, financiers in banking, lawyers in courtrooms, doctors in hospitals. There might come a time when church and ministry are decoupled completely, but that time isn’t now.
2. The world’s congregations need an educated clergy. If today’s seminary students leave theological meaning-making leadership to the untrained, seeing the church as too closed-minded, they create a self-fulfilling prophesy. Churches with pastors who aren’t prepared to teach the Gospel and create new meaning amidst new situations will cause the church to become less appealing as a setting for the next generation of religious scholar-leaders. If a calling from God to go to Divinity School has something to do with being of greatest and best use to the world, the church’s need for an educated clergy ought not to be dismissed as irrelevant to a graduate student’s discernment.
3. Graduates find good jobs in pastoral ministry, and they’re given immense responsibility from day-one. I can’t imagine a nonprofit organization making a brand new graduate its CEO, but that’s exactly what happens when a recent seminary graduate becomes a congregation’s pastor. Even associate ministers are given portfolios of responsibility characterized by independence and creative freedom as compared with number-two execs anywhere else.
4. Anything a person might find frustrating or suffocating about serving a congregation has its counterpart in other fields anyhow. The difference is that ministers’ roles are so public that we can see what might frustrate them, wrongly concluding that the minister’s struggles are unique when they’re not. Every leader has some reactive constituents who blow their tops over small and necessary changes. Every field has chief executives who submit to volunteer boards who don’t always understand the issues. Every field has HR challenges that keep heads of staff up at night, and every executive with more than a little experience has experienced what it’s like to be “the HR issue”.
5. Ministry in congregations is becoming freer as religious observance becomes less expected and more counter-cultural in our society. Capitalism’s invisible and sometimes grubby hands have relegated ministers so fully to the margins that they’re free from old expectations for playing ball with the powers that be. They can use that freedom to engage tougher questions, and to advocate for the marginalized, rather than blend in with the mayor and superintendent for fear of losing standing. That standing is sufficiently long-gone.
6. Ministering to a congregation is incredibly gratifying. Pastors are invited into homes and lives. They have a captive audience every week for sharing their ideas about how ancient teachings apply to today’s world. They’re paid a wage, low but livable. The parts that are hardest — like conflict and boundary management — are ones for which they can find resources for continuous growth and improvement. Pastors work across generations within the church, and across sectors beyond its doors. It’s no ordinary calling, perfect for someone with a short attention span who’s allergic to normalcy and boredom.

I hesitate to tell students any of the above when they, having never tried ministry in a congregation, dismiss the possibility. Is that because I know how very hard the work can be and don’t want to minimize the challenges? Is it because I can relate to how unappealing local church life might appear to a young person who wants to build the future, rather than maintain the past or present? Is it because I feel a twinge of shame that I haven’t dedicated more of my own ministry career to congregations? All those reasons: yes. Yet…

In church last week, my friend Lucy, a retired university CFO, offered a sermon as part of Laity Sunday. She told the story of our church supporting her through the several years her baby sister fought, and then succumbed to, cancer. She shared how there were some Sundays she would just sit in a pew and sob. Everyone was so kind, she said. She received so much love and support. My first thought was, “If we don’t have a pew to sob in, where are we going to sob? Where will all that sadness go?”

Hesitate as I might, I don’t and won’t go in on, “Oh, you don’t want to serve a church? Don’t worry about it!” talk with new seminarians, and that’s because I love the church. I serve a graduate theological institution that’s long called itself “The School of the Church:” no asterisks, caveats, or qualifications. I believe the church needs to change, in some cases dramatically. And I believe the world needs the church, at least until God reveals to us some new and better way to ensure that meaning-making has a dedicated space in our shared life together.